Archive for the ‘Health Debates’ Category
Ontario tinkers with health care, and still nobody knows what anything costs
Tuesday, March 12th, 2019
Right now doctors are typically paid on a fee-for-service basis. Surgeries and other treatments, on the other hand, are paid for out of hospitals’ global budgets. This has it exactly backwards…. the really interesting unanswered question about these new teams is how they are to be funded… Doctors already have both the know-how and the incentive, via the Hippocratic oath, to do what’s best for their patients; giving them a budget constraint would incentivize them to do what’s best for taxpayers as well.
Tags: budget, featured, Health, ideology, mental Health
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In the real world, encouraging signs for pharmacare
Monday, March 11th, 2019
… universal pharmacare, while it would cost Canadians less in total, would cost Canadian governments more – which is why finance ministers such as Bill Morneau are wary of it… a federal-provincial-territorial-Indigenous agency could co-exist with a fill-in-the-gaps system. But it makes more sense to go to all of this bother only for something more comprehensive, such as universal pharmacare.
Tags: budget, economy, featured, Health, ideology, jurisdiction, mental Health, participation, pharmaceutical, standard of living
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Put free menstrual products in all women’s washrooms. Period
Monday, March 11th, 2019
the city, school boards and the province should go further. They should strive for what’s known as “period equity” to normalize the conversation around menstruation and end the shame about what is, after all, a normal bodily function for half the population. To start, feminine hygiene products should be available for free not just in shelters and schools, but in workplaces and public spaces such as libraries, concert halls, sports arenas — and even privately owned stores and restaurants.
Tags: budget, Health, ideology, jurisdiction, poverty, standard of living, women
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Pills can help people control risky drinking, so why aren’t doctors prescribing them?
Thursday, February 28th, 2019
A recent study found that fewer than 1% of Ontario adults with an alcohol use disorder is ever prescribed a drug that can help them drink less, and less often… Pills don’t address the underlying issues that drive some people to drink, like childhood trauma, anxiety and depression. And, in cases where people are facing massive social or legal problems, people with explosive drinking patterns whose livers are giving out, “for sure it’s better to have the goal of abstinence”… But for others, “these medications potentially can help a wide range of people get back some of the control they have lost”
Tags: Health, ideology, pharmaceutical
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Ontario’s looming health care reforms are being rushed through to limit public scrutiny, critics say
Tuesday, February 12th, 2019
TheStar.com Politics/Provincial Politics Feb. 11, 2019. By ROB FERGUSON, Queen’s Park Bureau The Ford government’s looming health-care system “transformation” is being rushed through with little explanation to limit scrutiny by the public, the Ontario Health Coalition charges. Citing confidential draft legislation and other documents leaked to the New Democrats indicating elements of the plan — […]
Tags: budget, featured, Health, ideology, mental Health, participation, privatization
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Tilting at windmills won’t solve our health-care woes
Monday, February 4th, 2019
Almost all health services are contracted out to private providers – doctors (most of whom are corporations), hospitals (which are not-for-profit corporations), pharmacies, pharmaceutical companies, device manufacturers (for-profit corporations), home care and long-term care facilities (a mix of non-profit and for-profit corporations) and so on…. we have the least-universal universal health-insurance system in the world. More than 30 per cent of care is paid for privately.
Tags: budget, economy, featured, Health, ideology, mental Health, pharmaceutical, privatization
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We know the problems in health care; get moving on the fix
Monday, February 4th, 2019
… either the Ford government doesn’t have a plan or it has a secret plan. Neither option provides the slightest cause for confidence in this government, or its ability to tackle a problem with as many moving parts as health care… The Ford government should just get moving on the necessary retooling of health care to expand and better integrate home care, community supports and long-term beds to provide for Ontarians long before they get to a hospital hallway.
Tags: budget, featured, Health, mental Health, standard of living
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The danger of two-tier medicine if Doug Ford’s top doc doesn’t seek informed consent first
Monday, February 4th, 2019
All that decentralization engendered duplication, as each LHIN and CCAC assembled its own bureaucracies and boards, leaving the available managerial talent stretched thin. It’s time to recalibrate and recentralize, breaking down barriers instead of creating yet more silos… If the Devlin-Decter duo is pondering a two-tier system for Ford, presumably they plan to be “transparent and accountable to the public” about it before delivering a fait accompli.
Tags: budget, Health, participation
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Mental health is health care’s orphan
Saturday, February 2nd, 2019
The recent Health Accord between Canada and the provinces will invest $5-billion in mental-health services over 10 years, but spending will still be short of the annualized $3.1-billion investment that is required to reach the Mental Health Commission target of 9 per cent of health spending.
Tags: budget, disabilities, ideology, mental Health, standard of living
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So-called ‘super agency’ not a magic cure for Ontario’s health-care woes
Friday, February 1st, 2019
All of these problems are well-known. The fixes for them are well-known, too. None of them involves merging all the province’s health-care agencies into one… If we want a super-agency to oversee all of health care, wouldn’t that be the health ministry? If the ministry doesn’t do that, what does it do? … Rather than waste time, money and energy on reshaping the health bureaucracy, the Ford government should move directly to specific solutions to well-identified problems.
Tags: budget, featured, Health, ideology, mental Health
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