Private sector offers health-care hope
As you curse the family doctor shortage, consider the following list of health professionals: Dentists, optometrists, chiropractors, physiotherapists, massage therapists, dental hygienists, naturopaths, acupuncturists, pharmacists, psychologists, occupational therapists, opticians, audiologists and dieticians. I could go on. None of these is in short supply. All practise mostly outside of the publicly funded health-care system.
Now for a shorter list: Physicians, nurses, operating-room hours, hospital beds, medical diagnostic tests. All are in short supply, all are publicly funded under B.C.’s Medical Services Plan pursuant to the Canada Health Act.
In each case, the government (with help from professional associations), rather than market forces, controls the sum of money made available to spend on these medical services. The government, in other words, controls the supply.
MSP does its job well when one is seriously ill or injured, and in managing most chronic conditions. You won’t become impoverished by accessing essential medical care in Canada.
Yet MSP is seriously out of step with the rest of society. If I have the means, I can buy a house, a car, good food, clothing, a higher education, entertainment or take a nice vacation.
Give me a hernia or a bum hip, on the other hand, and my money becomes suddenly worthless. The medical services might be there; I just can’t purchase them.
Medicare, as expected, has been a great leveller in society — but, lately, has also become a great spoiler.
In this observation, I am not concerned with the very wealthy among us. They usually find a way to get what they want. My focus is the vast majority of us situated between the very wealthy and the very poor.
Normally, a shortage of some good or service will lead to one or a combination of three results: increased supply, reduced demand, or rationing. Health care is already rationed, and reduced demand is not likely.
It’s time to allow and encourage the private sector to provide elective surgeries and also to train health-care professionals, including doctors and nurses. This could even be done offshore to Canadian standards. We need to greatly increase the supply using innovative ideas and new sources of private-sector funding.
Brian Mason
Victoria
Please, make a choice that gives us doctors
As the Economist magazine is fond of saying, “governing is about choosing.” Governing is about choosing how to spend the resources they have to solve the problems we care about.
But choosing means risk to a government. Choosing risks that the choices government makes don’t work, are unpopular, or both and both will cost votes.
If the government can get more money instead, they don’t have to choose how to use the resources they already have to solve problems.
If they get more money, they can solve problems without risking votes. This is obviously preferred by any government because the first priority is to get re-elected.
Here’s where Premier John Horgan loses sight of his electorate: more money from the federal government still comes from my shrinking paycheque.
Sure it may solve the problem, but not because our provincial government had to make any hard choices with the resources they already have. Maybe different or better choices are the right path?
Horgan can fairly whine that the health-care music stopped and his government is standing without a chair.
Governing is about choosing. Health care is provincial. We don’t care about the fun games you’ve been playing with the feds.
We need family doctors now.
Stephen Ison
Victoria
Make those drug dealers responsible for deaths
Why aren’t drug sellers taking some responsibility for the horrendous numbers of deaths from a toxic drug supply? Surely they know what they are selling is killing people.
Our governments have been far too slow to produce a safe supply of drugs. Perhaps if we held the drug dealers criminally responsible for the deaths, something might change.
This might require a change to the Criminal Code. It is clear that whatever we are doing right now is not working and we need urgent action, not more talk.
John Miller
James Bay
Americans fighting for a better future
Re: “A cycling journey, Uvalde, and Canada’s future,” commentary, July 9.
Unfortunately, cyclist Paul Bucci witnessed the worst of America, and hopefully the best that is not in this commentary. I am just as concerned and perplexed by the people, politicians and governments of my country.
We northerners joke about moving to Canada. But that isn’t the solution. So ironically I find myself in a fight that I didn’t provoke to save our country and our planet.
Hope is not the answer; however, it helps when we have to confront so much anger.
Michelle Zelkowitz
Elizabethtown, New York
Rational solutions have full-time support
Re: “Time for the silent majority to stand up for Canada,” commentary, July 16.
I support the powerful commentary on the dangers of cultural contamination from our huge, proximal, dysfunctional neighbour to the south.
A frightening example is last winter’s freedom convoy in our national capital, which attempted to convince Canadians that essential public-health measures in managing the pandemic were a draconian invasion of some unspecified individual liberties.
This cultural contamination puts us in danger of pulling ourselves apart with fumbling attempts to address non-problems using unsuitable examples from elsewhere. As a sometime member of the silent majority, please put me down as a full-time supporter of rational solutions for Canada’s real problems.
Tom Wood
Victoria
Speed limits won’t help without enforcement
Speed limits can be changed — lowered — with no apparent effect.
Gorge Road is a 40 km/h zone. Good luck finding anyone going that speed. People don’t care and, in truth, the police are not enforcing it and if they did, they’d be vilified.
Why bother lowering the speed limit? Just more things most people (it seems to me) ignore.
Scott Adams
Victoria
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