Misdiagnose of Canadian Medicare

Unfortunately, medicare's real story doesn't get much air time. Former Saskatchewan premier Tommy Douglas talked all his life about the need for the second stage of medicare. He said the first stage featured public payment for the old system based on treating illness with doctors and hospitals. He said the second stage would highlight a redesigned delivery system focussed on keeping people healthy.

In the 1960s, Douglas and Supreme Court judge and co-founder of medicare Emmett Hall supported salaried doctors working in interdisciplinary teams. However, Douglas maintained that it was too politically difficult to change the way doctors were paid and how they did their work coincidently with pressuring them into public payment. For the
rest of his life, he repeatedly warned that if the delivery system was left unreformed, medicare would increasingly fail Canadians and lose political support.

When Canadians hear about the second stage of medicare, they are more than ready for a mature conversation. When they hear about innovations to reduce wait lists, they are ready to eradicate them with public sector solutions. When they hear that public finance is more efficient and that Canadian taxes have been cut by $100 billion, they are ready for medicare to cover drugs and continuing care.

So let's start the grown-up conversation with a real question about access. Best practices across Canada demonstrate that we could see our family doctors within one day, see specialists within one week, and get elective surgery within three months. And we could get this much better care for little or no additional cost. How can we make this happen within the next two years everywhere in this country?

If s true that this won't be an easy. But if s a miracle we got medicare at all. The medical profession, almost all the provinces, and most of the Canadian elite opposed medicare 50 years ago. Fortunately, the Canadian people strongly supported medicare then and they still do. Let's plug into that good will and modernize our health system for the 21st century.