How And Why Is It Being Challenged And How Should We Respond?

Canadian Medicare: how and why is it being challenged and how should we respond?
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Canadian Medicare: how and why is it being challenged and how should we respond?
The Canadian Medicare is being challenged because of several reasons that make it a little ineffective in comparison to other high-income countries’ healthcare system. One of how the Canadian Medicare is being challenged is concerned with the long wait time. While the Canadian Medicare is performing better regarding healthcare spending when compared to the U.S. (Busby, Muthukumaran, & Jacobs, 2018), this is not an indication that the system is better off because the long wait time for services causes drags in the delivery of healthcare services. Long wait times have been a cause of concern for some time now, raising questions on what can be done to improve the system about the long wait time to improve delivery of services.
Long wait times have been a cause of concern mostly because it is affecting the health outcomes of Canadians. Patients have problems accessing family physicians, MRIs, specialist appointments, and CTs (Busby, Muthukumaran, & Jacobs, 2018). Such delays in access to some of the important health care services can lead to detrimental health outcomes for patients. Other than poor health outcomes, Canadians have lost faith in the system, which was designed to ensure universal accessibility of health care services, regardless of the financial abilities of Canadians. Flood, Marchildon, and Paech (2018) indicates that throughout several years, the attitude of Canadians about the quality of care has changed to negative, despite the strong support for a system that focuses on the urgency and needs rather than financial ability.
In some cases, these delays and long waits put the health of the patient at risk, which has resulted in lawsuits on several occasions. Such lawsuits put the Canadian government in a bad position and further, damages the good that the healthcare system was designed to do, making long wait a relevant issue that needs to be addressed by the government through healthcare reforms. With such long wait times, patients get frustrated and can place their frustration on nurses and other healthcare professionals, yet their hands are tied. This puts a strain on the nurse-patient relationship and can explain why Canada has more nursing care complaints than other high-income countries, as revealed by Busby, Muthukumaran, and Jacobs (2018). In short, the long wait times have also affected the relationship between patients and nurses, leading to a low engagement, which leads to ineffective delivery of care.
Background
The Canadian Medicare was designed to ensure that access to health care services was based on need rather than the ability to pay, to ensure that all Canadians had access to healthcare services. This is what has made Canadian Medicare better than that of the U.S. regarding universal accessibility and health care spending. Since the 70s, Canada has made progress to get where it is right now regarding accessibility and has outdone countries such as New Zealand and the United Kingdom in the past (Flood, Marchildon, &Paech, 2018). However, the Canadian health care system is unique because unlike other high-income countries, the responsibility of health care has been left solely on provinces which have to meet certain requirements before they receive government funding. This is the only legislative role that the national government plays in facilitating accessibility of healthcare through Medicare. However, provinces have formulated and enacted legislation that are meant to prevent access to private care in Canada (Flood, Marchildon, & Paech, 2018), which forms part of the problem now because people with the financial ability to seek private care are unable to do so, thus further contributing to the long wait time for healthcare services.
Further, the issue of long wait has been partly due to the blame game between the national government and the provinces. More than often, the provinces have attributed the long wait time to the lack of sufficient funding from the federal government (Flood, Marchildon, &Paech, 2018). On the other hand, the federal government posits that the provinces are mismanaging funds and as such, they are to blame for the situation. The lack of accountability in the management of health care funds can only be remedied if either an external party becomes involved, or if the healthcare system becomes centralized. However, centralization of the health care system can be a challenge because according to Flood, Marchildon, and Paech (2018), the Canadian Medicare is the brainchild of provinces, which only came to receive the support of the federal government years later. As such, it is unlikely that provincial leaders will willingly let go of their brainchild and allow centralization. Therefore, this issue of accountability between the federal government and the provinces is likely to remain unchanged and as such, long wait times will continue to be a problem unless other measures are adopted.
Studies indicate that the wait times in the Canadian health care services such as knee and a hip replacement has been on the rise for the past few years (Siciliani, Moran, &Borowitz, 2014). On several occasions, there have been lawsuits resulting from the long wait times (Chen, Qian, & Zhang, 2014) and reforms have been made to solve the issue, especially for elective surgeries. According to Clarke (2016), more than 50% of Canadians who have a hard time accessing care services in the health care system have attributed it to the long wait times, and although the government has made some efforts to reduce the wait time for some services, there is still a long way to go before the situation is resolved.
Stance
Based on the available information on how the Canadian Medicare is fairing, it is clear that there is a need for more reforms that will reduce the long waiting time. The system is effective in many other areas as indicated by Busby, Muthukumaran, and Jacobs (2018) but it is important to ensure that all people can access care services. What is the point of having universal access to care if patients are unable to access services on time due to the long wait time? Further, access to care and quality of care should go hand in hand to ensure a healthy nation, but the latter is highly affected by the long wait time, which well explains why Canadians have lost faith in the quality of care provided through Medicare. In the past, proposals have been made implying that increasing federal government funding in the provinces is the key to solving the long wait time. However, the blame game between the federal government and the provinces will not be resolved just because additional funds are given to the provinces. Thus, it is imperative that other avenues of addressing the issue be explored to ensure that Medicare serves the purpose it was designed to serve.
Different stakeholders have different stances on the issue of long wait times. The common attribute is that they all agree that long wait times is an actual problem that needs i...