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Release Canadian health care from the chains of failing government monopolies
Switching to a publicly funded universal health insurance program would solve the crisis
It’s disheartening to hear stories of colleagues enduring lengthy waits in emergency departments while experiencing chest pain and atrial fibrillation, children bleeding on the roadside as they wait for an ambulance for hours and people stuck at home without the ability to access a family doctor.
Why is it so hard to fix health care in Canada? It’s not for a lack of trying. Many reports, commissions, task forces and consultants have tried. However, this great country has not been able to achieve what many people believe is the crown jewel of its identity. What’s happened to the idea of Medicare put forward by Justice Emmett Hall 60 years ago?
In 1961, Prime Minister John Diefenbaker asked Hall to head a royal commission of inquiry into a potential national health service. In 1964, the commission recommended the establishment of a publicly funded universal health insurance program, funded 50/50 by the provinces and the federal government. Coverage would include medical and nursing services, dental services for children and expectant mothers, prescription drugs, vision care as well as prosthetic and home care. It was not to be state medicine; rather, it was to be based “upon freedom of choice, and upon free and self-governing professions and institutions.”
That system never came to exist. At present, the provinces and territories each operate their own health services with support from the federal government, notwithstanding the trend to contract surgical care to private facilities — and it’s not working. Each agency operates independently, responding to a myriad of great ideas with “we already do that.” The feds don’t trust the provinces and territories, and the provinces and territories don’t trust the feds. Heck, the various alphabet soups of federal departments and agencies don’t trust each other.
Jack’s Note: If you REALLY, REALLY want to fix things suspend the lefty inspired Trudeaupean Canadian Constitution and rewrite it. Then put it to Canadian voters for ratification. DO NOT, under any circumstances, leave the final product in the hands of highly biased and compromised politicians. That is exactly why we are in the trouble we find ourselves in this very day.
