Dave Ellis
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- Dec 27, 2011
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Everything you ever wanted to know about Canadian health care
1) You're claim that Canada treats healthcare as a human right is a joke. If this were true supplemental coverage like dental care and drug coverage would be provided for. Nice soundbyte, but you have been lying.
When did I ever claim those things were covered? I didn't, therefore I never lied. Withdraw your accusation or this could count as flaming
Note: I believe those things SHOULD be covered, however I never once claimed that they were.
2) "While Canada is traditionally thought of as a publicly financed system, spending on these supplemental benefits means that 30 percent of health spending comes from private sources." Wow, 30 percent of your healthcare spending is from private sources. I thought I remember you saying that Canada was a single payer system?
Do you understand what a single payer system is? If you did I'm not sure why you'd ever rather make that bizarre claim. Private funding can include people buying supplementary coverage (ie so they get a private hospital room instead of sharing with another patient), drug and dental plans, private donations to the hospitals, etc. Those things are over and above the health insurance all Canadians have though.
3) "While Canada's health care system is publicly financed, many providers are not government employees. Instead, doctors are usually reimbursed by the government at a negotiated fee-for-service rate. The average primary care doctor in Canada earns $125,000 (in the United States, that number stands at $186,000)." I don't think I need to go into detail on this horse as it has been beaten hopelessly to death (please don't make me hit it again!).
In fact, virtually all health staff are privately employed. All of the hospitals and doctors offices are privately owned and operated. It's only the insurance plan that's publicly funded.
This is why your assertion that the government creates waiting lists to control demand is absurd. The government doesn't run the hospitals or doctors offices, they have no control over who gets seen, and when they get seen. The provincial health insurance plans get the bill after the patient has been treated.
4) "Where Canada does not do well is on wait times, which tend to be longer than in other countries, especially to see specialists or obtain an elective surgery. A Commonwealth Fund survey in 2010 found that 59 percent of respondents reported waiting more than four weeks for an appointment with a specialist, more than double the number in the United States:"
Like I said, Canada is not the best model for healthcare.
The wait times to see a specialist are a problem, sure. The wait time to see a doctor for basic medical procedures is minimal. If I called up my doctor for an annual checkup, I'd very likely get in next week, if not the week after.
The problem with specialist wait times is mainly administrative, taken from a CTV News article:
"As a family doctor, Dutt said she sees a “whole host” of different reasons for varying wait times across the country, including how physicians prioritize the care of their patients and access to resources in different provinces.
However, there are “lots of things” happening in Canada to make those wait times shorter, Dutt said, adding that the medical community has seen wait times go down “significantly” in places that have centralized their referral process.
“Often, as a family doc, I send off a referral to one doctor, I don’t know their wait times,” she said. “One of the best things that we can do is centralize that and have all the people needing care going to a centralized place so the first doctor that’s available sees that patient.”
Michael Decter, chair of the advocacy group Patients Canada, told CTV’s Power Play that simply pouring more money into the system won’t fix it.
His proof, he said, is that the federal government has increased health transfers to provinces by six per cent a year for more than a decade, yet wait times have gotten worse.
“It’s about innovation, it’s about accountability, it’s about focus and it’s about transparency,” he said. “It’s not about more money.”"
No system is perfect, and reforming that system to streamline the referral process would probably help in a big way. However, just because we have an area of concern that some reforms would fix doesn't mean the whole system needs to be thrown out. Your whole line of argument seems to depend on that kind of reasoning, and it's nonsense.
The flaws in the American health system are fundamental flaws that can't be rectified through minor reforms here and there. Your health care prices are automatically going to be higher because it's for profit. You have tens of millions of people who can't even access the system because they can't afford health insurance.
A healthcare system which can't be accessed by some people who need it the most isn't a proper healthcare system. It's a business, and those that can't pay get thrown overboard.
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