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The Globe & Mail is reporting that a $5.5 billion program to reduce wait times has largely been a failure. Though there has apparently been some success in some areas, overall wait times are not much lower than they were when this program was initiated in 2004. So after more money then I could even count in my life time, there is little or no improvement to the health care problem.
At some point policy makers are going to have to realize that throwing money at the health care system is not enough. The incentives for patients, doctors, and hospitals have all been perverted by our current government operated health care program.
Rather than piling more resources onto an unsustainable health care system, we as a nation should be having a serious grown up discussion on how we can bring more market incentives into the system. It is only with market incentives that costs will decrease and quality will increase.
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7 comments:
Completely privatizing the system would dramatically decrease wait times.
@ johndoe124;
WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN!!!!
or
YOU WANT TO KILL SENIORS!!!!
or my favourite
YOU WANT TWO TIER MEDICINE THAT FAVOURS THE RICH!!!!!
yeah, pretty much political suicide.
but i agree with you.
brad
Brad, you left out my favourite complaint...
YOU WANT AN AMERICAN STYLE SYSTEM!!!
Whether or not any proposed system is even close to the US system, that will be the argumen used, as if by calling something American-style automatically makes it bad.
P.S.
The American system is not a free market system.
http://mises.org/daily/3793
It is evident that more money will not solve the problem just as it is evident that the present system is badly failing. A large part of the money now goes to a top heavy administration which should not even exist. A rather simple solution would be for the government to limit itself to being a health care insurer and remove itself totally from the provision of health care. People could then decide if they wish to pay extra for service either not provided or more than the rate covered by the insurance. Health care provision would be totally privatised.
I think the issue is more complex than you suggest. Our health care system is actually incredibly efficient with less administrative costs then the US system. Privatization would actually dramatically increase overall cost to health care and reduce efficiency as measured by percentage of total cost going to direct patient care.
As a physician who is involved directly in joint replacement I can assure you that the wait time initiative had a dramatic effect on the number of joint replacements done at my local hospitals and the time that patients had to wait for these procedures. The article does not mention the fact that the total number of surgeries has increased significantly and that the "failure" of the initiative is more to do with the fact that there has been a dramatic increase in the number of people requiring surgery due mostly to the aging population and improvements in technique that opens up the procedure to younger and older candidates. The wait time for hip and knee replacement would have been much higher without the "money".
The Globe article outlines the many successes of the program but also demonstrates the difficulty of a federal initiative into provincial jurisdiction and the complexity of our health care system. There are no simple solutions to health care.
If there are no simple solutions then let's find those solutions for free through the self-organizing free market instead of perpetually being guinea pigs for socialists.
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