Opinions

Kafka's Nightmare

by Klaus Rohrich

December 16, 2004

Question: What do you call a line of people 495 km long, stretching from Trenton to
Windsor?

Answer: Canadian health care.

Picture 815,000 people standing in line waiting for medical treatment. A war? A cataclysmic natural event? An epidemic? Yes, anywhere else one or more of these might be the case. However, in Canada it’s business-as-usual health care, yet our per capita expenditure on health care is third highest in the world. At $4,000 per man woman and child, I think we could buy just about everyone in Canada a private insurance policy that would cover all eventualities with little or no waiting for treatment.

More and more Canadians are beginning to take their health into their own hands, as clearly, public health care is collapsing under its own weight. Many are seeing private physicians outside the country, while a large number of Quebecers, including our own prime minister are purchasing medical care at local medical clinics. Many provincial governments have begun to de-list certain medical procedures, such as regular eye examinations, chiropractic and physiotherapy care and some dermatological procedures, to name a few, in efforts to control spiraling costs.

Do our politicians and those who insist our health care system is what defines us as Canadians realize that we are essentially defining ourselves nationally in terms of a failure? Why is it so important that our health care system, which has clearly arrived in hell in a badly battered hand basket, be kept as a publicly funded, government administrated, not for profit white elephant? We have heard all the arguments about "US style" health care and how our system is morally and fiscally superior to theirs. However, when the waiting lines for a medical procedure are longer than the bread lines in the former Soviet Union, it’s time to look at other options.

I recently had occasion to experience first-hand how private health care in Canada is so far superior to the public system that it defies comparison. Many clinics that offer self-pay medical procedures are starting to open throughout the country to take up the slack left by the public system. What an experience to call an eye clinic, get an appointment the next day and be scheduled for a procedure the day after that. In addition, the person making the appointment treats one with dignity and respect because they know that the patient is paying their salary. Why is it that the public system is incapable of delivering a similar seamless experience to their clients? Presumably they are being paid the same amount of money as those working in a private clinic. I think the difference is that in a private clinic the staff see patients as sources of revenue, whereas publicly funded clinics and hospitals see patients as a drain on their budgets.

There are American doctors advertising in Canada to disaffected Canadian patients tired of waiting an average of 3.5 months to receive treatment from a specialist.

It’s true that health care once made us famous. The Americans were envious of us as the government saw to all our boo-boos. The system worked much better when patients were asked to contribute a monetary stipend to their care and clearly Americans had cause to be envious. No more. Now it’s the other way around; we should be the ones that are envious, as all Americans are enjoying a much better standard of care than we are- even those who cannot afford to pay. I’m all in favour of privatized medical care. It’s an inevitability, which the government is unable to control. I say: the sooner, the better!