While the US system that was being proposed didn’t exactly match Canada’s single payer model, everyone but the simplest of Obama drones knows that’s the end game (just ask the President; he said himself he envisioned a country where 15 years down the line we’d have a single payer system).
Canadians like to chide us for our system, but it’s not exactly all roses up in Canada either.
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,” Doing 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. He will present details from his fact-finding trip to Europe in January, where he met with health groups in England, Denmark, Belgium, Netherlands and France.
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.
What does this mean, precisely?
1. Like I’ve said on numerous occasions: all systems have their successes and failures and no system is perfect no matter how much we’re told it is.
2. Eliminating competition from private companies does nothing to improve the quality of care patients receive. Removing private industry from insurance, or for that matter punishing them or regulating them out of business need not be part of a new reformed health system in this country. You can have both: a vibrant and competitive private market and an effective and efficient government program. The two are not mutually exclusive nor should they be treated as such.
This is an important takeaway as we debate the future of health care in the United States. While it may sound all well and good to punish the evil insurance companies (ie: “them”), they may be the only thing (and I do mean the only thing) that’ll keep a government-run system honest.
Keep that in mind as this debate starts to change, come to an end, etc.