Stephen Skivington is the President of Polytrain and the author of a new book called This May Hurt a Bit: Reinventing Canada's Healthcare System. In this episode, he talks about why he wrote the book and why he thinks it s a good idea.
00:03:51.620I find it very, very fascinating because I think you're having a conversation that at least the people in power from all political parties,
00:04:02.760we're all guilty of this, they think we shouldn't be having.
00:04:06.460But you wrote an entire book that not only details the problems with the Canadian healthcare system, but solutions as well.
00:04:17.340But you also have an interesting story about why you wrote the book and what prompted writing the book.
00:04:23.600Well, I've been doing this for probably 24 years, and I think back when I appeared on the old Sun TV with Charles Adler in 2012 was probably what kicked this off.
00:04:35.400In fact, we didn't even have a name for private parallel health.
00:04:38.920We didn't call it hybrid healthcare back then, and that video is still available up on YouTube.
00:04:44.600Now, when I dropped dead about three or four years ago, and I'm in the back of the ambulance, and I said to myself,
00:04:51.440well, if I make it to the hospital and get through this, I'm going to finally write this book.
00:04:54.940So that was sort of the genesis of how I came to put all these thoughts together.
00:05:00.540But we also, I did three sessions with Dr. Min Basseter with his excellent team and simplexity thinking system.
00:05:07.580And what's really great about this system is it helps you identify what the real problem is and then work out solutions.
00:05:15.980What we're seeing, and we're seeing it right now in this run-up to the election campaign,
00:05:20.240we have all these different parties are coming up with the political solution to the political problem.
00:05:26.760It's not the solution to the actual problem.
00:05:29.500You know, whether it's pharmacare, whether it's hallway healthcare, in each case,
00:05:35.860they're doing exactly what Justice Emmett Hall did back in the 60s.
00:08:35.760Two things I find amusing is how many of the people that caused trouble in the,
00:08:39.680in the Peterson, Bob Ray, and Harris years are still out there now being touted as the great,
00:08:46.100you know, the great gurus are going to solve all this.
00:08:48.280And then the other thing is, I am laughing at, well, you know, I'm watching the,
00:08:53.280the forward government here in Ontario, and I'll certainly watch closely with what happens with Jason Kenney.
00:08:58.380But I almost wish it was mandatory that they read my book because they're doing the exact same things,
00:09:04.240making the exact same mistakes, you know, stepping in the exact same cow patties.
00:09:08.620And, you know, it's frustrating for me because I lay out in the book what was done, what could have been done.
00:09:16.520And, you know, one of the great problems that we have is that we have a massive math problem or an accounting problem or an actuarial problem.
00:09:26.880And it's interesting that, you know, we don't just talk about climate emergency and there may or may not be a climate emergency.
00:09:35.000There's definitely a health care emergency.
00:09:36.940And by 2030, we're going to be in huge, huge trouble.
00:09:40.380And the, the, the, the math problem is this, and it alarms me that the millennials and the iGens aren't paying attention
00:09:48.860because they figure out, well, I'm healthy.
00:09:50.440I don't need to care about health care.
00:09:51.540One of the studies I talk about in my book, I'm a baby boomer, just turned 60.
00:09:58.900I'm going to use $4,000 more health care than I pay for with my taxes in my lifetime.
00:10:05.060The millennials will pay $18,000 more in taxes than health care received.
00:10:11.480And the iGens will pay $27,000 more in taxes than health care received.
00:10:17.860Like, I'm sorry, I don't care who you are.
00:15:31.720And frankly, we are the ones that are going to end up driving this.
00:15:33.920There's no doubt because baby boomers aren't going to be waiting these crazy amounts of time for hips and eyes and knees and all this stuff.
00:15:40.160They will want choice and they will force it.
00:15:43.780But the irony is, and I've been waiting to see if maybe Mad Max was going to be the guy.
00:15:47.100If a politician, a leader, a party would come out and say, we're embracing this.
00:17:01.020And, you know, one of the great reasons politicians get away with is because our wonderful doctors and nurses and other health care providers.
00:17:08.280Unlike normal people have been sticking their fingers in the hole in the dike for the last 20 years, trying to keep the whole thing from collapsing.
00:17:14.800A normal person would let it collapse 20 years ago.
00:17:17.280And we could have had this debate 20 years ago.
00:17:19.840Now we're really up against it because we've only, as I say, got 10 or 11 years before the whole thing goes in the tank.
00:17:26.500And had our health care professionals not tried to keep the politicians, you know, from sinking, keep the boat from sinking.
00:17:36.020And so the politicians say, hey, it's great.
00:18:09.420It's actually an alternative level of care patients is what we're talking.
00:18:13.7009% of the so-called bed blockers were causing 40% of the bed blocking because they were suffering from dementia, obesity, and other problems.
00:18:24.140So our homes, our nursing homes, et cetera, are not set up to deal with dementia.
00:18:39.220And we should be increasing our long-term care facilities, building more of those, building more of those rooms.
00:18:46.540The problem is do not open more hospital rooms and then take the people out of the hallway and shove them in there.
00:18:52.840That's just solving the political problem.
00:18:54.760So, again, my book goes in great detail with all of this.
00:18:58.160And I know what's fascinating is that people that work in the health care system or have had encounters or their families had encounters, read the book and say, wow, you really nailed it.
00:19:09.560People who had no encounters with their health care system who think we have the best system in the world.
00:19:14.200I think it was Christine Blatchford said people who have never used our system say it's the best in the world.
00:19:18.520So, they read it and they go, wow, I had no idea about any of this stuff.
00:19:23.020Wow, I thought it was actually, it would be there for me when I need it.
00:19:26.000And now I see it's not going to be, you know, and that's, those are basically the two, the two main reactions I get.
00:19:32.000Yeah, you know, your book does quite a bit of myth busting.
00:19:36.100Those kind of common myths that we hear about the Canadian health care system that are just sort of floating around the ethos of the American media, and in particular, the American left-wing media.
00:19:50.500I wrote some of them down because I think a lot of Canadians are confused by this too.
00:19:57.480The idea that the Canadian system has to be publicly funded under the Canada Health Care, or the Canada Health Act, isn't true.
00:20:07.780It just needs to be publicly administered, right?
00:20:11.980Oh, there are lots of, you know, it's funny, even I who have been doing this for 24 years, learned things in researching.
00:20:18.380I had no idea the Canada Health Act was a finance bill.
00:20:21.140It's not, it's got nothing to do with health care.
00:20:22.400They slapped in, Tommy Douglas actually had in his version, eight principles, and they chose to use five of them.
00:20:29.820They left off responsible, effective, and I believe efficient were the other three.
00:20:38.620And of course, my big bugaboo is they left off quality.
00:20:42.460And so what I say is, how can you not have quality as one of the five?
00:20:45.940If I had died on the waiting list with my heart trouble, that would have been just as good as if I had a successful solution.
00:20:54.080In fact, actually, one of the docs said, actually, it would have been better if you died, because then you would have ended up costing the system even less money, trying to keep you alive.
00:21:09.720I'm just like one of you, if one of you had been dropped in the jungle and then came back 25 years later and reported on what they saw, like a war correspondent, that's how I see myself.
00:21:22.020And so if you have a severe problem, a heart or whatever it is, you're in a car accident, it's like being at the Indy 500 and pulling into the pit.
00:21:33.940And this wonderful crew works on you and saves your life and does whatever has to be done.
00:21:38.880That's our health care system at its best.
00:21:41.460But if you don't have a life threatening problem, if you need like a knee or hip or whatever it might be, then it's like when you're in a big city and it snows, big blizzard, right?
00:22:47.700So, you know, my great concern is that the lies have now become so entrenched and people have so wrapped themselves in the flag, the patriotic flag of the Canada Health Act.
00:23:02.760You know, people, you're wrapping yourself in a finance bill that was meant to ban extra billing and copayments and that sort of thing.
00:23:10.700That was the only reason that was brought out.
00:23:13.420And to somehow think that, you know, 30 plus years later, 35 years later, it's not time to do something about that.
00:23:20.200Or even in the case of the Medicare Act from 1968, you know, 50 years later.
00:23:26.740How can you possibly think, you know, that things haven't dramatically changed in that time and that those two pieces of legislation are still relevant?
00:23:35.480Yeah, I mean, again, you go back to the lies that just become repeated so often that they become truth.
00:23:44.740One of them that I wrote down again is that Tommy Douglas was the father of modern health care.
00:24:15.800There's the workers' compensation tier.
00:24:18.000There's the RCMP tier, the friends of friends tier, the friends of doctors tier, the athletes tier.
00:24:24.700And what's most serve some is the prisoners tier.
00:24:28.700Dr. Day has pointed this out in this charter challenge.
00:24:31.700Can Canadians possibly think it's a good idea that prisoners get better health care and quicker access and drugs paid for and so on and so forth in a way that we don't?
00:24:45.260You know, I could make the argument that, okay, it's all right to have a workers' compensation tier because you want to get them back to work as fast as possible.
00:24:53.120And then, you know, you're not paying government money, taxpayer dollars.
00:24:57.320But even that, you know, this game of pretend, this let's pretend, you know, this absolutely has to stop.
00:25:05.560One of the things, and, you know, you're back to your earlier point about the other side is definitely trying to muzzle me.
00:25:13.460And I fully expected that they're doing the same with Dr. Day and others.
00:25:17.600But one of the ways we get around that is I'm trying to create an institute of health care reform and innovation.
00:25:24.360And I don't see it as a bricks and mortar thing.
00:25:26.360I'm seeing it as, at the moment, be a virtual thing.
00:25:28.520So I'm trying to find investors and other people and ordinary Canadians to put about, I'm trying to, I need about $10,000 a month to do this because I want to go around giving speeches and making appearances.
00:25:41.920Obviously, I'm doing that on whatever level I can in kind of the southern Ontario at the moment.
00:25:47.260And I absolutely want to get into the states and do this, certainly in the run-up to next year's election, as we see with both Bernie Sanders and the Medicare for All Act, all that kind of stuff.
00:25:58.560You know, I'm doing what I can to try and get Americans to, you know, click on the link and read the book.
00:26:03.340But I need people that believe in what I'm saying and who really want to have this choice.
00:26:08.760You know, the slogan, I say, fund it or free it.
00:26:11.180And that's really, you know, they can't fund it, they won't fund it, so they really should free it.
00:26:17.240So if there's anyone out there who can get in touch with me who wants to get behind this, I'm absolutely looking for like-minded people because we need to find a platform,
00:26:26.380whether it's a better website, whether it's a, you know, I sort of look at Jordan Peterson as the model for this.
00:26:33.580He started kind of slowly too and then started broadcasting and making public appearances and the whole thing just exploded.
00:26:40.940I view this as the same thing because it's one of those topics where, you know, it's easy for politicians, you know, right now we've got politicians, you're talking about the economy or tax cuts or the environment or this, that and the other.
00:26:55.120And nobody is talking about health care and they're sort of being dragged now.
00:27:00.220Okay, so the liberals say, well, here's our pharma care plan, you'll see it in eight years.
00:27:04.840And then the NDP says, well, we've got a pharma care plan that we're putting out now and we're going to cover boom, boom, boom and boom.
00:27:11.500And, you know, somebody else is going to come out with something else.
00:27:15.180Andrew Scheer at least is being sensible enough to not say, here's our candy.
00:27:19.600You know, he's trying to be reasonable.
00:27:21.220And, of course, the voters, if the voters don't want to still get lied to all the time, stop eating the candy.
00:27:29.860It makes your tummy hurt and it rots your teeth.
00:27:32.060Stop taking these bribes of election goodies and stand up.
00:27:37.240You know, what I really wanted to do is to get as many Canadians as possible to read my book.
00:27:41.600So when the candidates come to the door and they say, well, I'm for Medicare, I'm for one tier.
00:27:45.860You know, if you're saying you're for the status quo, then what you're really saying is you're in favor of U.S. style two tier health care, because that's what the status quo will lead to.
00:27:56.260If you want to make sure that we don't end up there, then look at my 10 solutions, all of which are very doable and embrace.
00:28:03.520And by the way, I'm really excited about this.
00:28:05.740I was invited by Concordia University on September 27th.
00:28:09.540And anybody can sign up for this, by the way.
00:28:12.320We're going to do a workshop on my big fix, 10 solutions.
00:28:16.860And the people who come are going to be able to work on one or two of those solutions all day and figure out, for example, how would you take Canada's 14 health ministries and roll them into one super ministry at the federal level?
00:28:30.520How would you set it up so that we could have medical tourism where people come here instead of Canadians going elsewhere?
00:29:14.320What does your ideal Canadian health care system look like?
00:29:18.520Well, first of all, I don't think we should just imitate some other country system.
00:29:26.620I mentioned before we're 30 and the Americans are 36.
00:29:30.340We shouldn't go and imitate number one or two, you know, whether it's, you know, France or Germany or Switzerland or Sweden.
00:29:40.420I mean, I think we have enough brains to build a made in Canada health care system and that we should do that.
00:29:47.740We should certainly look at what other people have done.
00:29:50.140But our situation is somewhat unique here.
00:29:53.160And I talk about as you as you go and read the history of how we got to where we are.
00:29:57.160I think that our health care system, you know, I make 10 suggestions.
00:30:03.320I would ideally like to see all 10 of those things happen.
00:30:06.040I think quality, as I said, should be a part of the Canada Health Act if we're going to actually keep the Canada Health Act.
00:30:11.760But, again, using Dr. Min Bassett or Simplexity System, if we identify the real problem and then work towards solving the real problem, we can do this.
00:30:23.200You know, we could have done this 50 years ago, but, you know, we keep identifying the wrong problem.
00:30:29.340And it's not the political problem that we want to solve.