Taking pride in Canada – including our health care

In the wake of a successful Olympics support appears to be growing to continue funding elite athletes towards the next games. A recent Toronto Star editorial called upon the Federal government to pony up another $22 million towards maintaining “Own The Podium” despite a long list of competing priorities and an expanding deficit hysteria.

In the most recent Vector Poll, 97 per cent of Canadians also said they wanted government to spend more on health care. 57 per cent of these respondents said they would be willing to spend more even if it would raise their taxes.

In many ways, despite the problems and dangers we regularly highlight on these pages, our public Medicare system is still a success. Like our athletes, Canadians are willing to support spending that does produce results.

In its review of the last decade, the Canadian Institute for Health Information revealed that our life expectancy rose by three years between 1996 and 2006, a period in which governments began to respond to real funding needs after years of fiscal restraint.

Our wait times are beginning to come down thanks to escalating transfers of funding from the Federal government, a commitment that the Harper government is holding steadfast to.

More Ontarians are now able to find a family doctor, and more families are getting access to team-based care.

Despite expensive new technologies that mean less invasive surgeries and drug treatments that improve our quality of life, the overall costs of health care remains modest and well below many other countries.

During the last recession in 1992, our spending on health care was 10 per cent of our overall economic output. In 2008 it was 10.8 per cent. In 2009 it wasn’t escalating health costs that pushed that percentage to 11.9 per cent, but a shrinking economy.

Put another way, we are paying less than two cents more of each dollar on health care – both public and private – than we were almost 20 years ago. This is hardly a description of health care spending “out of control.” Globe and Mail columnist André Picard was correct when he pointed to the ‘mythology’ of ‘out of control’ health care spending. He pointed out that last year, when adjusted for inflation and population growth, our health care spending only expanded by 2.5 per cent.

Like our Olympics, we should regard the investments of the last six years not as a source of panic, but of pride. It is an indication that we were willing to correct the underfunding of the past and invest in new services that would improve our lives. At the time our leaders crowed they were striking a deal that would save Medicare for a generation.

Our health care is always under threat from tax-cutting politicians and privateers who want to skim off a greater share of the more than $180 billion spent across Canada on health each year. We know that there is plenty of room for improvement, including realizing efficiencies through better organization within the system and improving the numbers of skilled front-line staff. Despite the scandals, we still need an electronic health record and the benefits of new technologies. We could do a lot better on chronic care and mental health, among other areas.

We still have work to do. But we need to remember that our health care system is worth fighting for, especially when numerous short-sighted job cuts across the system threaten the progress we’ve made to date. These cuts are not part of a greater vision – they are just an attempt to deal with a deficit that never had anything to do with the performance of our health care providers.

In recent days the new Minister of Health has made a series of bizarre statements suggesting cutting front-line health care jobs is improving the quality of the system. These cuts are not being replaced in the community, as the government and the LHINs suggest. Don’t be fooled.

We still have not completed Tommy Douglas’ original vision of a comprehensive health system. Other countries have surpassed us in providing more comprehensive public drug plans, in providing coverage for dentistry, and in finding more humane ways of providing long term care, among other endeavours. Other countries have been able to provide more comprehensive health care and reduce their costs by using the economies of scale only a public system can provide.

We take pride in all our athletes – even those who failed to make the podium. We should take equal pride in our health system. In both cases, our elected officials need to take note and do the right thing.