Private Services is Healthy for Canada

In a past article titled 'Medical association seems to be tilting to private care’ Gazette columnist Janet Bagnall posits weary selective arguments in her defense of the public health system. She closes her article with a curious line. “…it (the Canadian Medical Association) owes Canadians the most accurate and relevant information available.”

If only she'd follow her own advice.

Unfortunately, I could not post the original article here because it was reserved for members of the online Gazette. So, dear friends, you'll have to take my word for it.

Let's get one thing straight. No one who advocates regulated private health is advocating the dismantling of the public health system. The problem with articles such as these is that it presupposes that the arrival of private health is the first step to "free" removing universal coverage. Worse, it seeks to maintain the usual egalitarian and impractical practice of preventing people from paying for services out of free will. It's a matter of choice. To deny it is anti-democratic at its roots.

What Ms. Bagnall won't tell you is that the inflexible and archaic Canadian public health system is not a model followed by anyone. What is happening is that citizens no longer feel they are getting the services they deserve relative to what they pay into the system. There is a backlash and the media is challenging the will of some citizens.

The last line of her article (mentioned in the first paragraph of this post) was curious because it obviously (and arrogantly) infers that it presents accurate information. All it does is defend a dogmatic partisan position. The reality is that the gap between public health as an ideal and public health as an efficient and functional institution offering timely and premium care has widened. It's to the point that there is now a health care revolution under way. Ms. Bagnall can deny this all she wants but she'll be holding the bag in her hands. It is pointless to seek out boogeymen such as Dr. Brian Day and paint them as enemies of the public health system.

Furthermore, the author claims to be disclosing honest facts but quoting statistics by the "left tilting" American Prospect only brings to question the motives of the piece itself.

It goes on with the usual and misguided "private is evil" tone prevalent among defenders of the public health system. What this suggests is that Ms. Bagnall is willing to put up with poor services and political games all in the name of medical ideology. Anyone who has been through the system should know that it, ironically (given that universal care is predicated on collective compassion), lacks compassion. It's one gigantic uncaring runaway monstrosity.

Canadians do indeed deserve accurate information as well as an enhanced and reinvented public health system that reflects the conditions of the 21st century. However, the article only reinforces why selling health as a core value in this country can be problematic. As such, it detracts people from confronting the severity of the problem. Putting the fear into people is not going to improve the system.

Let's suppose that Ms. Bagnall gets her wish and private care goes away. Where does that leave us? With the same problem. A problem that will never be solved because we have politicized health. This country - which may as well be 10 different countries at this point - absurdly has a public system that operates at 10 different speeds with no effective core to govern it.

Ms. Bagnall presents readers with the specious assertion that “there was no wait for emergency surgeries”. Forget stats, based on our own personal experiences we know this statement to be false.

And what’s an article about health care - the leitmotif of public health protectors - without taking a parting shot at the American medical system? We should pay closer attention to our own problems and not measure ourselves constantly with a misunderstood American system.

Gosh, it's become tiresome hasn't it? Enough already.

What this country needs, assuming we are truly progressive, is a meaningful debate; not middling polemics. Typical ‘blame games’ that rehash old political wounds and present selective statistics are plainly counter-productive.