Talk:Health care in Canada
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[edit] Japan
So what is Japan doing right?
It spends less of its GDP (public and private) on healthcare than the US or Canada, less of a % of tax revenue on healthcare than the US, and less % of private industry than anyone but the Brits.
What is it, the sushi? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.2.124.11 (talk • contribs) 2006-05-11 20:59:54 (UTC).
[edit] Merger
I disagree with the merger proposal. Medicare is a distinct program that handles only a minority of Canadian's healthcare. - SimonP 18:38, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Health care observations
I hope to introduce some of these observations into the topic.
Canada's Health care system has been called a public system, a socilized heath care system but in fact it is merely pulically funded, although many politicians and reports refer incorrectly to this system as a public one. ( this a good example of a half-truth - half-truth)
It was a very famous socialist politician Tommy Douglas the son of a preacher who instituted government funded health care.
Canadians receive 'free' health care paid for by a provincially funded tax supported fund. Some provinces employ a monthly insurance premium, Ontario does not. Some limited services are not covered.
Most doctors are in reality 'corporations' and clinics are privately owmed by doctor consortiums. Doctors, family doctors receive a fee per visit from the Government. A system that rewards repeat visits, referrals, and testing. Doctors in Canada, except for some hospital doctors do not receive a yearly salary.
The College of Physicians and Surgeons is a self regulating department that handles physician complaints.
Canadians are currently experiencing a doctor shortage due to the market forces at play and the fee structure, that penalizes doctors income relative to the supply of doctors.
A recent comparative report on Health Systems in the World, 'Wyatt/Watson' ranked Canada's Health system 20th in the world, better than that in the USA, ranked 24th. France and Italy were ranked in the top two.
I noted that I had forgotten to sign this one...the name is correct, the date is wrong...(half-truth.
--Caesar J. B. Squitti : Son of Maryann Rosso and Arthur Natale Squitti 18:01, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Observations on the observations
The article now notes that 99% of complaints to the College in Ontario are dismissed, most without making it the College's complaint committee. The sources for this information present it in a negative light, but it occurs to me that an investigation into the nature of the complaints might reveal that this rate is not in the least negligent; it may be that 99% of complaints are indeed insubstantial, which seems plausible enough to me. 霊村 11:23, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Cancer research funding
In a section titled Doctor Shortage there is a paragraph long digression on the difficulty of funding clinical trials on non-patented drugs. This is surely an interesting and important topic, but it seems a little bit out of place in this section. Could there be a separate section for criticsm of the Canadian health research model? And is this concern specific to Canadian health research? 霊村 11:34, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Private insurance?
Hi, I'm a bit confused by the fact that at one point this page states:
Increasingly, there are private clinics that offer some of the same services as the public system such as hip replacements and MRI scans. These are legal. Contrary to popular belief, selling private health insurance that could cover these procedures is legal in several provinces, but because they are available without charge in the public system, so far there has been no market for private insurance for what the Canada Health Act defines as "medically necessary services."
but then under criticisms, I find:
Canada also outlaws all purchases of health care services within its borders as well as the purchasing of health insurance, denying its citizens from opting out of the system.
Could someone please clarify if this is a mistake or if I am misreading? 15:00, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
- I wrote the criticisms section and I got the latter factoid from the On the Fence Film (also under links). However the film appears to be over a year old so I'm attempting to confirm or deny either statement. David Youngberg 01:40, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
"Much of the political discourse concerning the health care system, as it stands in the year 2006, appears to be politically motivated." -This sentence is stupid. Need I even say that it stands to reason that political discourse is politically motivated? I'd change it, but I don't even really know to what it's referring. Somebody think of something. 16 February 2007
[edit] Canada has a genetic advantage in longevity?
The last paragraph where it seems to state that Canada does have a genetic pre-disposition to living longer seems over the top. What kinds of evidence do we have for this?207.236.24.133 16:16, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
I agree, it seems anecdotal at best. They're basically saying that black people are "genetically predisposed" to live shorter lives, while Asian people are predisposed to live longer, which is complete and utter bullshit. It's like saying women are genetically predisposed to earning less than men are. Correlation != causation.
The statements in that paragraph has no proper reference so it has been removed. TimL 01:11, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
How statistics can lie, all about half-truths.
Many Canadians, have the distinct situation of not being from Canada. That is a great many people came to Canada after the 1st world war, and have diets, and culture that is not Canadian, that may contribute to their longevity. So to say that statistically Canadians live longer, some do, some don't, which are which.
I see that Italian Canadians appear to live longer that Canadian Italians, they seem to live longer, and healthier, as to those born here; just an observation, with a conclusion that complicates the statistical conclusion.
--Caesar J. B. Squitti : Son of Maryann Rosso and Arthur Natale Squitti 15:16, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Citing the Fraser Institute
I've got a concern, and it is that this page does not mention the fact that the Fraser Institute is a hard-line neo-liberal economics supportive (or conservative) institute. If you don't believe me just look at their website. Shouldn't this page make a note about the politics of the critics of the Canadian system? Or in the case of the Heritage Institute, say that they are aligned in the North American conservative movement before just going ahead and citing away? It's all well and good to cite them, but they should never be unidentified by their ideological alignment, am I right? Thoughts anyone? I think that going forward it ought to be known what an institution's political alignment is before you cite on this page. Otherwise all sorts of political institutions are going to be put on here as experts in the field and readers will not know that many of them have an agenda. Drakeguy 22:56, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
- The Fraser Institute is wikified on the page. If people want to know more about the source, that's how they can find out. Prefacing it with a descriptor of their politics runs the risk of turning that sentance/section into POV. -David Youngberg 19:13, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Mis-Citing the Fraser Institute
The last table on this page purports to present data from WHO, but the link is dead. The table presents the startling statistic that the Canadian "median waiting time to receive a critical procedure" is 124 days. That number is almost certainly derived from the Fraser Institute ( http://www.fraserinstitute.ca/shared/readmore.asp?sNav=pb&id=801 ) which states that the "total waiting time from referral to treatment" is 17.7 weeks (note that 17.7 x 7 = 123.9 days). It is bad enough that Fraser data is being passed off as WHO data, it is inexcusable that the "total time from referral to treatment" is then presented as "median waiting time to receive a critical procedure". If the table cannot be documented, it should be stricken.
For the best recent information on Canadian wait times, please see the latest Canadian Institute for Health Information data. CIHI is a Canadian government-funded watchdog agency. http://secure.cihi.ca/cihiweb/en/downloads/aib_provincial_wait_times_e.pdf
- Donald Loritz 19:16 (UTC), 5 March 2007, updated 6 March 2007 15:15 (UTC)
- Sadly, that data is sloppy. For example, for radiation therapy wait times in Newfoundland and Labrador the number is "within 30 days." Does that mean most do it within 30 days, or does that mean most are actually 20 days with a few exceptions? For some things, the 124-day wait times are way off (Manitoba has 13 days for bypass surgery) but sometimes it's quite good (Newfoundland and Labrador has 98.6% within 182 days; note that means 1.4% are taking longer than six months).
- In addition, sometimes there are wide ranges (in Nova Scotia CT and MRI scans can take anywhere from 34-177 days). And then, is that "critical care?" I don't know. Quebec cites its Cardiovascular/Cardiac Surgery wait times as "57-100%" What does that mean? Why are there no average numbers in this data? Why are there such wide ranges? How is "100%" a wait time? The problem is there is no aggregate data nor are the patient population numbers so we can't do aggregate data. They closest they get to that is: "The most commonly reported time periods are 1 month for 4 provinces, 3 months for 3 provinces, 6 months for 2 and 12 months for 1." Note they don't say if this is critical or general care.
- I have no idea why you call this "the best recent information" in a way that suggests it's any good. I'll make a note that this data exists but I don't see how we can incorporate it into the table. However, you are correct about the WHO. I can't find the data either but it also looks like they are redoing their methods. But to be sure, we don't know if the cited number is the Fraser Institute or the WHO.--David Youngberg 20:30, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
- Update: After examining the report in closer detail, I finaly figured out what they meant by "benchmark," as in they assign a target wait time for each priority level and this represents the percent that hits that level. 57-100% is a tremendous range and we have no data on which priority levels were achieved and which were not and how often each occurred. Thus the data is equally useless as I intially thought, just in a different way. -David Youngberg 20:52, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Persistently Mis-Citing the Fraser Institute
We should thank Mr. Youngberg for supplying the WHO reference to the "Comparison" table on this page. Future editors should periodically check the WHO data and keep the table updated. Mr. Youngberg says above he doesn't "know if the cited number is the Fraser Institute or the WHO", but who, if not he, assigned the footnote attributing the 124 days to the Fraser Institute during the 22 minutes he spent "examining the CIHI report in closer detail"? Would he had spent the same amount of time reading the Fraser report.
The Fraser report ("Waiting Your Turn", p. 19 et passim, emphasis added) says:
The crucial difference between the two measures, however, is the inclusion of urgent surgeries. The SSCN web site measures waiting times for all non-emergent surgeries (i.e., urgent and elective surgery waits are measured), while Waiting Your Turn measures waiting times for only elective surgeries. This means that urgent wait times (which are significantly shorter than elective wait times) are included in the wait time measures available on the SSCN web site but not in those measured by The Fraser Institute.
In other words, 124 days emphatically does not measure "waiting times for critical procedures".
I have not yet found a source for the "1.2 day" waiting time the suspect column reports for the United States, nor have I found a source for the other countries' statistics in that column.
Accordingly, I have applied a disclaimer to the Comparison Table. Given that this Wikipedia page and the 124 vs 1.2 day "waiting time for a critical procedure" statistic has been widely cited on the web in the two months since it was originally posted, I believe it is proper and ethical to leave the disclaimer in place for an equal period of time or until the statistics in the "waiting time" column can be rectified and verified. 71.64.159.174 19:19, 18 March 2007 (UTC) Donald Loritz
- I agree with your comments. I've updated the table, and left out that column. - SimonP 19:48, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
