Quote:
Originally Posted by Ashartus
I think we should wait and see how it works out in Quebec before rushing to judgments. The reason they are funding IVF (or at least one of the reasons) is that they expect in the long term it will actually save the health system money. If it does, then it makes sense to fund it; that's the sort of outside-the-box thinking we need to help get our health costs under better control, with the extra benefit of increasing our birth rate a bit to help prevent our working vs. retired population balance from getting too much worse. I'm not totally convinced it will save the system money in the long run if it means a bunch of people who wouldn't otherwise be getting IVF take advantage of the government funding - but no one can say for sure until someone tries it.
If it does turn out to save the health system money, then I'd be all for funding it, but with restrictions (e.g. limit of 2 children, age restrictions, and preferably at least partial payment by the couple to weed out people who financially aren't capable of providing for children).
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According to StatsCan, Quebec has a birthrate of about 1.13% (table
1, table
2). Somehow I think their funding of this initiative has more to do with them wanting more Quebecois babies than anything else. Their death rate is only 30k lower than their annual birth rate, as a province. And yet their population grows by at least 75K per year(
3). This policy has been enacted to ensure that the true Quebecois aren't out bread/immigrated by fools who don't understand the need for a French culture.
I'd also like to mention that waiting and watching to see if the Quebecois have it right is ridiculous; it would take almost a full generation to see their fruits ripen. We need to have more decisive on healthcare now, not 20 years from now.
I honestly think it's time for a full and open evaluation of the system we have in place vs. other systems that seem to operate fluently in a dual mode.
I don't want an American style system, but I don't think that our purported single tier system is good value for the money we spend on it. It's time to analyze what works elsewhere and why and what doesn't work here and why. And once that's done it's time to start a bi-tier or multi-tier program that works for as many of us as possible. There are ways of letting quality doctors run private clinics and work for hospitals at the same time. And there are ways of making this change beneficial to both users and providers.
We just need a government with the balls (seats) to stand up and get the ball rolling.
As far as it goes I'm against funding IVF publicly unless it's streamlined and efficient.... I have been half convinced by some of the posters in this thread of the value of this procedure, but if it's coming at the expense of things that are IMO the basis of our health care system then no, you can rot.