Healthcare And Pipelines Are The Front Lines of Canada's Struggle To Stay United

Breaking: Ottawa and Alberta have reached a memorandum of understanding that paves the way for, among other things,. a new oil pipeline in return for higher carbon taxes.. How’s it doing? B.C. and Quebec both reject the idea. The Liberals former Climate minister resigned his cabinet post.

The most amazing feature of the Mark Carney/Danielle Smith MOU is that both politicians feverishly hope that the deal fails. Carney can tell Quebec that he tried to reason with Smith, and Smith can say she tried to meet the federalists halfway. Failure suits their larger purposes. Carney to fold Canada into Euro climate insanity and Smith into a strong motive for separation.

We’ll have more in. our next column. In trhe meantime, another Alberta initiative on healthcare has stirred up the hornets of single payer.

To paraphrase Winston Churchill, “Canada’s health system is the worst in the world. Except for all the other systems.” If there is anything left that Canadians agree upon it’s that their provincial healthcare plan is a disaster that needs a boatload of new money and the same old class rhetoric about two-tier healthcare.  

Both prescriptions have been tried multiple times since Tommy Douglas made single-payer healthcare a reality. As a result today’s delivery systems are constantly strained to breaking and the money poured in to support it evaporates in red tape and vested interests. 

But suggest that Canada adopt the method of somewhere else and you get back stares. Who does it better? How can we copy that? Crickets. Then ask governments to cut back and create efficiencies. No one wants totell the unions thay are the first to move. As a result, operating rooms sit empty for lack of trained nurses and rationed doctors. The system is all dressed with nowhere to go. And never is heard a discouraging word.

Southpontiac Breaking news! MD frequently mentioned by CBC and Toronto Star adamant that Canadian healthcare system is functioning perfectly and any and all criticism is unwarranted. Canadians are just experiencing healthcare differently.

There are many earnest people trying their best to fit the square peg in the round hole. But so far it has produced a Frankenstein quilt of private clinics in other provinces handling overflows and American hospitals taking tens of thousands of overflows or critical cases. Ontarians travelling to Quebec for knee surgery. Albertans heading to eastern B.C. for hips and shoulders. Nova Scotians going to Boston for back surgery.

To say nothing of the legions of Canadians on waiting lists for terminal cancer or heart problems who, in despair of dying before seeing a socialist in 18-24 months, voyage to Lithuania, India or Mexico to save their lives. Everyone knows a story of a family member or friend surgery shopping. Every Canadian health authority sympathizes. But little solves the problem.

Which has led to predictable grumbling. @Tablesalt13 if the Liberals hadn’t surged immigration over the last 4-5 years and if all of the money spent on refugees and foreign aid was redirected to health care how much shorter would Canada's medical waitlists be?

And if any small progress is made the radical armies opposed to two-tiered healthcare raise a stink in the media, stopping that progress in its tracks. Suggesting public/ private healthcare systems is a quick trip to a Toronto Star editorial and losing your next election. 

Into the impasse Alberta has introduced Bill 11 to create a parallel private–public surgery system that allows surgeons to perform non-urgent procedures privately under set conditions, moving ahead with the premier’s announcement last week.The government says the approach will shorten wait times and help recruit doctors, while critics argue it risks two-tier care. 

The legislation marks a major shift in healthcare reform in Alberta and faces (shock) strong opposition from the NDP which is pairing these reforms with the province’s use of the notwithstanding clause in banning radical trans surgery and medication for minors in the province. 

There are examples of two-tiered healthcare elsewhere in the West. France , Ireland, Denmark, Switzerland and Germany, among others, use a dual-tracked system mixing public and private coverages. Reports FHI, “In the most successful European healthcare systems, e.g., Germany and Switzerland, the federal government handles the PEC risk, via national pools and government subsidies, sparing the burden on individual insurers.” While not perfect it hasn’t produced class warfare. 

The Americans, meanwhile learned to their chagrin with ObamaCare (the Affordable Care Act, that government healthcare is not the answer. The U.S. heath system replaces government accounting with health insurance rationers as the immoveable force. Many Americans were outside this traditional system, paying out-of-pocket. Under the Obama plan everyone would be forced into a plan, like it or not. 

The AFI continues, “ACA has a flawed design. Its architects meant to appeal to the public, promising what the old system could not fully deliver – guaranteed access to affordable health cover and coverage for pre-existing conditions (PECs). But they were wrong about being able to keep your doctor or your old policy if you wanted.

Previously individual policies had to exclude PEC coverage to be financially viable. Yet employer group policies often covered it after a waiting period, but the extra costs were spread over their fellow workers – a real burden on medium and small-sized companies. Under Obamacare, the very high PEC costs are still spread too narrowly – on each of the very few insurers who have agreed to stay as exchange insurers.”

In other words getting a universal system that helps the needy while not degrading treatment is illusory. Alberta is willing to admit that fact. Like agreement on pipelines it will face nothing but headwinds from the diehards (pun intended) who still believe Michael Moore’s fairy tales about a free system in Canada. And will do nothing to bind Canada’s warring factions.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.