What we need is a little competition in the health care market. Look at dentistry , there is one on every corner and they are very nice and polite , treating us as clients not numbers. Same thing for Chiropractors.
Why don’t we let the doctors loose to earn as much as they want and suport those patients who need that while the rest can shop around for private inuyrance.
That is were the debate should begin.

Quite simply, there is a bureaucracy that has entrenched itself INTO the Health Care System that don’t have to be accountable. Until Canadians demand more tax money credits for chosing ‘good’ life styles (vitamins, exercise clubs, purchasing heart pressure monitors, etc.) our health care system continues to be a “drug” care system. Hence tax deductions if you purchased ‘drugs’ - pharmaceutical of course. That is why it is failing. Europe (esp Germany), Britain, Australia, CHina, Japan to name a few are doing more in preventative and less costly medicare than Canada. They are ahead of Canada in every way - even the USA.

In Calgary, 42 General Practioners are scheduled to leave the system over the next year. Why? They can’t keep up with the overhead costs that are dramitically rising here. With private health insurance and a proper payment schedule we might not be losing this talent pool. The Alberta gov’t still hasn’t got the guts to move to a parallel system except for the privileged few such as MLA’s police,fire and highly paid sports figures. The rest of the peasants can wait. Sound like Russia. Yes!

A Liberal party member of my acquaintance during the last election mentioned to me that he was a hospital management consultant, and in his opinion hospitals were black holes into which money is poured with very little to show for it. This from a member of the party that supports exclusive state-run medicare with religious fervor. Anyone who has ever taken Economics 101 will realize that organizations that don’t have to account for their expenditure to anyone will develop enormous bureaucracies that will consume more and more funding with less and less to show for it. You can pour all the money you like into an exclusive state run medicare system and the result will always be the same - less and less output for more and more funding.

It should be clear to Canadians that our public monopely on health has failed. We must now look at ways to combine it with the private sector as has worked successfully in other jurisdictions. The far left should give up the fight to protect union workers in favour of the helth of our population.

THE GOV. SHOULD ALLOW DOCTOR`S AND ALL HEALTH CARE
WORKERS TO FILE TAX RETURN`S AS ANY OTHER CORPORATION.
ALLOW THEM TO DO THAT AND IT WOULD BE A STEP IN THE
RIGHT DIRECTION.

Jordan smith is right. The U.S. has been used as a stalking horse by those who don’t want to critically examine healthcare in Canada. The appropriate models are in Europe where access is universal and quick, cost expressed as a % of GDP is much lower and quality is fine. The key is real competition and real choices for users.

When it comes to medicare, politicians only defend the status quo. At least Mike Harris as premier in Ontario tried to do something; right or wrong.

Defending the status quo is all politicians do when it comes to medicare. For decades, nobody made any attempt to fix medicar because it’s a hot button with most people, believing it’s free. At least Former Ontario Premier Harris made an attempt to solve the problem here in Ontario. Obviously, the quo has no more status.

As long as public health care is in a mess, that will be the political straw man in every election. Why would politicians fix it and have to talk about their records on everything else at election time?

Everybody has an answer for this medical problem except this answer.
When healthcare began, all the medics did not think too much of the new system of being paid by a provincial government bureaucracy instead of by their patients. Doctors and more important hospital managers have learned to manipulate the system to their benefit. The many billions of tax dollars that Ottawa invests with the operators of the medical system is not producing a dividend for joe public.
I believe Canada needs to prohibit provincial medical associations from regulating the enrolment of individuals who want to enter the medical field. Our universities are not allowed to take all the people who want a medical career. Next the provinces must allow doctors to charge patients directly.
Once citizens realize the cost of medical services maybe then those who have been abusing the system through taking drugs, smoking, drinking alcohol and generally remaining in a state of poor physical condition will have to adjust their life style.

An honest debate on Health care? You must be kidding. The bureaucrats, unionist, Doctors, Administrators and politicians are all doing very well so whats the problem? patients have to just wait their turn even if they die waiting.

Kill the monopoly in the courts, then hammer it into the cold damp ground where evil bad ideas belong!
Here is a link that shows a start in that direction.
http://www.canadianconstitutionfoundation.ca/main/page.php?page_id=1
John

2 countries in the world ban private health care,North Korea and Canada - we keep strange bedfellows!Could it be our doctors are underpaid? - I recieve 10% less/fee allowing for inflation than I did in 1994.If you think doctors are paid enough then go to your gas station and demand that you get a full tank for 65c/litre as that is what you think is the fair price.!

It should be the right of any Canadian to go to any doctor or hospitol and
spend his or her own money to get repairs done to their own body.
Big civil service unions are the main problem. They are the real power in
this near communist country.
It is ridiculous that we can use our own money to pay lawyers, dentists,
mechanics, plumbers, etc etc but we can’t spend our tax paid savings to
what matters most . Real sick and getting sicker.

Sickness is the biggest business in the world. As long as money keeps flowing in to the drug cartels, the so-called research for cures which never happen will continue. People have to be responsible for their own health and until that happens medicare will just keep costing more and more. I think the medicare system should be ‘user pay’. People who look after their own health and don’t use the system should be rewarded by not having to pay premiums. Educating the public about preventative medicine willl cut costs more than anything else.

I was on the local health board for 10 years- when we first ‘changed’ our medical system-93-03– In that time I made 3 trips into North Dakota for a bone density test for my wife who suffers from osteoperosis. I ‘discussed’(??) the possibilitiy of private clinics here- “ABSOLUTILY NOT”! was my reply. I suggested keeping B.D.,MRI,Kts,and ultra sound machines running 24 hrs. a day,I said I would rather make a trip to Saskatoon or Regina in the middle of the night- and pay for it-that spend the $$$ across the border. (We were ‘offered’ a bone density in 18/24 months.) “Oh we can’t have a two teired system”, I was told. We already have a two teired - Bernard Coady(above) said it right!
If we had private clinics the people that are now going to B.C,Alta,Man.USA. could keep the money at home.

Politicians are genetically programmed to avoid honest debate

We must pay for services rendered!We can’t afford our presnt health system and many people think it’s free!!Fees for services must be initiated and private health care must be endorsed! The more money we shovel into the present system results in bigger bureaucracy and government.We don’t want a free lunch and would only apprecite knowing what we’re getting for our money.

We are told that we spend as much per capita on health care as most OCED countries and yet we are the one with the longest wait times, we must be doing something wrong. Let’s recognize that whoever tries to alter the status quo is making himself a lightning rod for criticism and everyone else will just line up against him for political gain. Jack Layton will make all these fancy speeches about two tiered health care. He says if Olivia were to become ill he would abide by the system and get in line. Frankly I would not! I would be heading over to the Mayo clinic or someplace where they don’t have any more than a one week wait for treatment. Our system doesn’t need tweaking. It doesn’t need more money. It penalizes doctors with the opt out system. Like the other folks who have commented before me: we can spend money on dentists, vets, mechanics, plumbers, electricians, carpenters, hairdressers, florists, you name it. But when it comes to doctors we have a rationed system to presumably make sure everyone gets a little bit. Universal health care we call it, universally bad. Where have we heard all this before? In the communist economies prior to the 1988 downfall of the iron curtain they tried such a system of command economy. Everyone was entitled to a rationed amount of food. As we all know now it was never enough and everyone operated in a two tier economy: the white market and the black market. You had to because it was impossible to survive on the official rations that the government set. How pitiful that our medical system has become like this. Kiefer Sutherland comes up and sticks his nose into our business which he doesn’t have to live under. Defending the mutated system that Tommy Douglas established is the source of our problems with wait times for medical treatment. Friends of Medicare: bah humbug! a totally misguided group that keeps our medical system in the dark ages. It’s a good thing I live 5 hours drive from being able to access American style health care. There is no question of the juvenile notion of jumping the queue. That should not even be a consideration. In a rationed medical system the people who need to be at the front of the line have to wait in line. Someone is dying but we deny them the necessity of queue jumping because other people were in line first. It is a ridiculous policy. Let’s look at other world jurisdictions and see if we can reach and all party solution. However in the 5-party political arena it is every man for himself and whoever takes the first step will be devoured by the rest taking the opposite side. Democracy has its good sides but this is a case of paralysis because guys like Jack Layton will seize any political opportunity he can. He and his Friends of medicare are responsible for the health care fiasco in this country. His party is not the party that Tommy Douglas founded. It has morphed into a monstrosity that is holding the country back from health care reform. People get with it! We need reform and we do not have to have waiting lists a mile long. This is the 21st century. We have the technology. We need to get over the notion that just because someone jumps the queue that the rest of us will receive inferior health care. I repeat if I or my family had a need for medical treatment that requires a lengthy wait I would not hesitate to abandon our medical system to get timely care, certainly not in the archaic Canadian that everyone thinks is so great compared to the Yanks. I just hope that no one in my family needs medical care but if we did, we might end up going elsewhere supporting some other medical system with an infusion of money instead of our own.

The basic trouble with our healthcare “system” is that it is essentially an insurance scheme without a deductable. Can you imagine the government taking on an automobile insurance scheme without a deductable? Everyody and his dog would be running to the bodyshop for every little scratch or minimal dent inflicted by another car owner’s door and have the government pay for it under the guise that it is “free” and every citizen has the “right” to a good looking unblemished car no matter how destructive his or her driving habits are. There would be not enough repairshops and personnel to do the work and waitlists would be long to get everything fixed and polished and looking like new all the time. The cost would be astronomical to the taxpayer, the repairmen and their union reasonably content and yet no politician would have the courage to end the insanity of “free” car repairs.. Sounds familiar?

Having practised medicine in both Canada & New Zealand and seeing “universal” healthcare in Britain & Europe, it is clear that no “universal” system works. They are all “black holes” which suck up tax money much of which is used to pay bureaucrats & managers who do nothing, produce nothing and deliver not one iota of health care to anyone or his dog. They all offer lowest common denominator level of care which is rationed and results in denial of excellent and timely care. The huge advantage in New Zealand & Australia is the existence of a parallel private system for which productive citizens can purchase private insurance to avoid deterioration or death while on a public system waiting list.
The perfect system would mesh a public and private system wherein wasted time, space, facilities and professional skills would dovetail within a bimodal private/public facility to reward excellence, efficiency, skill, and hard work.