12 months in, health-care system still can't provide Canadians with timely care while dealing with COVID-19
It has been a year since the world was brought to its knees by a microscopic particle known as COVID-19. Since then, the virus has taken the lives of more than 22,000 Canadians and infected another 940,000. But those are just the numbers that show up on media screens and government paperwork. The real human…
Here’s what needs to be done
The pandemic has presented us with many new difficulties that we’re struggling to manage. It has also pushed to the forefront some long-standing challenges that we’ve not dealt with in the past and have become even more problematic in the time of COVID-19. One ongoing problem that the pandemic has made much more serious and…
Patients in Canada face the longest wait time for elective surgery on record
By Bacchus Barua and Mackenzie Moir The Fraser Institute As we continue our battle against COVID-19, another separate health-care crisis rages on. Wait times. Patients in Canada face the longest wait time for elective surgery on record – 22.6 weeks (between referral from a family doctor to receipt of medically necessary treatment). Of course, the…
The N.S. Health Authority lets an inefficient telephone system act as an important barrier to timely care
If there’s any way to inconvenience patients and embrace antiquated methods, the Nova Scotia Health Authority will find it. Ask the sick patients who are trying to arrange appointments with specialists, or for imaging tests or for blood work. Most enterprises try to encourage and support increased consumer access to worthwhile services. Not the Nova…
COVID-19 fallout has revealed a genuine hostility on the part of the young toward the old, especially baby boomers
The Great Plague of 2020 has revealed some interesting things about Western society’s attitudes toward old people. In Italy, the shortage of medical equipment to treat patients suffering from COVID-19 led hospitals to sometimes rule that people over the age of 60 couldn’t be fully treated. That was essentially a death sentence for some pensioners.…
Idyllic descriptions of medicare do not fairly represent the challenging realities that are the day-to-day experiences of many Canadians
As the title suggests, The American Prospect article What Medicare for All Really Looks Like claims to describe the realities of Canadian medicare to our southern neighbours. So, it is both ironic – and disappointing – that a careful reading reveals it to be remarkable only in its unwillingness to examine these realities in any meaningful…
Delta Hospice Society has been locked in a lengthy fight with the health authority and the B.C. government, and has now lost its funding
Directors of a Vancouver-area hospice are considering their legal options after the B.C. government abruptly yanked its funding because it doesn’t permit medical assistance in dying (MAID) on the premises. And an Ottawa lawyer engaged by the Delta Hospice Society says B.C. Health Minister Adrian Dix is simply wrong to claim the facility’s refusal to…
In its sole reliance on government providing first-dollar coverage of medically necessary services, Canada’s health-care system is unique among high-income countries with universal health care. It also offers inferior service as a result. Virtually all high-income countries – including Australia, Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands – allow residents to use private insurance to pay for…
It’s no easy feat in the often-intractable and rigid Canadian health system, but the payoff can be immense for patients and care providers
By Clare Liddy and Erin Keely University of Ottawa It all started when the two of us sat down over a cup of coffee. As a family physician and endocrinologist, we stand on opposite sides of a large chasm called patient wait times, and we both started seeing more and more of our patients swallowed…
The B.C. government’s claim in the court challenge to medicare that waiting lists don’t harm patients is nothing short of ridiculous
After years of political debate and public frustration, it seems the future of Canadian health care may now depend on the outcome of a decade-long legal battle that’s now in the hands of a B.C. Supreme Court justice. The plaintiffs are Dr. Brian Day, the private Cambie Surgery Centre and four British Columbians who have…