wait times will only significantly decrease if healthcare is unaffordable to the majority of Canadians

Wait a minute! So if I buy your healthcare, and start defunding it, while simultaneously increasing prices, thus reducing the number of patients at the same rate as the services are failing therefore not increasing or perhaps even(!) reducing waiting times through prohibitively high costs,

I can both sell privatisation as a success story, AAND make record profits with my pals in the insurance business through cost cuts and price increases!? And I even end up with a less empowered workforce who's healthcare is tied to their employment and therefore unable to negotiate better salaries or leave for a better job easily? Kinda like medieval serfs??

Stop please stop! I can only get so excited (and I can't afford an ambulance) Big /s of course

I worked for a company that served clients on a first come, first served basis. Clients would complain about wait times. The bosses decided to create a priority fee where clients could pay extra to be put into a priority queue. Guess what happened? Literally every client paid to be in the priority queue. Wait times didn't change one bit, but the bosses were laughing about suddenly making $500 extra per client with zero changes to business.

But see, if you fix the problem then nobody will want to privatize and then my buddies cannot get more rich than they already are. --republicans, conservatives, etc.

employees don't even get parking spaces. What boggles my mind is theres thousands of students trying to get into a med school system with such a small amount of slots, and its basically a lottery at this point. Then nurses and techs get their sallaries capped and work unreal hours, so everyone quits and we all wonder why things are breaking down. just take care of your staff and expand the education system, things are stretched so thin its unreal and there are so many solutions. "We've tried nothing and are out of ideas"

The difference is that those in the public interest always argue this debate from the perspective of actually taking care of people

Those that argue for private health care argue for it as a money making business.

Those that argue for public services will not make a profit from their efforts other than the benefits they receive when they need health care ... those that argue for private health care are only thinking of the windfall they would receive if it were to happen. One is arguing for perceived benefits that we may or may not see or appreciate until we need them ... the other is only thinking of short term profits for themselves, even if it is morally bankrupt.

Increasing supply is increasing short term demand, while decreasing long term demand. If you can make it so that people are able to get regular care for well visits, checkups, and attention to relatively minor concerns (increasing supply and demand), you reduce the incidence of more severe health concerns by catching things early (reducing crisis demand).

The former would need to include not only lots of GPs, but also the cultural ability to take time off work for doctor's visits, and childcare, and transportation.

Make healthcare unaffordable? Now you’re talking Conservative!

But that does not give some politicians a plump job to go to after politics.

Private retirement homes are wonderful. The lack of care (aka TLC) and misery there is beyond compare.

It’s worse than you think

It’s government funded private care and at least in Ontario there isn’t any oversight or accountability allowed for private centres

Yea, the cultural lore surrounding public healthcare in the states is really funny. You can have people waiting months for things with our shitty system who will still say that wait times with public healthcare would be horrible.

Maybe. I guess if I had to choose between a financially debilitating procedure with a long wait time and a free one with a slightly longer wait time, I'd choose the latter.

That’s what drives me nuts about this talking point. As someone with a condition that requires specialists and lands me in the ER a lot, wait times in the US are abysmal. Referrals to specialists often take months or more than a year, and even after getting in it can be several months to schedule an appointment. And ER wait times are absurd, rarely less than 5-6 hours, usually 8-12 or more.

Well, if you were a billionaire with private doctors and access to preferred care then you would be way better off than someone in Canada, ergo the American system is better.

That's the only performance based argument in favor of privatized care that I can think of.

See here the problem is when any kind of healthcare conversation starts in Canada the US always gets brought up as a sledgehammer to shutdown any further discussion. I live in the US and nobody thinks the US system is the solution for anything. But there are dozens of working examples in Europe and Asia that are worth learning from. Canadians need to look beyond this continent.

I'm in Quebec, it's 12 to 18 months to see a specialist...

Plus private only offers better until public goes to shit, then private does whatever the fuck they want, which is prioritize the wealthy who will pay the most. Profits!

I'd love it if they did that to telecoms too, everything is so expensive. cost of living is quickly outweighing the benefits.

Also, add dentists thanks.

The NDP are trying.

Praise be.