The end of public health care in Canada

[soleiltropiques]

OP: I admit the title sounds alarmist, but it's also true. I'm posting two articles, one of which is older, in my own personal effort to do my bit to publicize the effects of the so-called reforms (both implemented and planned) by the current right-wing Conservative federal government in Canada (i.e. good friend to U.S. Republicans, among other

Comments

[sumi_tatsuha]

fml the last thing we need are our medicare to end up like the Americans :/

[shortsweetcynic]

i concur. our system is a fucking mess and i have no idea how any thinking person could look at it and say "yes, that's totally better."

[nesmith]

I vacation in Ontario every year, and one year when I was at the pool a guy in his late teens was talking about how much better health care is in America and how much Canada's sucks.

After I retrieved my eyeballs and put them back in my head, I gave him a quick picture of what "health care" in America actually entails--mostly that it's the best health care in the world if you're rich enough to afford it (or to afford really really good insurance that doesn't try to fuck you over), otherwise you have to pray the insurance company picks up the tab or you'll either have to deal with the hassle of trying to get them to cover it or face ruinous debt and yes technically if you don't have insurance you can go to the ER but if you don't have insurance they're highly motivated to get you out the door--and his eyes got wider and wider and at the end he admitted that our system is bullshit and suddenly having to wait longer to see the doctor didn't seem so bad to him

[the_siobhan]

I hear the "wait longer" thing a lot and I'm not entirely convinced it's true either. In Ontario at least if your condition is a priority there is almost no wait. For example my bf has had three reoccurences of lymphoma, all three times he started chemo within a couple of days. The wait time is usually for elective procedures. I've had three surgeries in the last 10 years, since they weren't for anything life-threatening they were scheduled about three-four months in advance. If I had been bumped for any of those - say because the surgeon was called to an emergency - I would have had priority for the next available slot.

Mind you, I say that as somebody who lives in a urban centre in a province that is fairly well funded, so I buy that wait times could be a lot longer in other locations with fewer resources. But I expect that's also true in the US, wait times in New York or LA are going to be shorter than places with smaller populations and fewer hospitals.

[the_siobhan]

But public health care costs have remained stable as a percentage of GDP since the 1970s -- it's shrinking provincial budgets that are the real problem.

Now that's an interesting tidbit - I had always heard that costs were going up because of more sophisticated medical techniques and longer lifespans. Good to know that's not the case.

[soleiltropiques]

Another few interesting tidbits: the ONLY sector where costs are increasing (and where there have been HUGE increases in costs) is pharmaceutical costs (i.e. where what is covered, if anything, varies by province).

...And another tidbit in relation to that one: the increasing costs of medications IS NOT driven by research & development, it's driven mainly by marketing costs (and possibly profit margins). (I gave a LOT of references on this in this ONTD_political post: http://ontd-political.livejournal.com/11009918.html)

Hence the tag: capitalism fuck yeah.

[soleiltropiques]

Also, I agree that that was a very interesting tidbit and it is something that the mainstream media generally does not report on.

Where I live (province of Quebec) there is almost NEVER any mention of the fact that income tax revenues have decreased since the 1990s -and not because budgetary needs are less. (Mostly, it's because of pressure by various lobby groups which sum up to the fact that the rich and well to do don't want to pay their fair share.)

[scaramoucher]

Ugh, Australia's government is trying to attempt similar things. Co-payments for GP visits is their starting point. It will hopefully crash and burn in the Senate but ffs, why does every goddamn conservative have a hard-on for the US way of doing things?

[the_siobhan]

Because it's incredibly profitable. The people who own the insurance companies make a metric shit-ton of money.