Canadians like to think that we have the best health care in the world. In fact, we often define ourselves by our universal health care that treats everyone equally.
Nothing has caused more pain for politicians advocating health care change in Canada than the charge by political opponents that proposed changes would bring “American health care” to Canada. And nothing has hurt the evolution of care in Canada more than this fear mongering.
Canadians often look smugly at the US system, noting that some quarter of the population is not covered by the expensive insurance system. But for those who can afford it, about three quarters of the population, the US is delivering a much better level of service.
In America, where competition exists in health care, waiting lists are virtually unknown; and, whatever ails you, you can be assured there’s help in the system.
President Obama has at least made a valiant effort to fix the problem for Americans who are not covered by introducing some kind of publicly funded coverage for those who are left out.
In Canada, the Canada Health act ensures universality of care, public administration and portability. But two other tenets of the act are letting Canadians down – accessibility (as is evidenced by long waiting lines for almost everything) and comprehensiveness (as evidenced by constant delisting). In fairness, as our public system has taken more and more of provincial GDP’s, what choice did governments have other than rationing of care. How long will it be until provincial governments are forced to put a hard cap on these costs?
While Obama is attempting to expand the U.S system to include public funding for those who can’t afford it, Canada remains stuck on the public-only funding model for medically necessary care in Canada. When will Canadians wake up to the fact that restricting funding to the public purse dooms us to poor health care service?
Don’t get me wrong – once you get to see a doctor or go to the hospital in this country, the quality of care is first rate. It’s just that our insane focus on public funding alone will forever limit access and make comprehensiveness a joke.
We need an Obama who has the courage to take on this sacred cow and add a parallel privately funded component to our sorely underfunded system.
It is neither the current American nor Canadian system that is the answer to better health care but a hybrid private/public system that has a sufficient funding envelope to do the job right.
