EDITORIAL: Knee-jerk naysayers won’t fix health care

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The definition of insanity, we’re told, is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome. That axiom is nowhere more evident than in the Canadian health-care system.

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We’re regaled daily with horror stories of how it doesn’t work. We’re told about our doctor shortage and how whole communities lack a family physician. We read about patients waiting for days in hospital emergency departments, awaiting care. There’s weeping and gnashing of teeth about routine surgeries that are delayed for months or years.

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Yet any time someone attempts to fix the problems, there’s even louder weeping and gnashing of teeth — usually from the people who were loudest in complaining about the problems.

This week, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith announced the introduction of a hybrid health-care system. Under the new plan, doctors will be allowed to work in both the private and public health systems simultaneously.

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Critics immediately leapt in to point out that this is contrary to federal legislation governing the delivery of health care under the Canada Health Act.

Why, yes, it does. But that hasn’t stopped Quebec from introducing private clinics to perform some surgeries, says a 2023 Fraser Institute report. Spurred by a 2005 Supreme Court ruling, private clinics initially were allowed to perform three procedures. Now the list includes more than 50.

The Fraser report said the average wait time between seeing a general practitioner and receiving care was 27.4 weeks in 2022 — 18.1 weeks longer than it was in 1993 and 6.5 weeks longer than in 2019, pre-COVID.

Private delivery has always been a major part of health care across the country. Doctors, diagnostic clinics and other services are all private enterprises.

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Naysayers claim the Alberta plan paves the way for “American-style” health care. Ah, yes, America: That would be the gigantic private clinic to the south of us — the U.S. — where more and more Canadians go to find the timely health care they can’t get at home.

Suggesting changes to a system that isn’t working is the third rail of Canadian politics. Touch it and you die. Politicians have been consigned to oblivion for stating the obvious: The system isn’t working and we need ways to make it better.

Perhaps critics of the changes should wait and see if they work before indulging in their knee-jerk complaints.

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