I was reserving judgment on yesterday’s Supreme Court Decision on healthcare because I wanted to give everyone a chance to calm down before reacting.
With public healthcare practically the Canadian religion, passions are undertstandably running high. Half the country is in hysterics because they’re afraid of the door being open to a two-tier system that will favour the rich, deny the poor, and turn us all into the worst Canadian nightmare: the United States. The other half of the country is decrying the decision as too soft, saying that more private healthcare is the only thing that will save us from total ruin and a third-world medical system.
As for me, I’m somewhere in between. I’ve pretty much always considered myself mostly in the public system camp, because I think that some things ought to be universally accessible regardless of ability to pay. Yes, this contradicts my position on university education, and no, I don’t think that’s hypocritical, because higher education is an investment into the future while healthcare is a basic survival tool.
On the other hand, only a fool would deny that our system is badly, badly broken. The universal system works nicely only if it’s universally good, or at the very least, universally adequate. But it falls apart if the only things universal about the system are doctor and nursing shortages, outdated equipment and mile-long waiting lists.
I’m also pragmatic enough to recognize that the ideals of universal healthcare fall apart when it’s personal. It’s all very well and good to say that everyone should get the same treatment… but when it’s my friend or family member, I want the best damn care in existence for them. And if better care exists but a law stands forbidding them to seek it out, then I would be the first to fight that law.
Unlike the Quebec Supreme Court, I don’t believe this is strictly a case of individual versus collective rights. I think it has much more to do with government incompetence and mis-management of funds and resources. The idea of universal healthcare is a good one, but we’ve messed it up royally over the years. There’s a doctor shortage because, as a monopoly, the healthcare system took them for granted, causing them to seek opportunties in the States or elsewhere. There are waiting lists because the government is so busy spending money on useless nonsense, so there’s not enough left for the healthcare system.
In short, in an ideal world, this court case shouldn’t have even been necessary in the first place, because the healthcare system would provide a good standard of care to everyone. But it’s become increasingly clear that without some private involvement to fill in the serious gaps in our system, it will collapse. a judgment forbidding it would be based on a nonexistent ideal and not on reality, which is why the Supreme Court was right to overturn it.
Excellent analysis, Sari, the only thing you left out (off the top of my head) and you sort of touched on it, is the massive shortage of Registered Nurses.
Even if Drs. weren’t in short supply, the bottleneck in the hospitals is the lack of qualified nursing care which the MSM likes to refer to as “bed shortages”. There’s no lack of empty beds; just nobody to care for the patients who should be in them.
The Nurse shortage is deliberate and calculated. The Healthcare planners have known for at least a decade that this was happening and have intentionally done nothing to alleviate the pressure. Why? They’ve been trying to cut the cost of Hospital care and what better way than to restrict access to beds.
I forgot to mention:
One of the main reasons for Doctors leaving is the restricted access to surgery time and hospital privileges.
No surgery time = no income (for surgeons and for a young Dr. or a newcomer, getting access to hospital admissions is a professional neccesity.
Hence the Nurse shortage being the lynch pin for the ‘bed shortage’ crisis and long wait lists. There is absolutely no excuse for whole wings of hospitals being closed to admissions due to staffing shortages. It’s all political mismanagement and b.s.
Coincidentally, this Letter to the Editor appeared in today’s Van. Sun;
Letter
Saturday, June 11, 2005
Re: Why private clinics won’t save medicare, Issues & Ideas, June 9
How ironic that Robert Evans and Rebecca Warburton should comment on the shortage of doctors. It was the same Robert Evans who once simplistically said that each doctor “cost” the medical care system hundreds of thousands of dollars. He caught the ear of the provincial politicians of the day and convinced them that restricting doctors’ billing numbers would somehow save medicare.
When that didn’t work, he and his health care economist colleagues convinced politicians to force medical schools to reduce enrolment in their classes by 10 per cent about 10 years ago. Is it any surprise, given the length of a physician’s training, that we now have a doctor shortage?
For Evans to now say that a few private clinics will be the cause of the ruin of the public system is another of his simplistic views. Maybe we should ship Evans and the rest of the country’s health care economists to Mars so they can no longer contribute to the degradation of our public medical care system.
Surely in a free and democratic society, Canadian citizens should be able to purchase the equivalent kind of medical care that they can purchase for their cat or dog — especially if the public system that their politicians have promised them turns out to be woefully inadequate.
Dr. D.W. Jones
Burnaby
© The Vancouver Sun 2005