Modernizing the Canadian Healthcare System

Medicare is a term that refers to Canada's publicly funded health care system. Instead of having a single national plan, we have 13 provincial and territorial health care insurance plans (Health Canada, 2018). Under this system, all Canadian residents have reasonable access to medically necessary hospital and physician services without paying out-of-pocket (Health Canada, 2018). Roles and responsibilities for health care services are shared between provincial and territorial governments and the federal government.

The provincial and territorial governments are responsible for the management, organization and delivery of health care services for their residents (Health Canada, 2018). The Canadian health act (CHA) is the federal health care insurance legislation and the principles that govern this system are comprehensiveness, universality, portability, and accessibility to reflect equity and solidarity (Health Canada, 2018).

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The health care needs of patients have not remained the same and have evolved exponentially over the years.  Despite technology and medical advances, the CHA needs to evolve with the growing nature of the populations’ health to provide the best care to Canadians. The CHA states that universal coverage includes “medically necessary” hospital and physician services (Flood and Thomas, 2016); however, there are still gaps in the universality of health care coverage which has created inequities in Canada’s health care. Under the CHA, vital services such as outpatient pharmaceuticals, dental care, long-term care, and many mental health services are excluded (Flood and Thomas, 2016). The lack of publicly funded accessibility to these vital services has created health disparities, specifically among the lower-income population versus the higher-income population. Ultimately, this has led to more privatization and demonstrates the urgent need to modernize the CHA.

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The trends we are seeing in healthcare today include that wealthier people in the country often have access to better outcomes and higher levels of patient satisfaction with primary care in the healthcare systems. Primary care is the initial doorway, all-encompassing, and well-organized kind of healthcare provided to all people, regardless of gender or race (Health Canada, 2018). The focus of many programs to enhance primary care has been the payment and incentive systems employed by family physicians; nevertheless, this is insufficient. There must be support from the public and policy stakeholders like medical experts to aid with success (Health Canada, 2018). Looking at health care networks and team-based approaches may also help with the shortage of health care professionals especially in rural areas. I believe that if we continue to go the way primary health care is going, Canada will have more private options in the coming years, which will put a large space between people with varying levels of income.

I believe that the CHA should be modernized by shifting more public funding from the old services and old treatments that are still included in the CHA to new services and treatments. Specifically, the focus on mental health services and funded pharmaceutical plans. Mental health disorders put a large strain on emergency rooms, and I feel that if there was more access to physiologists in the community, like a walk-in clinic, that patients would have more options to access the help they need.

References:

Flood, C. M., & Thomas, B. (2016). Modernizing the Canada Health Act. Dalhousie Law

Journal, 39(2), 396-411. https://doi.org/https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?

Health Canada. (2018, February). Canada Health Act: Annual Report 2016-2017

(Publication No. 170403). Government of Canada.