Architect of Canadian Healthcare system admits that it has failed

Here is what Claude Castonguay has to say about that wonderful socialized healthcare that we have so envied:

“We thought we could resolve the system’s problems by rationing services or injecting massive amounts of new money into it,” says Castonguay. But now he prescribes a radical overhaul: “We are proposing to give a greater role to the private sector so that people can exercise freedom of choice.”

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57% of Canadians reported waiting 4 weeks or more to see a specialist; 24% of Canadians waited 4 hours or more in the emergency room.

A March 2, 2004 article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal stated, “Saskatchewan is under fire for having the longest waiting time in the country for a diagnostic MRI — a whopping 22 months.”

A February 28, 2006 article in The New York Times quoted Dr. Brian Day as saying, “This is a country in which dogs can get a hip replacement in under a week and in which humans can wait two to three years.”

Canada’s shortage of medical practitioners causes problems. With 2.2 doctors per thousand population, Canada is well below the OECD average of 3.0, although its 10 nurses per thousand was slightly above the OECD average of 8.6. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is an international organisation of thirty countries that accept the principles of representative democracy and free market economy.

Doctors in Canada make an average of $202,000 a year (2006, before expenses). Alberta has the highest average salary of around $230,000, while Quebec has the lowest average annual salary at $165,000, creating interprovincial competition for doctors and contributing to local shortages.

In 1991, the Ontario Medical Association agreed to become a province-wide closed shop, making the OMA union a monopoly. Critics argue that this measure has restricted the supply of doctors to guarantee its members’ incomes.

According to a 2007 article, the Canadian medical profession is suffering from a brain drain. The article states, “One in nine trained-in-Canada doctors is practicing medicine in the United States. If Canadian-educated doctors who were born in the U.S. are excluded, the number is one in 12.”

A February 28, 2006 article in The New York Times stated, “Accepting money from patients for operations they would otherwise receive free of charge in a public hospital is technically prohibited in this country, even in cases where patients would wait months or even years before receiving treatment…Canada remains the only industrialized country that outlaws privately financed purchases of core medical services.”

In 2006, a Canadian court threatened to shut down one private clinic because it was planning to start accepting private payments from patients. According to The New York Times, although privately funded clinics are illegal in Canada, many clinics are opening anyway, because patients don’t like the long waiting lists in the government system.

In a 2007 interview on ABC News, Professor Regina Herzlinger of Harvard Business School said, “Many clinics all across Canada are illegal for-profit… They know they can’t get the health care they need from the legal system, so they’re complicit in creating an illegal system that’ll give them what they need.”

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Tags: canadian public healthcare, Claude Castonguay, healthcare, socialized healthcare, universal healthcare

One Response to “Architect of Canadian Healthcare system admits that it has failed”

Gbemi Says:
November 8th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
Hi
my name is gbemi and I would like to ask few questions about Canadian health care for my assignment. I am a grade 12 student.