By Chris Beach

Northern View

Northern View – How to save our health care system

Feb 1, 2023 | 4:17 PM

It seems there is an endless debate about the problems facing our health care system and how to improve it – or at least maintain it – along with the perennial requests from the provinces for more federal healthcare funding.

Clearly there is not one solution that’s going to overcome all the current challenges. A few provinces in Canada are as we speak experimenting with contracting out private clinics to perform surgeries and cut into the huge backlogs and waiting lists.

While the verdict is still out, you have to give these provinces credit for at least trying something different and being proactive – because doing nothing is only maintaining the status quo which appears to be unsustainable.

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Many observers assume that more private healthcare means a U.S. style system, but this is simply not true. There are 200 other countries in the world, and some of them have arguably superior health care than we have.

At a minimum there are parts of other systems – public or private – that we could try to emulate to improve our own.

Secondly, our healthcare system is not completely public like many Canadians believe – it’s still roughly 30% privately funded. Prescriptions, vision and dental care are still paid out of pocket or by your private or employee healthcare insurance. Another idea is more user fees for those able to afford them.

I lived in a country where we paid $3 at the time for my son to see a pediatrician, and we paid an extra $10 to see a specialist if necessary – but we got in that very same day, within a few hours – we didn’t have to wait weeks or months or years for that appointment.

If we adopted user fees like this, we could still ensure universal access but implement an income means test so lower income families would not have to pay. While this may not be ideal, many British Columbians are realizing we now need to turn to imperfect solutions to save our health care system.

We don’t have to become a more American system, but rather look all over the world to see where wait times are shorter, service is better, and systems are more efficient and cost-effective.

Doing the same thing we’ve always done, piling on more money without significant, fundamental change, is not going to fix a system that has been teetering on the edge for years and only headed in the wrong direction.

Editors note: The views expressed in this column do not necessarily represent the views of Pattison Media.