Re: ‘We need better ways to deliver health care’ (PQB News, July 20)
Canada spends more than $308 billion on health care ($8,000/person) these days so it could hardly be regarded as “free” as your article states.
It is in fact one of the most expensive systems in the developed world along with the distinction of being one of the least efficient. And why is that?
Bureaucracy and the politicization of everything. COVID proved this in spades. Hospitals are chronically understaffed because, unlike private enterprise, government entities are slow-moving and, because they are spending taxpayer money (i.e. not their own) they are relatively unconcerned at the efficiency of how dollars are spent.
COVID did not overwhelm our hospitals, it just showed how broken our system was in the first place.
Staffing? How about our governments get over their petty vendetta against those who chose to live by their Charter rights and freedoms (bodily autonomy and all that) and give the nurses, doctors and medical staff (900 in B.C. alone) their jobs back?
Most developed nations have some mixture of private and state-run health care because they realize that the state is not good at running anything but still wants to control everything.
Private enterprise (what’s with the disdain for making money in health care?) has proven to be highly creative and capable of coming up with great solutions with reasonable costs.
Until we realize that the government has no business being in the medical business we will continue to have long lines, doctor and nurse shortages, quotas for surgeries and overpaid bureaucrats.
Universal health care is a laudable goal but it will never be achieved by the state.
Mike Groenewold
Parksville
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