Thursday 11 January 2018

Canadian Health Care Embarassment and administridiot hubris.


  It's a major embarrassment that Canada,a country that once enjoyed international recognition for its health care system was ranked last of eleven developed countries by the Commonwealth Fund. If you still think our service is acceptable read the report for yourself. You will be horrified. Our politicians have done an incredible job of' fooling most of the people most of the time'. Still, they are smart enough to vote themselves a special health care package.
Most criminal of their activities is their acceptance, even encouragement, of the dangerously long waiting lists. The average wait for treatment by a specialist from the date the patient was referred by the Family Doc has hit twenty (20) weeks. In 1993 it was about 9 weeks. The wait-times continue to increase. In some specialties the wait is much longer unless you have a life threatening emergency.
    I can think of no reason why people put up with this appalling situation other that they have been fooled into believing that we still have the excellent exemplary standards we once had. We are now an example of another kind.
    Countries like Australia, Britain, Germany, France and Switzerland have systems far superior to our own.
    One of the main reasons for our dismal failure in improving or even maintaining our system is the Canada Health Act, a brain child of Canadian Politicians , that is so rigid that it leaves no possibility of improvement. The Canada Health Act prevents the private sector from playing a significant role in health care delivery except when the government is totally unable to provide the service. They jealously guard their monopoly despite being well aware that all of the above countries use all the help they can get from the private sector, sometime involving co-payments or deductibles. The Canada Health Act prohibits this although it is successful and provision is made so that the poor receive the same benefits as others. People in  the above mentioned countries willingly buy supplemental insurance or make modest co-payments thereby injecting much needed funds into the health care system to everyone's benefit.

   Unfortunately the hubris of Canadian politicians of all ilk make them regard any help as a loss of face, although they have already sustained that by reducing one of the finest health care systems in the developed world into one of the poorest, but as long as they do not perceive it as costing them votes, who cares?
   Remember Ronald Reagan's quotation of the nine most terrifying words in the language: "I'm from the government and I'm here to help."  
   How right he was! 

Be sure to read next weeks Medicalmanes to learn about suing your University for not passing your exams!! 


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