Yesterday morning as I was eating my breakfast and wandering
through the various on-line news sites I came across the following headline on
CBC "Patients' 'lives ruined' as
hip surgery waits grow"(CBC).
According to the article, people are having to wait not just months but years
to have a defective hip replaced. I can only imagine not only the discomfort
(medical term for it hurts like hell), but also the frustration of having to
wait for what now seems to be a fairly common operation and the dislocation of
one's life while you wait. I suspect that I would be fairly outraged if I was in
that position. For a number of years people in Canada have been complaining
about the lengthy wait times for such operations and for almost an equal number
of years various provinces have been promising to do something about it.
Clearly if said provinces have tried to fix the problem they have been
unsuccessful. Or have they?
It was not difficult to find accurate and current statistics
as to the number of hip replacements being done on an annual basis (something
sadly missing from the CBC article). Canadians had approximately 23,000 hip replacements in 2007 (Stats).
That was twice as many as were done ten years earlier (ibid). "In
2012–2013, there were 47,137" (CIHI)
hip replacements. In other words it appears as if the number of hip replacement
done in Canada doubles every nine or ten years. To put it another way: in 2012-2013
Canadian hospitals did four times as many hip surgeries as they did in 1995. Given
the number of baby boomers who are approaching 65-70 and who are all potential
recipients for hip replacement surgery and the increasing number of younger
people who are also requiring them, it is easy to predict that the number of
surgeries will double in the next ten years.
The cost of such an operation appears to change a little bit
depending upon which province, but in BC, each hip replacement costs an
estimated $13,100 (canada.com).
Which means tax payers in Canada paid approximately $617,494,700 for all of hip
replacement surgeries done in 2012-2013. In all likelihood, we will spend more next
year and even more the year after etc.etc.
In 2013 it was projected that Canada would spend $211
billion on health care. That is approximately double of what we spent in 1995 (CIHI).
While there is some suggestion that that rate of health spending growth is
slowing down or at least stabilizing (CTV),
there is no doubt that Canada will continue to spend a sizable percentage of
its GDP on health care. But it equally as clear that it is not enough if people
are having to wait extended periods of time to get needed surgeries.
To reduce the costs one could cut the salaries of doctors
and nurses (although I am not sure if I want the person holding the knife to be
irritated at the system), we could raise more money through taxes, we could
allow those who can afford it to arrange for the operation to be done privately
or we could employ the evermore frequently used Canadian strategy of whining
about poor service and demanding that someone else pay for it.
There was a time when most Canadians had a general awareness
that for the system to work everyone needed to pay into it. That awareness seems
to have been lost. Too many Canadians are
content - no eager - to rant and rail against the government and its inefficiencies.
It has become too easy for all political parties to argue that taxes can be
reduced and service maintained by just "tightening our belts" a little bit. It is time we realized that if we
want to have a good health care system (and a good educational system and etc.
etc.) then we need to pay for it up front. My heart goes out to all of those
who are in a long waiting line to get the necessary surgery, but I think the
question needs to be asked: how many of them
would have voted for higher taxes to pay for the services they now
demand?
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