GOLDSTEIN: Well being care is damaged and our governments broke it

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Can Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Canada’s 13 premiers and territorial leaders repair our well being care system that a long time of federal and provincial governments of all political stripes broke?

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Clearly it may well’t all be finished directly once they collect in Ottawa Feb. 7 to set the stage for a deal the place the federal authorities will improve funding to the provinces and territories in return for circumstances on that funding they should comply with individually.

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The issues return a long time. Fixing them will take years.

The query is whether or not the agreements arrived at as we speak will level Canadian well being care in the appropriate path, with efficient reforms.

Politicians going again a long time had been accountable for creating the myths that Canada’s well being system care is free, publicly-funded and one of the best on this planet.

In actuality, our system is pricey in comparison with different international locations all over the world with comparable common well being care programs.

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Thirty per cent of our well being care is privately funded.

Whereas there are a lot of constructive examples of wonderful well being care — regardless of relatively than due to the present system — internationally, Canada’s medical outcomes general are mediocre in comparison with related international locations.

Canadians face a number of the longest medical wait occasions for therapy within the developed world in a system with too few frontline well being care suppliers and inadequate working rooms and gear, equivalent to MRIs.

The explanation Canada has too few docs is because of deliberate insurance policies by provincial governments beginning within the Nineties, when Ottawa diminished switch funds to the provinces with a purpose to stability the federal price range that was uncontrolled on the time.

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The idea — promoted by so-called well being care economists inside Canada’s overly bureaucratized well being care system — was that graduating fewer docs by lowering the general public funding of medical faculties, would imply decrease prices as a result of there can be fewer docs treating sufferers and ordering assessments.

What occurred as an alternative is that the variety of Canadians with out household docs skyrocketed.

That resulted in increased prices, as a result of with out household docs, sufferers find yourself in hospital emergency rooms for each minor and extra severe well being care points — the place it’s far dearer to deal with them.

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Whereas we don’t have sufficient household docs or nurses — many burned out by the COVID-19 pandemic — we do have an overabundance of highly-paid, empire-building authorities well being care bureaucrats, consistently creating new types for docs to fill out, reducing into the time they take care of sufferers.

Information sharing of well being care data typically borders on the absurd.

On the peak of the pandemic, governments had been in lots of circumstances, compiling and sharing data by fax machine, apparently having missed the pc age.

Transferring affected person’s medical histories from paper to digital data has been laboriously sluggish and costly, with governments presiding over the method repeatedly losing money and time due to incompetence.

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Overcrowded emergency rooms and hallway medication had been created by years of provincial governments failing to create enough continual and long-term care beds, that means folks ended up in acute care hospitals as a result of there was nowhere else for them to go.

It doesn’t assist when fear-mongering defenders of the damaged establishment in well being care painting any makes an attempt at reform as creating two-tier, American-style well being care, which nobody who understands the problems is speaking about.

Let’s all hope for some significant breakthroughs on these points within the newest spherical of federal-provincial-territorial negotiations.

However don’t maintain your breath.

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