Dom Lucyk is the Communications Director for SecondStreet.org, a Canadian think tank.Enough Canadians to fill up a small city like Lethbridge, AB, or Kamloops, BC, have died on medical waitlists over the past six years.And yet, governments don’t seem to care enough to actively track the problem. The latest edition of the SecondStreet.org report, Died on a Waiting List, showed that over 23,000 Canadians died waiting for various surgeries or diagnostic scans over the past year, raising the total since 2018 to over 100,000. .HANNAFORD: MAID expansion rolls on, no matter how Health Canada spins it.The numbers are tragic enough, proof that the Canadian healthcare system is broken and needs real reform. But what makes them sting even more is governments’ general lack of interest in keeping an eye on this problem. .Not one government feels the need to actively disclose these numbers. Instead, we have to file Freedom of Information requests to gather the data, which is often incomplete and difficult to decipher. Sometimes governments even charge hundreds of dollars for collecting the data. Across the country, most provinces have no idea how many patients are dying while waiting to meet with a specialist. Manitoba gave us nothing on diagnostic waitlist deaths. This was the first year more than one region from Quebec gave us anything. Alberta has completely stopped tracking this problem..EDITORIAL: BC Conservatives must unite or watch the socialist BC NDP hold power.Is there any greater failure of a government-run healthcare system than letting patients die? Canadians spend their entire lives paying exorbitant taxes. Many of those dollars are pumped into the health system, and yet, in the final years of their lives, thousands of patients are being let down. They’re either left on a waitlist for some painful, chronic problem (like needing a new hip) or die directly because of the system’s failure to provide something like heart surgery or cancer care. Given the ridiculously high standards governments hold private businesses to (such as forcing a preschool to actively disclose that it was missing a paper towel holder after a health and safety inspection), one could expect governments to at least track and report their own failures..The lack of accountability coming from Alberta in not disclosing any waitlist death numbers is particularly frustrating. In other areas of healthcare, the Smith government is leading the way. This year, it announced two major reforms: keeping the public system but allowing patients to pay for surgery, and activity-based funding.Both of these reforms are how countries with more successful universal systems (like Sweden and Australia, for example) where they don’t have the kind of waiting we do in Canada. In short, keeping the public system but allowing patients to pay helps by taking pressure off of the public system. Every time someone chooses to pay, everyone behind them on the waitlist moves up a spot. Activity-based funding is a bit more complicated, but it’s basically a system that ties hospital funding to the amount of care they provide, instead of simply giving them a big budget and asking them to do their best. This has been shown to reduce waitlists and costs in healthcare. .AUBUT: How Canada broke its own economy.Quebec is also moving forward with activity-based funding, and patients in that province also enjoy the option of using private options outside the public system, but recent changes in terms of how doctors are paid is tarnishing these positive changes. Other than the bright spot that is the reform coming to Alberta, and to a lesser extent, Quebec, healthcare looks bleak across the country. Patients are dying, wait times are growing, and more patients than ever are on waitlists. If big, bold changes aren’t made, things will only get worse. And if governments can’t even be trusted to track their own failures, will they really take the initiative to fix healthcare? Only time will tell, but thousands of Canadians’ lives depend on the answer to that question.Dom Lucyk is the Communications Director for SecondStreet.org, a Canadian think tank.
