Some articles in the media, particularly during the Covid 19 pandemic, point to solutions to the lack of resources in our healthcare system that threaten to undermine our public medicare safety net in Canada.
Bill Blaikie, writing on the Broadbent Institute Website asks whether Medicare in Manitoba is at risk as the conservative ideological dream plays out under the cover of the COVID epidemic.
The final factor, or destructive gift to Manitoba, could well be an expansion of private sector health care delivery. Such an expansion, in the name of pandemic inspired “ innovation”, would be a long time Tory dream come true. It is no secret that Tory backroom chatter contemplates more privatization of government services, from health care to hydro. Denials notwithstanding. Sometimes the truth even gets out, as it did when Erin O’Toole briefly alluded to it as part of his plans for health care reform. Thanks to the cover of the pandemic nightmare, this favourite Tory ideological dream may well prove, like the condition known as long COVID, a lasting post-pandemic long term bad dream for those who value the integrity of Medicare.1
Guy Quenneville, in a CBC News article, notes that Saskatchewan is using private health-care resources in order to expand “surge capacity”. The plans include spending an estimated $2 million on approximately 8,500 MRI and CT scans from private providers, plus providing an additional 2,300 scans in smaller hospitals.
Saskatchewan NDP Leader Ryan Meili also said it's "very strange that the government is coming up with no other measures" to address the rising COVID-19 case numbers. "The one thing they would announce are measures to increase private, for-profit care within our system," he said during a Wednesday news conference. "Choosing this moment, taking advantage of a crisis to try to privatize our health-care system, [is] the wrong approach. We should be seeing added resources to address wait times in imaging and surgery."2
In September 2019, Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole responded to a question, on the CBC, about whether Canadians should be allowed to pay out-of-pocket for surgeries, if they can afford to do so.3
Marina von Stackelberg, of CBC News, reports that the decision to house private practices in hospitals is ‘the future of medicine' according to cardiologist, Dr. Dino Shukla. He says the new clinic will be able to see about 75 patients a day and all services are paid for by OHIP. Shukla told CBC News this type of program is very unique in the province.
"We are having doctors that are not employed by the health system working within the healthcare system. It changes the model a little bit in that we have a different workload and different concepts than working in the hospitals." Shukla said the cardiologists still run their own private practices from within the hospital walls and pay for their own secretaries, but the management of the Out-Patient centre is all done through the hospital. "It's done everywhere in the business world. It needs to be considered now in healthcare, without compromising care," he said. "In healthcare, there is an infinite demand for resources and there is only a finite amount of resources."4
Michael Gorman reports for CBC on the plan of the IWK hospital to use a private clinic to help tackle the wait-list for non-emergency surgeries.
While there's no issue finding time for surgeons, because they don't normally have operating room time every day, Dr. Doug Sinclair, the vice-president of medicine, quality and safety at the IWK, said the biggest roadblock to reducing the wait time has been the availability of nurses. "We have an excellent OR nursing group here at the IWK, but it's a fixed resource. So by using the nursing resource and the booking resource at Scotia Surgery, that just makes a huge difference." Sinclair said the partnership with Scotia Surgery would be evaluated after 13 months to determine what happens next. In the meantime, he said, the hospital is also working toward capital improvements in its own operating rooms and finding ways to increase staffing levels.5
Nicole Thompson, from The Canadian Press, reports that thousands are to receive COVID-19 vaccine at a clinic run by EllisDon construction company.
EllisDon partnered with a couple other companies — Flynn, Modern Niagara and Central Ontario Building Trades — to pay for the whole thing, save for the vaccines, which were provided by the Region of Peel. Such a model further fragments Ontario's bumpy vaccine rollout. Those who booked a vaccine at EllisDon's clinic couldn't do so through the provincial booking system or phone line, or through a regional website. Instead, they had to go to a different website, which they could learn about from media reports, social media accounts dedicated to sharing vaccine information or word of mouth.6
Abram Almeda, the province's executive director of acute care, in 2008, reported to MLA’s that a surgery deal with private clinic, Scotia Surgery Inc., was going well.
"I don't believe that Nova Scotians are against it," Almeda said. "We have 99-some-odd per cent of people who are 100 per cent satisfied with having gone there to get their procedure done in a timely fashion, in a facility dedicated to doing that type of work with the same physicians that would do it if they were getting it in a public place." But NDP health critic Dave Wilson still has his doubts. "I believe any money that is funnelled away from the public system to a private facility isn't utilized in the best manner and the best way for taxpayers' money," Wilson said… "Obviously, Dr. Cyr does make some money. The money that we pay him pays for his staff, pays for running his facility. And if he makes anything more off it, I won't say it's chump change, but it isn't very much money."&7
Mary Jane Hampton explains that more and more Canadians are willing to pay for some private health care. She says that is an ominous sign for our public system in her Healthcare Hacks #140 on CBC Nova Scotia, Information Morning.
The public/private split on health care provision in Canada is 70/30. In the United States, it is 48/52. Is Buying private paying for it twice?8
Some provincial governments in Canada have turned to private, for profit, organizations to provide relief to publicly funded health care systems that have suffered from under funding and shortage of human resources for some time. This policy takes us in a direction that makes it easier to abandon the promise of universal public healthcare in Canada.
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