Quote:
Originally Posted by Sliver
Years of facts from the left.
There are a limited number of healthcare workers. If we remove some from the public system then rich people will get better care than people of lesser financial means. The only people who would want that are selfish. Not selfish in the colloquial sense where you'd kind of lob that as an insult, but selfish in the sober and objective definition of the word.
To think my health is more important and my ills can be addressed better and faster than someone with less money is an absolutely untenable stance to me. It's abhorrent.
Healthcare workers moving from the public sector to the private sector would make the public system even worse. People advocating for that are horrible people and terrible community members. Let's bolster the public system so it stays communal and fair.
The wealthy should be insentivised to put more money into public healthcare if they want better services. Private healthcare should be illegal. If you want better healthcare and don't mind paying more for it, then why wouldn't you advocate for higher taxes so healthcare is better for all? That's what I think we should do. I'm not going to walk by a waiting room of suffering people on my way to a VIP clinic where I get superior healthcare. I wouldn't want to live with myself if that was the type of guy I was. I would literally rather die than take away services from other people so they suffer because I paid a doctor to look at me first.
I'm also bothered when I read people in this thread supporting a two-tiered system based on their own ignorance. Pylon, you didn't fricken get a heart condition from a vaccine. Sorry, but you just didn't. You're not a scientist. You're a 50-year-old dude and you are going to encounter more and more health issues as you age (we all are). The vaccine is safe and there is all the evidence in the world to support that statement.
But somebody has to help me with this: how much are you guys in favour of a two-tiered system willing to pay per year to have better healthcare than your fellow Albertans? Like, if we can put a number on that and maybe figure out what it is as a percentage of your salary, maybe we get to a palatable number that could be considered as a tax increase for everyone to be put towards better healthcare for all. If it's 1‰ or 3‰...whatever it might be...let's do it. Let's pay more tax so we can all take care of each other.
|
Logged in to specifically thank this post. Well reasoned, feels very “Canadian” reading this reasoning / logic. I feel similarly as well.
Taxes need to go up. They just do.
Wife just told me that a couple weeks ago the Alberta Children’s Hospital just switched out a couple waiting rooms (that were still kinda needed as waiting rooms…) for hospital bed rooms. There are some people literally waiting 4-5 days in Emerg right now / being told to leave / come back. There are huge issues. People are going to emerg who do not need to be going to emerg and that’s leading to further back ups. Staff shortages.
And Cliff is also right, and so is Fuzz. There are structural changes needed, and Fuzz is right- some are happening. People are trying. But I’m not sure why we decided to build an Alberta Childrens Hospital with roughly the same amount of beds as the previous, making sure we get a gigantic cafeteria, Good Earth, gift shop and other coffee shop in there plus other seemingly wasteful spaces, (this isn’t a mall and doesn’t need to be FFS), and we have unions blocking better healthcare outcomes for patients in certain circumstances. Now that I have iggy oi’s attention, yes, this is happening, and yes, it is a union problem and no, I don’t want to get more specific and debate you about this because there will never be changing your mind on the matter it would it derail this thread, but it is 110% happening.
Nurse practitioners might be a good solution, but too bad our post secondary schools only offer extremely limited spots and in the rare event you can get in- good luck finding a practicum placement as no other NPs will take you (but they’re very eager to offer to hire you when done! Thanks but no thanks, now people can’t finish school and quit!). Docs also trying to limit / restrict NPs because it threatens their career / earnings. The list goes on. The system has so many flaws and issues it’s kind of tough to know where to begin but one thing is for absolute certain, it generally speaking needs more funding and way more capacity. How do we still only have 4 hospitals and none on the horizon in a city / region that literally had over 100k people immigrate last year?!? Governments have TOTALLY ####ed this up. It’s truly on governments to fix it, and this will be the defining electoral issue for the next 2-3 decades IMO with an aging population. Raise taxes already, or at the very least, start signalling you have to. We all know it’s coming FFS.