A reform of the Canada Health Act making timely access to care a pillar of the law is needed, so that the provinces are obliged to work toward it, and have to set real goals and timelines for achieving them
The emergency entrance at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto on Feb 14. 6.5 million Canadians have no family doctor, emergency rooms that are not actually closed are overcrowded, and wait times for critical surgeries and procedures are excruciatingly long.A half-century after Canada adopted medicare, the promise that no one would ever again go without medically necessary health care seems like a quaint notion from the past. Today, 6.
The ossified wisdom is that 1) hallway medicine, delayed knee replacements and lack of access to a general practitioner may be lousy but it’s still better than letting “American-style” health care creep into Canada, and 2) that throwing money at the problem will take care of it. Better, then, to toe the line, tinker around the edges and pump more tax dollars into a system that is one of the most expensive per capita among its peers, while also being one of the worst performing. You will never lose your job by maintaining the failed status quo with adequate piety, even if you ought to.
Finally, the country needs to hold to account politicians who moralize about the wickedness of moving even an inch away from a failing government monopoly on health care.Canada in the most important metric of all – equality of access to care regardless of income – for doomsayers to dominate the debate.
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