Would a mixture of public and private health care solve the health care crisis?

[CdnFox]

1 hour ago, suds said:

The first thing we have to do is fix the doctor shortage. Whether it's public, private, or whatever, just give us something that works. It's amazing we have no shortage of dentists.

There is actually a growing shortage of dentists.  As for the doctor thing BC recently advised that it's not a shortage of doctors, it's that the population is growing faster than they can bring doctors on. Which may be true. In which case slowing immigration may solve that problem pretty easy (along with others).

A more pressing problem is that the system punishes doctors for being "GP"s.  And trudeau's little tax grab makes that worse.  So a huge percent of all new doctors don't want to be gp's, they want to specialize.  But GPs is what we're desperately in need of. 

[Michael Hardner]

3 hours ago, suds said:

The first thing we have to do is fix the doctor shortage. Whether it's public, private, or whatever, just give us something that works. It's amazing we have no shortage of dentists.

I'll bet there are tons of qualified family doctors overseas who want to live here.

[CdnFox]

1 hour ago, Michael Hardner said:

I'll bet there are tons of qualified family doctors overseas who want to live here.

Why? The pay is better in most countries, they'll have a long immigration wait to get here and trudeau just decided to tax them more.

 

[Michael Hardner]

6 hours ago, CdnFox said:

Why? The pay is better in most countries, they'll have a long immigration wait to get here and trudeau just decided to tax them more.

 

Fast tracking could be done with a stroke of a pen. I'll bet Nigeria, Pakistan, India have good candidates.

[eyeball]

4 hours ago, Michael Hardner said:

Fast tracking could be done with a stroke of a pen. I'll bet Nigeria, Pakistan, India have good candidates.

High-grading immigrants and raiding other countries for their best and brightest like this does present an ethical issue but I suppose that ship probably sailed a long time ago.  Maybe they'll pick up a few of our fleeing millionaires in exchange. 

[CdnFox]

4 hours ago, Michael Hardner said:

Fast tracking could be done with a stroke of a pen. I'll bet Nigeria, Pakistan, India have good candidates.

We do have fast tracking with a few select countries who's medical training and expertise is close enough to our own that the transition is easy.  Those three countries aren't great candidates but for example you will find a lot of doctors in Canada from South africa. There's a few others. 

But even then - the numbers who want to come are not huge, the time it takes to get them here and certified is large, our population is growing faster than our ability to import them and even if we do get them here even before trudeau's little tax game there is almost no incentive for them to be GP's or for GP's to come here, and GP's is what we desperately need.  And trudeau just made it worse  -  GP's were the ones who benefitted from the capital gains tax rules the most out of all the doctors as a rule and now he's made even that less attractive.

You can't fix those problems with the 'stroke of a pen'.

That's why some provinces are looking at expanding the 'nurse practitioner' programs. Basically an experienced nurse with extra training, just enough to be  lite version of a gp who's good enough to get people to the correct specialist and issue some basic medicines.

But we also have a shortage  of nurses - and even a nurse from a 'fast track' country can wait 16 - 20 months AFTER they manage to immigrate (which can take years right now) before they're able to work as a nurse.  That's a frikkin' nurse - doctors are even more problematic as you can imagine.

 

Fast tracking cannot be done with the stroke of a pen.  That's about as accurate as saying "cancer can be cured with the stroke of a pen".  Or "Our debt can be resolved with the stroke of a pen".   It's a  meaningless phrase. 

 

 

3 minutes ago, eyeball said:

High-grading immigrants and raiding other countries for their best and brightest like this does present an ethical issue but I suppose that ship probably sailed a long time ago. 

There's no ethical issue. Recruiting is as old as humans.

The problem is that this isn't a great place to immigrate to, especially if you're a doctor.  So we just can't compete.

[suds]

When you thought it couldn't get any worse, at least one walk-in clinic that I know of has cut it's hours drastically (and I mean 'drastically') due to a lack of physicians. I wonder if this is a sign of things to come?  It says so right on their website. Like it or not, we have a 2 tier healthcare system. Those who have a doctor and those who don't. This is really going to take years to sort out isn't it? Sort of like the mess we got into with our severe shortages of housing. I can understand why so many are so upset. The system is failing us in ways I never thought possible.

[CdnFox]

 

13 minutes ago, suds said:

When you thought it couldn't get any worse, at least one walk-in clinic that I know of has cut it's hours drastically (and I mean 'drastically') due to a lack of physicians. I wonder if this is a sign of things to come?  It says so right on their website. Like it or not, we have a 2 tier healthcare system. Those who have a doctor and those who don't. This is really going to take years to sort out isn't it? Sort of like the mess we got into with our severe shortages of housing. I can understand why so many are so upset. The system is failing us in ways I never thought possible.

 here even the walk in clinics are severely reducing visits and have for some years. I waited 5 years to get  a regular doctor and before that it was getting harder and harder to get to see ANYONE at all shy of going to emerg (which is also insanely overloaded).

Edited May 9, 2024 by CdnFox

[exPS]

On 4/13/2024 at 10:26 PM, blackbird said:

A lot of people have the money to pay for extra private health care services in Canada.

Perhaps that is the solution to the failing health system we have.

Does anyone have a solution that is better?

I have been to countries that have both a public and private health system and I have used them: Germany and Australia for sure and possibly Austria. I have used hospitals in each of those countries.

Their public health care systems works just fine. But like anything run that is "government run", it isn't all that efficient.

As a tax payer, I would want my tax dollars spent primarily on two things, our infrastructure and health care. And not on charities to foreign countries that are fully capable of borrowing the money that we send them. Let them go into debt!

I do have to chuckle about those patriotic Canadians that think we have the best health care system in the world. They should get out more and travel. We are nowhere near the "top" in health care.