A new report released Thursday says that privatization of health care in Ontario won’t reduce wait times but may actually increase them.
I’m a Canadian American, who studies the US health insurance market for a living… privatization would be fucking disastrous.
If you want an idea, just look at paid parking near hospitals and how fucking expensive those lots are… and you still can’t get a fucking spot.
The only way to reduce wait times is to increase supply or reduce demand… wait times will only significantly decrease if healthcare is unaffordable to the majority of Canadians or if we better fund public healthcare to attract more doctors.
wait times will only significantly decrease if healthcare is unaffordable to the majority of Canadians
Wait a minute! So if I buy your healthcare, and start defunding it, while simultaneously increasing prices, thus reducing the number of patients at the same rate as the services are failing therefore not increasing or perhaps even(!) reducing waiting times through prohibitively high costs,
I can both sell privatisation as a success story, AAND make record profits with my pals in the insurance business through cost cuts and price increases!? And I even end up with a less empowered workforce who’s healthcare is tied to their employment and therefore unable to negotiate better salaries or leave for a better job easily? Kinda like medieval serfs??
Stop please stop! I can only get so excited (and I can’t afford an ambulance) Big /s of course
I worked for a company that served clients on a first come, first served basis. Clients would complain about wait times. The bosses decided to create a priority fee where clients could pay extra to be put into a priority queue. Guess what happened? Literally every client paid to be in the priority queue. Wait times didn’t change one bit, but the bosses were laughing about suddenly making $500 extra per client with zero changes to business.
An excellent way to frame it.
But see, if you fix the problem then nobody will want to privatize and then my buddies cannot get more rich than they already are. --republicans, conservatives, etc.
Why does the choice have to be so difficult!
employees don’t even get parking spaces. What boggles my mind is theres thousands of students trying to get into a med school system with such a small amount of slots, and its basically a lottery at this point. Then nurses and techs get their sallaries capped and work unreal hours, so everyone quits and we all wonder why things are breaking down. just take care of your staff and expand the education system, things are stretched so thin its unreal and there are so many solutions. “We’ve tried nothing and are out of ideas”
The difference is that those in the public interest always argue this debate from the perspective of actually taking care of people
Those that argue for private health care argue for it as a money making business.
Those that argue for public services will not make a profit from their efforts other than the benefits they receive when they need health care … those that argue for private health care are only thinking of the windfall they would receive if it were to happen. One is arguing for perceived benefits that we may or may not see or appreciate until we need them … the other is only thinking of short term profits for themselves, even if it is morally bankrupt.
The difference is that those in the public interest always argue this debate from the perspective of actually taking care of people
Those that argue for private health care argue for it as a money making business.
This is what pisses me off most about attacks on public services. Saskatchewan killed STC, the provincial highway public transit/freight system. It was costing 17 million more to run than what they were bringing in. If we assume only 250,000 taxpayers (individual and business), that’s a lousy $68 apiece. I’m one of the proverbial fixed income seniors and I can come up with that much.
It’s stupid, short-sighted, and heartless.
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Increasing supply is increasing short term demand, while decreasing long term demand. If you can make it so that people are able to get regular care for well visits, checkups, and attention to relatively minor concerns (increasing supply and demand), you reduce the incidence of more severe health concerns by catching things early (reducing crisis demand).
The former would need to include not only lots of GPs, but also the cultural ability to take time off work for doctor’s visits, and childcare, and transportation.
Make healthcare unaffordable? Now you’re talking Conservative!
But that does not give some politicians a plump job to go to after politics.
Private retirement homes are wonderful. The lack of care (aka TLC) and misery there is beyond compare.
The only people who believe that wait times would be worse under a public health care system are people who don’t currently need to access health care under a private health care system. I’m an American who unfortunately needs to see specialists relatively frequently and the wait times are already atrocious.
It’s worse than you think
It’s government funded private care and at least in Ontario there isn’t any oversight or accountability allowed for private centres
Yea, the cultural lore surrounding public healthcare in the states is really funny. You can have people waiting months for things with our shitty system who will still say that wait times with public healthcare would be horrible.
Maybe. I guess if I had to choose between a financially debilitating procedure with a long wait time and a free one with a slightly longer wait time, I’d choose the latter.
That’s what drives me nuts about this talking point. As someone with a condition that requires specialists and lands me in the ER a lot, wait times in the US are abysmal. Referrals to specialists often take months or more than a year, and even after getting in it can be several months to schedule an appointment. And ER wait times are absurd, rarely less than 5-6 hours, usually 8-12 or more.
I’m one of the few who even have a primary care physician but I really only see them basically annually to get my blood pressure meds, or for general non-urgent health concerns like, “I’m tired all the time, is it that I’m in my mid thirties, or do I have low testosterone like my dad?” The wait time is usually like 4 months unless I think it’s urgent, then they can usually squeeze me in in the next 3-4 weeks. I don’t normally have to schedule the blood pressure visit but only because they’ll schedule it a year out for me when I’m there.
Anything else, like respiratory infections, covid, flu, strep, etc… urgent care is my only option and unless I get there at 6am when they open it’s usually a 4 hour ordeal.
You’re lucky to get treatment in 4 hours at urgent care. Where I live there is one clinic for over 100,000 people. You show up at 4am and that’s usually too late. They regularly put up a sign on the door that says “Was are only seeing 10 people today. Go to the local ER if you need medical care.” When you go there you can wait up to 2 days… or you give up and go home… or try in another nearby city.
My family and I save up our medical needs and get it dealt with when we travel. It’s faster and easier to pay cash for medical treatment when we are overseas visiting family than it is here in Canada.
See here the problem is when any kind of healthcare conversation starts in Canada the US always gets brought up as a sledgehammer to shutdown any further discussion. I live in the US and nobody thinks the US system is the solution for anything. But there are dozens of working examples in Europe and Asia that are worth learning from. Canadians need to look beyond this continent.
Well, if you were a billionaire with private doctors and access to preferred care then you would be way better off than someone in Canada, ergo the American system is better.
That’s the only performance based argument in favor of privatized care that I can think of.
I’m in Quebec, it’s 12 to 18 months to see a specialist…
Wildly varies based on your specific health profile, and above all, what kind of specialist.
And the perceived urgency of your medical issue.
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The fuck out of here with private healthcare
Private health care opens -> Private offices offer better hours and/or better pay -> Doctors and nurses jump ship because everyone has bills to pay -> Pubic offices get even farther behind.
Canada should be un-private-ing EVERY part of healthcare, not just the paying part. OHIP style where the govt. sets prices and pays for care but hospitals and doctors offices have to make enough to keep their lights on AND provide health care (and line pockets because private) is just stupid.
Plus private only offers better until public goes to shit, then private does whatever the fuck they want, which is prioritize the wealthy who will pay the most. Profits!
See : USA
The only people who think that private health care in the USA is better than public in Canada are people who have never had to deal with private insurance. It is expensive, wait times are still long, you get nickled and dimed for every little thing to inflate the bill, CoPays, Out-of-Network, your primary care physician/hospital/ambulance/anesthesiologist might not take your insurance.
It is an unlit maze of bullshit and the insurance company does not care if you get lost forever.
I’d love it if they did that to telecoms too, everything is so expensive. cost of living is quickly outweighing the benefits.
The benefits … of living?
That’s pretty dire.
right?
I’m an American expat, and lemme tell you, I wouldn’t care if it did shorten wait times. Fund the doctors whatever you gotta to keep it all public and free. Also, add dentists thanks.
Also, add dentists thanks.
The NDP are trying.
Obviously, if our tax dollars are going to private care that costs more then there is less funding for the cheaper public system and less over all to spread out
But it will make more money for our corporate overlords and their priesthood of investors.
This isn’t about health care or taking care of people … it’s always about the religion of money.
Praise be.
Deja vu
As an American who has waited a full workday in an emergency room for the privilege to then get a mystery bill that seems to be the product of a random number generator, don’t privatize your healthcare.
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To me the entire article seems to be establishment propaganda that tries to convince people that the current system is working fine and we just need to dump more money in it, which is not a real solution as we don’t have infinite money. Keep in mind a reform doesn’t mean we automatically turns into the US overnight. It might not even include any private component at all. But any reform that cuts waste will impact the various interest groups benefiting from the waste and inefficiencies in the current system and that seems to be what is article is defending against.
