My heart, my health, my choice!
The cry for choice in healthcare is getting louder as the inequities of the current system becomes impossible to ignore. If you are wealthy by feeding at the taxpayers trough you have health choices.
You may even own property in other countries but I would leave that conflict of interest for another post.
For most Canadians, including past and likely current CAP members the reality of choice is the reality of dying on a wait list. Of dying on a list waiting for tests or treatment that would save your life. Often the test or treatment is only a few hundred or a few thousand dollars but to the current health system that means millions and millions are saved by killing people off to save hundreds of dollars.
But it is My heart, my health, and it should be my choice.
What is needed is a health system where all Canadians are treated equally, a system in which all Canadians have a choice.
Of course we can’t really do that, equally, from a federal government point of view. Health is the responsibility of the provinces and so it should be.
The different regions in Canada have different health needs. The need for health to be a regional issue is driven home when one looks at the funding crisis or funding decisions that are being made and will have to be made within the next decades. It is also clearly a regional issue when one looks at the different health needs of each region. Clearly each region will have to develope their own response to their own needs, based on the resources they want to put to the task.
So the first step to treating all Canadians equally is to reduce the federal governments role and the extra layer of bureaucracy that consumes valuable tax money. Tax money originally taken from the very province trying to use it to provide health services.
Money should sill flow to the federal system but only to provide the framework, the guidelines, the rules, the certifications and procedures to ensure all regions are meeting Canadian standards via whatever methods they choose.
It is your heart, it is your health, it should be your choice.
