Throwing More Money At A Broken Healthcare Model Is Not The Answer

Without more private delivery and market-driven innovation, the Canadian healthcare system will continue to fall apart.

Predictably, the more the socialized healthcare system fails, the more we hear calls to throw more and more money at it.

Despite a larger and larger percentage of GDP going towards healthcare, and despite countless governments increasing funding at a rate far exceeding economic growth (even including inflation), the system continues to fall far short of expectations.

The system is easily overwhelmed, with the latest crisis being the surge in children with Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV), which is straining the system in many parts of the country.

Just as we saw during the pandemic, the failure of the socialized system is being used as a ‘justification’ for more restrictions on freedom.

It’s a sad irony:

The more a system based on centralized government and the absence of choice fails, the more many on the left call for more centralization and more restrictions on free choice.

But that won’t work.

We can’t keep throwing more money at a system that has failed.

Instead, what is needed is more privatization.

Privatization & universal access?

Defenders of the broken healthcare status quo try to rhetorically prop up the failing system by conflating two things:

Delivery, and access.

Healthcare can be delivered privately, while still be universally accessible.

By contrast, in Canada we currently have socialized delivery of healthcare that is not universally accessible.

Oh sure, in theory it’s ‘universal,’ but when a system crumbles and people have to wait and wait and wait and still don’t get treatment, you can’t claim it’s universally accessible.

Many of the countries with the best healthcare system deliver care through a mix of public and private hospitals/clinics, have a large role for the private sector, and still preserve universal access.

If someone goes to a private hospital, they ‘pay’ by presenting their government health card, and the government (taxpayers) pay the bill.

Those public-private systems manage to combine the strength of private sector competition, efficiency, and innovation, with access that is available to all.

This is the type of system Canada will end up with.

It is inevitable.

The question now is whether we will quickly move beyond the failed socialist system, or whether we will remain mired in poor healthcare for years and years until change is completely unavoidable.

Spencer Fernando

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