California Conservative

I’ve long thought that Canadacare was vastly overrated. Thanks to Drudge highlighting this article, I now have proof galore that Canadacare is a disaster. Here’s what I’m referring to:

SASKATOON — The incoming president of the Canadian Medical Association says this country’s health-care system is sick and doctors need to develop a plan to cure it.
Dr. Anne Doig says patients are getting less than optimal care and she adds that physicians from across the country, who will gather in Saskatoon on Sunday for their annual meeting, recognize that changes must be made.

“We all agree that the system is imploding, we all agree that things are more precarious than perhaps Canadians realize,” Doig said in an interview with The Canadian Press. “We know that there must be change,” she said. “We’re all running flat out, we’re all just trying to stay ahead of the immediate day-to-day demands.”

The pitch for change at the conference is to start with a presentation from Dr. Robert Ouellet, the current president of the CMA, who has said there’s a critical need to make Canada’s health-care system patient-centred.

Health care systems that aren’t “patient-centred” are worthless. If the patient’s needs aren’t the health care system’s highest priority, then that system’s priorities are worthless. PERIOD.

Who cares if everyone is insured if there are 17 week waiting periods for primary care physicians and longer waits for specialists? Who cares if everyone is insured if Canada has one-third of the MRI machines per capita that the United States has?

The question that conservatives should’ve been asking John Q. Public is whether they were willing to trade breakthroughs in equipment and life-saving procedures so that everyone is insured. We’ve failed in that type of messaging. Starting immediately, I won’t make that same messaging mistake again.

It must’ve about killed them to write this:

His thoughts on the issue are already clear. Ouellet has been saying since his return that “a health-care revolution has passed us by,” that it’s possible to make wait lists disappear while maintaining universal coverage and “that competition should be welcomed, not feared.” In other words, Ouellet believes there could be a role for private health-care delivery within the public system.

It must’ve been painful for someone who’s worked in a single-payer system to admit that “competition should be welcomed, not feared.” It must’ve been eye-opening and painful. While Obama and the Democrats have tried extolling the virtues of single-payer, albeit in code, Canada is moving in our direction. (Isn’t irony wonderful?)

Doig says there are some “very good things” about Canada’s health-care system, but she points out that many people have stories about times when things didn’t go well for them or their family.

“(Canadians) have to understand that the system that we have right now, if it keeps on going without change, is not sustainable,” said Doig. “They have to look at the evidence that’s being presented and will be presented at (the meeting) and realize what Canada’s doctors are trying to tell you, that you can get better care than what you’re getting and we all have to participate in the discussion around how do we do that and of course how do we pay for it.”

Obviously, Canada’s system won’t look like a competition-based system anytime soon. Still, it’s instructive to me that people are rethinking their socialist system and pondering a competition-based system. It might not sound dramatic when phrased that way but glasnost and perestroika didn’t sound threatening to the former Soviet Union when Gorbachev announced them, either. Thanks to the lens of history, we know how that turned out.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 16th, 2009 at 11:21 pm and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, Health Care, Liberals, Media, Obama. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.