I should have been more careful with my wording. I didn’t mean to imply that Canada was dismantling its public health care system. Of course it’s not. What it’s doing is allowing an ever-increasing amount of private health care to exist alongside the public health care system. And of course, we’ve always done that. We’re just expanding the areas of health care into which we’ll let private clinics compete.
Our public health care system is here to stay. But it speaks well for Canada that we’re willing to tweak it when it needs tweaking, without everyone getting all bent out of shape over it.
We’re talking apples and oranges here. These are private clinics, but largely still funded by the government. We’re talking about the difference between the government running a facility and paying for your treatments, or a private facility doing the treatments, but still being paid by the government. There is no ‘public option’ - the government health insurance completely crowded out private insurance. Canadians do not have the option of seeking private health insurance to cover the same things the government covers, except in a few narrow areas. So I’m afraid it actually bolsters the case of those who say the public option will crowd out private insurance.
Now, we do have private insurance in Canada, but it only exists in areas where the government specifically allows it. And the only reason private insurance exists in those areas is because the government has allowed specifically because the queues are long for public health care and the service not great. I don’t think this is a feature you want to tout.
Was that an unintended consequence, or was it planned that way? That makes a difference if you are warning us what might happen if we adopt a public option.
That would be Sam, gently preparing the ground for the amazing shifting goalpost trick. “oh, I didn’t mean THAT strong. Oh, even a tiny insignificant percentage growth over a cherry picked time is STILL growth”
I’d have to go look at the history of Canadian health care to be sure, but I think it was a direct government takeover in the beginning, with private funding completely disallowed for areas in which the government asserted control. Like I said, we’re comparing apples and oranges here.
There has always been a fairly large, completely private health care system in Canada. The government didn’t take over everything - just ‘essential health services’. So dental care, optical care, podiatry, chiropractic, diagnostic services of certain kinds, and other ancilliary health care services have remained completely private. We also have a drug payment system similar to the U.S. - we pay for our own medicine privately, but the very poor and the elderly are covered by the government. I have employer-based drug insurance that gives me prescription coverage for a flat rate of $3.00 per fill.
However, if you have serious issues in those areas, the government picks up the tab. So a root canal is privately paid for, but if you need reconstructive surgery or treatment for oral cancer, it’s publicly funded. This is close to the model I and many others advocate for the U.S. health care system - publicly funded castrophic care coupled with privately insured basic care. So now your insurance is really ‘gap’ insurance, to cover the region before the government steps in. That makes it much cheaper, and the paperwork is much lower because the insurance companies don’t have their necks stuck out as far.
About 30% of all Canadian health care services are privately funded. Of the publicly funded health care, about 70% is provided through private clinics. 66% of Canadians have some sort of private insurance to cover the stuff the government doesn’t do (compared to 67% for the U.S.). Of course, our insurance mix is very different.
Remember what your claims were, though. Can you support them? The information you’ve presented is static, whereas you made claims about change. Let’s not start moving the goalposts already.
I don’t have numbers either, but the government of the province Sam and I live in are all but actively hostile towards the people it works for. I’ve watched one hospital be demolished to cheering Calgarians without it being replaced, and I’ve had to stand my ground to keep another hospital in Edmonton open. My life was saved in that hospital years later, the one the Conservatives would rather didn’t exist. Also, the Conservatives ran on promises of improving the health care system (which needs improvement because of Conservative policies) then I read about forced early retirement for nurses and 1000 beds being shut down.
It’s a mistake to look at Alberta’s increase in private clinic use as a preference for private over public care. What’s happening is necessary because of the incompetence of Conservatives. And I still wouldn’t give it up. If it weren’t run by this awful brand of Conservatives our health care system would be better still.
Did it need to be replaced? I mean, anecdotes aren’t terribly convincing. Maybe the hospital was a pile of shit. Perhaps population shifts and services elsewhere made it redundant and a pointless money pit. They didn’t just dynamite a nice hospital for nothing, so I suspect your account of the matter is not exactly a fair accounting of the facts.
Pop quiz: What provincial goverment spends the MOST, per capita, on public health care?
I can’t speak as to whether it needed to be replaced, but at the time it was scheduled to be replaced by the Calgary South Hospital (the one demolished was just northeast of the downtown - and is a very lovely park and condo development now, but that’s beside the point). That scheduled replacement, though, has turned into a bit of a boondoggle, and will open a year late and at triple the cost.
What do you mean by private clinics ? I’ve been a client of private clinics for the past 40 years in three separate provinces, though my bills have been paid by Provincial insurance plans.
Oh, it was certainly a wreck. Full of asbestos too, if I recall. But yes, it should have been replaced. If some of its services were redundant then those could have been omitted, no problem, but if patients are shuffled into hallways or spend 12 hours waiting to be attended to in the ER as they can be, then one less hospital is not a good plan. As for demographics, believe me when I say Calgary’s population shifts call for more facilities, not fewer. The population was growing steadily when this occured during the dot-com boom, and then it exploded along with the price of oil more recently.
But regardless of Conservative competence or the lack thereof, the solution is not to privatize things as per Ms. Palin’s sage advice. That would open up a whole new set of problems of the sort I read about in the American news all the time. Ideologically pure, sure, but I prefer the security of knowing another bike accident won’t bankrupt me. Private clinics abound already as has already mentioned, and I can see what private health insurance leads to. No thanks.
So whether our health care troubles are due to incompetence, malice, or just plain economics, Sarah Palin can take a long walk off a short pier.
I’m amazed at all the little festivals that go on here all summer, and I’ll defend the Calgary Jazzfest. It’s not the Montreal Jazz Festival, but what is?
I knew I should have put a smiley face after that.
I’d say part of Palin’s problem with talking about Canadian anything is that she probably doesn’t have the first clue about what goes on here. From seeing her interviews during your last presidential election, she doesn’t even know what goes on in the U.S.
