Our leaders should scrap their shopworn argument about health care.
Canadians know what premiers say to prime ministers – ‘Give us more money and we’ll improve care.’ And what prime ministers say to premiers – ‘Give Canadians better care and we’ll up the ante.’
Well, Canadians are ahead of their leaders, miles in front of the political chatter.
What they want is timely access to quality care – without added fees, thank you.
Here’s the irrelevant political question, ‘Is Mom’s care being provided through Canada’s public health care system?’
Here’s the real question, ‘Can we find care for Mom when she really needs it?’
Our premiers and prime ministers should bear this mind as they prepare for tomorrow’s working meeting on health care.
The underlying issues are urgent, a fact underscored by the recent, tragic death of 37-year-old Allison Holthoff, after an agonizing seven hour wait in a Nova Scotia emergency department.
Sadly, too many stories like Allison’s are being written every day at hospitals and clinics across Canada.
Happily, there are signs of hope in Canada’s health care system.
We did a pretty good job, for instance, of rolling out COVID vaccines to tens of millions of Canadians.
How did that happen – by bypassing the ‘traditional’ health care system and vaccinating Canadians in pharmacies, pop-up clinics, schools, churches, synagogues, and mosques.
And the sky didn’t fall because pharmacists are part of the ‘private’ sector, or because millions of us now consult family docs by phone instead of in person.
At least that’s how we see things from The CrowsNest.
It’s time for our first ministers to stop virtue-signaling on Health Care and start looking at options for reform.
Some of them are staring us in the face already, so much so that we get tired of looking at them during those long waits with Mom in the emergency department.