Doctors have been moaning for 35 years and we have not been listening. People have died recently in Toronto from necessary emergency cutbacks because the system is just too darned expensive. If administration is 65% of the cost, as it also seems to be with every other government fat program, then what is it about privatizing part of it would increase costs, and reduce services? There is no point in comparing it to other schemes as its apples and oranges. If the US is a bad scheme, it does not have to be replicated. It isn't the only game in town.
Medicare in Canada costs 2.5 times what it should. It costs that because of the government feedbag attached to it, that pays people who don't do medicine or nursing to loaf on boards. It can be run with 40% of the present staff, and they would be very well paid if they took 40% of the salary or present admin. Then fees could be raised a bit. And research funds could be increased. It is not enough to say you are satisfied because you have not personally had a problem or enjoyed good health or good luck with the system, or never added up what it costs you in taxes and fees. It is also irrelevant what another system costs, or who complains about it. The only thing that counts is, is this system too expensive, not offering enough care, and are the users, both physicians and patients satisfied? I contend that we are not. I contend that consts could be drastically reduced, whether it remains public or not, and the system greatly improved.
It is a simple government equation. All government or crown corporations operate at about twice the cost or more of comparable private agencies that do the equivalent. And there is no improvement in efficiency or service for the more costly agency. My father worked for Ontario Hydro as an executive for 40 years. HEPCO had 30,000 employees. He told me that according to studies he had done, they could have operated the utility with 12,000 people and it would have worked better. I tend to believe he was not bullshitting. You have to wonder why they hired so many people. But when you consider that for years the only way to get a job with hydro was to be related to someone in Hydro already, it begins to dawn what the company's main function for the administration was. The care and feeding of indigent relatives.
Nepotism and inefficient government caused the collapse of the Egyptian and Roman empires in part. It would behoove someone in government to break the chain if they could. I fear with the unions now in place, we are a one-way course to a bankrupt society. As it is, Canada's GDP is 65% the civil service. This is the prime cause of the debt and provincial shortfalls, and it cannot get any higher without causing a total debt collapse. Right now, the operating cost can only get larger, as there is no mechanism whereby a government can reduce the size of the civil service and live to talk about it.
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