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.
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.
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”
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I’d love it if they did that to telecoms too, everything is so expensive. cost of living is quickly outweighing the benefits.
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.
The fuck out of here with private healthcare
