The front entrance of Victoria General Hospital in Victoria, B.C. (Credit: Dirk Meissner\/The Canadian Press files) <\/p>\n
How often do you hear of parents who have taken a sick or injured child to a hospital emergency, only to wait agonizing hours before even an assessment from overwhelmed admission nurses? The eight-year-old daughter of a carpenter doing some work for us recently waited in great pain from noon until 11:00 pm before triage for a serious injury.<\/p>\n
Unsatisfactory care is not uncommon in Canada\u2019s health care system. How many families lack a family doctor? How many injured workers wait so long for treatment that their deteriorating skills make them permanently unable to return to work?<\/p>\n
As economist Nikolai Wenzel reminded us earlier this year in a post<\/a> for the Foundation for Economic Education, the long wait times in our health care system are the symptom of a deep problem: \u00a0\u201cIn 2023, more than 1.3 million Canadians abandoned emergency room visits due to excessive wait times. Some hospitals have exceeded 200 per cent capacity, forcing patients into hallways and onto floors.\u201d Two years on, Canada\u2019s government health care monopoly has deteriorated even further.<\/p>\n Research by Calgary think tank secondstreet.org has found that upwards of 15,000 Canadians a year die while on waitlists for diagnostic scans or surgeries, with the true number likely being higher, as not all provinces report this statistic. And, as Fraser Institute senior fellow Nadeem Esmail points out in a recent commentary<\/a>, despite our universal system being one of the most expensive in the world, we have the longest waits among rich countries to access physicians, diagnostic scans and hospital beds. Noting that while running for office Mark Carney promised to \u201cdefend the Canada Health Act and build a health care system that Canadians can be proud of,\u201d Esmail concludes that \u201cunfortunately, to have any hope of accomplishing the latter, he must break the former.\u201d<\/p>\n Another Fraser Institute commentary<\/a> by Mackenzie Moir and Bacchus Barua references the results of the U.S.-based Commonwealth Fund\u2019s annual health policy survey of high-income countries. Canada continues to rank last or next to last on timely access to care. One likely reason? All countries except Canada allow, or even encourage, private-pay access to health care.<\/p>\n