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Canadian healthcare costs have mushroomed by more than 260 percent over the past 15 years to a whopping $130 billion in 2011, with an increasing portion funded by debt.
Due largely to runaway health care costs, the provinces racked up a combined deficit of over $30 billion in the 2010/11 fiscal year. Health care already swallows over half of revenues in Ontario and Quebec, and most other provinces will soon be facing the same debilitating prospect.
Making matters even worse, global fallout from the Eurozone debt crisis, combined with continuing American economic lethargy, are almost certain to reduce provincial and federal revenues.
A Stranglehold on Public Finances
What have Canadians been getting from this health care system that’s slowly strangling public finances? The answer isn’t pretty.
The Fraser Institute’s 2010 edition of “Waiting Your Turn” found the average wait time between general practitioner referrals and treatment delivery by a specialist increased to 18.2 weeks. And in a recent Macdonald Laurier Institute survey of 34 OECD countries, Canada ranked 26th in access to physicians and 24th in access to hospitals.
If ever there was a time for major surgery on our terminally ill healthcare system, it is now. Yet provincial premiers who gathered in Victoria two weeks ago focused mainly on how they could extract even more money from Ottawa to try and keep their sinking systems afloat. There was some discussion about being “more efficient” but, like the old phonograph on the doomed Titanic, that music has been playing over and over while the system sinks ever closer to the water line.
If ever there was a time for major surgery on our terminally ill healthcare system, it is now.
Systems that are breaking down exhibit tell-tale symptoms. One is the system actually thwarts those needed to save it.
Doctors consistently rank lack of operating room time as the biggest impediment to treatment. Specialists see little point in taking on more cases when their surgical time is limited to just a few hours per week, making wait times for non-life threatening, but frequently debilitating, “elective” surgery painfully long for patients.
Another symptom of systemic breakdown is that rationing becomes the only option. Many new doctors aren’t even able to obtain a residency due to what health care administrators term a “lack of resources.” This is happening while physician retirements combined with an aging population portend a pending physician supply crisis.
Perhaps if all patients waiting for treatment were to line up at their local hospital, the parallels to Soviet-style rationing would strike home with those who perpetuate the myth that Canada has one of the world’s best health care systems.
The stark realities: The system is expensive, but inaccessible. Our health care workers are high quality, but poorly utilized. What to do?
Guidance to answering that question can be gained from an ancient Chinese proverb, “One can argue forever about whether a stick is straight or crooked. The only way to find out is to place a straight stick alongside of it.”
The 2010 edition of the peer reviewed Euro-Canada Health Consumer Index shows that, despite the fourth highest per capita spending, Canadian health care ranks 25th compared with 33 European countries.
Public/Private Mix Works Best
In contrast to Canada’s legislation making it a crime for physicians to deliver and for patients to pay for “medically necessary services,” every one of those 33 countries permits a mixture of public and private spending. Those countries have found that, just as when parents choose to send their children to private school while continuing to pay public school taxes, dollars spent voluntarily for private care free up more funds for the public system.
As for the alarmist fear-mongering that private treatment reduces resources within the publicly funded system, how could that be true when new doctors can’t even get into the system and when surgeons sit waiting for access to an operating room?
Given these realities, it’s understandable that those who can afford to escape Canada’s debilitating wait lists go elsewhere for private treatment, and so do their dollars which could be staying in Canada.
Removing the Canada Health Act prohibition against private care would reverse the outflow of money going to international hospitals, better utilize our excellent health care professionals, and foster job-creating investment in one of the world’s fastest growing sectors.
The Canada Health Act stipulation that all Canadians have access to government-funded health care would remain sacrosanct and public system costs along with waiting lists would decline. It’s time to move forward to a new, sustainable model for Canadian health care.
Gwyn Morgan is a Canadian business leader and director of two global corporations.
Courtesy TroyMedia.ca
