Ottawa should be innovating, not punishing provinces
Publicly funded walk-in clinics are a workaround but they also have long lines of people waiting to see a duty doctor until someone comes along and tells them the clinic is full. They are then sent to overflowing emergency rooms — and more waiting.
The federal government’s clawback on health funding is a misplaced tactic that will do more to harm than help Canadians.
Nova Scotia will be walloped with a $1.27-million deduction in the health-care transfer as a punishment for allowing people to pay for medically necessary services.
It is one of eight provinces that will face $82 million in penalties unless they stop the practice.
This comes at a time when more than six million Canadians do not have a family doctor. In Nova Scotia, that number is inching up to 140,000. Emergency rooms are jammed and wait lists for surgeries are brutal.
The federal argument is that people are already paying for medically necessary services through their taxes and shouldn’t have to pay again through private service providers.
The problem with this argument is that people have to wait — and wait — for the medical services they are entitled to under the Canada Health Act.
They are suffering and in some cases dying in emergency rooms as they wait for services guaranteed under the law. Some are waiting a year or more for surgeries.
Even if they do have a family doctor, it can take weeks to get an appointment for something like an earache.
Publicly funded walk-in clinics are a workaround but they also have long lines of people waiting to see a duty doctor until someone comes along and tells them the clinic is full. They are then sent to overflowing emergency rooms — and more waiting.
Hospitals and emergency rooms are over capacity partially because in-patient beds are occupied by seniors awaiting places in long-term care.
In desperation, people are turning to for-profit clinics and diagnostic services to alleviate suffering or get a prescription renewed. Some pay thousands to receive medically necessary treatments in the U.S.
Is it any wonder? People want and need medical services to be delivered in a timely manner.
And the federal government thinks punitive measures are the answer.
The notion of the universal health-care system is certainly a worthy one and is a fundamental right if you are a Canadian, but it isn’t working the way it is configured.
I wonder which medically necessary services will be unavailable with a $1.27-million cut to healthcare funding?
The federal government needs to stop punishing and start innovating, as Nova Scotia has done. This province is paying private healthcare providers like Maple to provide virtual primary health care for residents who do not have family doctors.
You sign up for the online service to access primary care. The wait is measured in minutes, rather than days or weeks.
This province is also outsourcing surgeries to a private provider and paying them with tax dollars. We need more publicly funded health-care outsourcing.
This is not what the federal government is objecting to. It is trying to put a stop to people paying for medically necessary services when they do have a family doctor.
This focus on family doctors is part of the problem. The federal government seems to want to keep them as the gatekeepers to primary care.
That model of universal health care is clearly outdated, with population growth and an aging demographic.
It also fails to recognize that family doctors are actually private contractors who run businesses that pay for support staff and overheads to keep clinics running. They bill the province for their services.
The other question that arises is what is deemed a medically necessary service. Hip surgery is a medically necessary service but the physiotherapy patients need to rehabilitate is often private.
Canadians pay privately for other medical care like dentistry, optometry, ambulance service, podiatry and drugs.
And if you are unable to pay for expensive prescriptions not covered by the public health-care system, you are not receiving medically necessary health care.
Penalizing provinces to protect an outdated concept of universality is retrograde and even cruel to those who are waiting in pain or worrying about a cancer diagnosis.