The European OECD says that Canada is heading for serious trouble by refusing to entertain the option of user fees and deductibles. In an analysis of our health care system, the OECD says that Canada’s long wait times and number of patients without doctors is already a symptom of our sickness. The costs of our single-payer health care system are expected to skyrocket with the coming of the “gray tsunami”.
Health care spending in Canada was estimated to be about $183.1 billion in 2009, an increase of $9.5 billion, or 5.5%, since 2008. And the amount we’ve spent on health care in 1997 dollars has increased for every year between 1975 and 2009, more than doubling the per capita spending since the 70′s. Total spending in 2007 was equivalent to 10.1% of our GDP, or 7.8 times what goes to our entire military budget.
OECD recommends that Canada come into line with other countries that utilize health care user fees and privatized services in order to lower our overall burden:
Canada can boost value-for-money in health care. Regulation [Canada Health Act] currently prohibiting private insurance for core services and mixed public-private contracts for doctors should be removed to spur more efficient service delivery and expanded capacity by way of private entry. Pharmaceuticals, home and therapeutic care should be integrated into the core public package. Revenues could be raised and excess demand curbed by implementing some sort of capped patient co-payments and deductibles.
If you think this sounds unreasonable, consider that socialist governments like Portugal have basic user fees for health services. So does Sweden and Denmark and Germany. This is by no means a sudden collapse into a state of deregulated privatization. Ignoring the problem will only force larger government deficits and the slashing and burning of other core services, such as education.
The largest criticism by the OECD is that our health care system is inefficient. The main reason is a lack of competition to maintain cost-effective care, followed by the fact that patients don’t have health care costs quantified. They can go to the doctor as often as they like.
This idea that user fees to see doctors would create a burden on the poor doesn’t wash either. It hasn’t produced a two-tier system in the countries where user fees are employed. Just as one doesn’t run to the insurance company for every paint scratch on their car, a deductible would curtail flagrant abuse of the health care system.
The problem is also that working people have no time to go to the doctor, but other people have too much time to think about how sick they are and can go to the doctor everyday. I have not had a family doctor for 14 years. My kids (one with asthma) haven’t had one for 5 years.
So, my question is, who is getting all the doctors? If home grown Canadians are not getting any access, who is and they even paid to get that access?
Start billing for visits, the hypochondriacs can probably afford it.
Absolutely: bill for visits!!! I am in my mid-60′s and have not used health care or seen a doc since 2006. The less they find the better … Let the worried pay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I think we both know who gets the doctors. I can think of 490 recent examples.
I work in a hospital, and have insight into both the administrative and patient care issues. I have a department budget to manage, and I am aware of our responsibilities to patients as a healthcare provider.
It is absolutely true that our system is destined for collapse. The math is unavoidable. Every politician just wants to push off the moment of reckoning to some other politician’s watch.
Eventually people in Canada will have to choose what they want. Best medical care for everyone, regardless of cost and whether they contributed to the cost of that care, will not be possible.
User fees are a beginning, but will be nowhere enough to solve the problem.