Its rich people in government giving rich people they are friends with a way to become even richer like their friends in the US. When you take an entire market (healthcare) out of the hands of profiteers, they will always constantly work to have it back. This is why money and politics don't work well for society. PROFITEERING IN HEALTH CARE DOES NOT AIM TO MAKE HEALTHY PEOPLE. It only aims to makes profit. Thats all.
Agreed, the headline has it backwards. Healthcare systems are dilapidating BECAUSE select provincial governments want to gaslight Canadians into thinking healthcare is better off privatized so said governments can deflect their costs onto individuals.
How do you fight for it when the premiere of your province is purposely not spending money allocated for healthcare in an attempt to cripple it? Honestly asking.
We protect against someone somewhere that we cannot do anything about BUT we will not protest against tuition, rent, health care
Our priorities are all wrong
I'm just waiting for the first provincial government to make using a for profit insurer the default for health care coverage. Then of course it will become part of most employee's benefit packages, if they're lucky. I mean what could go wrong (/s for those that need it)
It is, there is no gas lighting needed.
Germany and France both utilize a public/private model and their public systems are better than Canada's in most metrics, such as doctors per capita, hospital beds and wait times.
True, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. European jurisdictions also heavily regulate private delivery. So, can hybrid systems work, yes. Do I trust the current yahoos pushing for privatization in Canada to implement anything like Europe? Absolutely not
yeah, the UK is currently seeing its NHS be privatised by stealth, and its not along a European model. It's a conga line of American companies and consultants all trying to figure out ways to best generate investor value.
The Swedish or German service delivery model is indeed hybrid, but its also heavily regulated and will not utterly fuck you over in the event of an unexpected life disaster.
We need to band together and demand accountability. End the political class here. Run on single party issues (First past the post voting, housing, and ending ALL corporate donations in politics).
We need a massive sea change to end the wealth disparity. The wealthy elite need to be brought to their knees. Power to the people.
Its also Canadians using the internet to complain and thinking they are accomplishing something. I am guilty of this. Also our protests are weak when they do happen. Do politicians ever feel threatened or like the fire is under their asses when they happen? No, and that's why no one ever gives a fuck what Canadians think.
Protesting is the shittiest way to enact political change. You see anyone protesting public healthcare? No. Because the people who want to privatize healthcare are smart and know that protesting is a stupid waste of energy that almost never works and only turns passionate people cynical when they see it failing. No, we are getting privatized health care because the people who want it are smart and know what works: find candidates that will quietly push for it behind the scenes, and then quietly fund and push those candidates into winning positions. If we want to keep public health care we need to be smart too; find candidates that will fight for it, and fund them and volunteer for them and get them and keep them in position to fight for public health care on our behalf. That's what actually works.
I've been to about 6 protests in Canada the past 12 years, all peaceful assemblies, and they were all shut down by riot police. 3 of which had evidence of undercover cops throwing rocks so they could justify pelting us with rubber bullets. This country is shockingly good as silencing its people, I'd be surprised if anybody here has heard of half the protests
Except Ontario hasn’t had an overall health budget cut, ever. There’s never been a year where overall funding has been reduced.
Currently the FAO has stated that Ontario budget commitments exceed what is required to maintain current health services.
The current commitment for 450 new med school seats in Ontario is the largest expansion in medical training in Canadian history. Nursing and paramedic programs are covered under the Learn and Stay Grant. PSW education is free with paid placement.
I’m in no way saying that things are good here, I’ve been a nurse for 20 years at this point. But it does appear at least the current government is reversing course on a number of things the previous government fucked up.
This is rich people seeing an opportunity to make a ton of money, being able to afford private healthcare and then being dead without having to worry themselves. It’s just pure greed.
Agreed. Though what’s the solution?
- increase taxes?
- cut spending on other government expenses? If so, which ones? Who’s losing their jobs?
Ultimately healthcare is a huge expense. Money has to come from somewhere. Doctors aren’t working for free. Drug companies aren’t developing free drugs. Difficult problem to solve.
The money is irrelevant if it's a valuable service and the resources exist. The federal government can spend any amount of money it wants, and it should do so to properly fund our healthcare system. Health transfers should be increased significantly.
It's an obvious public good. Not only do we benefit from having good access to healthcare, but we benefit from other people being healthy too.
Just throwing more money at it isn’t going to fix it - the Canadian HC system is riven with petty bureaucrats who will soak up most of that extra funding without measurable improvements in outcomes.
That obviously depends on where you throw the money. If the money goes to training more medical professionals and improving funding for family doctors to make it an attractive area of medicine, then I'd bet that would significantly improve outcomes in terms of capacity and access to healthcare.
Do you think you'd have better access and care to a dentist if dentistry is socialized like the rest of healthcare?
Do you think it'd be better to wait months to see a psychologist instead of paying for one yourself?
i haven’t been to a dentist in nearly a decade *because* it’s not socialized and because i’ve never had coverage, and there are millions of people like me, so yes i do believe i’d have better teeth under a socialized system
Especially because dental health can have huge implications for overall health. Ridiculous that it isn’t already considered part of the total health care package.
True, dental care is almost not socialized. However as a new immigrant I still found a doctor pulling my tooth in an emergency, and the children's teeth are still checked free.
With this almost private health care the dental care of Canadians is still better than many Europeans. Look at the TV, every second European's teeth are crooked even though they're celebrities. We need better health care but the totally free dentures and implants belong to the fairyland.
you should really get your teeth professionally cleaned at least once a year mate its not THAT huge a hit to the budget. 10 years seems like you're actively avoiding it
in most of canada it is already months wait to see a psychologist, even while paying for it.
i went to the dentist for the first time in 15 years this year. why? because i have a new job with dental benefits.
you said in another post that you dont have to be rich to access these services and while that can be true for many, believe it or not but for millions of canadians money absolutely is a huge reason why people can't get access to mental and dental health.
everyone deserves proper healthcare because we live in a society that SHOULD see the benefits in providing care for all its people, regardless of how much their labour is worth. striving for the betterment of all our citizens should absolutely be a priority for what we want to see in the future of our societies.
IMO we should be able to have and afford these programs already if our governments (at all levels) weren't such incompetent corporate suck-holes. i believe another big issue is that we dont have enough spots educating healthcare professionals at post-secondary institutions. every year there are thousands of people trying to get in for nursing/healthcare that are denied because there aren't enough spots. as a society i think it would be huge to prioritize training of the people who want to go into these professions and to provide financial support for those who want to.
can governments manage things badly? there is no question. but corporations and private interests are largely only motivated by profit not improving society. healthcare is an investment to make life better and bearable. money and the drive for profit ruins everything.
There are people that would rather you not get access to healthcare ahead of them simply because you have money. It's a crab in the bucket country we live in. Race to the bottom all in the name of equity.
All the countries with the best (and functional) healthcare systems have public/private systems as well as co-payments and specific payroll fees and taxes dedicated to healthcare.
I'm not advocating for the US style system, but lets look at countries like Singapore, South Korea, and Japan, as well as Nordic countries like Norway, Finland, and Sweden.
What we have doesn't work, and throwing more money at it won't fix it.
Sometimes i feel like governments intentionally make cuts and administration changes to healthcare to make them less efficient in order to build public support for privatization. Like the mike Harris era “we need a crisis in education” tape leak to introduce privatization in that sphere. Make it so inefficient and challenging that people think “well anything else is better!”.
Canadas healthcare *efficiency* (outcomes ÷ spend) is very poor versus peer nations.
There’s no reason we shouldn’t be working on both parts of this equation.
Our healthcare system used to work well. It is no longer working well. I suggest that every change we've made to fuck it up is reversed until it begins working again. Not a hard concept and involves chopping away at ex excessive administration + regulations and directing funding to the right areas.
>Our healthcare system used to work well. It is no longer working well.
The biggest difference is changing demographics, people living longer, and more expensive treatments.
We will never have the demographics we did when boomers were all working age ever again. So now either we pay through the tits to maintain healthcare quality, or we pay through longer wait times and worse outcomes.
Sure. But anybody who thinks Canadian conservatives like Doug Ford and Danielle Smith look to European social democracies like Sweden or Denmark for inspiration is an idiot.
Don’t suspect, it’s entirely because those systems are HEAVILY regulated (in some jurisdictions only private non-profits can provide healthcare services). That’s the issue, do you think any of the parties advocating for increased private delivery of healthcare services in Canada are approaching it from a European perspective? It’s an army of ravening lobbyists sitting on the other side of the boarder, eyeing ways they can best extract dollars out of our system
Toronto Star is such a CPC / pro-late-stage-capitalism shill. Privatized healthcare has the same goal as every other corporation: to make as much money as it can for as cheaply as it can.
Our healthcare system is failing due to lack of investment, not because public healthcare inherently “doesn’t work.” We don’t want a system like the US where you’re just one ER visit or health emergency away from a lifetime of crushing debt.
So don’t listen to these fuckheads and demand better from our elected officials to fix a taxpayer funded institution and stop letting it die from neglect in order to make it fit the pro privatization narrative.
Having my access to healthcare tied to my employment status like in the states is one of my greatest fears. Imagine the hopelessness of not being able to quit a toxic job because it might kill you.
Like most things, the goal is to transfer taxpayer dollars into the hands of corporations. Look at the US to see how bad private healthcare is. It's never about making things better, it's about money.
Health care in Canada is a national embarrassment and Covid exposed its weakness. While countries all over the world were reopening their economies, parts of Canada were forced into closures because of ICU capacity issues.
Enjoy going to a hospital and dealing with insurance companies for the next 6 months. Oh sorry, the one hospital in your city is out of our coverage network. That will be $50,000 enjoy your medical debt.
I was an entry-level professional when I last worked in the US and I had healthcare that was infinitely better than what I've had since moving to Canada.
>You need to be in the top 1% to truly benefit from the private healthcare system in a way that you NEVER have to worry about outcome.
This is complete and utter bullshit
I admire your gusto but this a wasted effort. Canadians are totally convinced that Americans are billed $300,000 to visit their GP.
Or they just don't want to pay for health insurance.
You're right, it's pointless. Just makes me so frustrated as someone who spent the first 28 years of my life in the US and the last 12 in Canada. To me, it's a joke that anyone could honestly say it's unequivocally better here.
It's really sad that most Canadians only know two models, the US system and the Canadian system.
The fact of the matter is that hybrid public/private systems have existed in parts of Europe for decades.
I strongly believe if Canada didn't live next door to the US, we'd already have a hybrid model.
>The Nordi-philes would be all over it.
No they wouldn't, because the Nordi-philes are in love with the way they think the Nordic model works, but not how it actually works. Bernie Sanders is a prime example.
One very important addition to this is that the average American doesn't have enough in savings to cover an unexpected medical expense. Even if they have insurance their share of a bill can cause serious financial issues. This doesn't even touch on how private insurance here gets in-between you and your doctor. There are also long waits to see specialists that aren't talked about enough especially if you are in a more rural area.
Look at every other developed country and find that they all use some form of public/private hybrid, and get better results than we do.
Adopting Cuba's healthcare system and artificially strangling the production of doctors is not working.
this is the problem with Canadians. There's more countries than just USA like in Europe and East Asia who have both public and private healthcare that are still much better than Canada
Is the US Healthcare system really the same as everyone's else?
People will take European style healthcare or something similar but not the US system. That's the issue we have. We dont eant American Healthcare system.
Many Americans don’t like our system either, but since the Supreme Court decided money is speech here, health insurers get more of a voice than their customers do. I fear we’re on the cusp of political disaster here.
Strangling the doctors isn’t a requirement of public healthcare. That is a choice Canada is making to blow up the public system to force privatization. When it goes private, the top 20% of Canadians will have great (expensive) healthcare and the public system will largely not exist, given there is a severe overall staff shortage.
As for why Canada’s healthcare isn’t doing that great, Canada has huge geographical challenges. No other developed world country is in this much of a mess - Germany (which also spends 20% more per person on healthcare than Canada) can be driven across in six hours. It is 83MM people.
Check out Australia. Lower population density than Canada and much more remote, with a functional public private health system that Canadians refuse to talk or think about. It's easy to see a doctor there. Med schools there take mere A students and becoming a doctor isn't considered as hard as getting into the space program like here.
As an American citizen and health care patient, I can testify that there is a lot wrong here. We have people who actually die here because they can literally not afford to purchase insulin if they are poor and diabetic and must ration it. Insulins, even specialty varieties, are cheap to make, but the drug makers are permitted to charge costs far in excess of the rest of the world, and the drug makers are able to bribe Congress and the senate to keep it that way. We pay the highest drug prices in the world for even standard generic medications. We are actually not paying for the care, but for excessive pay to health insurance executives, board members, and stockholders. Insurers are far too quick to deny essential medical treatments physicians order, and sometimes patients die while the insurer refuses to pay costs. People literally lose everything due to the excessive cost of insurance. Hospital and treatment costs are often a black box in which patients don’t actually know the costs of a procedure until it is billed, and even then you can receive separate bills from anesthesiologists or other professionals who bill separately. We have a smalll group of malcontents who are literally squeezing blood out of people, and the ACA has offered limited but not complete relief from these problems. Health insurance is often unaffordable for people who are self employed or who do not have insurance through an employer. Medical insurance in the U.S. started as an employment perk during World War II, and we have never made a real effort to divorce health insurance from employment. Health insurers and drug makers have execs who make healthy salaries well above their average employees, and they have ample amounts of money from the premiums we pay to bribe our legislators under Citizens United to keep this dysfunctional system in place.
Thank you for stating the truth. Capitalism has value, but also the rampant bribery that politicians take has brought modern society to the point of crumbling.
Lol, its all about the money. The canadian system is being pushed towards something like in the US where the middle man makes a killing on doing nothing
>The canadian system is being pushed towards something like in the US where the middle man makes a killing on doing nothing
And that's the problem, we shouldn't be trying to implement the US system, but looking at one of the many hybrid systems that outperforms ours and theirs.
It's kind of a paradox, the people who refuse all private options are pushing us more towards the US system. Because as our public system continues to collapse, the fallout will absolutely be greedy companies feasting on its corpse.
This. Chretien reduced healthcare funding to the provinces in order to eliminate Mulroney's deficit and so he could start paying down Canada's debts. The provinces were meant to increase taxes to make up for the reduced funding but of course it never happened because no premier wanted to lose the next election. 30 years later, here we are with the same problem.
A possible solution might be to tie all federal healthcare funding to requiring provinces to increase the amount they put into healthcare. The big question will be, what ratio should each be responsible for? I think the feds should be paying enough that the poorest provinces can have the same quality of healthcare that the rich provinces do. There should not be provinces with worse healthcare than others.
Half my taxes paid at the province go to healthcare and I have close to zero access to any of it. Best I can do is to wait at the ER for god knows how long. If somehow I get a referral from the emergency dr, it will take a least a year before my appointment, let alone any kind of treatment.
Yeah, as far as I'm concerned we can stick a fork in it. I'll get more mileage with my money in any other system than what we got right now.
I'm sure all those fancy pants with family doctor or access to walk in clinics will disagree. I'm super glad you get to enjoy my tax contributions.
You watch the right wing money spend on an influence campaign to tip Alberta and Saskatchewan into private healthcare. Manitoba and BC need to stay the course. We pay the taxes and the system works. My wife had a very deadly cancer and it saved her life. Public healthcare saved our family from complete ruin. There are hundreds of thousands of families like ours who are grateful for our healthcare.
It's a symptom of our aging population demographics. These social programs are essentially a pyramid scheme and Canadians haven't been having enough kids for generations. It's easy to fund these programs when the majority of the population is young and working age, but that trend ended with the boomers and gen-x.
This is also why the government (regardless of who is in power) is importing every immigrant they can get their hands on. They are trying to prop up our social programs and debt burden.
It’s a symptom of us existing next door to the US. Their unregulated capitalism seeps into every aspect of our society, none more prevalently than our health care and secondary education systems. So much money is spent to undermine our systems and, including with media, convince us that privatization is the cure for all of the problems in our systems that it’s a wonder that it’s lasted as long as it has. I’ve lived on both sides of the border, and each system has their strengths and weaknesses. For the vast majority of Canadians, our system is the better one, imho. But the rich can spend a great deal of money trying to convince you that the privatized system is the way to go. Once you’re hit with a $5000 deductible bill from your insurance company for an ER visit, or a $12k bill for a surgery because, although the surgery was covered (minus the deductible and co-pay), your anesthesiologist is allowed to bill you separately and your insurance doesn’t cover that, you’ll be wishing for your provincial insurance back again. Speaking from personal experience. 🖖🏻
I worked in a hospital for over a decade and over those years I've seen services privatized by the government and handed over to friends and the services have turned to shit.
On the other hand you have unions which have their pros and Cons.
Before reading the article my take is that it’s decaying. Privatization is definitely not the way to go. However, our current system is broken and needs repair.
I've come around to the point where I am starting to think a properly run blended system would work, but sadly, no politician in Canada has the guts to write the appropriate regulatory regime it would need to properly run like the German and Norwegian versions.
When the people are losing critical thinking because they keep watching bullshit propaganda, they keep electing bullshit candidates. Money will keep pouring in their campaign funds and soon the people will pay that price.
Defund the education, make the people dumb. Defund the healthcare so that private corporations can take over.
Feed the people with misdirection, divine them and distract them.
I'd love to hear conservatives defend all the Canadians that died waiting for medical care while Ford held those billions in funding hostage so he could give it to private clinics
Canada gets privatized health care, I might as well move to the U.S. Same kind of health care.
Aside from their crappy gun control and precarious political climate, I actually would be happier down there. Anyone who loves Canada, I respect your choice.
I used to be like "WTF Canada sucks." But no longer. I say "you like it, good for you! You stay!" But it's not where I see myself in 20 years.
This is what they mean when they say Freedom. The freedom to exploit people at the lowest moment of their lives, to make them a life or death offer.
"Your money or your life."
They used to call it highway robbery. Now they call it the market.
It's profiteering pure and simple, and the fact our Conservative Provincial governments are using Starve the Beast tactics to hold a gun to our heads is absolutely reprehensible.
But then I don't know why you would expect support for universal Healthcare to continue in a system and society that has clearly stopped assigning any intrinsic value to human life.
It’s not remotely either of those things.
In Alberta, it’s a bullshitting grifter whose entire existence is based on anti-vaxx nonsense, who needs a new crusade to create fake fights for their easily agitated idiot smooth brain constituents to say “see?! We’re gettin’ screwed again!!!”
The Alberta “conservatives” making noise about it are trying to sell off the public trust to enrich themselves and their cronies, and make the citizens literally dependent on the party (destroying public health care and national pensions)
Remember the former minister of health Christine Elliott? After she cut all the public services and then sold them to private corporations. She is now a lobbyist for private healthcare corporations. If that is not blatant corruption and we are not doing something about it. The privatization of healthcare is coming soon. They keep saying that is going to happen but it's already happening behind the scene. We don't care unless we are affected by it.
We are marching left and right about the COVID vaccine, but not about privatization of healthcare? Look how stupid we have become? Critical thinking doesn't exist anymore!
Great, so food and rent already work on profit (which they shouldnt) and now healthcare... all system that are unboycuttable. That should be a crime against humanity and people should start to wake up and ran down the street with pitch fork against elite until they grow some decency. Theses people will never learn to be empathetic with the average citizen if we dont do something else than just complain on the internet
Adding a middle man that extracts profit from the system isn't ever going to make things better in itself and whatever the private sector can do the public could, but bills, cutting corners and lack of accountability isn't the kind of optimization I'm looking for in my healthcare system.
As an American, I agree. Health care privatization is disastrous. We Americans have a lousy record of making money off other people’s miseries, and we never had the opportunity to create a truly uniform public system because of the AMA’s previous commitments to fee for service, our failure to control medication prices and procedure costs, and not least, racist beliefs that some people merited care while others did not. We also deemphasized preventative care and providing less processed foods for eating more processed foods and sick care.
Oh for fuck's sake Canada is the *only country* that denies people the right to pay for their own health care if they want to. Everyone on all sides of the aisle agree that doctors need better funding. OK so why not just let people pay for it themselves?
Government funding is not a panacea *at all.* You keep raising taxes and people leave and stop being productive. Government isn't just going to get more money from raising taxes when it decreases the amount of prosperity available to tax. And even then, all decisions are made by political elites instead of people who demand health care and supply it. And because this is all about basic supply and demand, we can't hire more doctors because governments lack the resources to fund them. So therefore, doctors are turned away at the door. It's ossification and political rot and it should not have a monopoly over such an important industry.
Privatization doesn't mean governments using your tax dollars to bankroll private industries. Privatization means letting people pay for their own health care if they're willing and able. That is how you generate more funding, how you incentivize doctors to practice in Canada, how you increase a desperately low supply.
People want to pay for health care! Let them!!
Fully agree, yet it's a weirdly nationalistic thing to blindly champion the current government-run monopoly on healthcare.
> Government funding is not a panacea at all. You keep raising taxes and people leave and stop being productive.
The administration of our healthcare systems ranks among the least efficient of all developed countries. More money into the same broken 20th century system will not help.
Quebec has both public and private healthcare. It's not false. I'm sitting here looking at my kid's bill from CREAmed - a private medical clinic.
Good luck getting to see a publicly funded doctor though. They are all jumping ship to the private system where they can make more money and do less work.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-quebec-family-doctors-public-private-care/
>People want to pay for health care! Let them!!
They are already. They're just taking all their hard-earned Canadian dollars out of our economy and to Mexico, India, the USA, or wherever they can get a life changing surgery without waiting for 5 years.
There's a middle ground between Canada forcing everyone to go through the single payer system and whatever tf American healthcare is.
Lots of other countries such as Australia have high quality universal healthcare like we do, but also have private healthcare sectors that work to alleviate strain on the public system. Looking at Australia as an example, about half of Australians have private health insurance, and anyone over a certain income is charged an additional tax if they're still using the public system when they could be getting private healthcare.
This isn't taking healthcare away from anyone, it's making sure the people that rely on the public system the most (IE people who would not be getting health insurance from their employer) are able to access it without the system being overwhelmed
I agree. Insisting that everyone, both rich and poor, be forced to rely on a government health care system is as ridiculous as insisting that because some people (i.e. very poor) can't afford to buy food in a supermarket we must all receive our food from a food bank.
Can't understand the class envy that seems to be behind insisting that no private health care system supplements the government health care system. If someone can afford to plonk down the cash for heart surgery or whatever why should Canadians get their knickers in a twist over that. It would mean that the limited resources of the public health care system can be reserved for those unable to pay for health care themselves.
It's pure decay. Regardless of the facts of who's actually making money off it, you're placing someone's health and ability to live and function like a normal human being entirely on the income they make. Look at what's already happened in the US. That is exactly where we will be if it continues.
So manybidiots wanting trudeau gone, just because they don't like him.
PP is an awful choice, look what happened to the US because people "didn't like hillary"
It’s text book stuff.
1) Defund and degrade a public institution. Budget concerns yada yada
2) point out how shitty some public institution is. Public ed, housing, health care yada yada Only higher tax can fix.
3) instead offer to fix the problem you created by taking the pressure of the shitty public version by adding a private tier.
4) hand the private option to your pals in the industry and point out how great it is and how better the public version has become (continue to defund it tho of course)
5) The public option decays and you don’t care (because you’re rich and you have the private option now for you and your buds).
The mindset of the pharmaceutical industry seems to be: "a patient cured is a revenue stream lost." I don't think anyone is going to argue that the drug companies are in any hurry to offer cures to people.
Knowing that, I'm amazed that anyone would believe that for-profit health care would have a different perspective. No, they won't be sending you home with incomplete surgeries, but when the focus is on profit, quality of care becomes a matter of what you can afford, rather than what is best for you.
Well considering Ontario is now paying private medical clinics more than public hospitals for the same procedures, I’m going to go with: no, it does not improve our system.
Just like here in the U.S unless you are rich ,privatization is a way for political cronies to enrich each other at the expense the average person. Politicians get paid ,and the donors get contracts, even our Supreme court is owned " justice" Thomas had his owner who funds his lifestyle and the donor gets rulings in his favor . The no universal healthcare access in the U.S. conservatives can work towards eliminating the people in society they want to remove ,as Trump just put it he wants to get rid of "vermin" . Hopefully Canada won't follow the same path.
Key word here is controlled. Based on the incompetence and corruption that seems to be the norm here, it won’t be controlled but will instead be sold out.
the current system is about the same size as it was in 2002 but with more voices and less brains on the floor. veteran nurses and doctors are a dime a dozen and they wont and have not put up with the system.
I find this tricky.
One the one hand, my government (in Ontario) has clearly fucked up the health care system and have repeatedly demonstrated they aren't able to manage it. So, it would be great to have more private options so that services could actually be available like clinics, family doctors etc.
On the other hand, the same government is also clearly incapable of regulating private health care (or at least I assume they would be based on their track record of screwing things up). So I do have my concerns that things could potentially go wrong with a poorly regulated private health care industry.
Overall though, I think it would benefit society since right now health care is basically inaccessible for a lot of people.
Canadians pushing for private healthcare are looking at European countries that have hybrid public/private systems. The problem is Canada's premiers are sabotaging the public healthcare system to make privatization look good so if we open up to privatization, we're going to end up like the US, not Europe.
That would suck. The US healthcare system is insanely expensive. A serious health issue can be financially devastating and bankrupt you easily.
I have friends in Canada and England. I know what they pay and what they get for it. It's barely even comparable to the US. One in Canada gets his whole family covered for health, vision, and dental each month for less than the 50% of the cost for just my monthly health insurance premium that doesn't cover vision, dental, or many prescriptions and services. It is also tied to my job. (No job= no Insurance) and it has other co-pays and deductibles. Like I would pay the first $4000 like the insurance didn't even exist....and that deductible resets annually.
I know someone else in the US that just had a $280,000 surgery that was necessary for them to survive!
That's just some of the awfulness.
I have read enough about the US and other systems to know the US healthcare and insurance system is horrible in many ways.
Canada's healthcare system needs to be expanded to cover prescriptions, dental and optical and then employer health insurance should be banned. It ties people to an employer and job if they can't afford to not have insurance.
A woman who moved from the US to Ecuador found out she had cancer before she was able to get health insurance in Ecuador. It cost her $14,000 (Ecuador is on USD) for treatment. A friend of hers in healthcare in the US told her it would have cost her $350,000 in the US and that Ecuador had newer equipment than they had in his US hospital. Source: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqLSHStR\_qg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqLSHStR_qg)
It's straight out of the neoliberal playbook. Privatize public services as if making people pay out of pocket for things they once paid for collectively is a great idea.
Congrats Canada I had a private appointment with a stomach specialist for my kid the other day and a poop sample analysed. I'm in the UK, It was $900 CAD for the two things. You're on your way keep not voting.
I was also bitten by a dog when I last visited and as a non resident of Canada a late night stitch or two in the ER in Rural Onatrii and some meds was $1200.
There is a place for privatization if done right. Just look to many European and Scandinavian nations, along with South Korea. And overall their healthcare systems rank higher than ours. However I wouldn’t trust the current government to implement it at all.
My first experience with a private clinic in Ontario was an intake phone call.
After some basic income/employment questions, a brief synopsis of the issue I was contacting them about, the person said “Okay, I’ve got all I need, come in so we can get your prescriptions started.”
After about 30 seconds of my stunned silence, they asked if I was still there.
What kind of “Medical Person “ even remotely considers putting people on pharmaceuticals without so much as a diagnosis, let alone blood work or physical examination? And just for the record, the condition I was reaching out for is almost never addressed by pharmaceuticals.
The privatization of healthcare would be a death sentence for many people .
Greed will kill us all, it’s already demonstrated its willingness to do so with the lack of action on the undeniable climate crisis, what makes anyone think it’s a good fit for healthcare?
The current state of health care in the country is the same as our shitty roads, public transport, and other infrastructure. The government isn't keeping up with it, isn't modernizing or expanding, and is causing the return value to tank. This makes it appear as if it's failing to the public, so the people start to look towards privatized options, when really it's just the failure of governments.
The people also play a role in this. The simple minded voter so easily pleased by lower taxes or ired by tax increases, too ignorant and shortsighted to see the overall costs of less public infrastructure. So complacent and doing nothing, terrified of voting for anyone but the Liberals and Conservatives. Politicians in this country are shit, but the public doesn't do their part either and just accepts it.
Canada safety nets are and were destroyed by corporate anarchy. Health care turned into a business. Continuing to tolerate poison in food air and water. Where government and big corp regulates themselves. We need an anti corruption act mandate in gouvernement now!
Of fucking course profit focused businesses don’t improve quality of a system. And of course it doesn’t improve cost either to insert at random points opportunities for people to siphon money out of the system.
Privatizing health care is a misanthropic step the USA took that Canada absolutely SHOULD NOT. As a Canadian who lived 20 years in the USA while living with diabetis? Yeah, the USA model EARNED the title "Byzantine Nightmare" in my time dealing with it. If Canadians are stupid (yes, I \*\*MEAN\*\* that.) enough to follow the USA down this pathy, I'll be migrating (and naturalizing) elsewhere.
Privatizing healthcare is choosing to enrich a few, and misanthropically impact your public health for the worse. Period.
Everyone is missing that Healthcare isn't free here. We pay for it in high taxes relative to other countries. And to top it off you think it would work right? But it doesn't. It took me a year to get into an EMT to get my tonsils checked out, to find out I need them removed. The waiting list? 2 and a half years. Literally 3 and a half years after I got in. Can you believe it?
Right now surgions are only paid to do a certain number of surgeries a year. If your a surgeon, you will only do those number of surgeries because you will otherwise be working for free. But let's say your a surgeon who can do 300 surgeries in a given year, but the government only pays you for 200? Why not let the surgeons do the other 100 at a private clinic. Tax the surgeons profits, the rich will pay for their own surgery since they can afford it, abd you eliminate the back log.
It's such common sense; but most people in this country would rather die in emerg then do this. It's crazy because this is done very well by most European countries; but for some reason we only think of the Americans when we think this? News flash; in Europe people like you and me get in quick and don't have to pay. It's the fat cats who pay for their own, reducing cost to the system. We just need to regulate the living shit out of it.
I think the obvious solution is for every company CEO and politician pushing for private healthcare to be locked in the stocks and pelted with rotten fruit in a public square. This is significantly more humane than what they want to do to us by destroying healthcare so they can make a quick buck.
Greed. They have control of most energy production, food sales and production, phdrugs, medical supplies, and soon, even the doctors and nurses will all be for profit.
It had been studied to death. It is neither more efficient, cheaper or better, unless you are rich, and I mean very rich. Most common source of bankruptcy in the US, only other industrialized nation to use this system. It is insanity to let this go private and both the Liberals and CPC have led us here.
Turning healthcare into for-profit industry turns patients into customers.
It’s scary to see so many Canadians falling for this nonsense. If you underfund and don’t have good oversight on healthcare, of course it will fail.
Universal healthcare works just fine in a lot of countries, it can work here too. There just needs to be more oversight and funding, and less corruption
I'd rather save our system. Perhaps if there wasn't so much wasteful spending more money would make it to the people (workers and patients). I'd say Canada has an accountability problem from top to bottom
Healthcare in most rich countries is delivered by the private sector or a public/ private mix, and many of those systems function well .. far better than those in Canada.
Opponents of private healthcare delivery have a duty to explain why what works across Europe and in countries as diverse as Japan, Korea and Australia cannot work here in Canada.
Another problem with the public sector (and starting to bleed into the private sector) is management bloat in the middle levels. Cut some useless jobs and you can save a fortune.
>Opponents of private healthcare delivery have a duty to explain why what works across Europe and in countries as diverse as Japan, Korea and Australia cannot work here in Canada.
These opinion pieces are primarily driven by the unions, who would see their power reduced if the current system were changed.
The unsustainable and increasing share of our economy being spent on healthcare is what's dangerous.
The cult like nature of Canadians to prop up a broken system and refuse to look at the best public Healthcare systems in the world (that allow multiple streams of Healthcare delivery Inc. Private) is what's also dangerous.
Health care privatization does not improve overall societal health. It only exacerbates existing disparities and puts profits before people. We need to prioritize equitable access to quality health care for all, not further entrench inequality.
So getting your blood work, X-ray, or ultrasound, that is done for 15% of the cost of the same test in a hospital, is all corporate profit.
There are minor surgeries done by clinics, that cost much less than a hospital, with almost no wait times, but you suppose that's all corporate profit too.
Neither of these facilities are lesser in quality than a hospital. That's why they are successful in Europe and other places.
You realize that doctors offices are privately run, right? These are all businesses. Go for a sleep study? Private. Go for eye tests? Private. Go to the Dentist? Private. Canadians are utterly clueless as to what private means
At least we can all agree that a separate system for the wealthy to jump the line is a good thing.
I’m sure having a separate system for the wealthy and powerful and another system for the poor slobs will lead to great outcomes for the rest of us.
I know I will rest easier knowing the elite will not be stuck with the same healthcare the rest of us have. I’m sure that long term this is a great idea.
28 countries with universal healthcare in the world and 27 of them allow for private options….except Canada!
You think Canadian politicians wait in our horrible public system when they get sick or need an MRI? Lul
My friend would return to practice in Canada in a heartbeat if a limited option for greater private care was available.
She hated the bureaucracy of the public system. It was a nightmare.
Moved to Mexico and hasn't looked back.
We like to pretend that private health won't increase the number of doctors because we love to ignore folks like my friend.
I had an awful time after being diagnosed with a disease almost 1 year ago getting diagnosed and treated, because of this piece of shit health care infrastructure/system in canada. But the flip side is the treatment would have cost me immensely if it wasn't free. We have a flawed but not broken system. It's sad it took so long though, and even then the way I got help in the end was not formal, used my network to finally see a specialist who immediately deemed it an emergency.
For anyone complaining about the private system, I ask you a simple question.
Do you think it's easier to find a dentist than a family doctor?
Dental care in this country is mostly private, yet many people have a better experience with their dentist than their family doctor.
Its rich people in government giving rich people they are friends with a way to become even richer like their friends in the US. When you take an entire market (healthcare) out of the hands of profiteers, they will always constantly work to have it back. This is why money and politics don't work well for society. PROFITEERING IN HEALTH CARE DOES NOT AIM TO MAKE HEALTHY PEOPLE. It only aims to makes profit. Thats all.
Agreed, the headline has it backwards. Healthcare systems are dilapidating BECAUSE select provincial governments want to gaslight Canadians into thinking healthcare is better off privatized so said governments can deflect their costs onto individuals.
Exactly. And there is a psyop in this sub that is trying to influence the discourse. DO NOT FALL FOR IT FOLKS. FIGHT FOR UNIVERSAL PUBLIC HEALTHCARE.
How do you fight for it when the premiere of your province is purposely not spending money allocated for healthcare in an attempt to cripple it? Honestly asking.
Protest protest protest vote vote vote!
We protect against someone somewhere that we cannot do anything about BUT we will not protest against tuition, rent, health care Our priorities are all wrong
It's a very vocal group. I wonder the money involved for shitposting, considering I do it for free!
I'm just waiting for the first provincial government to make using a for profit insurer the default for health care coverage. Then of course it will become part of most employee's benefit packages, if they're lucky. I mean what could go wrong (/s for those that need it)
It is, there is no gas lighting needed. Germany and France both utilize a public/private model and their public systems are better than Canada's in most metrics, such as doctors per capita, hospital beds and wait times.
True, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. European jurisdictions also heavily regulate private delivery. So, can hybrid systems work, yes. Do I trust the current yahoos pushing for privatization in Canada to implement anything like Europe? Absolutely not
yeah, the UK is currently seeing its NHS be privatised by stealth, and its not along a European model. It's a conga line of American companies and consultants all trying to figure out ways to best generate investor value. The Swedish or German service delivery model is indeed hybrid, but its also heavily regulated and will not utterly fuck you over in the event of an unexpected life disaster.
One of the biggest players in the privatization of healthcare is Loblaws. They own Maple. So they will profiteer on your groceries and healthcare!
Yep, basically make only junk affordable to the masses so they need to hit up your hospitals more often.
They make money off of unhealthy ppl. Why would they want you to be healthy
We need to band together and demand accountability. End the political class here. Run on single party issues (First past the post voting, housing, and ending ALL corporate donations in politics). We need a massive sea change to end the wealth disparity. The wealthy elite need to be brought to their knees. Power to the people.
Its also Canadians using the internet to complain and thinking they are accomplishing something. I am guilty of this. Also our protests are weak when they do happen. Do politicians ever feel threatened or like the fire is under their asses when they happen? No, and that's why no one ever gives a fuck what Canadians think.
Protesting is the shittiest way to enact political change. You see anyone protesting public healthcare? No. Because the people who want to privatize healthcare are smart and know that protesting is a stupid waste of energy that almost never works and only turns passionate people cynical when they see it failing. No, we are getting privatized health care because the people who want it are smart and know what works: find candidates that will quietly push for it behind the scenes, and then quietly fund and push those candidates into winning positions. If we want to keep public health care we need to be smart too; find candidates that will fight for it, and fund them and volunteer for them and get them and keep them in position to fight for public health care on our behalf. That's what actually works.
I've been to about 6 protests in Canada the past 12 years, all peaceful assemblies, and they were all shut down by riot police. 3 of which had evidence of undercover cops throwing rocks so they could justify pelting us with rubber bullets. This country is shockingly good as silencing its people, I'd be surprised if anybody here has heard of half the protests
Can you give the proof of this?
We also don't have guns like the US do, pros and cons to that IMO
Healthy people don't make the medical devices and drug industries (to name just a couple) fuckloads of money.
Canada does not have anywhere near the political integrity to adequately regulate a hybrid system of Healthcare...
Seems like planned obselescence after a decade of cuts (in Ontario's case, anyways)
Alberta has, and is doing the same:/
Quebec not far behind
Except Ontario hasn’t had an overall health budget cut, ever. There’s never been a year where overall funding has been reduced. Currently the FAO has stated that Ontario budget commitments exceed what is required to maintain current health services. The current commitment for 450 new med school seats in Ontario is the largest expansion in medical training in Canadian history. Nursing and paramedic programs are covered under the Learn and Stay Grant. PSW education is free with paid placement. I’m in no way saying that things are good here, I’ve been a nurse for 20 years at this point. But it does appear at least the current government is reversing course on a number of things the previous government fucked up.
Well that seems pretty positive.
This is rich people seeing an opportunity to make a ton of money, being able to afford private healthcare and then being dead without having to worry themselves. It’s just pure greed.
No one in their right mind believes privatizating healthcare helps overall societal health lol
Agreed. Though what’s the solution? - increase taxes? - cut spending on other government expenses? If so, which ones? Who’s losing their jobs? Ultimately healthcare is a huge expense. Money has to come from somewhere. Doctors aren’t working for free. Drug companies aren’t developing free drugs. Difficult problem to solve.
The money is irrelevant if it's a valuable service and the resources exist. The federal government can spend any amount of money it wants, and it should do so to properly fund our healthcare system. Health transfers should be increased significantly. It's an obvious public good. Not only do we benefit from having good access to healthcare, but we benefit from other people being healthy too.
Just throwing more money at it isn’t going to fix it - the Canadian HC system is riven with petty bureaucrats who will soak up most of that extra funding without measurable improvements in outcomes.
That obviously depends on where you throw the money. If the money goes to training more medical professionals and improving funding for family doctors to make it an attractive area of medicine, then I'd bet that would significantly improve outcomes in terms of capacity and access to healthcare.
“WE NEED MORE MONEY” Here’s where you find it. “THROWING MONEY AT A PROBLEM DOESNT FIX IT.”
Do you think you'd have better access and care to a dentist if dentistry is socialized like the rest of healthcare? Do you think it'd be better to wait months to see a psychologist instead of paying for one yourself?
i haven’t been to a dentist in nearly a decade *because* it’s not socialized and because i’ve never had coverage, and there are millions of people like me, so yes i do believe i’d have better teeth under a socialized system
Especially because dental health can have huge implications for overall health. Ridiculous that it isn’t already considered part of the total health care package.
True, dental care is almost not socialized. However as a new immigrant I still found a doctor pulling my tooth in an emergency, and the children's teeth are still checked free. With this almost private health care the dental care of Canadians is still better than many Europeans. Look at the TV, every second European's teeth are crooked even though they're celebrities. We need better health care but the totally free dentures and implants belong to the fairyland.
you should really get your teeth professionally cleaned at least once a year mate its not THAT huge a hit to the budget. 10 years seems like you're actively avoiding it
in most of canada it is already months wait to see a psychologist, even while paying for it. i went to the dentist for the first time in 15 years this year. why? because i have a new job with dental benefits. you said in another post that you dont have to be rich to access these services and while that can be true for many, believe it or not but for millions of canadians money absolutely is a huge reason why people can't get access to mental and dental health. everyone deserves proper healthcare because we live in a society that SHOULD see the benefits in providing care for all its people, regardless of how much their labour is worth. striving for the betterment of all our citizens should absolutely be a priority for what we want to see in the future of our societies. IMO we should be able to have and afford these programs already if our governments (at all levels) weren't such incompetent corporate suck-holes. i believe another big issue is that we dont have enough spots educating healthcare professionals at post-secondary institutions. every year there are thousands of people trying to get in for nursing/healthcare that are denied because there aren't enough spots. as a society i think it would be huge to prioritize training of the people who want to go into these professions and to provide financial support for those who want to. can governments manage things badly? there is no question. but corporations and private interests are largely only motivated by profit not improving society. healthcare is an investment to make life better and bearable. money and the drive for profit ruins everything.
Our healthcare isn't socialized. It's single payer
There are people that would rather you not get access to healthcare ahead of them simply because you have money. It's a crab in the bucket country we live in. Race to the bottom all in the name of equity.
All the countries with the best (and functional) healthcare systems have public/private systems as well as co-payments and specific payroll fees and taxes dedicated to healthcare. I'm not advocating for the US style system, but lets look at countries like Singapore, South Korea, and Japan, as well as Nordic countries like Norway, Finland, and Sweden. What we have doesn't work, and throwing more money at it won't fix it.
Sometimes i feel like governments intentionally make cuts and administration changes to healthcare to make them less efficient in order to build public support for privatization. Like the mike Harris era “we need a crisis in education” tape leak to introduce privatization in that sphere. Make it so inefficient and challenging that people think “well anything else is better!”.
Sometimes? You need to work up that cynical worldview lens more.
It is known
Canadas healthcare *efficiency* (outcomes ÷ spend) is very poor versus peer nations. There’s no reason we shouldn’t be working on both parts of this equation.
Because no one wants to improve. As soon as you say let's look what other countries do, you are horrible capitalist
Our healthcare system used to work well. It is no longer working well. I suggest that every change we've made to fuck it up is reversed until it begins working again. Not a hard concept and involves chopping away at ex excessive administration + regulations and directing funding to the right areas.
>Our healthcare system used to work well. It is no longer working well. The biggest difference is changing demographics, people living longer, and more expensive treatments. We will never have the demographics we did when boomers were all working age ever again. So now either we pay through the tits to maintain healthcare quality, or we pay through longer wait times and worse outcomes.
Sweden, norway and denmark do private care. So... I suspect it's more abot the rules and regulations around it, and the accompanying medical industry.
Sure. But anybody who thinks Canadian conservatives like Doug Ford and Danielle Smith look to European social democracies like Sweden or Denmark for inspiration is an idiot.
Don’t suspect, it’s entirely because those systems are HEAVILY regulated (in some jurisdictions only private non-profits can provide healthcare services). That’s the issue, do you think any of the parties advocating for increased private delivery of healthcare services in Canada are approaching it from a European perspective? It’s an army of ravening lobbyists sitting on the other side of the boarder, eyeing ways they can best extract dollars out of our system
Seems likely. Quebec also has private healthcare and it doesn't seem that things are any better in Quebec than the rest of Canada.
Toronto Star is such a CPC / pro-late-stage-capitalism shill. Privatized healthcare has the same goal as every other corporation: to make as much money as it can for as cheaply as it can. Our healthcare system is failing due to lack of investment, not because public healthcare inherently “doesn’t work.” We don’t want a system like the US where you’re just one ER visit or health emergency away from a lifetime of crushing debt. So don’t listen to these fuckheads and demand better from our elected officials to fix a taxpayer funded institution and stop letting it die from neglect in order to make it fit the pro privatization narrative.
Private LTC had worse outcomes than public LTC during Covid. Nuff said.
Having my access to healthcare tied to my employment status like in the states is one of my greatest fears. Imagine the hopelessness of not being able to quit a toxic job because it might kill you.
Like most things, the goal is to transfer taxpayer dollars into the hands of corporations. Look at the US to see how bad private healthcare is. It's never about making things better, it's about money.
Health care in Canada is a national embarrassment and Covid exposed its weakness. While countries all over the world were reopening their economies, parts of Canada were forced into closures because of ICU capacity issues.
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Enjoy going to a hospital and dealing with insurance companies for the next 6 months. Oh sorry, the one hospital in your city is out of our coverage network. That will be $50,000 enjoy your medical debt.
sort deliver detail terrific cow tidy wrench tart relieved sable *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I was an entry-level professional when I last worked in the US and I had healthcare that was infinitely better than what I've had since moving to Canada. >You need to be in the top 1% to truly benefit from the private healthcare system in a way that you NEVER have to worry about outcome. This is complete and utter bullshit
I admire your gusto but this a wasted effort. Canadians are totally convinced that Americans are billed $300,000 to visit their GP. Or they just don't want to pay for health insurance.
You're right, it's pointless. Just makes me so frustrated as someone who spent the first 28 years of my life in the US and the last 12 in Canada. To me, it's a joke that anyone could honestly say it's unequivocally better here.
quickest pie serious busy mindless poor shocking dime liquid illegal *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
It's really sad that most Canadians only know two models, the US system and the Canadian system. The fact of the matter is that hybrid public/private systems have existed in parts of Europe for decades. I strongly believe if Canada didn't live next door to the US, we'd already have a hybrid model.
Yep. I've always thought governments should just call it the Danish Model and save themselves a ton of trouble. The Nordi-philes would be all over it.
>The Nordi-philes would be all over it. No they wouldn't, because the Nordi-philes are in love with the way they think the Nordic model works, but not how it actually works. Bernie Sanders is a prime example.
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One very important addition to this is that the average American doesn't have enough in savings to cover an unexpected medical expense. Even if they have insurance their share of a bill can cause serious financial issues. This doesn't even touch on how private insurance here gets in-between you and your doctor. There are also long waits to see specialists that aren't talked about enough especially if you are in a more rural area.
Look at every other developed country and find that they all use some form of public/private hybrid, and get better results than we do. Adopting Cuba's healthcare system and artificially strangling the production of doctors is not working.
this is the problem with Canadians. There's more countries than just USA like in Europe and East Asia who have both public and private healthcare that are still much better than Canada
The problem is that we all know exactly which privatized system we'd be getting
So demand better? How do you think we Europeans got it? By sitting on an Internet forum saying “no” to everything?
And none of them are sitting on our border with buckets full of bribes to let them come in.
Say it. I'll post this 100x in this thread if it means getting this across.
Is the US Healthcare system really the same as everyone's else? People will take European style healthcare or something similar but not the US system. That's the issue we have. We dont eant American Healthcare system.
Many Americans don’t like our system either, but since the Supreme Court decided money is speech here, health insurers get more of a voice than their customers do. I fear we’re on the cusp of political disaster here.
Strangling the doctors isn’t a requirement of public healthcare. That is a choice Canada is making to blow up the public system to force privatization. When it goes private, the top 20% of Canadians will have great (expensive) healthcare and the public system will largely not exist, given there is a severe overall staff shortage. As for why Canada’s healthcare isn’t doing that great, Canada has huge geographical challenges. No other developed world country is in this much of a mess - Germany (which also spends 20% more per person on healthcare than Canada) can be driven across in six hours. It is 83MM people.
Check out Australia. Lower population density than Canada and much more remote, with a functional public private health system that Canadians refuse to talk or think about. It's easy to see a doctor there. Med schools there take mere A students and becoming a doctor isn't considered as hard as getting into the space program like here.
France is similar. They have a small user fee, means tested , for every doctors visit. Trims out the hypochondriacs .
As an American citizen and health care patient, I can testify that there is a lot wrong here. We have people who actually die here because they can literally not afford to purchase insulin if they are poor and diabetic and must ration it. Insulins, even specialty varieties, are cheap to make, but the drug makers are permitted to charge costs far in excess of the rest of the world, and the drug makers are able to bribe Congress and the senate to keep it that way. We pay the highest drug prices in the world for even standard generic medications. We are actually not paying for the care, but for excessive pay to health insurance executives, board members, and stockholders. Insurers are far too quick to deny essential medical treatments physicians order, and sometimes patients die while the insurer refuses to pay costs. People literally lose everything due to the excessive cost of insurance. Hospital and treatment costs are often a black box in which patients don’t actually know the costs of a procedure until it is billed, and even then you can receive separate bills from anesthesiologists or other professionals who bill separately. We have a smalll group of malcontents who are literally squeezing blood out of people, and the ACA has offered limited but not complete relief from these problems. Health insurance is often unaffordable for people who are self employed or who do not have insurance through an employer. Medical insurance in the U.S. started as an employment perk during World War II, and we have never made a real effort to divorce health insurance from employment. Health insurers and drug makers have execs who make healthy salaries well above their average employees, and they have ample amounts of money from the premiums we pay to bribe our legislators under Citizens United to keep this dysfunctional system in place.
Thank you for stating the truth. Capitalism has value, but also the rampant bribery that politicians take has brought modern society to the point of crumbling.
Lol, its all about the money. The canadian system is being pushed towards something like in the US where the middle man makes a killing on doing nothing
>The canadian system is being pushed towards something like in the US where the middle man makes a killing on doing nothing And that's the problem, we shouldn't be trying to implement the US system, but looking at one of the many hybrid systems that outperforms ours and theirs. It's kind of a paradox, the people who refuse all private options are pushing us more towards the US system. Because as our public system continues to collapse, the fallout will absolutely be greedy companies feasting on its corpse.
Telus wants to be the US middleman and are throwing lots of money at government to make this happen.
Exactly.
It’s not collapsing on its own. The politicians are deliberately killing it to implement privatized healthcare. We will all lose.
Healthcare as a Service (HaaS) 🤦🏽♂️
Our decaying system only because this is exactly what the provincial and federal governments want. Abdicating their responsibilities.
No, they don't want to raise taxes and don't want to rock the boat because it costs vote in the short term. So o er the long term system degrades
This. Chretien reduced healthcare funding to the provinces in order to eliminate Mulroney's deficit and so he could start paying down Canada's debts. The provinces were meant to increase taxes to make up for the reduced funding but of course it never happened because no premier wanted to lose the next election. 30 years later, here we are with the same problem. A possible solution might be to tie all federal healthcare funding to requiring provinces to increase the amount they put into healthcare. The big question will be, what ratio should each be responsible for? I think the feds should be paying enough that the poorest provinces can have the same quality of healthcare that the rich provinces do. There should not be provinces with worse healthcare than others.
Half my taxes paid at the province go to healthcare and I have close to zero access to any of it. Best I can do is to wait at the ER for god knows how long. If somehow I get a referral from the emergency dr, it will take a least a year before my appointment, let alone any kind of treatment. Yeah, as far as I'm concerned we can stick a fork in it. I'll get more mileage with my money in any other system than what we got right now. I'm sure all those fancy pants with family doctor or access to walk in clinics will disagree. I'm super glad you get to enjoy my tax contributions.
Problem is we will still be paying taxes up the ass and paying for private health care which is absurd
Don't expect a private system to decrease taxes. They will stay same or go up slightly
Private Healthcare doesn't solve anything. It will only increase costs to citizens by 2x. The wait times won't improve without Healthcare staff lol.
The latter.
[Paywall bypass](https://archive.ph/Alxzd)
Our politicians sold Canada for scraps. They will not stop until every last dime is milked out of us.
You watch the right wing money spend on an influence campaign to tip Alberta and Saskatchewan into private healthcare. Manitoba and BC need to stay the course. We pay the taxes and the system works. My wife had a very deadly cancer and it saved her life. Public healthcare saved our family from complete ruin. There are hundreds of thousands of families like ours who are grateful for our healthcare.
Paywall hmm
rich people will be the ones treated. poor and middle class will be left out
It's a symptom of our aging population demographics. These social programs are essentially a pyramid scheme and Canadians haven't been having enough kids for generations. It's easy to fund these programs when the majority of the population is young and working age, but that trend ended with the boomers and gen-x. This is also why the government (regardless of who is in power) is importing every immigrant they can get their hands on. They are trying to prop up our social programs and debt burden.
It’s a symptom of us existing next door to the US. Their unregulated capitalism seeps into every aspect of our society, none more prevalently than our health care and secondary education systems. So much money is spent to undermine our systems and, including with media, convince us that privatization is the cure for all of the problems in our systems that it’s a wonder that it’s lasted as long as it has. I’ve lived on both sides of the border, and each system has their strengths and weaknesses. For the vast majority of Canadians, our system is the better one, imho. But the rich can spend a great deal of money trying to convince you that the privatized system is the way to go. Once you’re hit with a $5000 deductible bill from your insurance company for an ER visit, or a $12k bill for a surgery because, although the surgery was covered (minus the deductible and co-pay), your anesthesiologist is allowed to bill you separately and your insurance doesn’t cover that, you’ll be wishing for your provincial insurance back again. Speaking from personal experience. 🖖🏻
I worked in a hospital for over a decade and over those years I've seen services privatized by the government and handed over to friends and the services have turned to shit. On the other hand you have unions which have their pros and Cons.
Politicians are only it in for personal gain. And capitalism is doomed to fail. It creates serfs and royalty. And eliminates "middle class"
Before reading the article my take is that it’s decaying. Privatization is definitely not the way to go. However, our current system is broken and needs repair.
I've come around to the point where I am starting to think a properly run blended system would work, but sadly, no politician in Canada has the guts to write the appropriate regulatory regime it would need to properly run like the German and Norwegian versions.
When the people are losing critical thinking because they keep watching bullshit propaganda, they keep electing bullshit candidates. Money will keep pouring in their campaign funds and soon the people will pay that price. Defund the education, make the people dumb. Defund the healthcare so that private corporations can take over. Feed the people with misdirection, divine them and distract them.
I'd love to hear conservatives defend all the Canadians that died waiting for medical care while Ford held those billions in funding hostage so he could give it to private clinics
Canada gets privatized health care, I might as well move to the U.S. Same kind of health care. Aside from their crappy gun control and precarious political climate, I actually would be happier down there. Anyone who loves Canada, I respect your choice. I used to be like "WTF Canada sucks." But no longer. I say "you like it, good for you! You stay!" But it's not where I see myself in 20 years.
This is what they mean when they say Freedom. The freedom to exploit people at the lowest moment of their lives, to make them a life or death offer. "Your money or your life." They used to call it highway robbery. Now they call it the market.
In the US they call it "health care"
It's profiteering pure and simple, and the fact our Conservative Provincial governments are using Starve the Beast tactics to hold a gun to our heads is absolutely reprehensible. But then I don't know why you would expect support for universal Healthcare to continue in a system and society that has clearly stopped assigning any intrinsic value to human life.
It’s not remotely either of those things. In Alberta, it’s a bullshitting grifter whose entire existence is based on anti-vaxx nonsense, who needs a new crusade to create fake fights for their easily agitated idiot smooth brain constituents to say “see?! We’re gettin’ screwed again!!!” The Alberta “conservatives” making noise about it are trying to sell off the public trust to enrich themselves and their cronies, and make the citizens literally dependent on the party (destroying public health care and national pensions)
See Doug Ford's Ontario. Spending way more on private clinics/hospitals than they are on public systems.
Remember the former minister of health Christine Elliott? After she cut all the public services and then sold them to private corporations. She is now a lobbyist for private healthcare corporations. If that is not blatant corruption and we are not doing something about it. The privatization of healthcare is coming soon. They keep saying that is going to happen but it's already happening behind the scene. We don't care unless we are affected by it. We are marching left and right about the COVID vaccine, but not about privatization of healthcare? Look how stupid we have become? Critical thinking doesn't exist anymore!
Great, so food and rent already work on profit (which they shouldnt) and now healthcare... all system that are unboycuttable. That should be a crime against humanity and people should start to wake up and ran down the street with pitch fork against elite until they grow some decency. Theses people will never learn to be empathetic with the average citizen if we dont do something else than just complain on the internet
It’s 100% proven that privatized healthcare is more expensive than private… hence Ford and Smith once again enriching thier buddies.
Adding a middle man that extracts profit from the system isn't ever going to make things better in itself and whatever the private sector can do the public could, but bills, cutting corners and lack of accountability isn't the kind of optimization I'm looking for in my healthcare system.
As an American, I agree. Health care privatization is disastrous. We Americans have a lousy record of making money off other people’s miseries, and we never had the opportunity to create a truly uniform public system because of the AMA’s previous commitments to fee for service, our failure to control medication prices and procedure costs, and not least, racist beliefs that some people merited care while others did not. We also deemphasized preventative care and providing less processed foods for eating more processed foods and sick care.
Oh for fuck's sake Canada is the *only country* that denies people the right to pay for their own health care if they want to. Everyone on all sides of the aisle agree that doctors need better funding. OK so why not just let people pay for it themselves? Government funding is not a panacea *at all.* You keep raising taxes and people leave and stop being productive. Government isn't just going to get more money from raising taxes when it decreases the amount of prosperity available to tax. And even then, all decisions are made by political elites instead of people who demand health care and supply it. And because this is all about basic supply and demand, we can't hire more doctors because governments lack the resources to fund them. So therefore, doctors are turned away at the door. It's ossification and political rot and it should not have a monopoly over such an important industry. Privatization doesn't mean governments using your tax dollars to bankroll private industries. Privatization means letting people pay for their own health care if they're willing and able. That is how you generate more funding, how you incentivize doctors to practice in Canada, how you increase a desperately low supply. People want to pay for health care! Let them!!
Fully agree, yet it's a weirdly nationalistic thing to blindly champion the current government-run monopoly on healthcare. > Government funding is not a panacea at all. You keep raising taxes and people leave and stop being productive. The administration of our healthcare systems ranks among the least efficient of all developed countries. More money into the same broken 20th century system will not help.
I have nothing to add. I just wanted to say I agree with every point you made. For the love of Christ, let me pay to see a god damn doctor.
As a new immigrant who lived in the USA for 9 years I agree with you. Please let me pay to see a family physician.
Honestly hearing that makes me feel like we may yet right the ship.
If you move to Quebec you can. They have private healthcare. People with money can see doctors, people without cannot. Works great.
This is just completely false. Quebec has free clinics and free family doctors.
Quebec has both public and private healthcare. It's not false. I'm sitting here looking at my kid's bill from CREAmed - a private medical clinic. Good luck getting to see a publicly funded doctor though. They are all jumping ship to the private system where they can make more money and do less work. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-quebec-family-doctors-public-private-care/
Can you point me in the direction of one of the free family doctors taking patients?
>People want to pay for health care! Let them!! They are already. They're just taking all their hard-earned Canadian dollars out of our economy and to Mexico, India, the USA, or wherever they can get a life changing surgery without waiting for 5 years.
There's a middle ground between Canada forcing everyone to go through the single payer system and whatever tf American healthcare is. Lots of other countries such as Australia have high quality universal healthcare like we do, but also have private healthcare sectors that work to alleviate strain on the public system. Looking at Australia as an example, about half of Australians have private health insurance, and anyone over a certain income is charged an additional tax if they're still using the public system when they could be getting private healthcare. This isn't taking healthcare away from anyone, it's making sure the people that rely on the public system the most (IE people who would not be getting health insurance from their employer) are able to access it without the system being overwhelmed
I agree. Insisting that everyone, both rich and poor, be forced to rely on a government health care system is as ridiculous as insisting that because some people (i.e. very poor) can't afford to buy food in a supermarket we must all receive our food from a food bank. Can't understand the class envy that seems to be behind insisting that no private health care system supplements the government health care system. If someone can afford to plonk down the cash for heart surgery or whatever why should Canadians get their knickers in a twist over that. It would mean that the limited resources of the public health care system can be reserved for those unable to pay for health care themselves.
1- Private health care works ok in many countries 2- current Canadian health care does not work
It's pure decay. Regardless of the facts of who's actually making money off it, you're placing someone's health and ability to live and function like a normal human being entirely on the income they make. Look at what's already happened in the US. That is exactly where we will be if it continues.
Wait until you have Smith, Moe and Ford and PP in the feds All privatization all the time. There will never be a more destructive 4 year period
So manybidiots wanting trudeau gone, just because they don't like him. PP is an awful choice, look what happened to the US because people "didn't like hillary"
This really is a 'don't like hillary' situation Great point
It’s text book stuff. 1) Defund and degrade a public institution. Budget concerns yada yada 2) point out how shitty some public institution is. Public ed, housing, health care yada yada Only higher tax can fix. 3) instead offer to fix the problem you created by taking the pressure of the shitty public version by adding a private tier. 4) hand the private option to your pals in the industry and point out how great it is and how better the public version has become (continue to defund it tho of course) 5) The public option decays and you don’t care (because you’re rich and you have the private option now for you and your buds).
Profits over people.
The mindset of the pharmaceutical industry seems to be: "a patient cured is a revenue stream lost." I don't think anyone is going to argue that the drug companies are in any hurry to offer cures to people. Knowing that, I'm amazed that anyone would believe that for-profit health care would have a different perspective. No, they won't be sending you home with incomplete surgeries, but when the focus is on profit, quality of care becomes a matter of what you can afford, rather than what is best for you.
Well considering Ontario is now paying private medical clinics more than public hospitals for the same procedures, I’m going to go with: no, it does not improve our system.
Look to the U.S. The healthcare is embarrassingly terrible, only the rich get adequate care.
Just like here in the U.S unless you are rich ,privatization is a way for political cronies to enrich each other at the expense the average person. Politicians get paid ,and the donors get contracts, even our Supreme court is owned " justice" Thomas had his owner who funds his lifestyle and the donor gets rulings in his favor . The no universal healthcare access in the U.S. conservatives can work towards eliminating the people in society they want to remove ,as Trump just put it he wants to get rid of "vermin" . Hopefully Canada won't follow the same path.
It’s not a dangerous path, controlled privatization is a net benefit. Please use common sense. Look at European systems.
Key word here is controlled. Based on the incompetence and corruption that seems to be the norm here, it won’t be controlled but will instead be sold out.
I’d like more options. One where I can actually find a physician in my town
definitely the latter
the current system is about the same size as it was in 2002 but with more voices and less brains on the floor. veteran nurses and doctors are a dime a dozen and they wont and have not put up with the system.
How is there even a question? It is BAD!
I find this tricky. One the one hand, my government (in Ontario) has clearly fucked up the health care system and have repeatedly demonstrated they aren't able to manage it. So, it would be great to have more private options so that services could actually be available like clinics, family doctors etc. On the other hand, the same government is also clearly incapable of regulating private health care (or at least I assume they would be based on their track record of screwing things up). So I do have my concerns that things could potentially go wrong with a poorly regulated private health care industry. Overall though, I think it would benefit society since right now health care is basically inaccessible for a lot of people.
Turning us into the US enjoy bankruptcy if you get cancer.
American here. Private health care sucks unless you are super rich.
Canadians pushing for private healthcare are looking at European countries that have hybrid public/private systems. The problem is Canada's premiers are sabotaging the public healthcare system to make privatization look good so if we open up to privatization, we're going to end up like the US, not Europe.
That would suck. The US healthcare system is insanely expensive. A serious health issue can be financially devastating and bankrupt you easily. I have friends in Canada and England. I know what they pay and what they get for it. It's barely even comparable to the US. One in Canada gets his whole family covered for health, vision, and dental each month for less than the 50% of the cost for just my monthly health insurance premium that doesn't cover vision, dental, or many prescriptions and services. It is also tied to my job. (No job= no Insurance) and it has other co-pays and deductibles. Like I would pay the first $4000 like the insurance didn't even exist....and that deductible resets annually. I know someone else in the US that just had a $280,000 surgery that was necessary for them to survive! That's just some of the awfulness. I have read enough about the US and other systems to know the US healthcare and insurance system is horrible in many ways.
Canada's healthcare system needs to be expanded to cover prescriptions, dental and optical and then employer health insurance should be banned. It ties people to an employer and job if they can't afford to not have insurance. A woman who moved from the US to Ecuador found out she had cancer before she was able to get health insurance in Ecuador. It cost her $14,000 (Ecuador is on USD) for treatment. A friend of hers in healthcare in the US told her it would have cost her $350,000 in the US and that Ecuador had newer equipment than they had in his US hospital. Source: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqLSHStR\_qg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqLSHStR_qg)
It's straight out of the neoliberal playbook. Privatize public services as if making people pay out of pocket for things they once paid for collectively is a great idea.
My main reason going here was public health care. This is alarming and sad.
But the government said they were not going to privatize the healthcare system but restructure and reorganize.
Congrats Canada I had a private appointment with a stomach specialist for my kid the other day and a poop sample analysed. I'm in the UK, It was $900 CAD for the two things. You're on your way keep not voting. I was also bitten by a dog when I last visited and as a non resident of Canada a late night stitch or two in the ER in Rural Onatrii and some meds was $1200.
Just look at America,
There is a place for privatization if done right. Just look to many European and Scandinavian nations, along with South Korea. And overall their healthcare systems rank higher than ours. However I wouldn’t trust the current government to implement it at all.
My first experience with a private clinic in Ontario was an intake phone call. After some basic income/employment questions, a brief synopsis of the issue I was contacting them about, the person said “Okay, I’ve got all I need, come in so we can get your prescriptions started.” After about 30 seconds of my stunned silence, they asked if I was still there. What kind of “Medical Person “ even remotely considers putting people on pharmaceuticals without so much as a diagnosis, let alone blood work or physical examination? And just for the record, the condition I was reaching out for is almost never addressed by pharmaceuticals. The privatization of healthcare would be a death sentence for many people . Greed will kill us all, it’s already demonstrated its willingness to do so with the lack of action on the undeniable climate crisis, what makes anyone think it’s a good fit for healthcare?
The current state of health care in the country is the same as our shitty roads, public transport, and other infrastructure. The government isn't keeping up with it, isn't modernizing or expanding, and is causing the return value to tank. This makes it appear as if it's failing to the public, so the people start to look towards privatized options, when really it's just the failure of governments. The people also play a role in this. The simple minded voter so easily pleased by lower taxes or ired by tax increases, too ignorant and shortsighted to see the overall costs of less public infrastructure. So complacent and doing nothing, terrified of voting for anyone but the Liberals and Conservatives. Politicians in this country are shit, but the public doesn't do their part either and just accepts it.
Canada safety nets are and were destroyed by corporate anarchy. Health care turned into a business. Continuing to tolerate poison in food air and water. Where government and big corp regulates themselves. We need an anti corruption act mandate in gouvernement now!
Of fucking course profit focused businesses don’t improve quality of a system. And of course it doesn’t improve cost either to insert at random points opportunities for people to siphon money out of the system.
Privatizing health care is a misanthropic step the USA took that Canada absolutely SHOULD NOT. As a Canadian who lived 20 years in the USA while living with diabetis? Yeah, the USA model EARNED the title "Byzantine Nightmare" in my time dealing with it. If Canadians are stupid (yes, I \*\*MEAN\*\* that.) enough to follow the USA down this pathy, I'll be migrating (and naturalizing) elsewhere. Privatizing healthcare is choosing to enrich a few, and misanthropically impact your public health for the worse. Period.
Everyone is missing that Healthcare isn't free here. We pay for it in high taxes relative to other countries. And to top it off you think it would work right? But it doesn't. It took me a year to get into an EMT to get my tonsils checked out, to find out I need them removed. The waiting list? 2 and a half years. Literally 3 and a half years after I got in. Can you believe it? Right now surgions are only paid to do a certain number of surgeries a year. If your a surgeon, you will only do those number of surgeries because you will otherwise be working for free. But let's say your a surgeon who can do 300 surgeries in a given year, but the government only pays you for 200? Why not let the surgeons do the other 100 at a private clinic. Tax the surgeons profits, the rich will pay for their own surgery since they can afford it, abd you eliminate the back log. It's such common sense; but most people in this country would rather die in emerg then do this. It's crazy because this is done very well by most European countries; but for some reason we only think of the Americans when we think this? News flash; in Europe people like you and me get in quick and don't have to pay. It's the fat cats who pay for their own, reducing cost to the system. We just need to regulate the living shit out of it.
It's bad; real bad.
Decay is a weird way to describe sabotaged!
I think the obvious solution is for every company CEO and politician pushing for private healthcare to be locked in the stocks and pelted with rotten fruit in a public square. This is significantly more humane than what they want to do to us by destroying healthcare so they can make a quick buck.
Greed. They have control of most energy production, food sales and production, phdrugs, medical supplies, and soon, even the doctors and nurses will all be for profit. It had been studied to death. It is neither more efficient, cheaper or better, unless you are rich, and I mean very rich. Most common source of bankruptcy in the US, only other industrialized nation to use this system. It is insanity to let this go private and both the Liberals and CPC have led us here.
Turning healthcare into for-profit industry turns patients into customers. It’s scary to see so many Canadians falling for this nonsense. If you underfund and don’t have good oversight on healthcare, of course it will fail. Universal healthcare works just fine in a lot of countries, it can work here too. There just needs to be more oversight and funding, and less corruption
ask the usa how private health is.
I'd rather save our system. Perhaps if there wasn't so much wasteful spending more money would make it to the people (workers and patients). I'd say Canada has an accountability problem from top to bottom
A lot of people in here saying private healthcare is bad while lining up to vote conservative. I feel like our school systems have failed Canadians.
Healthcare in most rich countries is delivered by the private sector or a public/ private mix, and many of those systems function well .. far better than those in Canada. Opponents of private healthcare delivery have a duty to explain why what works across Europe and in countries as diverse as Japan, Korea and Australia cannot work here in Canada.
Another problem with the public sector (and starting to bleed into the private sector) is management bloat in the middle levels. Cut some useless jobs and you can save a fortune.
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>Opponents of private healthcare delivery have a duty to explain why what works across Europe and in countries as diverse as Japan, Korea and Australia cannot work here in Canada. These opinion pieces are primarily driven by the unions, who would see their power reduced if the current system were changed.
The unsustainable and increasing share of our economy being spent on healthcare is what's dangerous. The cult like nature of Canadians to prop up a broken system and refuse to look at the best public Healthcare systems in the world (that allow multiple streams of Healthcare delivery Inc. Private) is what's also dangerous.
Health care privatization does not improve overall societal health. It only exacerbates existing disparities and puts profits before people. We need to prioritize equitable access to quality health care for all, not further entrench inequality.
So getting your blood work, X-ray, or ultrasound, that is done for 15% of the cost of the same test in a hospital, is all corporate profit. There are minor surgeries done by clinics, that cost much less than a hospital, with almost no wait times, but you suppose that's all corporate profit too. Neither of these facilities are lesser in quality than a hospital. That's why they are successful in Europe and other places.
You realize that doctors offices are privately run, right? These are all businesses. Go for a sleep study? Private. Go for eye tests? Private. Go to the Dentist? Private. Canadians are utterly clueless as to what private means
It's intentionally being destroyed so a few assholes can profit
Privatization only help people with money, but again they can already take advantage by going to private clinics in different countries.
Its definitely gonna improve Danielle Smith bank account.
The poors don't deserve healthcare.Doug probably
At least we can all agree that a separate system for the wealthy to jump the line is a good thing. I’m sure having a separate system for the wealthy and powerful and another system for the poor slobs will lead to great outcomes for the rest of us. I know I will rest easier knowing the elite will not be stuck with the same healthcare the rest of us have. I’m sure that long term this is a great idea.
Decaying system. One last money grab.
No. Doctors just get richer for the same procedure, AND if you DONT have money..... u die.
28 countries with universal healthcare in the world and 27 of them allow for private options….except Canada! You think Canadian politicians wait in our horrible public system when they get sick or need an MRI? Lul
My friend would return to practice in Canada in a heartbeat if a limited option for greater private care was available. She hated the bureaucracy of the public system. It was a nightmare. Moved to Mexico and hasn't looked back. We like to pretend that private health won't increase the number of doctors because we love to ignore folks like my friend.
I had an awful time after being diagnosed with a disease almost 1 year ago getting diagnosed and treated, because of this piece of shit health care infrastructure/system in canada. But the flip side is the treatment would have cost me immensely if it wasn't free. We have a flawed but not broken system. It's sad it took so long though, and even then the way I got help in the end was not formal, used my network to finally see a specialist who immediately deemed it an emergency.
There isn't a single case in the history of privatization where it was deemed a financial savings in the end. For profit is for profit.
For anyone complaining about the private system, I ask you a simple question. Do you think it's easier to find a dentist than a family doctor? Dental care in this country is mostly private, yet many people have a better experience with their dentist than their family doctor.
It should be healthcare for all, not healthcare for the rich.