Misplaced Pride? — 73% of Canadians Proud of Universal Healthcare

Canadian Pride

Universal healthcare made the top of a list of things identified as a very important source of personal or collective Canadian Pride.

The Association for Canadian Studies conducted a survey from June 28 to July 1, 2019.

The survey shows that 73% of Canadians found personal or collective pride in universal healthcare, 70% in the Canadian passport, 67% in the Canadian Flag, and 65% found pride in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The National Anthem and the Armed Forces also won more than 50% support.

Presentism

Things that impact the present and affect people personally ranked higher than concepts or historical events.

The 1867 Confederation Agreements won only 37% support and the Monarchy 15%. But without the British North America Act, Canada and universal healthcare would not exist. Something different than Canada would exist instead.

Low support for history runs though every social issue. Dreams about something different divide voters into two camps.

Some see history as an embarrassment. History limits our present greatness. We’d be better off forgetting it.

While others value the past because they appreciate the present. They do not see the past as perfect, but they love the past because it brought us the present.

Misplaced Pride?

Only 4% of Canadians need an acute care hospital bed in any given year. Most people never experience healthcare beyond twisted ankles and prescription refills.

Waiting for care, for most people, means a few hours in a clinic or lab. Vulnerable patients who wait two years, or longer, with pain and disability represent a much smaller cohort. They are older with less to lose financially, through waiting, and more gratitude for any care they get.

Study after study ranks Canadian health care below most other OECD countries. We outperform many poor, undeveloped nations, but this is surely not a cause for pride.

Given all that we spend, Canadian universal healthcare is an embarrassment for the thousands of patients we leave in hallways and who suffer permanent disability from egregious wait times.

Medicare in the 1970s gave Canadians a legitimate reason to be proud. We had far more hospital beds than we needed and fewer sick people who needed them. Government poured money into Medicare between 1968 and 1976 to make the program stick.

But in 1977, the first PM Trudeau grounded the gravy train.

The Established Programs Financing Act (1977) stopped the federal blank cheques that used to cover 50% of whatever the provinces felt like spending. The Feds would only hand out block grants in the future.

Growth and bloat from provincial election promises were now the responsibility of the provincial politicians who campaigned on promises in the first place.

Having run out of other people’s money, the provinces cut services, closed beds, and slashed payments to doctors and nurses. The dream ended, replaced with a painful reality.

The provincial insurance system that birthed Medicare, in the early 1970s, is nothing like the centrally controlled, rationed, managed care entitlement program that politicians play football with today.

But the afterglow remains. Canadians still vote for Medicare. Some modern politicians admit that “It’s a myth that Canada has best health care system in the world”, but most stay silent. Homage wins more votes than honesty.

Real Pride

Our fifty-year experiment with single payer, government-run universal health care makes Canada a world expert on wait times. All this evidence should make an irrefutable case for substantive change.

Canada could have universal healthcare without having government run healthcare. That means every single Canadian — rich or poor, young or old, new or old Canadian — could get care without resorting to a government run system.

We can also have first dollar coverage (no cash for care) without government controlling the whole system, if that’s what Canadians wanted.

We could even have a government run, tax funded, single payer path for some kinds of care that ran alongside a more liberal system offering choice. Again, choice does not have to mean cash payment.  We could easily offer multiple insurance options that give every single Canadian choice, including subsidized premiums for those who cannot afford to pay personally for any of the options.

There are so many ways to offer universal healthcare. Only fear prevents us from improving our system: fear sold by ideologues, collectivists, and all the rent-seekers who currently get fat at the single payer trough.

This latest survey from the Association for Canadian Studies shows that we need to get much more honest about Medicare. Our most vulnerable Canadians deserve better. Let’s build them something to be truly proud of again.

Photo credit: MontrealGazette.com

 

15 thoughts on “Misplaced Pride? — 73% of Canadians Proud of Universal Healthcare”

  1. Ontario’s docs should have insisted on a parallel private insurance based separate system when ohip was introduced in 1970 (like the UK did when introducing the NHS).
    The UK system (as most European systems)allows some choice for both patients and providers which is essential in a healthy system.
    Our ‘Canadian’ system is in a dark place…..a marked gap between perception and reality,as indicated in this survey.Hard to change any social program once instituted (as Ford is discovering),so the future is bleak …. spiralling reduction in quality with increasing wait times.
    Good luck young docs …. it’s too bad physician ‘leadership’ in 1970 failed you and ultimately,patients.

    1. Each generation of medical leadership at both the Federal and Provincial levels since the 70’s made their negative contribution …accelerating in 2012 where Ontario is concerned.

      The main cause of crisis within the Canadian health care system is the result of solutions to previous problems which were themselves the result of prior solutions to previous perceived problems…and now the arrogant and highly intelligent but utterly incompetent elitist central planners are at it again.

      I cannot think of one “improvement” concocted by these hubristic central planning types over the last 50 years that was , in fact, an improvement…any supposed two steps forwards ended up as three steps back.

      Those medical practitioners that recall the working functioning Canadian health care system of 50 years ago are fading away fast and are being replaced by generations that believe that it was always thus and that the present is an improvement on the past.

      It isn’t.

      1. Another excellent comment, Andris. People assume the medical industry will disappear if the state stops managing it. We are moving into our 3rd generation of Canadians who have been born knowing nothing other than Medicare. We are held in our Plato’s Cave by fear of losing what we have now.

        1. If the the ministry of health evaporated tomorrow…if all the hospital bureaucracies vanished overnight , all the LHINs etc. ceased to resist …human ingenuity would kick in automatically …the healthcare providers would seize the initiative…those in need of their services and all the supporting structures, industries and organizations would find each other.

          “ Grave yards are full of indispensable people” ( Charles DecGaulle)

    2. Well said, Ramunas.

      Our beloved Beveridge-style system remains unchanged while the land of Beveridge has moved on to a blended system, as you say. Entitlements are almost impossible to change.

      The only alternative to the downward spiral you describe is to hope (and fight) for rationality. It makes no sense that Canada remains resolute in refusing to consider a blended approach. We woke up and got rid of national monopolies in telephone and air travel long ago. We need to develop before the real baby boomer crunch hits.

      “Good luck young docs…” indeed.

      Thanks for posting!

  2. Please see my very recent articles in the Vancouver Sun and Ottawa Citizen. I showed how Dr. Eric Hoskins’ national pharmacare proposal violates several of the principles of medicare,. He even states, ” The council recommends the federal government enshrine the principles and national standards of pharmacare in federal legislation separate and distinct from the Canada Health Act. We are also concerned that amending the Canada Health Act might lead to pressure to make other changes.” PRECISELY!!

    1. Good linkage, Dr. Shaver. Feel free to post the links. (There will be a delay in having them go live as any post with links requires approval.)

      Thanks for all your prolific advocacy!

      Cheers

  3. The CHA and Canadian Medicare much resemble the Soviet Constitution….absolutely perfect on paper…extremely imperfect in practice.

    A Soviet citizen who attempted to point to the clauses within the Soviet constitution that safeguarded the citizen’s rights were placed in insane asylums for being crazy enough to believe that the words written in the Soviet Constitution should be applied.

    Similarly the CHA has never been respected in its entirety by any provincial or Federal government , in particular where the rights of the medical profession are concerned…those who attempted to challenge the numerous violations are driven crazy by the Byzantine legal labyrinths and hurdles placed before them to prevent their application.

    The increasing strident volume of the Canadian governments / establishment/ elitist propaganda campaign propagating the self evident lie that the Canadian health care system is the “ best in the world” has been increasingly noticeable in recent months even as the reality deteriorates….an inverse relationship increasing volume with decreasing effectiveness and efficiency.

    The propagandists declare that all that is needed to reach health care nirvana is a statist tweak here, a collectivist tweak there…repackaged “ brilliant and bold” unworkable schemes that remain within the prevailing dysfunctional paradigm are churned out with great fanfare …it is notable that within the medical community’s own media that many a person that points out the reality of the nakedness of the Canadian Medicare emperor is blackballed and essentially silenced.

    Diversity of opinion is not tolerated.

    1. I can’t argue with this, Andris.

      Former Ministers of Health have made it their mission to defend the status quo, or add “statist tweak(s)” as you say. We need a crowd of people calling for calm, rational debate big enough to make marginalization and silencing impossible. The crowd already exists in the medical community.

      Dr. Brian Day’s lecture for the Adam Linton lunch at OMA spring council brought out the largest crowd I have ever seen in almost 20 years of council meetings. He got a sustained and energetic standing ovation. Doctors know we need change. Most doctors admit it. A few vocal ideologues refuse to entertain anything other that what they’ve always known. It is shameful.

      Thanks again for reading and posting a comment.

      1. Ian McWhinney, one of the father of modern family medicine arrived with me from the British National health care mothership to London Ontario’s Victoria hospital in 1968…a year or so later Linton arrived.

        Those were interesting days with vigorous conversations in the doctors’ lounges….Mc Whitnney was the more mystical of the two.

        I doubt that neither had the slightest idea that the Canadian health care system would end up in this shambolic ordain knot 50 years later.

    1. Thanks Matt! Great link. I hope everyone takes a chance to read it. Cheers

  5. Canadians who think the medical system is great in large part have never been sick and really don’t give it much thought in real terms until they do get sick. Canadians also get offended of any criticism of the medical system because they feel it’s unpatriotic to criticize it.

  6. Public health care is the key to Canada’s stagnation.

    It represents the tipping point where our country began the irresistible swing towards full-on “social democracy”.

    It is first because of the huge share of GDP represented by this industry, but also because it provided a method of starting up other government programs, because people were ALWAYS ready to pay more for health care. And the government simply kept transferring that money into other initiatives.

    Care gets worse ; they ask the taxpayer to make a greater effort ; the funds are bureaucratically embezzled ; and the dance starts again.

    Attacking health care in Canada will be the mother of all battles.

    Best,
    http://www.euthanasiediscussion.net/

    Gordon Friesen

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