True Patriot Love - November 27, 2025


Quebec’s Healthcare Crisis: The Truth Exposed


Episode Stats

Length

59 minutes

Words per Minute

197.4652

Word Count

11,680

Sentence Count

14

Misogynist Sentences

5

Hate Speech Sentences

5


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 healthcare in Canada is without question the most complex subject every day every month every year
00:00:10.640 in Canadian politics no more so than in the province of Quebec with their new Bill 2 that
00:00:16.220 has put the doctors and the government of Quebec at loggerheads on how to execute healthcare in
00:00:21.920 that province and it's something that's being watched closely not just in Ontario but every
00:00:26.800 province in the country talk more about it thrilled to be joined by Paul Micucci Paul how are you good
00:00:31.060 Jim how you doing yeah and I really you know I this issue is pivotal uh for the country and I've yeah
00:00:37.900 I've been just glued to it because I think it is the test case 100 and look what Doug Ford said the
00:00:45.000 premier of Ontario saying I'll take your doctors when they had 12,000 doctors at the Bell Center
00:00:50.580 on a rally to fight the bill and a number of doctors with the word is what 300 doctors are
00:00:57.100 ready to leave the province and Fort say and I'll take them with open arms yeah yeah it's very
00:01:02.300 interesting I don't you know between the premiers I don't know how that's received but I won't go
00:01:07.620 there but you know Canada has been kind of uh had the benefit of having a large healthcare spend
00:01:15.420 right so and I think that's kind of a misnomer that for years and I do the budget analysis you
00:01:21.760 know that one every year the 2025 and as I started digging into the 24-25 budgets the first thing I
00:01:27.980 realized was you know we have a very large healthcare transfer amount coming from the federal government to
00:01:34.980 the provinces and then I went I started digging in you know I looked at the stuff that the Fraser was
00:01:40.080 doing and the stuff that's out there from the CHI and we have the third largest spend on healthcare
00:01:47.540 per per GDP so if you look compared to our GDP we're the third largest we're in the top 10 sometimes we
00:01:57.020 slip to 13 when total healthcare costs you know uh by developed nations so we we do spend a lot per
00:02:04.740 capita um but you know I I was always puzzled how and so this was when this popped up I started
00:02:13.620 following this because I'm like okay great now someone's gonna really dissect this and I looked
00:02:20.160 and I looked and we spent you know probably four or five days kind of digging to try to find basically
00:02:25.740 the formula with which uh Christian Dubay the health minister in Quebec had come up with and we
00:02:31.680 couldn't find it and we finally found it it was in French we had to you know translate it and then
00:02:36.660 we had to sort of go through it and through it and through it and through it so I think we got it for
00:02:41.580 today and you know but but you know you and I kind of look at this differently which is good right you
00:02:48.240 know we've had this discussion I'm I look at it completely analytical right and probably too maybe too much
00:02:55.380 so um but you know what have you found on this one like what are you thinking uh with respect to
00:03:03.180 the position of the doctors right now well there was a fasting story in column in the Montreal Gazette
00:03:09.060 a few days ago and it just broke down he's a world-class cancer specialist an oncology surgeon
00:03:15.480 Dr. Rami Yunan and it's his average day in Montreal so when he's not at the University of Montreal Health
00:03:21.480 Center um he's in surgery it did you know dealing with tumors and saving lives but when he's in his
00:03:28.640 clinic a typical day starts at 7 a.m and then in that day he'll examine approximately 45 patients 45 a
00:03:37.040 day before his day wraps up at 6 30 p.m and when he's not in clinics dealing with patients he's in
00:03:43.980 surgery or prepping for surgery and the Quebec government is asking him to do more and he as he told
00:03:49.120 the reporter I simply can't do anymore right yeah no no and well it's interesting because they did talk
00:03:55.980 you know in the in the report they did when they went through Dubé's report and the the health
00:04:01.240 ministry's report they do talk about the uneven workloads correct so the uneven workloads is a big
00:04:07.860 thing and they get that yes I'm not sure the formula addresses it so when we get to there you know
00:04:12.880 let's kind of look at it because I I and I agree I think there are some like everything else but
00:04:18.240 there are some specialists that are hard to find we can't get them and they're overworked and they're
00:04:24.600 burning out and they're burning out and but but you know then on the on the opposite scale we have
00:04:29.700 some people who are kind of taking advantage of the system and how to balance that system and that's
00:04:34.400 the tough part about health care like that's the emotional part because he is probably the guy who
00:04:40.040 you want he's one of the best in the world he's hard-working he's diligent he's doing it but you
00:04:46.040 have a bunch of people riding his coattails picking up that check for you know when you look at the when
00:04:51.920 you look at the actual health care spend per doctor in Quebec and you uh you kind of uh level set it
00:05:01.500 you know you you go across and you take out all the parameters they're the highest paid per doctor at
00:05:07.160 414 000 correct there's 23 000 of them right for 8.5 million people so the number of them you know
00:05:16.560 you could argue it's low uh but you know that equates to about if it was split up equally and it
00:05:23.600 isn't I get that I know there's again hard workers not hard workers but that's 369 patients per
00:05:30.960 doctor per doctor per doctor so the in-depth study in the province of Quebec a couple years ago
00:05:39.900 they worked out the number but like in the precursor to this new bill c to a bill too
00:05:45.520 that the average Quebec family doctor sees approximately 70 patients a week now a lot of
00:05:51.860 family doctors will do a four-day week in their office seeing patients and one day is lab work
00:05:57.560 professional development so they're seeing 70 patients in four days in Ontario sometimes that
00:06:03.860 number is over 120 and you're talking about a real burnout and they're you can only see so many
00:06:10.840 patients a day as a doctor you can't rush someone in there when they're telling you I think I feel
00:06:16.320 like I'm dying you have to spend time with them and at the same time they need to eat they need to go
00:06:21.580 to the bathroom they have to deal with paperwork and they still have to take care of their own health
00:06:26.360 yeah oh no I agree but you know the uh I don't know about the 70 I don't know if I agree with 70
00:06:32.660 that's what they the studies showed that the average Quebec family doctor sees approximately
00:06:37.420 70 patients a week yeah the math doesn't support it so well see now my real story Paul real quick
00:06:45.060 here's the thing with the math yeah um for years in my 20s and early 30s I never went to the doctor
00:06:51.920 because I was just a guy I would play hockey I'm like of course me take it all I was 40 right
00:06:58.220 so the problem is the family doctors are seeing a lot of the same patients over and over again it's
00:07:03.920 the aging population it's people 55 60 and over things are breaking down they're getting cancer
00:07:10.780 they're having issues with their kidneys whatever it is so they need repeat visits and a lot of the
00:07:17.080 young people like that gen y gen zed who are in their 20s and 30s don't go that often because
00:07:23.140 they don't feel the need to but if you're a parent you're taking your infant your toddler every year
00:07:27.800 for multiple checkups and if you're elderly you're going multiple times as well right no no and and I
00:07:33.500 think that's why they you know uh we'll get into in a minute they tried to come up with team
00:07:38.340 healthcare okay right now that I agree with so they said okay well you know for for different uh maladies
00:07:44.540 for sicknesses we need team healthcare we need to color code it and we need to sign it and then kind
00:07:49.280 of try to figure that out so but you know Jim just you know and I want to I want to kind of break down
00:07:54.020 so this thing come out of like all the other provinces it didn't come out of nowhere right
00:07:59.960 it kind of came out of the fact that uh the government and I'm sure the government honestly
00:08:06.320 Christian Dubay and Legault and everyone I'm sure if they could have dodged this they would have just
00:08:13.180 said okay great let's leave this but this did pop up because quite frankly whether you call it a
00:08:20.500 political I don't know if it's so much political but the the brutal truth is there were almost two
00:08:28.020 million people who weren't allocated a physician so they had like in Canada it is by far the highest
00:08:36.180 number of people who don't have a physician right so at two million um you know and nationally about 83%
00:08:45.540 of Canadians have a regular doctor right so they were far lower they were down you know 70. so they were
00:08:53.340 10 below the average uh you know they were the worst for wait times they were the worst for uh delays uh
00:09:03.180 triage um getting specialists so all the markers so Quebec for all the markers was by far the lowest
00:09:12.540 number and when you have so few family doctors and so many people without them when you're sick
00:09:17.640 where do you go you go to emerge well that's what happened so you know the emergency rooms buckled
00:09:22.980 because quite frankly people were going for regular care and then they end up spending like in Montreal
00:09:28.020 20 to 24 hours waiting uh their average stretcher time was 16 and a half hours uh specialist time
00:09:36.060 quite frankly they were 33 percent longer than the rest of Canada to get to a specialist um they you
00:09:44.380 know for a less urgent element they were taking two years so like if you had to get like a cyst you know
00:09:51.360 removed or something you have to hope in the two years nothing happens to that cyst exactly yeah you
00:09:56.380 weren't getting it done right yeah so so you know they they really turned out to it was a mess so so
00:10:02.200 they're sitting there he probably doesn't want to touch it because who wants to mess with talking to
00:10:06.480 the doctors right it's the third rail right yeah it's a third rail but their contract's coming up
00:10:10.700 so now they have the agreement to do with the doctors they have to get it done they start having
00:10:15.120 this conversation they're like guys this doesn't work like so and and this is you know and you know i
00:10:22.340 i really wanted back and forth but the sad part about this in my mind is you had you know the
00:10:30.700 doctors who are intelligent you had the government i think i think christian dubay quite frankly i've
00:10:35.860 listened to him i think he's a fairly smart guy you know legault was no dum-dum no he's been around
00:10:41.900 for a while for a reason yeah yeah they like him and i think quite frankly that for dubay it's been
00:10:47.740 taxing you know this is this will be the end for him because he's an older guy and i think quite
00:10:51.620 frankly this has been super stressful and and no one wanted you know this is kind of pulling the
00:10:57.800 band-aid off you know you use a medical term but this is kind of pulling the band-aid off a problem
00:11:02.180 that canadians don't want to address but it's in front of her face every day every day i know but we
00:11:08.960 don't want to talk about we don't understand why every day there's a story of a poor person there
00:11:13.860 was a story of a woman in winnipeg who ended up having like her chest ripped open for surgery
00:11:19.220 after sitting for 20 hours in an emergency department no i know i get you but look at look
00:11:24.460 at the hubbub you have 12 to 20 000 people at the bell center you know quite frankly everyone respects
00:11:30.680 doctors they don't want to do anything nasty with them but quite frankly the math doesn't work right
00:11:36.920 now so the math isn't working and quite for and so you know i think what dubay tried to do in this
00:11:42.700 case which i found very interesting i went back and watched you know uh bill 106 discussions bill
00:11:47.820 two discussions i went back and listened to uh points in times where he was so frustrated because
00:11:53.720 the doctors wouldn't meet with him for a whole summer and they cut him off and they said we're
00:11:58.180 not going to have this discussion we like the way it is and he said i know you like the way it is
00:12:03.120 but i have it's not working i have two million people without a doctor i got these wait times i got
00:12:08.180 all these problems guys i need to fix this right and they just know well so no i am pro doctor but
00:12:14.280 when they say that paul yeah that is on the doctors yeah if he reaches out the olive branch and says i
00:12:20.500 want to sit down and talk to you can we put our heads together and come up with solution that works
00:12:25.040 for everybody how could they not agree to meet with dubay that doesn't make any sense to me
00:12:29.080 well yeah no i agree and i think quite frankly the onus is on doctors at this point not just in
00:12:36.340 quebec but the onus is on doctors for them to fix it for them to come from their associations come
00:12:42.040 back and hire a group of accountants and consultants and really smart people mbas to come back and
00:12:48.800 actually give us a uh they know here's you know the funny thing and i'm formerly an accountant but the
00:12:56.260 way my mind works which is which is i think fairly simple is you have the budget so you have the
00:13:03.760 health care budget for each of the provinces so you know the you know the end result where you have
00:13:09.280 to get to you know how much is allocated to different uh whether it be hospitals whether
00:13:15.000 it be doctors whether it be nurses you know where all the costs it's broken down all the sites you
00:13:19.720 know the chi canadian uh healthcare it's all accessible it's all accessible it's broken down very
00:13:25.820 finite hospital administrators do a magnificent job at reporting right they're very good at it they do a lot
00:13:32.560 because they have to get paid right so they have to report so they have to do a lot of uh great
00:13:37.400 reporting most of the times a lot of times actually uh people who did what i used to do accountants
00:13:43.500 become hospital administrators because of their skills in accounting accounting there's so much
00:13:48.200 accounting and it's very complex to do it yes so you know you wonder why given that we couldn't sit
00:13:56.420 down and say okay here's where we got to get to here's what we have to spend here's how we have to
00:14:01.420 allocate it here's how we deal with specialists here's how we deal with gps here's how we deal
00:14:06.080 with nurses here's the uh trajectory we need to go on for a pay increase you know over so many years
00:14:12.460 why is this so contentious it seems just bizarre um and then we get to this and to your point you know
00:14:19.540 you made this point when we first started talking about this i think where quebec made the mistake
00:14:24.440 you know there had to be someone who was able to arbitrate this so i think somewhere along the way
00:14:31.060 dubai shitter said okay i'm i'm gonna bow out i'm gonna bring a doctor in i'm gonna let him propose
00:14:36.600 this and i let him to propose it to you as a as a uh a respected practitioner they're gonna come talk
00:14:43.380 to you they're gonna let you know their thoughts i'm gonna share them with him he's gonna take yours
00:14:48.200 and he's gonna give us some uh consolidated thoughts on the thinking on this and i don't
00:14:53.160 understand why the doctors wouldn't have been completely open to that or maybe even propose that
00:14:58.060 in the monsieur debate this is not working out yes i am proposing that mike wixon is our appointed
00:15:04.900 former surgeon he's head of the quebec medical association we're going to have him we're going to
00:15:10.360 handpick him he's going to arbitrate we're going to come up with a series of solutions
00:15:14.560 that a b and c may work or may not work but within that we could do something because
00:15:19.700 this is a canadian problem as you said off the top you nailed it this is a test a litmus test
00:15:25.880 for every province in the country there are thousands of foreign trained doctors in this
00:15:31.300 country who are driving amazon trucks or working at your kfc because they can't get qualified to
00:15:37.800 practice medicine in the country now to me if you're a foreign trained doctor maybe you don't have
00:15:44.260 the mcgill medical school ut medical school but you're a doctor surely they can qualify them and
00:15:50.500 give them some level of health care to canadians to help shorten the queue but that was his creating
00:15:57.100 the teams right yeah no no and that was him creating the teams to get there but you know and it's
00:16:03.460 interesting because we're seeing this in the the budget the federal budget which is uh they didn't put
00:16:08.880 any money towards accreditation for professionals in health care why i don't know and i brought it
00:16:15.600 up when we did our budget review and i'm like okay we're going to go out and we're going to recruit
00:16:19.120 experts abroad for specialty areas why don't why don't we just look inside our country and try to
00:16:26.880 get the people that are here who already have those specialty areas involved in the system maybe
00:16:31.600 not at the doctor level but maybe at a triage level exactly health clinic level because part of bill
00:16:37.120 c2 says clinics must ensure coverage 24 7 365 via coordinated call systems would they not be
00:16:44.900 perfectly suited they're already trained right they're already trained and they can say oh you
00:16:49.020 know what mr micucci this is something you could no no you got to go to emerge right now and that way
00:16:55.420 people are only going when they're being told they have to go right and that's what you know so part
00:17:01.160 of this you know the bill too and and everything we're going through they i think there are parts
00:17:06.800 of it that are uh you can keep i think there's some good things and i don't think it's a total
00:17:13.020 uh throwaway no i think there's some things that need to be relooked at um to your point you know i'm
00:17:19.480 going to come back to the point you made before we we go forward on taking a look at this okay
00:17:23.540 a lot of times in associations and in industries the people that end up running the industries
00:17:30.820 are kind of the bottom feeders and i don't mean that in a nasty way i just mean they're the kind
00:17:37.240 of the laziest least uh aggressive you know right most control hungry people so what they do is they
00:17:44.860 end up controlling an association because that's their means of income and their power their power
00:17:51.680 right and the and the cancer specialist who's seen 45 patients a day doesn't have time he doesn't
00:17:57.120 have time he's he's saving the world so you know and it's interesting because uh we see it you know
00:18:03.340 in every province including here in ontario a lot of times we see the talking heads on tv and they're
00:18:08.760 the people that have actually decided to spend the majority of their time lobbying for whatever is
00:18:14.480 beneficial for them and maybe not for the whole industry and you know and not looking at the stats and
00:18:20.500 the numbers and trying to meet a resolution because if they were they wouldn't be going on tv
00:18:25.380 and saying we need more this we need more that we need more this they'd be saying the solution to
00:18:29.500 this is and then we're not hearing that and we didn't hear that in quebec and i think that's what kind
00:18:34.320 of got my interest because i've been listening to them and there's a lot of uh there's a lot of
00:18:40.560 discussion for the figureheads on on the doctor side that are coming forward and they're they're just
00:18:46.000 shooting this they're just saying i don't like this i don't like this i don't like that okay
00:18:50.240 what do you like yeah so you know is there any there has to be something in there they agree with
00:18:55.300 i can't imagine there's not one single thing they wouldn't say you know what this makes sense let's
00:19:00.180 use as a starting point and maybe we can tweak some things that works for everybody right so let's go
00:19:05.000 through let's spend a few minutes sure you know because just looking at it quite frankly
00:19:08.660 so uh the first thing that kind of uh you know pops out for me is that you're assigned to a primary
00:19:17.940 health team so i like this i do too like i like the fact that you know quite frankly you know right
00:19:26.600 now and i think my my wife goes through it more than i do because we have different doctors of course
00:19:31.200 right we have a doctor who quite frank or she is a doctor quite frankly that doesn't spend a ton of time
00:19:36.660 you know i don't know what her personal issues but she spends limited time right you know getting
00:19:42.640 care or giving care so she's only 20 hours so you know it'd be great if there was people around her
00:19:49.980 that would actually be able to provide the care yeah right so she's not there she'd be able to go
00:19:55.860 and she's able to get advice from whether it be a nurse or someone else but right now the way our fee
00:20:01.580 for services sort of set out she has to wait for the doctor and quite frankly it's more about the
00:20:08.200 billing cycle of this is more about her getting a visitation with the doctor than it is about finding
00:20:14.460 a solution for what's going on with her you know it's it's quite complex in canada because family
00:20:19.680 doctors have to pay office expenses malpractice insurance they're paying off staggering debts
00:20:25.280 oh yeah and schooling and it's and paul at the same time they're balancing trying to give the
00:20:30.660 best health care to the patients but realizing they're also in a business and they have bills
00:20:35.480 and financial responsibilities at the same time yeah yeah no they should be paid for their efforts after
00:20:40.940 what 12 years of school before they become a doctor no no they i agree with you and i'm and i i do
00:20:47.320 honestly i don't think in this scenario having read it a couple times now i don't think their end
00:20:54.440 result was to try to take money away from the doctors i don't i didn't see that at all no i
00:21:00.180 didn't see that at all because you know the the the second thing that i i i agreed with there's some
00:21:05.900 of it quite frankly i would have done different but they have a blended physician payment schedule
00:21:10.940 right so they're not basically compensated for volume so it's no longer a volume game
00:21:18.020 so there's a uh a captivation capitation which is having patients there's that part there's uh seeing
00:21:27.800 patients which is the act of seeing patients and then there's doing follow-up and coordination which
00:21:33.280 is hourly and then there's a collective bonus so there's a different components to how they get
00:21:38.320 paid and that's the community-wide access target so to me that goes back to community-based
00:21:44.060 medical care yeah yeah now that one's a little bit problematic in my mind and we can get to in a
00:21:50.380 minute because it's like a pool i think the way they did it is a pool and they're going to give it
00:21:54.100 to the doctors association and then they're going to have to split it up so what you're going to create
00:21:57.980 i think is probably a war on how that money gets redistributed because it's not a large amount but
00:22:03.840 quite frankly i think that's the one that's going to cause the so that one i didn't love right
00:22:08.360 um the first three you have a patient yeah you see a patient you do follow-up that's medical care
00:22:16.740 as i understand it that kind of makes sense to me but that's not how so if we go back that's not how
00:22:22.460 the system in quebec right the system was fragmented the doctor's workload was unbalanced so different
00:22:28.540 doctors right uh care was dependent on individual doctors instead of team-based um family medicine groups
00:22:36.880 uh were all split up uh many clinics served only their own patients so they had a lot of clinics
00:22:43.680 in quebec where you couldn't just walk in so they were clinic-based yeah my family doctor there is part
00:22:49.500 of a team there's six doctors within the health care team mine too but you have to be one of their
00:22:54.260 patients so if my doctor isn't in i'd see you yeah the other doctor but you can't just come off the
00:22:59.620 street yeah yeah mine too so but they had uh how did i say it they had a um uh quite a high number
00:23:08.940 of those so in quebec so that was not open clinics they were closed clinics um you know basically as we
00:23:17.080 talked about access was restricted uh and basically you know they didn't have a really great network
00:23:25.540 to service anyone quite frankly so all those things said this helped because quite frankly
00:23:33.800 assigning a team the collective responsibility of having it open 24 7 trying to get people not go
00:23:43.040 to the er that's the big total sense right so they i think this addressed it so you are a parent and
00:23:50.740 your kid falls it's late at night maybe they don't need to get a full x-ray but they need medical care
00:23:57.180 instead of sitting for 15 hours and emerge you go to the clinic and maybe you're home in two hours
00:24:02.580 because you're seen taking care of it's not that serious but you know you'll sleep well at night
00:24:06.820 because your child's off physician yeah or you can just call someone and say and they'll tell you you
00:24:11.180 know is he you know my son dislocated his elbow when he was a kid right well that's the common one yeah
00:24:16.580 yeah yeah and quite frankly my dad was playing with him and i came up and you know and he was
00:24:20.240 you know he wasn't crying but he could tell he was uncomfortable you know and uh you know i just if
00:24:26.280 you could call someone and they could just either tell you what to do or where to go that's important
00:24:31.580 you know i wanted to go for two minutes so please a lot of people don't know so um canada-wide the
00:24:37.760 baseline for doctors so let's talk about that for a minute so around 70 to 72 percent of physicians in
00:24:43.900 canada get paid for a fee for service so basically you come in uh there's a there's a fee per visit
00:24:51.760 um and that's how you get paid in quebec that was a little higher it was about 80 percent right so the
00:24:58.940 80 of that was coming uh for fee for service so that created some challenges quite frankly because
00:25:06.100 it just became a volume game right so you know you see as many people you make as many phone calls
00:25:12.120 you try to get through it um and then you go home and you try to stack up so you had some doctors like
00:25:18.780 the doctor you're talking about he's doing really well because he's getting paid to see all these
00:25:23.180 people from 7 a.m to 6 30 p.m yeah you know so but and now he's doing well but he's also doing
00:25:29.560 financially really well well just yeah there's no question and then you have a dog a bunch of doctors
00:25:34.080 you know and i i'm not knocking quebec but quebec has a little bit of a different work ethic
00:25:38.760 you had a bunch of doctors who quite frankly were seeing five and just enjoying life and quite frankly
00:25:44.780 maybe they had research grants for the universities so what they did is they kept their practice they
00:25:50.020 saw a few so out of that 23 000 so the unbalanced behavior was you had some of them were really grinding
00:25:56.140 it and then they closed their shops you can only see them by referral or for the things and they
00:26:01.360 were doing great they were making their 414 000 they had their clinics going and then you had
00:26:06.660 let's say another five to seven thousand we're doing other work on the side making good money
00:26:14.760 and only needed to see a few patients just to keep their license going correct so you didn't have so
00:26:20.100 you had a really imbalance and i think that's kind of what we've seen so now they said okay
00:26:25.080 let's change this there's three pieces to what we want to do one is we're going to assign people
00:26:30.700 to you so you're going to get a fixed fee right that's the one where you're going to be given a
00:26:36.320 you're going to be out of the 8.5 million people in quebec you get this chunk yeah you're going to be
00:26:43.120 getting you're going to get your 369 people correct that's divided by 23 000 right you're going to get
00:26:48.860 those people then there you're still going to get a a fee for service right so you're going to get
00:26:54.440 your fee for service and then you're going to get an hourly 20 percent pay based on the clinical and
00:27:01.460 non-clinical work you do right sounds okay you know i when you were referring to the people who
00:27:10.280 have the clinic and only seeing a handful of patients that reminds me of doctors towards the
00:27:14.620 end of the end of their career they're in their late 60s early 70s and they are doing more research
00:27:20.860 more specific things and seeing less individual patients every day yeah and that's you know if
00:27:26.720 you're 70 you're still practicing medicine you may have earned the right to dial it down a bit and not
00:27:31.960 see 45 a day right but then quite frankly you know one of the issues that came up with dubai and where
00:27:37.620 they got very upset is when the the doctors decided they weren't going to actually teach
00:27:43.800 in the medical schools anymore so they were shutting down uh the interns coming for the next round so
00:27:49.580 that there was a little bit of a standoff back in 2023 where they said you know either keep going
00:27:54.940 or quite frankly we won't teach you we won't teach anymore and when you want so you know that's just
00:27:59.840 you know in negotiations i learned this a long time ago you have to be careful about bad will
00:28:06.120 because once you create you know you lose the good will and you create the bad will and then all
00:28:10.500 of a sudden there's no more liberties awarded to you at the table so you know it's a give and
00:28:14.620 take right i can't win every discussion i have to let you i have to concede i have to give take
00:28:19.780 and and that's what i've watched great negotiators in my life and they're very good at you know
00:28:25.860 moving moving moving forward giving giving taking giving taking stop let's go let's take a break
00:28:32.640 let's go back tomorrow again right right and then they go again again and the great negotiators
00:28:36.640 have pace and they're very good at kind of making sure it's not a total demolition of the opponent
00:28:42.680 and getting the key issues they want in a very articulate way this wasn't right the doctors used
00:28:48.320 a very heavy-handed approach they said we're going to cut the interns out we're not going to bring
00:28:51.620 people in and then the government which is you know let's be serious the government in quebec is a
00:28:56.340 is a fairly heavy-handed government they're very powerful yeah they're very powerful and they
00:29:00.760 they use it they swing that you know they they swing that club when they need to yes and probably
00:29:05.600 not the right approach because once you did that then they just said okay done but this goes back
00:29:09.920 to your earlier point paul if they had the independent arbitrator oh yeah guys guys guys calm down yeah
00:29:16.220 yeah let's just like go away for the weekend yeah and we're going to meet again and well i'll bring
00:29:21.100 in some muffins and croissants who doesn't like that and then we'll talk in the morning and then we like
00:29:26.400 that's that was totally missing yeah you're saying that's it i'm not whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa
00:29:32.120 calm down yeah no i know well you know and so then they you know then they came up so i didn't mind
00:29:37.960 uh the fee structure they came up with i this one was a little weird the color-coded system i thought
00:29:45.620 was it's a little convoluted right yeah it's convoluted i think this one got weird and quite frankly
00:29:50.800 i think maybe someone overthought this right yeah i think this is where i they kind of lost me a
00:29:55.940 little when they basically said you know um we're going to assign people to you and then we're going
00:30:01.500 to give them a color code so we're going to and we're going to pay you so we're going to pay you
00:30:05.220 if you're green and you're healthy you're going to get that person we're going to pay you nine dollars
00:30:09.100 a year if that person has minor ailments we're going to give you 54 a year and if they have
00:30:15.160 moderate conditions you're going to give you 91 and red so they're you know major illnesses we're
00:30:21.720 going to give you 164. so it's type 2 diabetes considered moderate and well they do have a they have
00:30:28.320 a whole chart of like this is yeah this is like and it's really it is a little bit i tried to go
00:30:33.900 through it i'm not a doctor so i followed it for a little while and i'm like wow this is uh you know
00:30:38.880 i hope this is computerized quite frankly because i really wouldn't want to be doing this and trying
00:30:43.400 to figure out where everyone fit well imagine the administrator the receptionist of the office
00:30:47.440 and you come in trying to so yeah i think this got a little too i the concept i think is a good
00:30:52.280 concept i don't know how you manage it by a color-coded system efficiently and then the other thing
00:30:58.500 too is already one of the challenges of the health system it's the honor system right so you know
00:31:06.020 and we hear horror stories so there's no point you know we can't lie about it you know and doctors
00:31:10.140 will admit too you do hear those horror stories that that doctor who never saw anyone and build
00:31:15.280 you know millions of dollars and then quite frankly they have to take his license away and there's
00:31:20.840 you know 20 of these guys pop every year and we all read in the paper and we all which is sad because
00:31:25.620 the thousands of other ones are complete opposite they take the they take the brunt of it and yeah but
00:31:29.960 it does happen and quite frankly i think creating another system where someone has to make a judgment
00:31:34.760 call is going to be very challenging so i don't i think that you have to narrow it or you'd have to
00:31:40.640 think through or even create like very small categories not the large ones they thought so i thought
00:31:46.040 this wasn't the best thing that they came up with but i think the idea of having uh everyone allocated
00:31:53.220 to a doctor or to a medical team everyone kind of quite frankly them being paid for that allocation
00:31:59.860 was a smart idea reducing the fee for service because i think the fee for service wasn't really
00:32:06.160 it wasn't getting them there right the total fee for service so i think that was good um
00:32:12.660 you know they created a new fee for service schedule
00:32:16.320 uh and that caused a challenge right because now and that naturally caused a challenge because that's
00:32:23.880 change because it changed for something that's been in place for decades exactly and they knew how to
00:32:29.840 use it they knew what it was they calculated their income based on it they budgeted for it oh yeah
00:32:34.720 my doctor my doctor uh my old doctor not my current doctor but my old doctor quite frankly knew how many
00:32:40.260 people she had to see per year and she had it broken down and her and her husband knew by day per year
00:32:45.340 to make the amount of money she wanted to make and then go on vacation right it's very calculated right
00:32:50.860 but think about any business paul oh yeah that's that is a conversation be had in every business in
00:32:56.880 every walk of life in the country i need to do this this and this to have some time and money to do
00:33:02.180 that yeah doctors are human and they do need breaks and so i get that oh yeah yeah no and i agree and i
00:33:07.940 and i thought that was that's good i think you know the transition to a new fee schedule is
00:33:14.560 it's an okay idea i think it's caused a lot of challenges i think that was because all of a sudden
00:33:20.160 they said an in-person patient you know you're gonna uh at the patient's home is 59 in person at
00:33:27.220 the clinic is only 16 and they're like what do you mean 16 you know and they went down and so i think
00:33:32.760 just naturally on the diminishing numbers per schedule item i think they were they were in hot
00:33:39.760 water right away and probably didn't do a very good job at communicating that i watched the videos
00:33:44.900 that they uh they had quite a few videos online on the government site the quebec government site
00:33:50.080 they weren't the best videos right and they were done by bureaucrats so they they basically got you
00:33:56.540 know staff who worked in the ministry of health they got them aboard and they tried to explain it
00:34:01.720 again it fell short it fell short they should have had doctors explaining it and they should have
00:34:06.540 actually related it to an uh an actual example of they should have taken you through a gp they should
00:34:13.540 have taken you through and showed you how to do it i think that really didn't work very well right
00:34:18.000 because the message in this kind of thing you're going to have so many people in the public paul
00:34:22.400 who are completely pro-doctor and if the message falls short then you lose them but if it's a solid
00:34:28.420 message from a health care professional in the field and they're explaining it they're like oh oh wait a
00:34:33.820 sec that may make a big difference with public opinion yeah so you know and it's interesting
00:34:39.500 what do you think this the professional designations what do you think the second most
00:34:44.960 the second highest bankruptcy rate per professional designation is
00:34:49.140 um contractor no like accountant lawyer oh oh i see um i'm so bad at this i guess
00:34:59.820 lawyer no lawyers one doctors two really yeah quite a few it's actually happens quite a bit
00:35:06.900 is it because of the they have such debt loads no doctors are terrible money managers for the most part
00:35:13.040 you know my experience they've they've always been terrible because they're so focused in health care
00:35:17.920 and science it's like an artist right you know you're you're an artist and so quite frankly you go out
00:35:22.680 and quite frankly what they tend to do for doctors is they pass they get through medical school
00:35:27.840 and what we do in the society is they get a lot of credit they get mortgages easy they credit easy
00:35:34.600 from the banks etc oh yeah sure you know you're because you know you're like an annuity right so
00:35:39.320 they look at them like an annuity so what a doctor does he goes in so he over leverages he buys too big
00:35:44.160 a home he buys too big too fancy a car he gets you know too big a gym membership and now he's carrying a
00:35:50.060 huge nut every month right so he gets sick or something happens has some mental issues some something goes
00:35:56.480 down that causes them to do a bleep and quite frankly it's over really wow yeah so it's a tough
00:36:02.060 it's not as easy as you think like i and that's where i really do respect any doctor because you
00:36:07.480 know you have to put in you figure to pay to pay to live the lifestyle at an age where you want to live
00:36:14.300 it and you go do it you also have to work that annuity to the end so you got to do those 40 years
00:36:20.240 well you have to and you can't you can't pull up think about the specialist the oncologist the gi
00:36:25.340 specialist orthopedic surgeon cardiac surgeon neurologist an 80 hour a week is not uncommon
00:36:30.980 80 hours a week oh yeah being so dedicated to their craft and they still have to have a family and a life
00:36:36.540 right well and they and they you know quite frankly you know if they're living in that fancy home
00:36:41.520 driving that nice car and they've been giving credit out the wazoo the banks love them right
00:36:46.060 absolutely sure they do they're great right you know they can they cover their mortgages it's
00:36:51.140 government money so they're in the sweet spot so and and quite frankly it's a prestige if you ever
00:36:57.500 golf with a lawyer who didn't live well no i mean a doctor who didn't live well of course they did
00:37:02.940 right so some are a little a little more modest with their money than others but i see your point
00:37:07.280 yeah yeah so so then you know there's the collective performance right so that's the the last one we
00:37:13.540 talked about so that's that massive envelope um for specialists the total compensation envelope is
00:37:19.960 about 5.5 billion so and uh per year and that's kind of they decided to keep that till 2028 for family
00:37:30.720 doctors it was 3.4 billion so they set aside this collective money and they took uh 15 of it
00:37:40.240 and they put it into a fund and then they said that's going to be distributed to everyone else
00:37:45.460 right um and 10 percent would be tied to performance measures and then the five percent is kind of
00:37:54.560 agreed upon sure yeah and that's how they did it that's how the compensation went so overall when
00:37:59.740 they ran kind of the traditional numbers through the number of visits because they did the one thing
00:38:04.920 they did do really well the quebec government they actually took a look at the total number of uh
00:38:10.920 healthcare visitate visits in a year for everything and they tried to figure out if this uh formula would
00:38:18.400 be able to be managed and if it would provide the same amount of revenue to the doctors that they
00:38:26.320 currently were doing and they they did so they did you know they ran a model they had some big uh mba
00:38:32.640 guy running a big macro excel sheet he tracked it all put it together and he came out with
00:38:38.240 yeah this will make everyone whole the challenge is it's not going to make everyone whole it's going
00:38:43.620 to make some holes there'll be winners and losers in the equation always will be yeah unfortunately
00:38:48.580 you've got different ages different health care challenges parts of the country may have more
00:38:54.960 dementia than others part may have more cardiac issues part may have more cancer it's hard to
00:39:00.040 predict all these things paul it is it is but that's the part of it probably you and i don't
00:39:06.480 like the best so probably quite frankly having collective bonuses and stuff probably again i think
00:39:13.700 the color coding and the collective bonus stuff i probably would have passed on yeah i think that
00:39:18.140 just and the performance indicators quite frankly uh you could have done a small amount on that i think
00:39:24.900 that's probably something you could have tried to you know i think you were uh kind of reaching
00:39:31.740 with that i think you they went too far um i would have pulled back and maybe i would have had five to
00:39:37.280 ten percent just as individual performance measures so that you would actually give to certain so you give
00:39:42.880 the gps you know one you'd give the specialist one you'd have different exactly by category but not a
00:39:49.720 general performance measure part of the challenge i think in this country right now not just quebec is
00:39:55.120 making sure doctors are financially compensated so we don't lose our best specialist to the usa or
00:40:01.300 other countries which is happening yep making sure that health care is being delivered in a timely
00:40:06.480 faction when you see things like the average wait time 16 and a half hours on average for a bed
00:40:13.000 it's it it breaks my heart as a canadian to see stuff like that these stories are happening all
00:40:19.120 across the country people are desperate for a family doctor they can't get it they have an ailment they
00:40:24.460 don't know where to go maybe where they live there isn't a walk-in clinic and they're stuck in
00:40:28.540 emergency for half a day or a full day right and it's hard to believe this is happening in all the
00:40:34.800 things whether it's municipal provincial federal there has to be so many bright minds that can get
00:40:40.140 together and come up with a better way to do this yeah and i think there is i think again i think
00:40:45.280 we're stuck behind a group of associations and self-interests that are not letting it shine and now
00:40:52.100 you know might not have agreed with everything they did right but my i take my hat off to them they
00:40:59.140 tried something well and they've they've started the conversation you know they just like podcasting
00:41:04.100 like we're doing we're not always right we make mistakes we say things but we want input maybe
00:41:08.440 someone watching this right now i'm listening they've got answers we'll bring it in give us your
00:41:13.500 comments i'd love to do a show on someone else who has another solution yeah and bring them on and say
00:41:17.540 okay tell us the other solution because there's got to be another solution there's got to be somewhere
00:41:22.000 and this is the other thing that i find very bizarre you know you look at other countries who have
00:41:27.620 service or team-based health care they cover off they've been doing it for years they cover cover off a hundred
00:41:34.260 percent of their population and they don't have the problems we have how well they put the services
00:41:42.040 into place years ago and they've basically worked it so they're they've worked the kinks out where they
00:41:47.880 they identify people at different health levels they get them into the right service teams they move
00:41:53.860 them around so they've figured out how to do it so it's being done yeah we're not we're not you know so
00:41:59.560 why can't we just go and take what the best of the breed of the other countries bring it to bring
00:42:05.200 it to canada implement it you know if we have to again i'm not looking to take any income off anyone
00:42:12.460 who works hard right if they're working hard and the system penalizes them i think we have to create
00:42:18.680 a contingency plan to make sure that person's not penalized so you have to put some money aside to
00:42:23.420 transition them to the model yes yeah like anything else you know and i think quite frankly on the
00:42:29.300 doctor's side thinking that your annuity is a given is a little bit of a mistake so and i think you have
00:42:37.520 to let them transition out of that because you know just because you operate and or you function in a
00:42:43.460 province if the system changes like any business where any of us are you know any business person
00:42:49.080 understands that climate's change craps this tariff that's hit us in the last you know year
00:42:54.360 uh it's thrown the country on its head well and it's proven to all of us in different industries
00:42:59.780 that we have to be versatile we have to you know have multiple vendors multiple customers we have to
00:43:05.580 look outside of our u.s uh relationships it happens in every business it's my sister retired after 35 years
00:43:13.600 of being a nurse and all her fellow nurses who are in that age group retired not so much for physical
00:43:20.080 reasons but emotional and mental reasons they couldn't do it anymore they were burned out and
00:43:25.980 if anyone's seen the series the pit which is a depiction of an emergency department in a hospital
00:43:32.940 in pittsburgh my sister watched it and she said i had to turn it off because it was too close to home
00:43:37.720 it actually showed just how crazy it is in a hospital in an emergency room and what they deal with
00:43:44.920 every day and it's happening in hospitals and family health care clinics and we are too good of a country
00:43:52.380 too wealthy of a country too intelligent of a country to not have a better solution than people waiting
00:43:57.740 16 and a half hours in a hallway emergency room waiting for to see a physician there has to be paul
00:44:04.460 agreed agreed and so that's where you know quite frankly that dialogue this dialogue has to keep going
00:44:10.420 and and i understand you want to protest i get it and you have every right protesting is everyone's
00:44:16.620 right but at the end of the day when you stop protesting start trying to find solutions all right
00:44:22.220 so post-protest okay go to the media go to your local you know politician hey i think this might be
00:44:28.940 better i'm pretty sure dubai would actually sit and listen to people if they talk to them and they
00:44:33.620 could come up with a solution and and as you said off the top and it was the most salient point
00:44:38.500 that premier ford and premier houston and nova scotia and premier evie and bc are all watching
00:44:44.000 this extremely closely because they all have the similar challenges in every province in the country
00:44:49.240 with executing health care making sure doctors and nurses and psws are paid well and taken care of
00:44:55.740 but making sure the public has health care access that they need we that's one of the things as
00:45:00.780 canadians we stand on the rooftops and yell we have free health care we have universal health care
00:45:06.420 we've got the best health care in the world it's amazing health care but 16 and a half hours and
00:45:12.080 emerge is not the best health care in the world yeah and you know what jim it's it could be it could
00:45:16.220 be but it's interesting even new immigrants that are coming to the country right now yes it's i'm
00:45:20.980 listening to their stories their health care is better in the country they come right so they're
00:45:26.500 telling that was never like that before no and it's actually embarrassing because they they asked me so
00:45:30.260 they they it's funny because i'm you know i'm getting up there in age and they say to me sometimes they
00:45:34.720 they say was it always like this paul and i said no it wasn't always like this quite frankly it was
00:45:39.220 it was a really great system it worked really well and i don't really remember there was no protest
00:45:43.480 no there was no protest you know we negotiated doctor fees and quite frankly moved along had very
00:45:49.020 very little wait times very efficient nicely clean hospitals and and you know they say well it's because
00:45:55.360 all the immigrants no it's not because all the immigrants it's not it's not at all we have enough
00:46:00.680 we have the resources and the people we just don't organize it well well and then anytime you
00:46:06.440 get to rural canada far northern ontario rural parts of the provinces you want to talk about
00:46:12.520 problems with health care yeah and then if you live in some sort of community where you're you quite
00:46:18.260 frankly can't afford to live in a big city you may be driving an hour an hour and a half to see a
00:46:22.760 specialist and and if something happens you kind of know it's over so you know i've been through with my
00:46:29.120 dad and one of his best friends right and my dad he wanted him to move where he lived and quite
00:46:34.600 frankly i said to my dad i said you're getting older it's a bad decision and it was a bad decision
00:46:39.060 because this gentleman did have a heart attack and died on the way because it was too far right and so
00:46:43.340 you know it's great you know you can live there for a period of time but as you get older you got to
00:46:47.500 transition and unfortunately you're transitioning the wrong way our elderly should be transitioning into
00:46:53.160 smaller more local communities closer to help major health care hubs closer to major health care
00:46:58.000 jobs not back into the city where traffic congestion and all the other stuff makes it harder for them
00:47:03.020 to have a quality of life right and the numbers the stats from the alzheimer society and all the
00:47:09.680 professionals about the 60 and over the amount of dementia and alzheimer's in the country it's pretty
00:47:14.640 scary paul and and for a lot of families who are dealing with it they wonder if they're going to get
00:47:19.640 the care and i know so many families that they have a parent who will not go into a long-term care home
00:47:25.600 and they're stuck at home trying to deal with an elderly loved one yeah and and then take them
00:47:31.160 to appointments and dealing with health care we have a family friend who are doing doing the same
00:47:35.960 thing and they're driving their 80 some year old father to specialists from maybe from collingwood
00:47:41.200 to barry for people watching that's 45 minutes on a good day yeah in the winter it's over an hour or
00:47:47.620 driving an hour plus to london and it's like that in every province in the country right now yeah no no and
00:47:53.680 again but that is the joy or that is the good one of the good things about this plan right they're
00:48:00.320 going to be allocated to a service team to help their needs and hopefully take care of some of
00:48:05.340 their issues and and you know the one thing i will give the province to give back credit it peels back
00:48:11.060 the onion to what is really going on it was quite in depth yeah yeah right i mean they they the curtain
00:48:17.780 was exposed instead of saying hey you know don't ask we're not it's none of your business they made
00:48:23.480 it everyone's business all the information all the numbers all the stats and then people go oh wait a
00:48:28.520 sec so i think as canadians the average canadian have a right to make sure we have access to the
00:48:34.560 best health care possible and so that means all levels of government have to work together to make
00:48:39.380 sure they can get that access they're just the numbers you've talked about it before
00:48:43.460 the millions of canadians without a family doctor it's heartbreaking so they go they go without
00:48:49.900 health care they go a long time without seeing anyone because they're like i don't want to wait
00:48:53.760 20 hours and emerge i'm fine there's that always i'm fine they may have a lingering problem and it's
00:48:59.200 undiagnosed because they they have nowhere to go yeah no well nowhere to go nowhere to get in no
00:49:04.040 equipment quite frankly because we don't do a great job at the diagnostic equipment we do pull in and
00:49:10.240 quite frankly because they don't have time the doctors and the way we've done it to date
00:49:15.940 they're not doing great you know you're even your physicals now you go for a physical quite frankly
00:49:21.180 if you go for a i did it for the first time a few years ago but two years ago i went to a private
00:49:26.880 health care oh uh clinic and i had a full physical done okay oh my goodness what a difference
00:49:34.580 so when i was 50 yeah i had a full complete physical i got a note from the province of
00:49:40.380 ontario that you're 50 and through my family doctor it was like head to toe i got an ekg
00:49:47.120 they did an extensive blood test i got a colonoscopy they checked me inside and out to make sure i got
00:49:53.240 a clean bill of health yeah and so every five to seven years i got a colonoscopy because it's a great
00:49:57.980 pre you know it's a very preventable cancer if you get it checked out yeah but yeah i mean part of that
00:50:03.380 sometimes the family doctor will say paul you're this age we want to give you all these different
00:50:09.040 tests just to make sure that you continue to have good health right so then you would in in this case
00:50:14.140 scenario you would go into that service team and that service team would kind of that that would be
00:50:18.480 your your age category and who you are correct would we go in and again that makes so much sense
00:50:24.100 it makes so much sense okay jim you might be changing service teams now yeah of course because
00:50:29.700 these people specialize on males from x to x because i'm in a different category you're in a
00:50:34.300 different category now and they're they're the ones who specialize in all these tests and make sure they
00:50:38.240 look for this this and this and that's where you should go right some 25 year old who has no health
00:50:44.540 problems could go years out seeing a doctor and have no problem right but we can allocate in the in
00:50:49.560 this scenario we can allocate you know if there's eight and a half million people and so many of them
00:50:54.180 are under the age of 25 we can allocate them to fewer gps and fewer doctors because there's less
00:51:00.580 need for it and less need for it and then the doctors that have more of the specialty skills they can
00:51:05.300 actually and that's where i like this like i was like looking at him thinking this makes rational
00:51:10.500 sense to me you know i'm a i'm a bean counter by trade i quite frankly looking at him thinking okay
00:51:15.260 this is starting to make sense to me so i think they're on to something i really do i think they have
00:51:19.920 the bones for something so they just have to work it a little differently they have to work it and
00:51:23.800 they need more input which they didn't unfortunately they they had loggerheads and they all fought
00:51:28.540 they had to drop a bill which was not a great bill because it just passed no one likes a bill that they
00:51:33.480 don't get input into of course so that didn't work out well but you know what at the end of the day
00:51:37.320 this gentleman i know he's retiring this the health minister in quebec kristin dubay dubay you know
00:51:43.640 what and i i gotta tell you he should be commended the way out this is his last term
00:51:48.520 the only thing i say to him is he brought an issue to light whether it's a great outcome i don't know
00:51:54.440 how they passed it i don't think that's the best but he did do a lot of work bringing the issue and
00:51:59.820 he surfaced something that to your point jim no one wanted to talk about for some reason this was kind
00:52:07.600 of the elephant in the room yeah that we all sat around said we know it's broken but let's not talk
00:52:12.740 about how to fix it and you know fee schedules my goodness for years i don't know about you but i
00:52:19.700 always ask what do doctors get paid there we go they don't tell you right i i just assumed that
00:52:26.760 there was like you're a gp you get this much money and i never really knew either i know but why don't
00:52:32.140 we talk about we talk about how everyone else in the world gets paid right like it's so weird to me
00:52:37.140 like we don't talk about doctors and how they get paid because a lawyer makes x amount of dollars
00:52:42.080 per hour an accountant you know whatever i know when my lawyer quite frankly when they i remember
00:52:46.600 the day quite frankly when i was sitting there my lawyer called me said we're all going to charge
00:52:50.100 a thousand dollars an hour now and i went like oh my goodness like can i find another lawyer right
00:52:54.840 then i called another guy and he said yeah we all got together and we all charge a thousand
00:52:58.320 dollars a lawyer now an hour and i went okay then i don't know if that's fair but i guess that's the
00:53:05.200 new rate right wow well we but we knew that right good or bad we knew it and that's kind of so you
00:53:09.980 kind of you know you reduced your amount of legal time to 10 minutes i'm gonna go hang up the phone
00:53:16.220 yeah i don't need your advice but but you know we did but yeah with doctors for some reason with
00:53:23.660 doctors it became this weird thing where we never got the details and i enjoyed this i i honestly when i
00:53:30.180 started looking into this and we're gonna this is by the way going to be online yeah so
00:53:34.860 everyone have access to it everyone have access and please provide your comments but when i got it
00:53:39.580 and i started going through it i'm like oh that's really interesting i never knew when i went to the
00:53:43.500 doctor they got 59 yeah you know the the funny thing is it talked about uh seeing a specialist you
00:53:49.920 know and we mentioned how um quebec is worse than ontario in the atlantic provinces it's 10 to 15 weeks
00:53:56.440 longer to see a specialist than quebec so for people in new brunswick nova scotia and the maritime
00:54:01.820 provinces seeing a specialist it's you could be waiting anywhere from three quarters of a year
00:54:07.320 to a full calendar year to see a specialist yeah they mostly fly here or they fly to florida honestly
00:54:13.100 most of the people who live in atlantic canada than i know who have a little bit of money actually fly
00:54:18.520 into the states and get private health care if they need a specialist but that's that shouldn't
00:54:23.160 happen that shouldn't they shouldn't be forced to have to travel to see a specialist for a health
00:54:27.800 care need i get it you're being told you're not going to see someone for 11 months you're like
00:54:33.000 well wait i don't think what if i can't wait 11 months what if i should be should i be dealt with
00:54:37.340 now i get if you have the ways and means that you do this but this is the challenge for health care in
00:54:42.880 canada is making sure we're not forcing people to fly to the mayo clinic or the cleveland clinic
00:54:47.840 to get health care they should get in their own community well that's you know then that's for
00:54:52.020 another show we got to do it because quite frankly uh private health care which is becoming more and
00:54:57.320 more popular and they're saying so the issue becomes this is a very interesting issue we're
00:55:02.480 going from uh to your you made the point jim so well you know we're so proud we have free health care
00:55:07.660 we brag about it every day but if they transition us off of free health care into private health care
00:55:13.100 but we're still paying the same tax rates all we did was move ourself off of one system to pay for
00:55:21.500 another system and in the states right now private health care which was something that was fairly
00:55:25.760 reasonable up until about two three years private health care now is super expensive every american
00:55:31.460 a friend of mine came for dinner the other night from florida him and his wife we had a wonderful
00:55:36.280 dinner my wife and i and he started telling me what his what his uh health care costs are and
00:55:42.320 do you mind revealing just a ballpark it's like 34 000 for the two of them a year
00:55:47.500 wow yeah and i went and i'm like because i remember when i was down there when i was paying
00:55:52.580 fractions of that for myself living in the in the u.s for health care i wasn't even close to that and
00:55:58.480 now their health care is like crazy well that excludes a lot of people in america doesn't it
00:56:03.800 well that's a challenge right so as we shift now like as we're looking to move some of our services off
00:56:09.980 you know where's that slippery slope end and if we're going to do that that has a whole tax regime and
00:56:15.220 a whole tax restructuring that we have to look at as a country because i know we can't simply move
00:56:20.560 off to private health care and keep paying laser eye surgery is considered private they have the
00:56:26.300 laser eye surgery clinics in canada yeah there are certain um there is the shoulder ice clinic for
00:56:31.900 hernia in the toronto area which is world renowned yeah and then there's a bunch of small little now
00:56:38.420 health care clinics that remember the premier opened up here and i'm trying to think they're like they do
00:56:43.120 diagnostic cts and mris yes so you can get it for pay a ct or mri or or a diagnostic scan for part of
00:56:50.580 your body yes yes and i've sold it's not ideal in a perfect world we'd never have to have private
00:56:58.240 health care in canada but if the population continues to grow and there's no signs it's
00:57:02.380 not going to continue to grow and we can't provide enough doctors and nurses and all the other health
00:57:07.460 care professionals needed within the system what else are going to people if people are sick they
00:57:13.600 want to feel better if they're in pain i don't want to feel pain anymore a plan right we got to look at
00:57:20.040 this plan and what we have to do is we got to make it better so quite frankly we got to figure out we got
00:57:25.440 to figure out this quebec plan and we need to grow off of it quite frankly and it's my opinion that i know
00:57:32.740 all of it's not perfect but i think we have the bones to now figure out how to restructure and i think
00:57:38.620 this gentleman what he's done is he's actually thrown on the table here we go yeah the start this is
00:57:45.680 the start and i think we can get better at but and then therefore we won't have to be searching for
00:57:50.380 private health care we can actually we can find ways to deal with things and i think we got it you did
00:57:55.020 such an incredible multi-part breakdown of the budget and it's a close to 500 page document
00:58:00.580 the latest budget you know so much research and brain power went into that with all the genius
00:58:08.300 people across this country in administrative in accounting in legal speak in health care you can't
00:58:16.480 tell me they can't get together and put some sort of similar document based off this bill too something
00:58:21.800 that provide more health care people in a more efficient way so less people are like i don't have a
00:58:27.220 doctor i don't know where to go i don't have where do i turn to no no it's solvable he he hit on it it
00:58:32.840 is solvable yeah and we definitely have the the power within this country to solve this problem yeah
00:58:38.660 and the technology absolutely we have the technology paul it's an absolute pleasure my friend yeah thanks
00:58:43.180 yeah thank you
00:59:01.520 you
00:59:02.020 you
00:59:02.320 you
00:59:02.340 you
00:59:03.840 you
00:59:04.380 you
00:59:08.880 you