HALIFAX, N.S. — It’s taken years to get us into the mess in health care. And it will take more than an election cycle to get us out. The author of a new book on public health care is trying to sound the alarm about the “fixes” that some jurisdictions are proposing to allow private health services. Catherine Mac Neil is a thirty year veteran who is still a registered nurse and a teacher. Her book is titled “Dying to be Seen”.
What do you think happens to the public hospital that's now been depleted of staff to move to the private clinic? I'll come back to that. Pro-privatization forces would say, Hey, we've taken a load of patients away from you, so we may have decreased your staff. But we still have taken a load of patients away from you.
And currently for the surgical categories of cataract extraction, hip and knee replacements and coronary artery bypass surgery, patients in public beds have longer wait times in that Australian system now than Canada. So that speaks to the deleterious effects that privatization or that duality has on the public system. And that's where my concern is, is the public system.And we do have access to private treatment. If you have the means and some of the services are being farmed out.
Culturally, that will shift the change to we as a federal government. We are interested in the health and welfare of the nation. The other thing I ask them to do is to end the fiscal food fight with the provinces and territories over money. Even if it means sitting down individually and doling out those Canada Health Transfer dollars to each jurisdiction and tailor it to the needs of the 13 provinces and territories.
We just read the release of Auditor General Adairs’ report where she was talking about these additional appropriations. So apparently when it comes to the Finance Act, our province is an outlier. Over the past ten years, there's been $4.7 billion of money given to departments once they exceed their own department money. It's just doled out without question, without a debate, without any discourse.
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