Change the system, do not replace it

Re: “Fix health care with a dual private system,” letter, July 16.

I have to suppose that there is an unknown number of doctors lurking in the shadows ready to come into private practice, or that there is something in the present system that prevents doctors performing all the services that they could.

As for the latter, doctors have long been complaining that the built-in bureaucracy takes time away from their actually practising. Why are they not heeded?

But if the number of doctors is finite and there is not a hidden number of surgeons, etc. ready to act if allowed to practise privately, then, it is must be true that doctors from the present finite group serving those that can afford to pay for their services will indeed reduce the waiting list and those waiting will move up in the line, but what will be the advantage as there will be fewer doctors to treat them (their numbers being reduced by those working privately, whether fullor part-time)?

Given that England, one of the countries with a public/private system, is suffering from both a doctor shortage and unacceptable wait times just as Canada is — some cases are sent by the NHS over to France for treatment — would it not be better to listen to the suggested solutions of our doctors and medical practitioners themselves?

From what I have read and heard, it would be better to restructure the system in the way that medical practitioners

themselves have been urging rather than throwing money into a system that, if not already wrecked, is certainly sinking.

Has the medical health system in Canada become so cumbersome that change is impossible?

William Thompson Victoria