00:04:50.740They welcome people to help increase the supply of health care.
00:04:54.620In Canada, like I said, we do the opposite.
00:04:57.020We have governments putting up roadblocks anytime someone wants to start providing health care in this country.
00:05:03.180So by restricting supply of health care, go figure, you end up with long waiting lists like the ones that you just showed.
00:05:10.580Well, one of the things that's so interesting from the documentary is that they just don't really seem to have real wait times in Japan.
00:05:17.380I'm going to play a short trailer from the documentary because you speak to a lot of people, people who work in hospitals, doctors, advocates, all this kind of thing.
00:05:24.460Most people say, you know, average, you wait like maybe a couple of days or two weeks max when you need a surgery, which, you know, to the Canadian here, it's like, wait, what?
00:06:09.280Really interesting stuff. You can see this sort of Japanese temperament, right?
00:06:12.760They're trying to be polite, but they're kind of shocked when you tell them about what things are like in Canada.
00:06:17.200And so can you kind of unpack the reason?
00:06:20.160Like, why is it that there's so much innovation, there's so many options, there's so many choices in Japan, and yet they're still able to maintain that universal coverage?
00:06:28.320And people don't really pay that much out of pocket when they have major surgeries or even doctor visits.
00:06:33.000Yeah, that last doctor in the clip there, he was asking how long the wait times are in Canada, because he couldn't believe it when I said it was a year.
00:06:40.640Like, they were shocked. People over there were, like, stunned that Canadians would have to wait so long.
00:06:45.220So to your question about how, the big difference is that in Japan, they welcome people to enter their healthcare sector and start providing care for patients.
00:06:56.720I mean, this is a novel concept, but they want people to enter.
00:07:00.000If you have a, you know, qualified staff, obviously, but you can go in and open up a clinic that maybe does knee surgeries, or maybe you open up a hospital, they openly welcome it, because the government doesn't really care who's providing it, as long as it's, you know, qualified people and that they can help patients.
00:07:17.880So the government sets the rate for how much they will pay for different procedures and that.
00:07:23.620And then everyone knows, okay, these are the terms of agreement. If I enter the market, then this is how much I'm going to get compensated for providing these different treatments for patients.
00:07:33.220So it's much easier. It's very straightforward.
00:07:36.300In Canada, we find the opposite. We have governments putting up stop signs, red lights, whatever, barricades, whatever you want to call it, to restrict the supply of healthcare.
00:07:46.140So, Candice, tomorrow, if, let's say, you wanted to open up a, whatever, knee surgical clinic somewhere in Canada, and start doing like they do in Japan, where you would, you know, have staff providing knee operations to people, you can't really do that in Canada.
00:08:03.040Because you would have to come up with some agreement with the government where they kind of go, oh, okay, well, we're going to pay you X amount, because our system just isn't set up that way.
00:08:13.000They fund services to patients. Our systems fund, or our governments fund health systems.
00:08:20.140So they throw money into the system and then hope that patients get a lot of treatment or healthcare services out of it.
00:08:27.180So a lot of our dollars get grinded down in bureaucracy just because of the structure is so different.
00:08:32.880So we restrict the supply, you end up with long waiting lists.
00:08:36.680And if you want to, let's say, you want to, don't want to wait in the public system in this country, and you want to pay privately, well, government barriers are there to stop that from happening.
00:08:46.180You can't do that in your province, with the exception of Quebec.
00:08:49.620So this is why patients travel to other provinces to pay for treatment.
00:08:58.360It's like a big government top-down system where a government controls everything.
00:09:01.400And if you try to innovate, like we saw with the Day Clinic in British Columbia, the Cammy Day Clinic, the government will sue you out of existence.
00:09:07.920So much that it doesn't, it doesn't want competition so much so that it will put you out of business.
00:09:12.900The documentary is called Fixing Canada's Healthcare Lessons from Japan.
00:09:18.860First, I want to take a moment to thank the sponsor of today's episode, which is Unsmoke.
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00:10:00.160Okay, Colin, I want to ask you, because basically, you know, we've been talking about this for a long time, that other alternative countries exist, right?
00:10:08.580We always compare ourselves to the Americans.
00:10:10.440We always look at the U.S. healthcare system. It makes sense.
00:10:12.520We share a continent with them. We have similar sorts of populations.
00:10:15.400And yet, one of the things that you do over at Second Street is look outside of the continent for alternatives.
00:10:23.500So, you know, we had this report that Switzerland has much better healthcare, other countries as well.
00:10:29.680Why hasn't this message gotten through?
00:10:32.240And even in, you know, Canadian provinces run by conservative governments like Ontario and Alberta,
00:10:38.500we haven't really seen a lot of innovation.
00:10:49.960We also have a video on our site, if anyone's interested, where we look at Sweden's healthcare system, as well as France's healthcare system.
00:10:55.880Europe, in particular, has a lot of better universal healthcare systems that are delivering better results.
00:11:38.000The political class has been very slow to respond.
00:11:40.840And I think part of the problem is that a lot of people in the political class have long memories,
00:11:45.700and they're still thinking that this is the debate from 20, 30 years ago where healthcare reform was something that politicians just did not want to talk about because it was too controversial.
00:11:56.400But now the public understands that, you know, there are better systems out there in Europe, countries like Japan, Australia, and others, that we could be learning from and copying their policies.
00:12:10.120I think it's time for the political class to wake up a little bit.
00:12:13.000Something that was encouraging, though, and we do have these encouraging signs in different parts of the country.
00:12:18.860In British Columbia, in their last election, one party there, the Conservatives, campaigned on a pretty bold platform to reform healthcare.
00:12:29.200So instead of, you know, as political operatives will say, instead of a shield issue where they're kind of playing defense,
00:12:34.900they saw it as a sword where they could go out and aggressively campaign on it.
00:12:39.360Now, you know, I think it could have made communicative things better than that,
00:12:42.800but at least they were willing to kind of stick their neck out and start talking about it.
00:12:47.420You know, in Ontario, some credit to the government there.
00:12:51.100They're starting to partner more with non-government providers for healthcare.
00:12:54.700This doesn't have to be, all the services don't have to be delivered by the government.
00:12:59.400The government can fund them, fund other people to deliver the services to the public,
00:13:03.520whether it's a non-profit or for-profit entity.