First let me say that I DO NOT fault Emergency Room staff for waits that to each of us seem to be exceedingly long … doctors and nurses for long waits to have surgery … custodial staff for facilities that are not as clean as they once were … and workers that serve unappetizing meals shipped in from elsewhere and simply re-heated. We seem to be able to pump an awful lot of money into the health care system but to the general public, it does not seem like we get the value we once did. Why is that?
I am not one of those people that say the private sector should be doing more and more in the way of delivering public sector services, but with that happening, why does it appear we are we getting less instead of more? Why does it appear our health care system is failing us?
Last October the Canadian Institute for Health Research released some interesting figures that bear looking into. It showed that in 2001 our public sector spending on health care was in the top third of Canada’s provinces – by last year we had slipped to ninth place ahead of only Quebec. Ten years ago we spent ahead of the average – now we spend substantially lower than the average.
The investment in health care spending however is increasing, so are we getting more bang for our dollar; I believe most if not all of us would say “NO”.
