Mixed Public-Private Healthcare & Canada's Struggling System ｜ A Critical Compass Clip
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
145.24207
Summary
In this episode of the podcast, we talk about the new documentary about Canadian health care. We discuss the differences between Canada and the United States in terms of public vs private health care, the benefits and drawbacks of the two systems, and what we can do to improve them.
Transcript
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well with we like to think that our health care system is something to be envied
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and actually in the western world it's one of the worst and we're not ready to have that
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conversation as a country because we've we've based so much of our national identity on this
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this notion of free health care people just don't have the the context to understand how bad our
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health care is compared to most other civilized western nations specifically uh the nordic
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countries in europe so when when you hear this this documentary is definitely worth watching
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because he interviews a lot of people from uh from european health agencies where they talk about how
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like a lot of people don't know but most modern western health agencies have a mixed private public
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system uh and this amongst other things amongst other reasons uh serves to make both significantly
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better and so when we talk about you know even the notion sometimes of having any sort of uh dual
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system in canada is is poo-pooed immediately and you're you're accused of wanting to bring you know
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american style health care to canada and there's just the reality is there's just so much uh in
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between those two systems the u.s system has its benefits for for certain people if you you know
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viva fry talked about recently on a prod on a podcast about how you know because he lives part
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time in florida now he says well you can you can you pay a lot of money for private health insurance in
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in the u.s uh and you get you get decent care or you could pay a lot of money in taxes to fund
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a shitty health care system in canada so it'll it'll end up working out about the same
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but the specifically the the northern european countries with their with their mixed private
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public system they are so so superior to ours and in almost every way the the public system
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functions so much better yeah you get a base level of guaranteed coverage yeah and then the overflows
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um i i think the the key part is that it's not they have some restrictions on that like a doctor
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cannot dedicate a hundred percent of their time to a private clinic they must balance out some of
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the hours so it's not like they're poaching talent they have they're not punished for making some money
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in the private um there's still incentives for the like for these small clinics to to start up and
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now you have a expanded capacity because one of the restrictions in canada right now is that
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you've got a certain amount of funding and if surgery beds if you funded all your surgery beds
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you could have two open beds the beds are physically open you have somebody willing to
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do a surgery on that bed but they can't fund it therefore you have capacity that can't be met with the
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funding that you have and there are people that well they have to wait eight months for a surgery
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they would pay money to fund their own service so you you have a mismatch between the demand and the
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supply and it's kind of just being blocked in the middle so there there is some in between that could
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be approached and the problem is you mentioned that the conversation gets gets distorted and again that
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you mentioned that thought terminating cliche of american-style health care or american-style
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politics or when you build an ethos around these terms um it's easy to demonize