Editor:
Those advocating for public ownership and management of the new residential long-term care facility say they are defending “public health care.” In fact, they are defending the indefensible. The Canadian health care system is abysmally dysfunctional. The authoritative Commonwealth Fund rates Canada as 10th of 11 large developed countries in terms of the quality of its health care system – only the U.S. rates lower. The study is readily available online. We have the longest waits for medical care in the developed world; people languish on wait lists, sometimes for years and often in pain, as their conditions deteriorate. Hospitals are overcrowded and badly managed. Our system is one of the most expensive in the world but pays for less than 70 per cent of medically necessary care. The World Health Organization rates Canada as 30th overall for the quality of its health care system – well behind many third world countries. The OECD has come to similar conclusions in many studies.
Not coincidentally, Canada is the only developed country that maintains a government monopoly on the ownership and operation of hospitalized care. All of those countries whose systems work so much better than ours provide universal health care using a robust mix of public and private facilities and providers at every level. They benefit from competition, innovation and management flexibility. We, in turn, suffer under an inefficient, inflexible, slow and bureaucratically bloated monopoly. Extending that monopoly to residential long-term care facilities makes no sense.
The biggest obstacle to improving our health care system is national mythology. Too many Canadians are afflicted with the great Canadian blind spot that keeps us from seeing how badly our health care system actually performs. We need innovation and reform in all aspects of health care, not more of the same.
Keith Maxwell, Sechelt
