Fraser Institute
Other countries with universal health care don’t have Canada’s long wait times
From the Fraser Institute
By Mackenzie Moir and Bacchus Barua
Unfortunately it’s now very common to see stories about how long provincial wait times for medical care are driving patients to seek care elsewhere, often at great personal cost. Take the recent case of the Milburns in Manitoba who, after waiting years for a knee surgery, are now considering selling their home and moving to Alberta just to get on a potentially shorter public wait list.
Patients in Manitoba could expect to wait a median of 29 weeks to see an orthopedic specialist after a referral from a family physician, then they still faced a median 24.4 week wait to get treatment. In other words, the total typical wait for orthopedic surgery in the province is more than one year at 53.4 weeks. Remember, that’s a median measure, which means some patients wait much longer.
Unfortunately, the Milburns are unlikely to get more timely care on the public wait list in Alberta. At 64.1 weeks, the total median wait for orthopedic care in Alberta was actually longer than in Manitoba. And this doesn’t include the time it takes for provincial coverage to activate for a new provincial resident, or the time it will take to find a new family doctor and get the necessary tests, scans and referrals.
To get more timely care, the Milburns are left with unenviable options. Because they’re insured by Manitoba’s public health-care plan, paying for covered care out of pocket is restricted. They can, however, pay for and receive care privately in other provinces as uninsured visitors (i.e. not move there permanently). Specifically, certain provinces have “exemptions” that allow physicians to charge out-of-province patients directly to provide these procedures privately.
Alternatively, the Milburns could leave Canada and travel even further from home to receive timely care abroad.
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
Long wait times are not the necessary price Canadians must pay for universal coverage. In fact, Canada is one of 30 high-income countries with universal health care. Other countries such as Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany and Australia have much shorter wait times. For example, only 62 per cent of Canadians reported access to non-emergency surgery in less than four months in 2020 compared to 99 per cent of Germans, 94 per cent of Swiss and 72 per cent of Australians.
The difference? These countries approach health care in a fundamentally different way than us. One notable difference is their attitude towards the private sector.
In Germany, patients can seek private care while still insured by the public system or can opt out and purchase regulated private coverage. These approaches (universal, privately paid or privately insured) are able to deliver rapid access to care. The Swiss simply mandate that patients purchase private insurance in a regulated-but-competitive marketplace as part of their universal scheme. Lower-income families receive a subsidy so they can participate on a more equal footing in the competitive marketplace to obtain the insurance that best fits their needs.
Perhaps the most direct comparator to Canada is Australia—not just geographically, but because it also primarily relies on a tax-funded universal health-care system. However, unlike Canada, individuals can purchase private insurance to cover (among other things) care received as a private patient in a public or private hospital, or simply pay for their private care directly if they choose. In 2021/22 more than two-thirds (70 per cent) of non-emergency admissions to a hospital involving surgery (both publicly and privately funded) took place in a private facility.
Of course, these faster-access countries share other differences in attitudes to universal health-care policy including requirements to share the cost of care for patients and funding hospitals on the basis of activity (instead of Canada’s outdated bureaucratically-determined budgets). A crucial difference, however, is that patients are not generally prevented from paying privately for health care in their home province (or canton or state) in any of these countries.
Without fundamental reform, and as provincial systems continue to struggle to provide basic non-emergency care, we’ll continue to see more stories like the Milburn’s. Without reform, many Canadians will continue to be forced to make similarly absurd decisions to get the care they need, rather than focusing on treatment and recovery.
Authors:
Business
Ottawa’s avalanche of spending hasn’t helped First Nations
From the Fraser Institute
By Tom Flanagan
When Justin Trudeau came to power in 2015, he memorably said that the welfare of Indigenous Canadians was his highest priority. He certainly has delivered on his promise, at least in terms of shovelling out money.
During his 10 years in office, budgeted Indigenous spending has approximately tripled, from about $11 billion to almost $33 billion. Prime Minister Trudeau’s instruction to the Department of Justice to negotiate rather than litigate class actions has resulted in paying tens of billions of dollars to Indigenous claimants over alleged wrongs in education and other social services. And his government has settled specific claims—alleged violations of treaty terms or of the Indian Act—at four times the previous rate, resulting in the award of at least an additional $10 billion to First Nations government.
But has this avalanche of money really helped First Nations people living on reserves, who are the poorest segment of Canadian society?
One indicator suggests the answer is yes. The gap between reserves and other communities—as measured by the Community Well-Being Index (CWB), a composite of income, employment, housing and education—fell from 19 to 16 points from 2016 to 2021. But closer analysis shows that the reduction in the gap, although real, cannot be due to the additional spending described above.
The gain in First Nations CWB is due mainly to an increase in the income component of the CWB. But almost all of the federal spending on First Nations, class-action settlements and specific claims do not provide taxable income to First Nations people. Rather, the increase in income documented by the CWB comes from the greatly increased payments legislated by the Liberals in the form of the Canada Child Benefit (CCB). First Nations people have a higher birth rate than other Canadians, so they have more children and receive more (on average) from the Canada Child Benefit. Also, they have lower income on average than other Canadians, so the value of the CCB is higher than comparable non-Indigenous families. The result? A gain in income relative to other Canadians, and thus a narrowing of the CWB gap between First Nations and other communities.
There’s an important lesson here. Tens of billions in additional budgetary spending and legal settlements did not move the needle. What did lead to a measurable improvement was legislation creating financial benefits for all eligible Canadian families with children regardless of race. Racially inspired policies are terrible for many reasons, especially because they rarely achieve their goals in practise. If we want to improve life for First Nations people, we should increase opportunities for Canadians of all racial backgrounds and not enact racially targeted policies.
Moreover, racial policies are also fraught with unintended consequences. In this case, the flood of federal money has made First Nations more dependent rather than less dependent on government. In fact, from 2018 to 2022, “Own Source Revenue” (business earnings plus property taxes and fees) among First Nations bands increased—but not as much as transfers from government. The result? Greater dependency on government transfers.
This finding is not just a statistical oddity. Previous research has shown that First Nations who are relatively less dependent on government transfers tend to achieve higher living standards (again, as measured by the CWB index). Thus, the increase in dependency presided over by the Trudeau government does not augur well for the future.
One qualification: this finding is not as robust as I would like because the number of band governments filing reports on their finances has drastically declined. Of 630 First Nation governments, only 260 filed audited statements for fiscal 2022. All First Nations are theoretically obliged by the First Nations Financial Transparency Act, 2013, to publish such statements, but the Trudeau government announced there would be no penalties for non-compliance, leading to a precipitous decline in reporting.
This is a shame, because First Nations, as they often insist, are governments, not private organizations. And like other governments, they should make their affairs visible to the public. Also, most of their income comes from Canadian taxpayers. Both band members and other Canadians have a right to know how much money they receive, how it’s being spent and whether it’s achieving its intended goals.
Author:
Education
‘Grade inflation’ gives students false sense of their academic abilities
From the Fraser Institute
The average entrance grade at the University of British Columbia is now 87 per cent, up from 70 per cent only 20 years ago. While this is partly because the supply of available university spots has not kept pace with growing demand, it’s also likely that some B.C. high schools are inflating their students’ grades.
Suppose you’re scheduled for major heart surgery. Shortly before your surgery begins, you check into your surgeon’s background and are pleased to discover your surgeon had a 100 per cent average throughout medical school. But then you learn that every student at the same medical school received 100 per cent in their courses, too. Now you probably don’t feel quite as confident in your surgeon.
This is the ugly reality of “grade inflation” where the achievements of everyone, including the most outstanding students, are thrown into question. Fortunately, grade inflation is (currently) rare in medical schools. But in high schools, it’s a growing problem.
In fact, grade inflation is so prevalent in Ontario high schools that the University of Waterloo’s undergraduate engineering program uses an adjustment factor when evaluating student applications—for example, Waterloo might consider a 95 per cent average from one school the equivalent of an 85 per cent average from another school.
Grade inflation is a problem in other provinces as well. The average entrance grade at the University of British Columbia is now 87 per cent, up from 70 per cent only 20 years ago. While this is partly because the supply of available university spots has not kept pace with growing demand, it’s also likely that some B.C. high schools are inflating their students’ grades.
Sadly, grade inflation is so rampant these days that some school administrators don’t even try to hide it. For example, earlier this year all students at St. Maximilian Kolbe Catholic High School in Aurora, Ontario, received perfect marks on their midterm exams in two biology courses and one business course—not because these students had mastered these subjects but because the York Catholic District School Board had been unable to find a permanent teacher at this school.
The fact that a school board would use grade inflation to compensate for inadequate instruction in high school tells us everything we need to know about the abysmal academic standards in many schools across Canada.
And make no mistake, student academic performance is declining. According to results from the Programme for International Assessment (PISA), math scores across Canada declined from 532 points in 2003 to 497 points in 2022 (PISA equates 20 points to one grade level). In other words, Canadian students are nearly two years behind on their math skills then they were 20 years ago. While their high school marks are going up, their actual performance is going down.
And that’s the rub—far from correcting a problem, grade inflation makes the problem much worse. Students with inflated grades get a false sense of their academic abilities—then experience a rude shock when they discover they aren’t prepared for post-secondary education. (According to research by economists Ross Finnie and Felice Martinello, students with the highest high school averages usually experience the largest drop in grades in university). Consequently, many end up dropping out.
Grade inflation even hurts students who go on to be academically successful because they suffer the indignity of having their legitimate achievements thrown into doubt by the inflated grades of other students. If we want marks to have meaning, we must end the practise of grade inflation. We do our students no favours when we give them marks they don’t really deserve.
Just as our confidence in a surgeon would go down if we found out that every student from the same medical school had a 100 per cent average, so we should also question the value of diplomas from high schools where grade inflation is rampant.
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