http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...alls-short-of-what-we-deserve/article1592694/
Can you help me find a family doctor?” It’s a question I’m asked practically every day in the hospital wards where I work. No wonder. According to the
Canadian Medical Association, four million to five million people (16%) don’t have a family physician.
The doctor shortage is a major problem with our health-care system. Unfortunately, it’s just one of many. Our patients wait too long for basic care. The system is plagued by too much bureaucracy. And despite a massive infusion of money – the Ontario health budget has roughly doubled in the past decade – we must acknowledge what no government official is willing to admit: Canadian health care falls short of what we deserve.
...There are still too many tragedies. Think of the Montreal woman who died recently
after waiting four days in a hospital ER, the last of a string of Quebec deaths that led the head of that province’s College of Physicians to hope for a “miracle.”
With so many problems, provincial governments are forced to spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year purchasing American health care for Canadians. Yes, our public dollars go to pay for their private health services.
Canadians, though, are routinely told how well our health-care system compares to those of other nations. It’s not so. Take the United States. Despite the heated political rhetoric north of the 49th parallel about American health care,
their patients are more likely to survive cancer (66.3 per cent over five years for American men, but 58 per cent for Canadian men, based on recent data from national databases). Their outcomes are also better for heart attacks and transplants. And, based on data from the Joint Canada/U.S. Survey of Health, Americans have greater access to preventive screening tests and higher treatment rates for chronic illnesses, and the poor under our public system seem to be less healthy relative to the non-poor than their American counterparts.
People need to pay more directly for their health care. The objective isn’t to make a cancer patient burn her life savings to pay for her care – although this happens too often to some patients in Canada’s health-care system, as seen in a survey of breast cancer survivors released by the Canadian Breast Cancer Network recently.
David Gratzer is a physician and author. He is participating in tonight’s Munk Debate, with the resolution: “Be it resolved:
I would rather get sick in the U.S. than Canada.”