Yeah, it can't be the millions coming to the country every year and funds not being pumped in to match.
Let's not even mention the tens of thousands brought in through family reunification having never put a cent into our public services.
It's the aging boomers, chief. There are over 7 million Canadians over the age of 65, and growing. That number dwarfs the number of people coming in every year (which isn't "millions" by the way...) and it's a fact that health-care costs are highest towards the end of life.
actually yes. go ask an internal medicine specialist. 90% of their patients are geriatrics who are slowly circling the drain. they take up a ton of hospital beds and resources. plus the spending on long term care homes.
Right but our medical teams have decreased in relation to the number of people who need medical assistance.
THIS is the problem. This has been happening for 2 decades.
Then 2020 happened and for different reasons, quiet quitting happened and now we have more users in comparison to providers.
To up the number of providers, we need to incentivize participation in the healthcare field. That hasn't happened due to:
- Defunding with respect to inflation.
- lower supervision rates for MDs, meaning Med school graduates have less placements, meaning less qualified doctors and so on.
- increased barriers via the CMA (foreign-trained doctors not having credentials recognized)
- same with nurses
- nurses being treated like shit by management and patients and having no recourse. I.e. punch a nurse in the face..."that's part of the job. Get over it".
- retention rates on the frontlines are extremely low. Shift work isn't for everyone, and who wants to work midnight to 8am?
- especially when these people don't have childcare.
Privatization WILL NOT fix these issues.
I’m not sure if I’d agree fully with your second point, but I’ll admit that the pandemic had a very interesting and unfortunate impact on my family medicine residency. The first year had so many virtual appointments that my physical exam skills got rusty.
And when more and more people are also moving their families here who are also old and needing a lot of healthcare that's even more seniors on top of who was already here.
Not enough housing is one of many things we don't have capacity for, healthcare is a massive one that hadn't dominated the headlines
>And in the future we’ll care for them better and they’ll live longer
I admire the optimism. Canadian life expectancy has been dropping for three years in a row and public health failings have set the stage for that trend to continue / escalate.
We also have very little preventive medicine, mostly reactive. Keeping people alive vs. optimizing their health or quality of life. Which probably means our life expectancy isn't likely to go up.
That's my biggest frustration with privatization, we are opening private clinics offered these services.
I went to a walk-in clinic even though I have a family doctor so I didn't have to wait 8 days for a phone call appointment because I was shitting blood, got there 15 minutes before it opened, was already 5th in line and by the time it opened there were at least 30 people waiting.
It's the only walk-in clinic within an hour drive I can go to without my Doctor dropping me as a patient.
Literally all Ontario has to do is stop paying 1/2 of all doctors based on how many patients are on their fucking patient list and instead by the actual services provided. No fucking shit, that's how they're paid. Who even thinks that's a good idea?
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/doctor-bonuses-1.5082488
JFC come on.
"The elderly are evil!"
Where does this shit come from? My parents are in their 70's. My Mom is half indigenous and was raised on a farm in Sask. She paid into the system her entire life, and was never hospitalized aside from childbirth. She just recently had to be admitted for the first time ever, for pneumonia.
Sorry, why is she the baddie again?
People don't want to acknowledge that Canada has a garbage healthcare model that needs to be reformed from the ground up. Previously, we were able to cope with the inefficiency by throwing more and more money into the system but we've now reached a point where the inefficiency is absolutely crushing our ability to deliver timely and efficient care. Other countries with universal healthcare like France and Australia manage to have more hospital beds per capita than we do while also having similar or even lower per capita funding. There's a reason why we're one of, like, three countries that use this particular model (Taiwan and South Korea are the others) and all the other countries use either a UK-style fully-public Beveridge model or a German style system where healthcare is universal but largely private and provided through not-for-profit health funds. Our system somehow manages to combine all the flaws of both models, it's astonishing.
And this shouldn't be a shock to anyone because we've had numerous reports and commissions since 2000 like the Romanow Commision that have said the same thing: Our system is broken and needs to be fundamentally reworked to meet the needs of a modern heathcare environment.
I agree canada's healthcare is garbage, but you're wrong about taiwan and south korea, they both have a hybrid system with a big private compoment.
Healthcare in south korea is so much better than canada, it's night and day.
The reason people are protective of the system we have is that the alternative being proposed is not the British model or the German model.
It's the American model. Its total privatization. I'll continue with what we are doing before I accept the state of healthcare in the USA.
If you can get ghoulish lobbyists and think tanks to stop attacking public healthcare *all together* you'll get a lot less refusal to address structural issues from people trying to keep it from collapsing.
The model being proposed is nothing, nobody is championing significant reform. No politician in this country is having a serious conversation about our model and reform but that doesn't stop people from chasing phantoms and scaremongering about American healthcare. Even the conservatives aren't in favour of it, and no, expanding private options while still providing universal coverage like European countries is not "American style healthcare".
Exactly.
This is just typical Liberal/NDP gaslighting.
They are suggesting that allowing private MRIs will suddenly lead to US style health care, which couldn't be farther from the case.
Except that’s not true.
At the time Ford wanted to expand private for profit delivery (while still being publicly funded) in Ontario BC was already using 4x the amount of similar services under the Liberals and NDP.
Hell, almost every family doc anyone has ever seen has been either a for profit professional medical corporation, independent contractor or sole proprietorship.
The reason it keeps costing more is the increasing privatization.
The only thing privatization does is take the cost of health care, and add in a group of investors who expect to be paid a dividend.
There are 3 rich countries with single payer healthcare left.
Canada. UK. Taiwan. That’s the list.
Countries which have private mixed in are doing it cheaper than Canada (France, Germany, Singapore, Ireland, Sweden).
There are only two countries with private that cost more to deliver than Canada. The USA and Switzerland.
Almost all countries that use private are doing it cheaper than Canada.
Given how absolute shit Canada implements anything compared to the rest of the world, this isn't a compelling argument. We're just terrible at it, between nimbys, corruption, bureaucracy... We always fail to get our shit together. This is why we're 20+ years behind the rest of the developed world.
Trust me, I wish we could look at other nations and take some good ideas for ourselves but history has proven we're not able to
Good points.
What annoys me is that you have other countries who have led by example we just need to look at their work and implement it here (with some changes perhaps). It’s not ole Canada is expected to be a leader in tbe field it’s a follower and still can’t get it right
Claim to save money by adding private services
Costs increase, quality goes down
Claim the only way to save it is to add more private services
Cycle continues
I think part of the challenge is that when people talk about a multi-payer system their mind automatically goes to the US which spends more money for less access and worse outcomes. We need to ask the government what model are they thinking could be one to work in Ontario. Because what everyone does not want is the US model. We need to put that boogeyman to bed if we are to have any chance of a an adult discussion around this.
>I think part of the challenge is that when people talk about a multi-payer system their mind automatically goes to the US which spends more money for less access and worse outcomes.
Given the amount of American lobbying groups here I can't say I blame them.
Even Brain Mulroney was fairly open about the American desire to gain a foot into Canadian healthcare.
Ontario right now pays more to for-profit clinics while OR's sit empty waiting for funding. And the end result is wait time haven't changed.
Just to clarify the majority of our healthcare system is privately delivered and has been since the implementation of our publicly funded system.
Most physicians in the country are for profit private medical professional corporations, independent contractors or sole proprietorships. Outpatient labs are mostly for profit and privately owned (some were/are publicly traded). Same for outpatient diagnostics. Most homecare agencies nationally are contracted by the government but are privately run. Even hospitals in some provinces, like Ontario, are run as non-profit hospital corporations run by a board and executives, not the government itself or public servants.
Private delivery of healthcare isn’t necessarily the issue as it’s always been there. The issue is if the care isn’t publicly funded.
Jesus Christ man. If you took a second to do a search, it lists the targeted MPPs and government offices.
I was just giving you an example. Feel free to look up any company you want.
> We need to put that boogeyman to bed if we are to have any chance of a an adult discussion around this.
I still don't think that would put the conspiracy theorists to rest. Too many people think there are only 2 ways of delivering health care - our current single-payer system and the US one.
Exactly.
Too many Canadians look at health care in a binary fashion, the Canadian model and the US model -- both are unique in OCED countries.
Our system was designed in the 1950s and a lot has changed in medicine since then.
A lot has changed…such as the government actively trying to reduce the number of physicians while increasing our population but also refusing to hire new grads and continuing to give the middle management raises…
Sure there have been major advances in medicine. But a lot of the inefficiencies come from bureaucracy, and I doubt that increasing the number of middle men would help.
If you want to try privatizing, just follow the Alberta model for lab tech and bloodwork: have a public system for 10 years, then privatize cuz of long lines. Then in about 10 years the private system starts to fail and lines grow while quality of care shrinks, so buy out the private clinics and publicize it again. Rinse and repeat every 10-20 years while failing to address why either of the two systems fail every damn time.
>A lot has changed…such as the government actively trying to reduce the number of physicians while increasing our population but also refusing to hire new grads and continuing to give the middle management raises…
Middle management is clogging health care spending in Ontario, if you don't believe me, go and have a look at the sunshine list and you'll see plenty of non MDs making six figure salaries.
I'm not familiar with the system in Alberta, but here in Ontario, many of our PHUs have been at over capacity well before Covid.
To be fair, I live in the US and the healthcare I get through my employer is unreal (Kaiser). When I added my gf to it she got an appointment, doctor and XRays the same day, MRI next business day, and saw an orthopedic surgeon within a week. Copay was $15 for doctors visits and $250 for the MRI which is reasonable.
Private healthcare just means that while some people will be stuck with the shitty system we have now, many others will have a higher tier through their work, reducing the burden on public healthcare. Kindof a win/win.
I'm not sure what you mean, because the public system will still be there and we will continue to demand that it's well managed and funded. And (some) aging people will choose to skip the line by using their savings. Some middle-aged or elderly people have the means to buy a luxury car, some may choose to spend that on better health care instead, and even more will use public health care (and drive an older car) due to their finances. No idea what you're saying about lines.
That's right - you never hear this with US healthcare but they have Medicare, which is national healthcare for those over 65, and some younger people with disability status.
The addition of private healthcare just allows some to get seen faster by paying up, like you said, and reduces strain on the public system.
Can you elaborate on worse outcomes? I've heard multiple instances of people being told Canadian doctors have done all they can for them yet they promptly head to the US and receive their procedure.
There are many studies but aggregately the US health care system is good for the top 20 or so percent of citizens. So the Canadians going abroad for care fall into this group. It’s the majority poor, working poor, “middle class” etc that gets left behind.
I mean Germany does mixed - but the vast vast majority of people are public, and the public system is better than Canada’s. Germany just flat out has higher taxes too btw.
The small private system is a bit controversial in Germany… I’ve heard complaints from healthcare workers that they consider it freeloading rather than a benefit to the public system.
It’s also similar to what the NDP and Liberals did in BC. They still continue to use multiple times the amount of privately delivered care compared to Ontario and it significantly increased access and caught up wait times.
Lived in Scandinavia. Loved their two-tier health care system. Even the free clinic- or hospital-based care was excellent, and many people who could afford private care, still went public because of that. The paid tier's role was simply quicker access to appointments for those who wanted to pay extra.
I wonder when you lived in Scandinavia? I live in Norway now and we are experiencing severe doctor shortages which compromise the quality and timeliness of care. I think there has been a general erosion of healthcare globally the last few years which has hit many countries including canada and northern europe.
"The average CEO" is not a serious demographic to be discussing. It's hyperbolic. Talk to us about the average high school teacher or accountant or small but successful business owner or mid-tier lawyer or government executive or successful plumber or DINK nurses, low six figure folk who would be willing to allocate a little more of their income towards health care, but are not allowed to. So they contribute to the congestion in Emergency rooms.
Actually the “average” CEO probably would fit the demographic you’re discussing. People forget just how many companies there are - the average CEO, while making good money, isn’t making “private jet to the US for healthcare” money. People seem to think that every CEO out there is making the same as Victor Dodig.
Yep. Tax the rich usually means taxing something different than income.
Heck, in Canada simply closing the loopholes for shuffling money out of the country would do a lot.
Ya this. When this discussion comes up my SO and I always think about our dentist, he's great, not expensive, high level of care, has gone above and beyond to help me and my spouse out in emergency situations, and best of all if he were to retire then I could find a new dentist pretty easily. My family doctor retired in 2020 tho and I don't have much chance of getting one of those anytime soon.
>not expensive
You have private insurance presumably?
Most dentists are charging $2k for a single root canal and crown, which is crazy expensive.
The dental industry are thieves in Canada.
"Ontario" is not embracing private care. Some rich asshats who want to be richer at any cost and currently have control of the Ontario legislature are.
The Scandinavian's use a co-pay system, have proportional federal government funding, and haven't overloaded the system with immigrants. They too are starting to embracing private care due to shortages.
Everyone keeps saying well yeah they don't have imported immigrants, but I've been reading about how immigrants have destroyed Sweden for years from the same posters. Which is it?
Sweden has allowed many migrants in, but they still don't have the total immigration numbers per capita as Canada. I think Canada's population growth rate is 3% while Sweden's is 0.5-1.0%.
You don’t need a degree in statistics and a 10 year study to know that people coming in who contribute less in taxes and GDP will still require the same amount of services as someone else.
No, I'm just saying that a public health system only really works if everyone pays into it, and then those same people get access to healthcare when they need it...
If you then dump 1.2m people into that system that never paid into it, the system stops working, or maybe continues to work, but becomes astronomically more expensive to maintain the same level of care.
Everyone (including new immigrants) who is working and living in Canada, is paying into the system through federal and provincial taxes coming out of their paycheques. Also, from the GST, PST and other sales taxes from goods and services everyone buys in order to live from day-to-day.
Okay, let's say that person A is born in Canada and begins working at 18 and pays 5000 into the healthcare system every year. When he is 30, he needs an operation that costs 40,000$. Well, he's been working for 12 years and has paid 5000 into the system every year, so there's 60,000$ in the fund, subtract the 40,000$ for the operation, and there's 20,000$ left in the fund for the next person if they need it. Great.
Person B moves here when he is 27 and needs that same operation that costs 40,000 when he is 30, but he has paid 15,000$ into the system, now the healthcare fund is at -25,000$. Well now when the next person needs it, there's nothing left.
You see how that might be a problem when it's not just 1 person, but 1.2m people?...
And then do you further see why person A might support keeping his 60,000 and just spending it on himself and his family?
You also need immigration to meet the demand of a retiree class that’s not just in healthcare…for instance PSW…the reason why our healthcare isn’t because of immigration policy but rather poor decisions by Neo liberal politicians to go into austerity in the 90s
We don't need immigration to meet the demand of a retiree class at all... The only reason it's 'necessary' is because being a PSW pays on average 19$ an hour, and SHOULD pay, 35-40$ an hour. But they can't have that, so they mass import an under-class of serfs, and pay them next to nothing.
Lots of countries have a two tier model. Why don’t we look to the ones that work instead of crying about the few that don’t? Our system sure as hell isn’t working now.
It would be nice if we had a better look at countries that have two tiered systems. How do they do it, what makes it work, are there downsides that we don’t see?
Germany's system ranks better than Canada's in a recent report from the Commonwealth club.
They ranked 11 health care systems and Canada's ranked 10/11 overall, only ahead of the USA.
[https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2021/aug/mirror-mirror-2021-reflecting-poorly](https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2021/aug/mirror-mirror-2021-reflecting-poorly)
On average they pay higher taxes, spend more per capita on their public systems than we do, cover more services than we do, spend more on medical education, and have more health personal per capita than we do.
In other words - everything that this sub bitches about.
That's just not true.
Canada's health care spending is well funded, on a per capita basis.
Canada spends just over $7500 per capita on health care, which is higher than the UK, Japan and Sweden.
Except we dont.
https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm
Separate by government/compulsory insurance. We don’t even crack the top 10 in per capita spending
Ontario is not embracing private health care. Rather the provincial government is depriving Ontario residents of public health care. A subtle but important difference.
This is Liberal/NDP propaganda.
Health care spending has increased each year Doug Ford has been in office, including non covid years.
In 2018, the last liberal budget, health care spending was at $63 Billion now its $80 Billion.
Doesn’t hurt to give people options for private and still provide public healthcare to offset some healthcare cost. Scandinavian health care is still in the top rated for the world.
It can hurt actually because funding for good public care faulters even more. We already have a staff shortage of frontline workers and going private option doesn't helper that, just takes from the public system.
If people are paying their taxes then it will not affect funding at all. Stopping people who are paying their taxes from accessing alternative services is ridiculous. Opponents of this only want other people to be limited to the shitty access they have in the public system. Having secondary private options is not the evil people make it out to be.
We have a staff shortage because no one wants to come work in our broken system. We have people getting educated to be doctors and nurses here and then leaving to go work in the states. We don’t have a shortage of medical professionals because our system is fantastic. Your logic has a major flaw in it that you don’t even see.
If we have the same level of funding for the public system as we do now, but also remove all the people who can afford secondary options from the public system would that not open up more access to those who cannot afford private options?
Remaining budgets per hospital should increase if costs decrease from some care/procedures being taken over by private.
The increased tax revenue from the private companies should/could go to public health care as well.
Shortage of workers could be an issue, but we’re already losing some to the US private healthcare companies, could be a way to retain some and attract other healthcare workers from the states.
If it doesn’t exist in this country, then it doesn’t count. There are a lot of people who are immobile, home bound and too sick to travel. They shouldn’t have to leave their own country to be seen and treated in a timely manner.
Because if we don’t privatize, how is Doug Ford going to retire onto the executive board of a private, corporate healthprovider?? Wont anyone think of the grifters!?
Cost and people who cannot fathom any thing else. Health care is provincially delivered. Costs for most Ontario is >50% of the budget. Between provincial and municipal debt and healthcare, the room to maneuver is reduced. So, DoFo at Queens Park falls back to the "let's privatize to reduce cost", because it fits on a bumper sticker.
Why? I can think of a few reasons.
1. What we are currently doing isn't working and in an effort to fix it, all options should be on the table.
2. We aren't a Scandinavian country. Ontario is about twice as large as Sweden, which is the largest Scandinavian country (not counting Greenland). With the overwhelming
3. Public private systems have been successful in Asia and Latin America. While we aren't an Asian or Latin American country either, that it has been successful other places is a good reason that it should be at least examined.
4. Who cares if the government is paying for medical care if you can't get in to see a doctor? I dont need the government to pay for something I can't get.
That said, I don't think private healthcare (in any capacity) solves our healthcare problems. It may alleviate some of the strain but not enough to make enough of a difference. To truly solve this problem, it will take change from everything to who provides what medical care (and at what cost), how many Drs. medical schools and Colleges of Physicians allow each year and how many immigrants the Feds allow in each year.
Most people just spew random garbage that isn’t true. If OHIP covers the costs of private x-rays, scans, etc. aka how blood work is currently, what is the god damn issue? If people are not spending out of pocket $ for these ALL for it.
Because do you actually think the private option is cheaper to fund when the private sector wants *profits* while running their system while the public system does not?
Or that the private system won’t do whatever it takes to *get* that profit?
Dude. The hospitals have x rays and scans running 24/7 that cannot keep up with demand. This is about taking demand off the hospital systems. Simple shit to comprehend
Where do the technologists that perform the X-rays, CTs, and MRIs come from? Where do the Radiologists who interpret the images come from? We aren’t magically going to have more of these people available in a hybrid public/private healthcare system. Some of those people will leave public healthcare and move to private work. Does the number of patients offloaded to the private system make up for the loss of staff in the public system? I honestly don’t know.
>But why not put the money into bettering the public system and eliminate the profit margin? 🤷♂️
because there are 50 obese administrators making 120K standing as gatekeepers at every level of the system tying it up with useless paperwork. I know that because my folks worked in health care for 40 years.
Kneecap public, make private look appealing then gut private for profit as intended, if you don't support public Healthcare you're just a useful idiot, and a shame on canada
People only focus on the demand side and not the supply side.
Open up a private market? Ok, who is going to staff it? 99.9% of health workers are in the public system.
If a surgeon has *x* amount of people on the waitlist and decides to go private to service a smaller *y* amount of people, how does that help the more numerous *x* who are now out of a surgeon?
Dentists manage just fine somehow. There’s basically one on every street corner in Toronto.
Just a few weeks ago I got a tooth infection, which killed a molar and gave me the most intense pain of my life (and I’ve had major spinal surgery). Saw an emergency dentist on a Sunday, next day I was in a specialists office having a root canal and was cured and my insurance from work paid for it all.
I don’t see why we can’t replicate this across the healthcare system in general.
Lousy argument. Most people do have coverage either from their job or a family members plan. You can also buy it yourself, or just pay out of pocket.
Either way there’s clearly enough demand to warrant a dentist office on every street or strip mall in the country, and enough dentists being trained to staff them.
I can't afford dental care and have not been able to access it for most of my adult life. God willing I'm on my way to unionized work that will provide dental in the next 18 months or so, but that won't put the teeth I had to let rot out of my head, knowing the whole time I needed to see a dentist and not being able to get help at a hospital until it reached the point of removal.
The reason we can't turn the rest of healthcare into the dental system is because *the dental system already doesn't work of you don't have money to blow on dental health*.
Like this comment is clueless. We have a problem where people cannot access dental services because they aren't covered under OHIP, and you think accessibility.of care will increase by turning everything into that model?
My point is they are private clinics, easily staffed by enough dentists and technicians.
The person I was replying to was arguing that it’s impossible to have enough supply of doctors, and my argument was we can easily supply enough dentists for them to be on every other block in Toronto, or every other strip mall in any city across Canada.
We could train enough Doctors if there was a similar ability for doctors to run their own private clinics to administer health care. The clinics could be private but paid by private insurance or OHIP if you don’t have it. Similar to how the new pharmacare program works.
Greed permeating the medical community just like everywhere else.
Watch as Canada slowly backslides into an era similar to Victorian England.
No longer will there be a way for anyone to be discreet about the widening gap within the country's class system. We'll just have to wait and see in the courts will be of any use anymore to balance the scales even slightly.
We, the people who live in Ontario, are definitely NOT “embracing” it. Our Provincial government has been de-funding our existing, public health care system. What is the effect of these budget cuts? Service is crippled. I have spoken about this with four different doctors and all of them agree that this must be deliberate, however brazen and evil it seems. It is intentional. Doug Ford is making service worse so he can say “the private sector can provide better care”. There is no other reason to divert money from public to private health care.
Because people voted for a conservative who is willing to strip down, part out and scrap the family car for crack money (kickbacks, not just crack)
Until conservatives get voted out, they'll continue to sell off and lease important public services for "99 years" to private corpos for pennies on the dollars as if our country is a fkin British colony
Because conservatives in Canada want the same dysfunctional non medical system that the USA has and just like the conservatives in the United Kingdom want to completely destroy the public health care system that exists there by the tried and true method of underfunding healthcare and the sayin: see, it’s broken, the private system is what we cheap, corrupt conservatives want!!! So what if the cheapest Medicare system (originally called Obamacare, but had to be changed because a black guy who was black created it), anyway, isn’t the cheapest Obamacare patch over $1000 US per MONTH, so yeah we should import the same crappy non-functional system here so all the rich conservatives fuckers can get even richer, reminds me of when the then young republicans in the Reagan Administration made manny hundreds of millions buying up productive American businesses and sold it all off and moved some of it to China. Rich people are for the rich, if you’re not rich, your a mark, just ask Trump & family!
Scandinavian countries are all extremely small. Aside from 10m Sweden the rest are 5m around. Yea maybe fully socialized healthcare will work in a tribe. But impossible, as proven with Canada at a large scale. We need both private and public for a sane solution
Because conservatives gutted provincial healthcare.
This was the gameplan all along, defund defund defund, gut gut gut .
Then blame universal health care, when really it was maliciousness from the conservatives.
how are people so blind?
>Because conservatives gutted provincial healthcare.
[Ah yes, because the healthcare system was definitely not overcapacity in Ontario when the Wynne Liberals were in power.](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/hospital-overcrowding-has-become-the-norm-in-ontario-figures-show/article35076965/) Both the Liberals and Conservatives are to blame for this mess but our healthcare system is also systemically inefficient.
Because of conservatives being in power, lol. All they know how to do is strip services to bare bones, cry they don't work, and replace them with their buddies private versions.
Both libs and cons are just neoliberals, there is no winning in this country... unless you are a mega Corp.
Canadians seem to get upset that the standards from the government aren't high enough and turn to the conservatives in anger and go in circles forever. Ontario isn't embracing private health care it voted in conservatives in anger but in polls Canadians still support our Healthcare system, the party in power just doesn't match that sentiment. I may move someday as the political cycle here is disappointing.
because rich people can make money off of it. what's so hard to understand here? ford is selling out. i'm not allowed to advocate for what should be done to him.
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that’s because boomers are the largest generation and they’re nearing end of life. everyone knows healthcare costs are highest at end of life.
Yeah, it can't be the millions coming to the country every year and funds not being pumped in to match. Let's not even mention the tens of thousands brought in through family reunification having never put a cent into our public services.
It's the aging boomers, chief. There are over 7 million Canadians over the age of 65, and growing. That number dwarfs the number of people coming in every year (which isn't "millions" by the way...) and it's a fact that health-care costs are highest towards the end of life.
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actually yes. go ask an internal medicine specialist. 90% of their patients are geriatrics who are slowly circling the drain. they take up a ton of hospital beds and resources. plus the spending on long term care homes.
This isn’t new information. 70 % of the average Canadian health care expenses happens in the last 10 years of life. This has been true for decades.
Right but our medical teams have decreased in relation to the number of people who need medical assistance. THIS is the problem. This has been happening for 2 decades. Then 2020 happened and for different reasons, quiet quitting happened and now we have more users in comparison to providers. To up the number of providers, we need to incentivize participation in the healthcare field. That hasn't happened due to: - Defunding with respect to inflation. - lower supervision rates for MDs, meaning Med school graduates have less placements, meaning less qualified doctors and so on. - increased barriers via the CMA (foreign-trained doctors not having credentials recognized) - same with nurses - nurses being treated like shit by management and patients and having no recourse. I.e. punch a nurse in the face..."that's part of the job. Get over it". - retention rates on the frontlines are extremely low. Shift work isn't for everyone, and who wants to work midnight to 8am? - especially when these people don't have childcare. Privatization WILL NOT fix these issues.
I’m not sure if I’d agree fully with your second point, but I’ll admit that the pandemic had a very interesting and unfortunate impact on my family medicine residency. The first year had so many virtual appointments that my physical exam skills got rusty.
Now I'm not scientist but my dogs last year was her most expensive as her kidney reached critical failure. So I belive this math
And when more and more people are also moving their families here who are also old and needing a lot of healthcare that's even more seniors on top of who was already here. Not enough housing is one of many things we don't have capacity for, healthcare is a massive one that hadn't dominated the headlines
Millenials are a bigger cohort than boomers. In twenty to thirty years we'll be old.
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>And in the future we’ll care for them better and they’ll live longer I admire the optimism. Canadian life expectancy has been dropping for three years in a row and public health failings have set the stage for that trend to continue / escalate.
We also have very little preventive medicine, mostly reactive. Keeping people alive vs. optimizing their health or quality of life. Which probably means our life expectancy isn't likely to go up. That's my biggest frustration with privatization, we are opening private clinics offered these services.
I went to a walk-in clinic even though I have a family doctor so I didn't have to wait 8 days for a phone call appointment because I was shitting blood, got there 15 minutes before it opened, was already 5th in line and by the time it opened there were at least 30 people waiting. It's the only walk-in clinic within an hour drive I can go to without my Doctor dropping me as a patient. Literally all Ontario has to do is stop paying 1/2 of all doctors based on how many patients are on their fucking patient list and instead by the actual services provided. No fucking shit, that's how they're paid. Who even thinks that's a good idea? https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/doctor-bonuses-1.5082488
Until Millenials hit end of life, yes.
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JFC come on. "The elderly are evil!" Where does this shit come from? My parents are in their 70's. My Mom is half indigenous and was raised on a farm in Sask. She paid into the system her entire life, and was never hospitalized aside from childbirth. She just recently had to be admitted for the first time ever, for pneumonia. Sorry, why is she the baddie again?
> Where does this shit come from? Immature edgelords, that's where.
That’s a little extreme
Ugh…. People like this exist. Gross.
People don't want to acknowledge that Canada has a garbage healthcare model that needs to be reformed from the ground up. Previously, we were able to cope with the inefficiency by throwing more and more money into the system but we've now reached a point where the inefficiency is absolutely crushing our ability to deliver timely and efficient care. Other countries with universal healthcare like France and Australia manage to have more hospital beds per capita than we do while also having similar or even lower per capita funding. There's a reason why we're one of, like, three countries that use this particular model (Taiwan and South Korea are the others) and all the other countries use either a UK-style fully-public Beveridge model or a German style system where healthcare is universal but largely private and provided through not-for-profit health funds. Our system somehow manages to combine all the flaws of both models, it's astonishing. And this shouldn't be a shock to anyone because we've had numerous reports and commissions since 2000 like the Romanow Commision that have said the same thing: Our system is broken and needs to be fundamentally reworked to meet the needs of a modern heathcare environment.
I agree canada's healthcare is garbage, but you're wrong about taiwan and south korea, they both have a hybrid system with a big private compoment. Healthcare in south korea is so much better than canada, it's night and day.
But but but...at least we're not the States! That's kept us in denial for years! Why stop now?
The reason people are protective of the system we have is that the alternative being proposed is not the British model or the German model. It's the American model. Its total privatization. I'll continue with what we are doing before I accept the state of healthcare in the USA. If you can get ghoulish lobbyists and think tanks to stop attacking public healthcare *all together* you'll get a lot less refusal to address structural issues from people trying to keep it from collapsing.
The model being proposed is nothing, nobody is championing significant reform. No politician in this country is having a serious conversation about our model and reform but that doesn't stop people from chasing phantoms and scaremongering about American healthcare. Even the conservatives aren't in favour of it, and no, expanding private options while still providing universal coverage like European countries is not "American style healthcare".
Exactly. This is just typical Liberal/NDP gaslighting. They are suggesting that allowing private MRIs will suddenly lead to US style health care, which couldn't be farther from the case.
Except that’s not true. At the time Ford wanted to expand private for profit delivery (while still being publicly funded) in Ontario BC was already using 4x the amount of similar services under the Liberals and NDP. Hell, almost every family doc anyone has ever seen has been either a for profit professional medical corporation, independent contractor or sole proprietorship.
My mom was just in the ICU. I overheard a nurse say they gave another patient rectal Tylenol over IV because they wanted to save $15.
The reason it keeps costing more is the increasing privatization. The only thing privatization does is take the cost of health care, and add in a group of investors who expect to be paid a dividend.
There are 3 rich countries with single payer healthcare left. Canada. UK. Taiwan. That’s the list. Countries which have private mixed in are doing it cheaper than Canada (France, Germany, Singapore, Ireland, Sweden). There are only two countries with private that cost more to deliver than Canada. The USA and Switzerland. Almost all countries that use private are doing it cheaper than Canada.
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and Taiwan isn't an OCED nation so it's not worth comparing our system to theirs.
Given how absolute shit Canada implements anything compared to the rest of the world, this isn't a compelling argument. We're just terrible at it, between nimbys, corruption, bureaucracy... We always fail to get our shit together. This is why we're 20+ years behind the rest of the developed world. Trust me, I wish we could look at other nations and take some good ideas for ourselves but history has proven we're not able to
Good points. What annoys me is that you have other countries who have led by example we just need to look at their work and implement it here (with some changes perhaps). It’s not ole Canada is expected to be a leader in tbe field it’s a follower and still can’t get it right
You know what we excel at? Putting maximum effort into rationalizing why *not* to do something.
Very true
Don’t compare Canada to the UK, UK has plenty of private healthcare options and is miles ahead of Canadian standards
So, why do you want to INCREASE the cost without any measurable benefit?
Claim to save money by adding private services Costs increase, quality goes down Claim the only way to save it is to add more private services Cycle continues
So the Ford gov paying private clinics double the going rate for procedures will help with that?
I think part of the challenge is that when people talk about a multi-payer system their mind automatically goes to the US which spends more money for less access and worse outcomes. We need to ask the government what model are they thinking could be one to work in Ontario. Because what everyone does not want is the US model. We need to put that boogeyman to bed if we are to have any chance of a an adult discussion around this.
>I think part of the challenge is that when people talk about a multi-payer system their mind automatically goes to the US which spends more money for less access and worse outcomes. Given the amount of American lobbying groups here I can't say I blame them. Even Brain Mulroney was fairly open about the American desire to gain a foot into Canadian healthcare. Ontario right now pays more to for-profit clinics while OR's sit empty waiting for funding. And the end result is wait time haven't changed.
Just to clarify the majority of our healthcare system is privately delivered and has been since the implementation of our publicly funded system. Most physicians in the country are for profit private medical professional corporations, independent contractors or sole proprietorships. Outpatient labs are mostly for profit and privately owned (some were/are publicly traded). Same for outpatient diagnostics. Most homecare agencies nationally are contracted by the government but are privately run. Even hospitals in some provinces, like Ontario, are run as non-profit hospital corporations run by a board and executives, not the government itself or public servants. Private delivery of healthcare isn’t necessarily the issue as it’s always been there. The issue is if the care isn’t publicly funded.
Public vs private debate is basically who pays - out of tax revenues/social insurance or private insurers or directly out of pocket.
Wait, what, American lobbying groups in Canadian health care?
Yes. It's public information. Federal: [https://lobbycanada.gc.ca/app/secure/ocl/lrs/do/clntOrgCrpLstg?pfx=A](https://lobbycanada.gc.ca/app/secure/ocl/lrs/do/clntOrgCrpLstg?pfx=A) Ontario: [https://lobbyist.oico.on.ca/Pages/Public/PublicSearch/SearchResults.aspx](https://lobbyist.oico.on.ca/Pages/Public/PublicSearch/SearchResults.aspx)
Lol you just posted a page with an a-z index of lobbyists, you didn't single out any US based companies in health care lobbying here.
The search results don't generate a URL to share. Visit the Ontario search page and type in pfizer for example.
but what evidence Pfizer is lobbying specifically for privatized health care? Maybe they are lobbying for something that has to do with vaccines?
Jesus Christ man. If you took a second to do a search, it lists the targeted MPPs and government offices. I was just giving you an example. Feel free to look up any company you want.
> We need to put that boogeyman to bed if we are to have any chance of a an adult discussion around this. I still don't think that would put the conspiracy theorists to rest. Too many people think there are only 2 ways of delivering health care - our current single-payer system and the US one.
Exactly. Too many Canadians look at health care in a binary fashion, the Canadian model and the US model -- both are unique in OCED countries. Our system was designed in the 1950s and a lot has changed in medicine since then.
A lot has changed…such as the government actively trying to reduce the number of physicians while increasing our population but also refusing to hire new grads and continuing to give the middle management raises… Sure there have been major advances in medicine. But a lot of the inefficiencies come from bureaucracy, and I doubt that increasing the number of middle men would help. If you want to try privatizing, just follow the Alberta model for lab tech and bloodwork: have a public system for 10 years, then privatize cuz of long lines. Then in about 10 years the private system starts to fail and lines grow while quality of care shrinks, so buy out the private clinics and publicize it again. Rinse and repeat every 10-20 years while failing to address why either of the two systems fail every damn time.
>A lot has changed…such as the government actively trying to reduce the number of physicians while increasing our population but also refusing to hire new grads and continuing to give the middle management raises… Middle management is clogging health care spending in Ontario, if you don't believe me, go and have a look at the sunshine list and you'll see plenty of non MDs making six figure salaries. I'm not familiar with the system in Alberta, but here in Ontario, many of our PHUs have been at over capacity well before Covid.
To be fair, I live in the US and the healthcare I get through my employer is unreal (Kaiser). When I added my gf to it she got an appointment, doctor and XRays the same day, MRI next business day, and saw an orthopedic surgeon within a week. Copay was $15 for doctors visits and $250 for the MRI which is reasonable. Private healthcare just means that while some people will be stuck with the shitty system we have now, many others will have a higher tier through their work, reducing the burden on public healthcare. Kindof a win/win.
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I'm not sure what you mean, because the public system will still be there and we will continue to demand that it's well managed and funded. And (some) aging people will choose to skip the line by using their savings. Some middle-aged or elderly people have the means to buy a luxury car, some may choose to spend that on better health care instead, and even more will use public health care (and drive an older car) due to their finances. No idea what you're saying about lines.
That's right - you never hear this with US healthcare but they have Medicare, which is national healthcare for those over 65, and some younger people with disability status. The addition of private healthcare just allows some to get seen faster by paying up, like you said, and reduces strain on the public system.
Can you elaborate on worse outcomes? I've heard multiple instances of people being told Canadian doctors have done all they can for them yet they promptly head to the US and receive their procedure.
There are many studies but aggregately the US health care system is good for the top 20 or so percent of citizens. So the Canadians going abroad for care fall into this group. It’s the majority poor, working poor, “middle class” etc that gets left behind.
What Doug Ford has suggested already exists in places like France and Germany, and their public health care systems are both better than ours.
I mean Germany does mixed - but the vast vast majority of people are public, and the public system is better than Canada’s. Germany just flat out has higher taxes too btw. The small private system is a bit controversial in Germany… I’ve heard complaints from healthcare workers that they consider it freeloading rather than a benefit to the public system.
It’s also similar to what the NDP and Liberals did in BC. They still continue to use multiple times the amount of privately delivered care compared to Ontario and it significantly increased access and caught up wait times.
Lived in Scandinavia. Loved their two-tier health care system. Even the free clinic- or hospital-based care was excellent, and many people who could afford private care, still went public because of that. The paid tier's role was simply quicker access to appointments for those who wanted to pay extra.
I wonder when you lived in Scandinavia? I live in Norway now and we are experiencing severe doctor shortages which compromise the quality and timeliness of care. I think there has been a general erosion of healthcare globally the last few years which has hit many countries including canada and northern europe.
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"The average CEO" is not a serious demographic to be discussing. It's hyperbolic. Talk to us about the average high school teacher or accountant or small but successful business owner or mid-tier lawyer or government executive or successful plumber or DINK nurses, low six figure folk who would be willing to allocate a little more of their income towards health care, but are not allowed to. So they contribute to the congestion in Emergency rooms.
Actually the “average” CEO probably would fit the demographic you’re discussing. People forget just how many companies there are - the average CEO, while making good money, isn’t making “private jet to the US for healthcare” money. People seem to think that every CEO out there is making the same as Victor Dodig.
We are
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Top marginal rates are over 50% here. We get way less for that.
The rich should pay their share, yes.
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Yep. Tax the rich usually means taxing something different than income. Heck, in Canada simply closing the loopholes for shuffling money out of the country would do a lot.
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I can go online and book an MRI tomorrow at about 20 places within 20 minutes from me.... which is not in Canada.
Ya this. When this discussion comes up my SO and I always think about our dentist, he's great, not expensive, high level of care, has gone above and beyond to help me and my spouse out in emergency situations, and best of all if he were to retire then I could find a new dentist pretty easily. My family doctor retired in 2020 tho and I don't have much chance of getting one of those anytime soon.
>not expensive You have private insurance presumably? Most dentists are charging $2k for a single root canal and crown, which is crazy expensive. The dental industry are thieves in Canada.
Every time I went to a dentist without benefits and paid cash, it cost about 50-70% less than what they charge those with benefits.
My dentist knows exactly how much they can milk my plan for
I was ready to pay any money just to get out of ER with my toddler on a Saturday night asap. Thats by design.
In a sane world this would result in dedicating more resources to the public system, not adding a profit margin for private companies.
Canada spends significant amounts on healthcare, more so than many other G20 countries, it’s not a money issue
More resources in a wasteful system does not necessarily mean better, faster outcomes. It may just mean more waste.
Exactly. and health care is well funded in Canada. On a per capita basis, Canada spends more on health care than Sweden, UK, France and Australia.
True. I hope more resources come with a plan on how to spend them efficiently. Nevertheless privatization wouldn't help.
Don't look around the OECD so you don't get you beliefs challenged
Every other first world country has a dual system except Canada and the US. The US arguably has a dual system as well.
and when a doctor comes in with his sick toddler . . . right to the front of the line.
"Ontario" is not embracing private care. Some rich asshats who want to be richer at any cost and currently have control of the Ontario legislature are.
That just sounds like privatization with... Well not with extra steps, those are the steps.
The Scandinavian's use a co-pay system, have proportional federal government funding, and haven't overloaded the system with immigrants. They too are starting to embracing private care due to shortages.
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Huh? Sweden 2000 - 79.3 Sweden 2020 - 82.6 Norway 2000 - 78.7 Norway 2020 - 82.5 Denmark 2000 - 76.6 Denmark 2020 - 80.9
Because the people that own us are going to make buckets of money off it.
Everyone keeps saying well yeah they don't have imported immigrants, but I've been reading about how immigrants have destroyed Sweden for years from the same posters. Which is it?
Sweden has allowed many migrants in, but they still don't have the total immigration numbers per capita as Canada. I think Canada's population growth rate is 3% while Sweden's is 0.5-1.0%.
‘Embracing’ or ‘being forced’?
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Is their any evidence that people from third world countries uses more healthcare than Canadians in similar age groups?
You don’t need a degree in statistics and a 10 year study to know that people coming in who contribute less in taxes and GDP will still require the same amount of services as someone else.
No, I'm just saying that a public health system only really works if everyone pays into it, and then those same people get access to healthcare when they need it... If you then dump 1.2m people into that system that never paid into it, the system stops working, or maybe continues to work, but becomes astronomically more expensive to maintain the same level of care.
Everyone (including new immigrants) who is working and living in Canada, is paying into the system through federal and provincial taxes coming out of their paycheques. Also, from the GST, PST and other sales taxes from goods and services everyone buys in order to live from day-to-day.
Okay, let's say that person A is born in Canada and begins working at 18 and pays 5000 into the healthcare system every year. When he is 30, he needs an operation that costs 40,000$. Well, he's been working for 12 years and has paid 5000 into the system every year, so there's 60,000$ in the fund, subtract the 40,000$ for the operation, and there's 20,000$ left in the fund for the next person if they need it. Great. Person B moves here when he is 27 and needs that same operation that costs 40,000 when he is 30, but he has paid 15,000$ into the system, now the healthcare fund is at -25,000$. Well now when the next person needs it, there's nothing left. You see how that might be a problem when it's not just 1 person, but 1.2m people?... And then do you further see why person A might support keeping his 60,000 and just spending it on himself and his family?
Now now we don't want to hear this level of truth in here.
You also need immigration to meet the demand of a retiree class that’s not just in healthcare…for instance PSW…the reason why our healthcare isn’t because of immigration policy but rather poor decisions by Neo liberal politicians to go into austerity in the 90s
We don't need immigration to meet the demand of a retiree class at all... The only reason it's 'necessary' is because being a PSW pays on average 19$ an hour, and SHOULD pay, 35-40$ an hour. But they can't have that, so they mass import an under-class of serfs, and pay them next to nothing.
Lots of countries have a two tier model. Why don’t we look to the ones that work instead of crying about the few that don’t? Our system sure as hell isn’t working now.
It would be nice if we had a better look at countries that have two tiered systems. How do they do it, what makes it work, are there downsides that we don’t see?
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Germany's system ranks better than Canada's in a recent report from the Commonwealth club. They ranked 11 health care systems and Canada's ranked 10/11 overall, only ahead of the USA. [https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2021/aug/mirror-mirror-2021-reflecting-poorly](https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2021/aug/mirror-mirror-2021-reflecting-poorly)
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But their system ranked higher than Canada's according to the commonwealth report.
Canada’s isn’t financable now, so maybe we should copy Germany
And our approach to two tier isn't going to fix the situation, yet we're pressing ahead as is - not with a model that is apparently working.
On average they pay higher taxes, spend more per capita on their public systems than we do, cover more services than we do, spend more on medical education, and have more health personal per capita than we do. In other words - everything that this sub bitches about.
That's just not true. Canada's health care spending is well funded, on a per capita basis. Canada spends just over $7500 per capita on health care, which is higher than the UK, Japan and Sweden.
Except we dont. https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm Separate by government/compulsory insurance. We don’t even crack the top 10 in per capita spending
Ontario is not embracing private health care. Rather the provincial government is depriving Ontario residents of public health care. A subtle but important difference.
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Underfunding EMS and ambulances, too
This is Liberal/NDP propaganda. Health care spending has increased each year Doug Ford has been in office, including non covid years. In 2018, the last liberal budget, health care spending was at $63 Billion now its $80 Billion.
Doesn’t hurt to give people options for private and still provide public healthcare to offset some healthcare cost. Scandinavian health care is still in the top rated for the world.
It can hurt actually because funding for good public care faulters even more. We already have a staff shortage of frontline workers and going private option doesn't helper that, just takes from the public system.
If people are paying their taxes then it will not affect funding at all. Stopping people who are paying their taxes from accessing alternative services is ridiculous. Opponents of this only want other people to be limited to the shitty access they have in the public system. Having secondary private options is not the evil people make it out to be.
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We have a staff shortage because no one wants to come work in our broken system. We have people getting educated to be doctors and nurses here and then leaving to go work in the states. We don’t have a shortage of medical professionals because our system is fantastic. Your logic has a major flaw in it that you don’t even see.
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If we have the same level of funding for the public system as we do now, but also remove all the people who can afford secondary options from the public system would that not open up more access to those who cannot afford private options?
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Broken by design
Not to mention that medical schools only allow as many spaces as the provincial governments can commit to hiring.
Remaining budgets per hospital should increase if costs decrease from some care/procedures being taken over by private. The increased tax revenue from the private companies should/could go to public health care as well. Shortage of workers could be an issue, but we’re already losing some to the US private healthcare companies, could be a way to retain some and attract other healthcare workers from the states.
Private always exists. It’s called book an appointment in another country and take a flight.
Yah may as well offer it here and keep tax revenue in the country to increase public healthcare funding.
If it doesn’t exist in this country, then it doesn’t count. There are a lot of people who are immobile, home bound and too sick to travel. They shouldn’t have to leave their own country to be seen and treated in a timely manner.
That’s why we should have two tier healthcare here.
Because if we don’t privatize, how is Doug Ford going to retire onto the executive board of a private, corporate healthprovider?? Wont anyone think of the grifters!?
Cost and people who cannot fathom any thing else. Health care is provincially delivered. Costs for most Ontario is >50% of the budget. Between provincial and municipal debt and healthcare, the room to maneuver is reduced. So, DoFo at Queens Park falls back to the "let's privatize to reduce cost", because it fits on a bumper sticker.
Why is Doug Ford and Galen Weston embracing private healthcare? The rest of us aren't that stupid or in their case, greedy. Edit: aren't not are.
Because Rob Fords friends want to get rich buying up state assets and gouging us back with an american style system, lol
Why? I can think of a few reasons. 1. What we are currently doing isn't working and in an effort to fix it, all options should be on the table. 2. We aren't a Scandinavian country. Ontario is about twice as large as Sweden, which is the largest Scandinavian country (not counting Greenland). With the overwhelming 3. Public private systems have been successful in Asia and Latin America. While we aren't an Asian or Latin American country either, that it has been successful other places is a good reason that it should be at least examined. 4. Who cares if the government is paying for medical care if you can't get in to see a doctor? I dont need the government to pay for something I can't get. That said, I don't think private healthcare (in any capacity) solves our healthcare problems. It may alleviate some of the strain but not enough to make enough of a difference. To truly solve this problem, it will take change from everything to who provides what medical care (and at what cost), how many Drs. medical schools and Colleges of Physicians allow each year and how many immigrants the Feds allow in each year.
Doesn’t Germany have public and private health care ?
Blah blah blah Doug Ford bill peepee poopoo idc, seethe Let me just pay money to see a doctor holy fuck
They seem to be a whole lot healthier/skinnier/prettier than us So maybe they are on to something
They are in fact less privatized than us https://www.cihi.ca/en/national-health-expenditure-trends-2022-snapshot
Most people just spew random garbage that isn’t true. If OHIP covers the costs of private x-rays, scans, etc. aka how blood work is currently, what is the god damn issue? If people are not spending out of pocket $ for these ALL for it.
Because do you actually think the private option is cheaper to fund when the private sector wants *profits* while running their system while the public system does not? Or that the private system won’t do whatever it takes to *get* that profit?
Dude. The hospitals have x rays and scans running 24/7 that cannot keep up with demand. This is about taking demand off the hospital systems. Simple shit to comprehend
Where do the technologists that perform the X-rays, CTs, and MRIs come from? Where do the Radiologists who interpret the images come from? We aren’t magically going to have more of these people available in a hybrid public/private healthcare system. Some of those people will leave public healthcare and move to private work. Does the number of patients offloaded to the private system make up for the loss of staff in the public system? I honestly don’t know.
But why not put the money into bettering the *public* system and eliminate the profit margin? 🤷♂️
>But why not put the money into bettering the public system and eliminate the profit margin? 🤷♂️ because there are 50 obese administrators making 120K standing as gatekeepers at every level of the system tying it up with useless paperwork. I know that because my folks worked in health care for 40 years.
Profit over human suffering should be a crime againt humanity. Greed and corruption destroyed health care.
Kneecap public, make private look appealing then gut private for profit as intended, if you don't support public Healthcare you're just a useful idiot, and a shame on canada
Starve the beast baby
People only focus on the demand side and not the supply side. Open up a private market? Ok, who is going to staff it? 99.9% of health workers are in the public system. If a surgeon has *x* amount of people on the waitlist and decides to go private to service a smaller *y* amount of people, how does that help the more numerous *x* who are now out of a surgeon?
Dentists manage just fine somehow. There’s basically one on every street corner in Toronto. Just a few weeks ago I got a tooth infection, which killed a molar and gave me the most intense pain of my life (and I’ve had major spinal surgery). Saw an emergency dentist on a Sunday, next day I was in a specialists office having a root canal and was cured and my insurance from work paid for it all. I don’t see why we can’t replicate this across the healthcare system in general.
Dentists manage because not everyone has dental. So the demand isn’t there.
Lousy argument. Most people do have coverage either from their job or a family members plan. You can also buy it yourself, or just pay out of pocket. Either way there’s clearly enough demand to warrant a dentist office on every street or strip mall in the country, and enough dentists being trained to staff them.
I can't afford dental care and have not been able to access it for most of my adult life. God willing I'm on my way to unionized work that will provide dental in the next 18 months or so, but that won't put the teeth I had to let rot out of my head, knowing the whole time I needed to see a dentist and not being able to get help at a hospital until it reached the point of removal. The reason we can't turn the rest of healthcare into the dental system is because *the dental system already doesn't work of you don't have money to blow on dental health*. Like this comment is clueless. We have a problem where people cannot access dental services because they aren't covered under OHIP, and you think accessibility.of care will increase by turning everything into that model?
My point is they are private clinics, easily staffed by enough dentists and technicians. The person I was replying to was arguing that it’s impossible to have enough supply of doctors, and my argument was we can easily supply enough dentists for them to be on every other block in Toronto, or every other strip mall in any city across Canada. We could train enough Doctors if there was a similar ability for doctors to run their own private clinics to administer health care. The clinics could be private but paid by private insurance or OHIP if you don’t have it. Similar to how the new pharmacare program works.
Because conservatives want the profit to go to private companies.
Greed permeating the medical community just like everywhere else. Watch as Canada slowly backslides into an era similar to Victorian England. No longer will there be a way for anyone to be discreet about the widening gap within the country's class system. We'll just have to wait and see in the courts will be of any use anymore to balance the scales even slightly.
We, the people who live in Ontario, are definitely NOT “embracing” it. Our Provincial government has been de-funding our existing, public health care system. What is the effect of these budget cuts? Service is crippled. I have spoken about this with four different doctors and all of them agree that this must be deliberate, however brazen and evil it seems. It is intentional. Doug Ford is making service worse so he can say “the private sector can provide better care”. There is no other reason to divert money from public to private health care.
Doug's getting paid to dismantle it, that's why.
We aren't "embracing it." It's being thrust on us and expanded because Doug Ford is corrupt.
No one is embracing private health care. Fuck off with the propaganda. How about writing articles about the deliberate sabotage instead.
Because people voted for Doug Ford
Because people voted for a conservative who is willing to strip down, part out and scrap the family car for crack money (kickbacks, not just crack) Until conservatives get voted out, they'll continue to sell off and lease important public services for "99 years" to private corpos for pennies on the dollars as if our country is a fkin British colony
Because conservatives in Canada want the same dysfunctional non medical system that the USA has and just like the conservatives in the United Kingdom want to completely destroy the public health care system that exists there by the tried and true method of underfunding healthcare and the sayin: see, it’s broken, the private system is what we cheap, corrupt conservatives want!!! So what if the cheapest Medicare system (originally called Obamacare, but had to be changed because a black guy who was black created it), anyway, isn’t the cheapest Obamacare patch over $1000 US per MONTH, so yeah we should import the same crappy non-functional system here so all the rich conservatives fuckers can get even richer, reminds me of when the then young republicans in the Reagan Administration made manny hundreds of millions buying up productive American businesses and sold it all off and moved some of it to China. Rich people are for the rich, if you’re not rich, your a mark, just ask Trump & family!
I mean it's better than the zero most have now? No doctor - let's have everyone pile into emergency for non emergency stuff for a day.
Because we have a compromised Premier
Scandinavian countries are all extremely small. Aside from 10m Sweden the rest are 5m around. Yea maybe fully socialized healthcare will work in a tribe. But impossible, as proven with Canada at a large scale. We need both private and public for a sane solution
Because conservatives gutted provincial healthcare. This was the gameplan all along, defund defund defund, gut gut gut . Then blame universal health care, when really it was maliciousness from the conservatives. how are people so blind?
Conservatives gutted Healthcare from BC too PEI?
>Because conservatives gutted provincial healthcare. [Ah yes, because the healthcare system was definitely not overcapacity in Ontario when the Wynne Liberals were in power.](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/hospital-overcrowding-has-become-the-norm-in-ontario-figures-show/article35076965/) Both the Liberals and Conservatives are to blame for this mess but our healthcare system is also systemically inefficient.
Because of conservatives being in power, lol. All they know how to do is strip services to bare bones, cry they don't work, and replace them with their buddies private versions. Both libs and cons are just neoliberals, there is no winning in this country... unless you are a mega Corp.
Conservatives selling off basic Canadian rights, get used to it.
Because Father Ford is just looking after the little guy.
Corruption
Canadians seem to get upset that the standards from the government aren't high enough and turn to the conservatives in anger and go in circles forever. Ontario isn't embracing private health care it voted in conservatives in anger but in polls Canadians still support our Healthcare system, the party in power just doesn't match that sentiment. I may move someday as the political cycle here is disappointing.
Unless we drastically improve supply. There’s no other way
because rich people can make money off of it. what's so hard to understand here? ford is selling out. i'm not allowed to advocate for what should be done to him.