March 05, 2006
The many tiers of health care are already well-established
With a dirty little secret revealed (again) towards the end of this post.
If the hospital in your community can raise large amounts of money in a lottery or by donations it can provide better medical care than hospitals that can't. Surely that alone is two-tier care.
In Ontario people covered by what used to be called workmen's compensation get much faster access to diagnotic imaging and surgery. That is to say the state can choose to pay extra for preferential treatment for certain individuals the state selects. Is that fair?
And of course different provinces provide different levels of services in many areas of health care.
The current system is riddled with inequities and moreover cannot provide essential services effectively, efficiently and quickly.
Hence the need to allow private care paid for by private insurance (for whatever specific procedures/ailments an individual decides to have covered). Insurance ensures that private care is not just for the "rich": a stupid red herring of an argument. People who can afford car insurance and household insurance could afford such medical insurance too. And very few of them are rich.
As to two tiers favouring the rich--they already have the second tier, called the US. No new advantage for them with private care in Canada. However private insurance would allow much of the non-rich middle class access to prompt care.
If you actually want to know how insurance works, look at this site: British United Provident Association.
And here is the dirty little secret our politicians are hoping we won't notice.
Dec. 12, 2005:
...
'A wait time begins with the booking of a service, when the patient and the appropriate physician agree to a service and the patient is ready to receive it. The appropriate physician [i.e. the specialist] is one with the authority to determine the needed service. A wait time ends with the commencement of the service...
That is to say the recommended (and that's all they are) waiting times for various procedures that provincial governments are agreeing on only cover the time between a specialist's recommending treatment and the treatment itself. They do not include the time--which can be excruciatingly lengthy--it takes to see a specialist after referral by a family doctor (unless you're a Workmen's Comp case or a foreigner paying cash for treatment in a Canadian hospital).
This secret is kept by Senators Kirby and Keon (a doctor) in their column March 4 (full text not online, excerpt in Norman's Spectator).
At some point the Conservative government much face up to reality: "one-tier" health care is not the solution and cannot remain sacrosanct.
Parting shot/jab: if the Canadian system is so excellent, why are there not teams of experts being sent by European countries to study it? Can anyone give such examples?
(Most of bit on waiting times stolen from earlier post Health care: Quebec's hollow reform proposals.)
Update: In the Globe a Québécoise agrees with the above analysis and highlights the dirty little secret that other journalists--and all politicians--ignore.
Upperdate: Even The Star prints the truth, that "blended" public/private health care works well in Europe.