TORONTO, ONTARIO, Oct 07 (MARKET WIRE) --
Canadian health policy is increasingly failing patients, exploiting
medical providers, and is ultimately financially unsustainable in its
present form, concludes a new book published by the Fraser Institute, one
of Canada's leading economic think tanks.

    And things are likely to get worse unless Canada adopts policy
alternatives that dramatically change the economic incentives in the
health system, says Dr. Brett Skinner, Fraser Institute director of
bio-pharma and health policy and author of Canadian Health Policy
Failures: What's wrong? Who gets hurt? Why nothing changes.

    "The Canadian health care system is a textbook case of government failure
in medical insurance and medical services," Skinner said.

    "Our elected leaders have no political incentive to make the necessary
changes. Special interest groups oppose reform because they benefit
economically from the status quo, and our policy-makers lack objective
information about health care options in use elsewhere, especially
outside North America."

    The peer-reviewed book identifies six key areas where Canadian health
policy is failing: unsustainable costs, shortages of health
professionals, shortages of medical technology, long waits for treatment,
inefficient drug spending, and a lack of access to new medicines.

    The book also provides a small sample of published media stories and
reports illustrating the ways in which real people are often harmed by
Canadian health policy.

    "Lengthy wait times for medically necessary treatment have become a
standard part of the Canadian health care system as governments ration
care in an attempt to control costs. The experience of other countries
shows this doesn't have to be the case," Skinner said.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/10/07/idUS85089+07-Oct-2009+MW20091007

VANCOUVER (CP) – The incoming president of the Canadian Medical Association says the country's public health-care system is headed for crisis, but a greater role for private health care could be the right prescription.

Dr. Brian Day said in his inaugural speech to Canada's medical establishment Wednesday that contracting out health services isn't new and has helped slash wait lists.

"Let's be clear: Canadians should have the right to private medical insurance when timely access is not available in the public system," he said to applause from about 270 delegates at the annual convention.

Day, a Vancouver orthopedic surgeon, said the Supreme Court of Canada has already made a decision favouring such a move.

The Chaouilli case, named after the Quebec doctor who initiated it, struck down Quebec's ban on private insurance in 1995, saying it contradicted the provincial charter of rights.

Day said injured workers in some provinces are treated in private facilities, saving workers' compensation boards millions of dollars in wages and keeping people off long wait lists.

Day, who opened Canada's first private surgery clinic in 1995, has often been criticized for his pro-privatization views that some say could pave the way for a for-profit system much like in the United States.

"No one I know wants to adopt a so-called American-style health system," he told delegates at the association that represents 65,000 doctors across Canada.

He said the private-versus-public debate is largely irrelevant and counterproductive but that new ideas and concepts are bound to face opposition and skepticism.

The status quo must change, Day said, because the declining health of the country's aging population will have a profound social and economic impact on Canada's future.

"Canadians face difficult choices, but we must act. We and our patients remain frustrated by waiting periods that exceed all ethical standards."

But while he advocated more choice in the private sector, Day said the ability to pay should never be a factor for any patient needing health care in Canada.

He called for the modernization of the Canada Health Act, saying it's based on principles developed over 40 years ago and no longer meets the needs of today's population.

"My support for universal health care is unequivocal, but I believe the act must be revised."

Day also said provinces must change the way hospitals are funded because they suck the largest amount of money out of the health-care budget.

The current system of block, or global, funding doesn't reward efficiencies or penalize failure to deliver service to patients, Day said.

"Hospitals must have incentives to reopen operating rooms, increase the number of beds available, hire more staff and treat more patients."

Day is an advocate of the British system of funding hospitals, which compete with each other for public money based on the number of procedures they perform as an incentive to cut that country's wait lists.

He said the market-oriented scheme has some problems but that Canada could adapt what's working in Britain and other countries that have universal health care as part of their health-care system.

"There are those that dismiss these concepts of success and excellence as elitist or undesirable. They support the status quo and dismiss the plight and suffering of patients."

Guy Caron, spokesman for the Council of Canadians, said that while Canada has a problem with wait lists, it's too simplistic to say models from other countries can be applied here.

Caron said Britain and France, which each have a mixed public-private health-care system, have hired more doctors to cut wait lists.

"In the UK and in New Zealand they tried to bring market components to health care and it failed so they are actually reforming the system right now to bring more public (services) into the system."

Day said Canada's shortage of doctors and other health-care professionals is at a crisis point and that medical graduates leave the country every year because they don't have the operating-room time and other resources they need to stay here.

Day also called for the use of technology, such as electronic medical records, in the health-care field to deliver safe, efficient care.

"We are in the information age and medicine needs to catch up," he said. "Sadly, our access to new and valuable technologies is at a point where we rank near the bottom of developed countries. This must change."

Before Day's speech, delegates voted overwhelmingly in favour of several motions, with 99 per cent of them calling on provincial and territorial governments to implement strategies that would reduce emergency-room wait times and overcrowding.

http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/1042227/cma_head_says_canadas_healthcare_system_in_crisis_needs_change/

Quote from: Just_the_facts_mamm on February 27, 2012, 09:12:33 PM
Like you have any first hand knowledge of the health care in Canada.

One of my best friends in Canadian, and I have heard all the insane stories that you people have accepted as normal.  You have no standard of living.

Quote
You all bought billy's story about the metric change over that happened 30 years ago.
SO, Your fact checking abilities are already in question.

Billy is a little more traveled than you.  I have learned from Billy on the forums.  You... not so much.

Quote
What you know about Canadian health care is only what you have heard from the insurance industry in the US that does not want things to change.

I have family, friends, all across the country.

What proof do you have?

http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/19664

If you ever see PM Williams, ask him how he is feeling, and if we can do anything else for him.

A Calgary widow says Alberta's mental health system failed her husband, allowing him to kill himself in a hospital room.

Shayne Anonson, 44, had struggled with depression and alcoholism, so when he finally admitted in February that he needed professional help, his wife, Terri-Lee Anonson, eagerly drove him to the Rockyview General Hospital in February.

The woman recalled that as she drove up to the hospital entrance, which overlooked a lower
level, her husband said, "Stop, that's the perfect place to jump. That will do, it's better than nothing."

She electronically locked the doors and alarmed the truck, then ran into the emergency department where she found security guards to come out and escort her husband into the hospital, she told CBC News on Monday.

Anonson said she thought her obviously suicidal husband would get the help he needed, but he was put into a medical unit, in a room that had at least three doors between it and the nurses' station.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/story/2010/04/12/calgary-mental-health-suicide-anonson-hospital-psych.html

Quote from: Just_the_facts_mamm on February 27, 2012, 09:12:33 PM
Like you have any first hand knowledge of the health care in Canada.

You all bought billy's story about the metric change over that happened 30 years ago.
SO, Your fact checking abilities are already in question.

What you know about Canadian health care is only what you have heard from the insurance industry in the US that does not want things to change.

I have family, friends, all across the country.

What proof do you have?

I too have friends in Canada as well as travel to Calgary quite often to our office their, their system is truly screwed up and the number of people who have to buy private healthcare plans to supplement the national system is amazing.

You are too much of a socialist to realize money while printed by the government earns no value until backed by private enterprise.

You should learn to provide for yourself instead of expecting everyone else to give you that which you have not earned.

While I agree with some of your position on the military, I am sure it is for different reasons.

Quote from: The Boo Man... on February 27, 2012, 09:32:21 PM
Here we go again...

The Ugly Truth About Canadian Health Care
http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_3_canadian_healthcare.html

     Ouch!

Quote from: walkstall on February 28, 2012, 04:54:20 AM


     Ouch!

Funniest gif ever!

And if I may add my own humble contribution, it seems this thread has earned our esteemed liberal friend yet another Glenn Ford award.

Quote from: Just_the_facts_mamm on February 27, 2012, 09:19:13 PM
Canada goes back and forth.

BUT the NDP are now the minority and they are full on socialist, (compared to you crazies).

AND the word "conservative" only goes so far, in a country with managed healthcare and plenty of nanny programs.

Parliamentary system is much better than this presidential thing.

You can out a government with one vote of parliament.

So you have enough pissed off members from what ever party, it's over!

call an election.

over, done in 2 moths, tops.

Folks, I just wanted to point out that one of our resident libs fully admits (let the cat out of the bag) that the socialist system has a nanny state agenda and that is its prime directive, is to rule over every facet of our lives.
The sad thing is, he's fine with letting someone else dictate over his life.
Proof positive that libs are too stupid to function without being told what to do next.

When so-called teachers and so-called school boards choose openly-biased, factually-negligent textbooks, you have the start of our toboggan-run to the bottom.

Kids are not told about the now-unbelievable hardships of our first warriors --- the ones who defeated a mad tyrant against insurmountable odds. Washington scarcely gets mentioned, whereas (if you believe the bias) history obviously began the day African blacks sold other African blacks to the white slavers who get all the blame.

American interests are ALWAYS evil, and corporations are ALWAYS bad. Our military is ALWAYS a bunch of blood-lusting peckerwoods eager to mow down anyone in sight --- just ask the leftists. No cause if worth fighting for, so long as we can bow and scrape to our foreign enemies. Just ask Hollywood. Just ask our NEA.

Kids are brought up to believe that because leftists teach them nothing else. Hollywood, their well-funded emissary, despises the very nation allowing them the freedom to say these vile and anti-American things.

Our next battle is in the classroom. If we act like we're up in Canada, where a father can be strip-searched and his home ransacked without a court order, all for his 4-year-old daughter DRAWING a crayon picture of a gun ---- well, if we act like that, we are in for a very long campaign.

I really can't help that you are all morons.

so, none of you drones have any stories of the insurance company, here in the US, that has cut them off from health care?
They killed my neighbor, just last year.

Insurance companies deny coverage due to a loopholes in the policy?

people who are sentenced to death because they have reached the limit of their payout?
The US healthcare system is FAR from perfect!

Quote
Barzelai says physicians in Canada earn a good living and aren't faced with the same administrative hassles that American doctors gripe about. "Medical costs here are half of what medical costs in the States are," he says. "At the same time, our infant mortality is lower, our life expectancy is longer, our rates of obesity are a lot less. So there's got to be some positive aspects of living in Canada and with the Canadian medical system."
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111721651

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/08/how-canadians-feel-about-their-health-care-wait-times-and-spending/

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2009/07/21/72229/poll-canadians-like-their-health.html

Canadians live longer, have a lower infant death rate than the US.

The US is currently 34th in the world in infant mortality!

ie.  33 countries have better health care than the US!

Something to be proud of for "the greatest country on earth"

The Canadian system is not perfect but the US system is
RETARDED.

Not to mention that the US spends double per capita, than any other industrialized country and we DON'T insure 40 million of us.

You fools defend the most fucked up and expensive system of health care, that does NOT delivers the 33rd BEST healthcare in the world.

WOW, makes you proud to live in the US, where I have the right to die in the streets!

There are Dozens of countries with longer life expectancy and healthier people and socialized medicine.
 
explain that?

Can't answer that question about that kid's drawing, can you, gutless wonder? What's this been, my sixth or seven time watching you dance away from the single most egregious flaw your nation now endures, entirely by its own making and without the usual Canadian mantra that the U.S. somehow tricked you into it.

Quote from: quiller on February 29, 2012, 02:06:47 PM
Can't answer that question about that kid's drawing, can you, gutless wonder? What's this been, my sixth or seven time watching you dance away from the single most egregious flaw your nation now endures, entirely by its own making and without the usual Canadian mantra that the U.S. somehow tricked you into it.

what the F are you trying to say?

The US tricked Canada into WHAT?

have your care giver type it for you.

your meds are messing up you ability to communicate.

Quote from: Just_the_facts_mamm on February 29, 2012, 01:52:57 PM
I really can't help that you are all morons.

First you should help yourself.

Quoteso, none of you drones have any stories of the insurance company, here in the US, that has cut them off from health care?

There are plenty but none of us are denying insurance companies have and do drop people to save money.

QuoteThey killed my neighbor, just last year.

How convenient

QuoteInsurance companies deny coverage due to a loopholes in the policy?

They are called preexisting conditions and that is legal and moral.

Quotepeople who are sentenced to death because they have reached the limit of their payout?

Specifics please.

QuoteThe US healthcare system is FAR from perfect!

Thank you Captain Obvious. No one here has said otherwise.

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/08/how-canadians-feel-about-their-health-care-wait-times-and-spending/

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2009/07/21/72229/poll-canadians-like-their-health.html

QuoteCanadians live longer,

By 2.4 years

Quotehave a lower infant death rate than the US.

it's called infant mortality rate and Canada has 1.22 lower rate than the US. That is negligible.

QuoteThe US is currently 34th in the world in infant mortality!

No. That would be Monaco. The US is 6.26 per 1000 babies.

Quoteie.  33 countries have better health care than the US!

Sorry. You cannot base the quality of healthcare based on two issues.

QuoteSomething to be proud of for "the greatest country on earth"

We we welcome the tens of thousands of Canadians that come to the US for medical treatment

QuoteThe Canadian system is not perfect but the US system is

QuoteRETARDED.

LOL! Is that a technical term? retarded?

QuoteNot to mention that the US spends double per capita, than any other industrialized country and we DON'T insure 40 million of us.

You forgot to factor in the percentage of US citizens that opt to not carry insurance.

QuoteYou fools defend the most fucked up and expensive system of health care, that does NOT delivers the 33rd BEST healthcare in the world.

Yet YOU emmigrated here. That makes YOU a moron

QuoteWOW, makes you proud to live in the US, where I have the right to die in the streets!

people do not die in the streets because no one is turned away from treatment. That is why illegal immigrants always go to the ER.

QuoteThere are Dozens of countries with longer life expectancy and healthier people and socialized medicine.
 
explain that?

Explain it? Sure that is easy. these countries have a third of the population we have. Aside from that they all have progressive tax systems where everybody pays something. In the US you liberal idiots refuse to let 50 percent of the country pay income tax so my liberal friend take the amount of people that would have to be covered and the percentage of people that pay into the system and you can easily see why it will never work.

I noticed that you trash the US constantly yet you live here.

Hypocrite.

Quote from: Just_the_facts_mamm on February 29, 2012, 02:14:51 PM
what the F are you trying to say?

The US tricked Canada into WHAT?

have your care giver type it for you.

your meds are messing up you ability to communicate.

I am directly saying you refuse to discuss that unlawful strip-search and illegal home-search, all because a 4-year-old girl drew a PICTURE of a gun. You repeatedly have avoided answering my request to discuss it, and it's high time you explained why you cannot do so.