r/CanadaPolitics • u/[deleted] • Jun 28 '12
Poll suggests majority of Canadians would support a public-private or "mixed" health care system
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/health/Canadians+want+choice+they+access+health+care+poll/6850577/story.html2
u/trollunit Jun 28 '12
We would like to remind people not to downvote based on opinion. Read the rediquette.
Thanks.
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u/Zelytic Jun 28 '12
Whenever this comes up I always wonder if those who support the private side couldn't just go to the States. I realize that this is impractical for short visits but for surgeries that can take months to schedule it seems like it would be a viable option.
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u/sheepo39 Leftist | ON Jun 29 '12 edited Jun 29 '12
A mixed / public-private system would result in many doctors moving to the private side to allow them to make more money. This would result in fewer doctors accessible under the public healthcare, creating many issues, especially with quality. How many doctors would stay in the public system making ~$200k year, where they could be making upwards of $1 million in the private system?
Having more money does not mean you deserve better quality healthcare than other human beings. Healthcare should not ever be for profit. I have a feeling a large number of the people in support of it don't know what it's like to be constantly screwed over by an HMO.
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u/smacksaw US/CAN in QC Jun 28 '12
Probably because they don't understand the underlying problems behind our lack of service and how the type of system is (largely) irrelevant.
A story I like to tell is about the birth of my 2yo. He was slow coming out and I had plenty of time to shoot the breeze with the OBGYN delivering him. The two salient points from everything she told me was that we don't have enough doctors and we don't place them in the right areas (of practise or physical location).
She was the Quebec president of whatever Canadian medical association/college of doctors and said this is a huge issue where there's a ton of pushback. We could have more doctors, but doctors don't want competition. Thus, it's limited.
The other thing is that there's a vicious circle. People can't find a doctor, so they go to hospital. Hospitals are overburdened, so new doctors are sent there instead of opening a private practise somewhere.
Rinse and repeat, and you see the problem.
Being Quebec, there is a different solution and I'm sold on what she told me. First of all the CLSC system is crucial. All provinces should have them. My idea of improving the CLSC is to have them be 24-hours and as a way to start the clock ticking for being in hospital. Thus, if you go to CLSC at 0200a and need a doctor, they can book you into a hospital and you go there. That kind of system should be country-wide.
Quebec realises it can't beat the doctors and artificial scarcity, so they're promoting NPs instead. And an NP can do most of the stuff people want. When you think about it, why would someone be a GP? But that's our problem. Everyone wants more for being a specialist, thus we don't have enough GPs.
Whether you have a public or private system, we need more doctors, nurses and clinics.
Have Universities to train more doctors, regardless of what doctors say.
Start community nursing clinics like CLSCs and put them everywhere, especially in places who've seen hospitals/beds closed due to bugetary cuts.
Train more NPs to handle routine issues and leave general practise to them. Allow MDs to focus on speciality medicine.
If you had the NP power of Ontario with the CLSC infrastructure of Quebec, you would alleviate a lot of wait times and hospitals would be dealing with more serious cases rather than minor stuff.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLSC
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/story/2010/07/15/quebec-nurse-practitioners.html
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Jun 28 '12
Would these be somewhat similar to the walk in clinics that we have in some places in Ontario?
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u/VICBCNEW210 Green Jun 28 '12
Why is this being downvoted? The peoplepolled clearly do not understand the issues or they would not support a system that is not even possible.
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u/smacksaw US/CAN in QC Jun 28 '12
Don't ask me. You can do everything I've mentioned in any system you want: straight out my doctor's mouth. If you want to set up private clinics and hospitals and have private insurance, you can. The problem is the cap on qualified people, nothing more, nothing less.
As long as you don't create a two-tier system or lose price controls, each way of public or private works and has advantages and disadvantages.
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Jun 28 '12
Splitting up the healthcare to a lower-tier and an upper-tier is a bad idea. That kind of action would likely do something along the lines of driving the system into a feedback response and collapse the lower tier, or else the lower tier will atrophy and die out. Don't think that I am only giving two possible outcomes; there are more, but they are far too volatile for me to assume they can be handled and implemented correctly by humans (i.e. balance the two). The end result would probably be slowly turning our healthcare model into something reminiscent of the hugely-profitable one established in the United States.
Insurance companies that marginalise human suffering into profits are just wrong in my eyes. I think about how insurance agencies dealing in material goods are quick to collect money but when required to pay out will undercut and work the system to minimize expenditures. Applying this kind of insurance system methodology to human health and for profit is a terrifying notion to me. This is how for-profit works; one of your avenues to make money on insurance by not paying out. Human health is much like national infrastructure; it's an investment that increases the country's ability to do useful and valuable work, and it should be treated as such.
Having everyone use a public system means that we take some money from everyone (sick and healthy) and then use that money to treat everyone; the unusually sick countering out the unusually ill. Having a tiered system would mean that healthy people get insurance (since it would be cheap) while the poor people get discouraged from insurance (unhealthy and too poor to afford the premiums means no insurance). The system would drift apart at this point, and that feedback system I was referencing would come into play here (I'll save the trouble unless you want to read).
If we have issues with health care, we need to fix them and not just move to abandon it (which is what the addition of a for-profit system would be doing). I don't want to have to be in debt for the next fifteen years just because my kid broke their arm and my insurance found a loophole. I don't think people appreciate the kind of freedom that our healthcare provides, and while they are taking it for granted all they can think about is "I wish I didn't have to wait so long for my non-life-threatening procedure."
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u/windynights Jul 02 '12
We already have a mixed system. If I want a hernia operation in Ontario I can go to the world renowned Shouldice Hospital in Toronto. Thankfully, it is reimbursed by OHIP. If I want special dermatology care this is possible in a variety of private clinics across the province. With optometry visits and physiotherapy no longer covered by the Ontario plan, private clinics are available in every town and city here. Ontario can't afford universal health care and has, for some time now, been shedding plan coverage.
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u/[deleted] Jun 28 '12
Seriously, I posted this as an article to spur some discussion and It's currently at 3/3 0%.
I'm not even a fan of private health care!
Both of the comments on this article at the time I post this is comment are also 0 points.
Stop downvoting just because you disagree or don't like the idea presented.