Increasing costs and problems with wait lists for some treatments worry Canadians about the future of their health-care system. Dr. Robert Bell, President of the University Health Network, writing in today's
Toronto Star argues that the system, warts and all, gives Canada a competitive advantage in the global economy.
Ontario health care offers an economic advantage to our province in a competitive global economy and reflects our commitment to a coherent, inclusive society.
The system needs to be improved and expanded, not supplemented by an inefficient and costly parallel private care alternative.
Access to health care based on need rather that ability to pay is an important defining characteristic of this country's social policy that should be protected rather than deserted.
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But discontent with the system has resulted in the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) electing a new president who advocates a "two-tier" system based upon the American model.
Delegates to the CMA convention elected Dr. Brian Day, an advocate of more private health care, to be their next President. Day operates a private orthopedic clinic in British Columbia.
Bell and Day agree that the current system needs to be reformed. Government restraints on spending have taken a system that worked well to one that is struggling with implementation of new technology, doctor shortages, and waiting lists for some treatments. Their prescriptions are quite different.
Bell notes drug costs and new technologies as primary causes for increases in health care spending. Canadian cost increases have been in line with other countries, generally. However, Canadian cost advantage over its primary trading partner, the USA, gives it a huge competitive advantage as a matter of policy.
Consider the staggering health-care cost faced by General Motors. In 2005, the auto giant's health insurance bill totalled more than $5.3 billion for its 1.1 million U.S. employees, retirees and their dependents. This is at least 50 per cent more than the cost of publicly funded care in Canada.
The high cost of American health insurance means GM spends more money on health care than on steel in its automobiles. GM's $740 million announcement this week to manufacture Camaros in Oshawa was welcome news and may, in part, reflect the advantage afforded by our public health-care system in attracting investment.
Meanwhile the CMA acting in its own sole interest refused to apply transparency to their proceedings. Toronto Star
... firmly rejected a motion that would have required CMA delegates to reveal any financial interest they might reap from the expansion of privately funded health care.
A Grover Norquist inspired war on government is part of the Canadian scene too. Canadians need to be ever vigilant. Otherwise the desire of a few physicians to make a few more bucks for themselves and their undeclared supporters (read: US HMO's, drug companies, etc.) may drag us down to the more expensive, less efficient US model ranked #40 in the world. World Health Report 2000: Health Systems: Improving Performance The National Post and other right wing advocates of markets for health-care have attempted to reduce public investment and spending to a minimum ensuring the public system will become broken then eventually fail. They deny the concept of the "common good". Destruction of all public assets (in education, and healthcare especially) is their longterm goal. Creating a better climate for investors in private clinics is the priority. However, they do not believe in revealing their potential conflicts of interest.
As any dKos reader knows the right wing only thinks it knows how to make good policy. And doctors looking after their own best interests may not realize how their actions can destroy a country's economic advantage.