Paying for “one-tier” health care
Today the clear answer in a National Post editorial: get rid of that “one-tier”:
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The CMA has its own list of proposals, which include a reexamination and modernization of the five founding principles of the Health Act, and the creation of a “Charter for Patientcentred Care.”A better solution, we think, would be simply to bring Canada in line with virtually every other OECD nation, and create a hybrid system that permits private health-funding options in parallel with a publicly-funded universal health system. As others have noted many times, Canada is the only country in the world, outside of Cuba and North Korea, where garden-variety private health insurance for essential health needs is illegal.
It is all well and good that the CMA is critiquing the fine points of Canada’s single-payer health model. But until our politicians tear down its Soviet-style proscription of private options, everything else is palliative care.
As I wrote at Daimnation! in 2005:
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So once private health insurance for essential services is allowed across Canada (it already is in several provinces, and the Supreme Court decision said it should be allowed in Quebec), then we can have a European-style two-tier system, with the private clinics (hospitals, imaging centres, etc.) existing parallel to the public system as long as they receive no payments from the public system. (A full two-tier system will not be possible if it relies on cash payments–very expensive for major procedures–rather than payments through insurance: see the UK’s BUPA.)…
Remember that even the UK, despite the sainted National Health Service, has always allowed “two-tier” health care via private insurance such as provided by BUPA. Insurance that almost certainly saved my father-in-law’s life when he required rapid major surgery a few years ago.
Update thought: We’re sure making progess in dealing with health care funding, eh? The CMA itself has backtracked badly. And there’s been no there there from the currently governing party:
Conservatives kiss health care reform good-bye
Mark
Ottawa
