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Canada's health system has its own problems
The Health Council of Canada recently published a report in which they reiterated Canada’s universal, publicly funded health care system is widely viewed as an essential part of a social safety net and a reflection of Canadians’ core values. But they also found that the cost of the system is a constant concern, and many fear that public health care is unsustainable.
Negative discussion about health care in Canada tends to focus on a persistent set of problems: access, wait times, and shortages of health care providers. This has been the case in times of good economy and during economic crisis.
The 10th annual Health Care in Canada survey confirms that wait times and the shortage of doctors top the list pf concerns voiced by Canadians in 2008. Other issues of concern were timeliness and access to care and environmental health issues such as air and water pollution.
Although some Canadians say they have never waited for medical services, complaints about long waiting times have lead virtually every provincial government to publish data on wait times for specific procedures in their province.
In 2004 the federal government and all the provincial governments entered into a 10 year plan to achieve significant reductions in wait times for 5 priority areas:
- Cancer
- Heart
- Diagnostic imaging
- Joint replacement
- Sight restoration (cataract surgery)
By 2007, despite government promises and billions of dollars funneled into the Canadian health-care system, "the average patient waited more than 18 weeks between seeing their family doctor and receiving the surgery or treatment they required," said Nadeem Esmail, director of Health System Performance Studies at the independent Fraser Institute.
It is difficult to talk about waiting times across the board because of differences in provincial reporting. Waiting times did increase in 7 provinces: Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador.
But 4 provinces, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island., showed marked decreases in waiting time. The differences between the provinces may to some extent account for the widely differing opinions expressed by Canadians about their health care system.
The shortage of doctors and other health care professionals is the second most problematic issue for Canadians. The lure of more lucrative salaries led to a "brain drain" of professionals to the United States in recent years. Although overall emigration has been relatively small, health care professionals constitute a significant proportion of the public sector workers who have chosen to leave Canada for employment in the United States.
Canadian nurses have expressed particular dissatisfactions with the health care system in recent years. They have consistently recommended increasing the number of nurses, improvements in education, and maximizing the scope of practice of nurses.
Follow this series on Canada's health care system by clicking on "SUBSCRIBE to E-MAIL." Comments and opposing views are welcome and appreciated. Rudeness is neither welcome nor appreciated
Comments
The Fraser Institute, like many other think tanks, is funded by special interest groups who want to see certain reports written and published. I am not sure I would call them independent.
Canadian nurses may want more money and less of a work load. However, they will and have fought to preserve the current health care system.
Canadians LOVE their health care and spend half (HALF) per person than Americans do and have better results overall. So, how many Canadians say that would prefer to return to an American style, for-profit insurance system? Canadian government studies show that about 6% say they would switch. This number is about the same number of Canadians who are ILLITERATE! SO STOP WITH THE LIES AND DISTORTION OF FACTS, Shiela.
Why even look at the Canadian health care system? Is it the best in the world? No, it was ranked 30th by the World Health Organization (our (non-)system was ranked 37th). Please do a series on the top ten.
Many years ago I submitted a suggestion: a totally free system is subject to misuse. Charge a small fee to keep diaper rashes and hangnails from plugging the waiting rooms.
To Onecarenowia: I can't help but wonder why you did not say something when I wrote the previous article "Canadian health care is very good." I'm not illiterate. I do not tell lies. I report on fact which come from credible source and if there is any questions of biases, I identify the source. Please do not scream it me. It undermines your credibility
To Odile: You got it. I'm working on the article as we speak. It should be done soon. Please keep reading
onecarenowla: Rein it a little and spend some time reading the rest of the articles in the series. I would say Sheila has been doing one of the better jobs impartially discussing the issue that I've seen in recently. And nothing in this article is actually inaccurate, although it could perhaps use a bit more context to clarify that many of those complaining in Canada still have *no* desire to experience U.S. style care. They just want to see improvements in a generally good system.
As for analysis of other systems, seconded! If it's a choice only between the U.S or Canada the latter is the way to go... but if you're not limiting the field to those two nations I'd say emulate France. The U.S. has a sub par system, I'd say Canada has a good system, France has an *excellent* system. And they still run it for less money than the U.S. runs theirs.
Of course if you think the right wing wails about the idea of emulating Canada, try telling them they should do anything the way the French
Thanks Grant. Just wanted you to know 2 things.
1. I have read the Canadian Press Harris-Decima survey and I think you are correct. I have contacted them to get permission to use their results in another column. Maybe onecarenowta will like that one.
2. As per Odile's request I am going to do a series on the top 10 health care systems in the World. With Canada at #30 and the US at #37 neither will be in the top 10.
I do have to laugh about the fact the France is #1. Born to an Irish American family you can see I married a Frenchman. This could be interesting.
Please keep reading.
One other thing you may want to look at, which I think is completely neglected in almost any discussion on this topic, is the fallacy that competition is desireable to the consumer in the insurance industry.
Here's the thing... if you're in the market for groceries, or a car, or rubber duckies, or almost any other standard commodity competition is what you want. It drives efficiencies and quality in the industries and the result is you generally get a decent quality product at about the best price you can reasonably expect.
Insurance is NOTHING like those other things.
Insurance works best and most efficiently when it is able to operate in the largest possible client pool to better mitigate risks to the whole system. Increased competition by definition requires you to divide that pool up into smaller and smaller penny packet segments belonging to each competing provider. It's counter-productive to do that in an insurance market.
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...continuing on from last comment:
Of course, the last thing you want is a for-profit company holding a monopoly on the entire client pool. Which is why having a large government administered non profit entity managing a very large client pool when you're dealing with insurance generally works pretty darn well and why every other industrialized nation uses far higher levels of government involvement in their health insurance systems. With that huge pool of clients to work with the system doesn't have to worry much about the risk of catastrophic health expenses in any one small segment of it's client base draining the system dry of funds because those costs are spread across such a huge number of people paying into the system that they become negligible even if those people are each, individually, contributing smaller amounts. That client base also gives them stroner leverage to keep prices for services in check in negotiations with care providers.
We are Canadians presently living in Kansas (12 years) and moving back to Ontario next year to retire. One of our major concerns is health care in Canada. We do not have any problems in seeing Drs nor have we experienced any waiting times for tests or the minor surgical procedures we have needed. But we do hear horror stories in the US about the sad state of the Can health care system. Are they true? Is it difficult to get in to see a Dr or have one accept you as a new patient? Where can we get the truth?
In the article, there is sentence in the first paragraph "Canada’s universal, publicly funded health care system is widely viewed as an essential part of a social safety net and a reflection of Canadians’ core values".
That is why canadians do not want a US style system that does not reflect there core values. If you start from this point it is easy to understand canada's health care, financial, educational, justice, political, etc., systems. Canadians wouldnt mind bits of minor headaches of health care if it maintains the overall well being of its fellow citizens. They believe access to basic and primary health care is the right of every canadian and not a privilege that you can only buy through money.
To Kansas 66019. Thank you for your comment. I don't know the answer, however. The research would seem to indicate that the majority of Canadians are satisfied with their health care. We hear of exceptions. Wait times seem to concern the provincial governments as each province has a special report on wait times. As I said in one of my articles, some provinces report improvement, some do not.
I can only suggest you talk to people in Ontario--talk to doctors, talk to nurses, talk to Ontario's health ministry.
I wish I had a simple and accurate answers but there are so many stories all I can do is bring them to your attention.
Thanks for reading
Kansas66109: When you move back get your OHIP card (assuming you don't have one now?) then just head over to the Ontario Ministry of Health website. The comment box won't let me post a functional link, so you'll have to remove the spaces:
http : // www .health.gov.on.ca/ms/healthcareconnect/public/index.html
Or I think you can just call them:
1-800-445-1822.
They'll help you find a doctor in your area. No charge.
As for how difficult finding one will be, depends. If you're moving to Toronto I don't think you're looking at any issues. If you're moving to some sparsely populated rural area you might have to do some work.
As for the scary stories, don't believe everything you hear about Canadian health care in the US, it's absolutely saturated with misinformation. The system has it's issues, and people will complain about them, but overall Canadians are overwhelmingly supportive of and satisfied with the system there and certainly wouldn't trade it for the one south of t
It's worth noting you cannot email the author of this article (a common trait of "opinion journalists" who only want to spread propaganda--and not hear from readers to exchange ideas openly). Further "The Examiner" is based in Boulder Colorado--not even from Canada. This website and this author are shills for neo-conservative values. The objective of this article is to privatize healthcare in Canada so it is just like USA. Speaking as an American this is NOT THE WAY TO GO. Our healthcare system is a disaster. Who cares about waiting a few weeks for treatment, when in USA you are simply DENIED ANY TREATMENT (health insurance companies often deny legitimate claims because it is not profitable for their Wall Street shareholders). Americans are often left broke and homeless because they became seriously ill--and the cost for even a couple of hours in an emergency room is $8,000! American style healthcare will KILL YOU in the end.
To Canadian
First I would point out to you that you absolutely can get my e-mail simply by clicking on Bio. In case that is too hard for you, my e mail is planners@sbcglobal.net
Second, you obviously did not read the rest of the articles in the series about Canada and its health care system (good, bad, history etc.) as well as the French system which is acknowledged to be the best in the world.
Before you start calling people names you might want to actually read the all the articles in this series.
canada has maple syrup
To the writer, Sheila Guilloton,
I don't know if anyone else had pointed this out but I just wanted to say that Canada has 10 provinces and the part where it is written "7 provinces: Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador." I believe Labrador was counted as a 7th.
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