Considering Two-Tiered Heathcare, By:Stunt
This is a topic of great controversy; many federal politicians tend to avoid this topic, as polls indicate healthcare is the most valued institution and service in the country. Federal politicians are just in their avoidance as healthcare is a provincial jurisdiction, not federal. Through this piece, I intend to bring to light the positives and negatives of this concept.
Two tiered healthcare defined by Wiki is: ?a form of national healthcare system that is used in most developed countries. It is a system in which a guaranteed public health care system exists, but where a private system operates in parallel. The private system has the benefit of shorter waiting times and more luxurious treatment, but costs far more than the public one for patients. Thus there are two tiers of health care, one for the public at large and another for those who are wealthy enough to pay for better care.?
First off I want to mention that in Canada, Two Tier Healthcare exists! There are only a few provinces pioneering this field: Quebec, Alberta, BC, Nova Scotia and Saskatchewan. Of these provinces, only the latter three have been charged as Alberta refuses to pay, and the federal government is not anxious to get on Quebec?s bad side. Quebec is by far the leader of private healthcare with the most private clinics and over 50% of the private (for-profit) imaging clinics in the country.
So why two-tier you might ask, well the reasons are countless. The most obvious are waiting lines, costs, and keeping health professionals in Canada.
Waiting lines: This topic received a lot of press last election as it was a key part of Martin?s election campaign. The Canadian system has some of the longest waiting times for service in the developed world. Reducing waiting lines is as simple as taking people out of line. As the richer leave lines to pay for service in a private clinic, the poor will get faster service and the system will benefit all parties involved.
Costs: Buying medical equipment is expensive. Allowing more people to pay for their own services reduces costs drastically for the government system. The majority will receive better care as the government will not be spending money on free healthcare for millionaires, but on the poor and middle class exclusively.
Health Professionals: Allowing for profit clinics in Canada, the clinics will keep doctors, nurses and other professionals from flowing to the US for higher wages as we will be able to provide these higher wages domestically rather than push these people away with our limited public health budget. One argument against the private system in Canada is that doctors in the private system will be better and the less fortunate will get the crappier doctors. This is the worst argument ever. Assuming the number of people receiving care is constant (same number of people getting hurt, getting disease, suffering illness), a fully public and two-tiered system will roughly require the same number of doctors. This means that the ?crappier? doctors these people mention are already working in the Canadian healthcare system. Making this case is an insult to Canada?s current healthcare system, and an insult to the medical education institutions in this country. With the private clinics able to offer larger compensation through their increased cash flows (from rich paying for service), we can keep doctors in Canada rather than exporting them to the states. Overall the quality of doctors will increase for everyone with two-tiered healthcare.
Healthcare is a very important issue in today?s political landscape. It is a service Canadians are proud of and we all feel everyone should have access to care. Those who are ill and hurt should be treated no matter how much money they make. One thing I do not like is watching our government give a service to millionaires for free when they would prefer not to use the service. Two-tier as shown above makes everyone better off. As long as the rich continue to pay into the public system, quality of care will increase and waiting lines will be reduced.
An obvious example of the public and private systems working well together is the secondary education system where rich can pay for a different service for a price, but allowing the public system to remain mainstream, free and effective.
I am interested to hear some of your opinions on this concept. How private health clinics can help our system, how you think they would hurt our system. Your views on the brain drain, how we can keep doctors in Canada, without breaking the bank.