New B.C. cancer patient policy represents a systemic failure
Moving cancer patients across the border for treatment shows how far healthcare has fallen
B.C.'s decision to send breast and prostate cancer patients to the U.S for treatment is a telling sign that Canada's Medicare system is failing. (Unsplash/Olga Kononenko)
Universal healthcare was, and still is, one of the greatest social achievements that was won in the last century of history. The idea is simple yet revolutionary; give people unobstructed access to medical care, regardless of their background, so they can enjoy longer, healthier lives.
It is an objective fact that countries with public healthcare systems have more productive workforces, longer life expectancies, and bear less costs compared to the largest non-universal healthcare country in the world, the United States.
Aside from this overused talking point, one only has to look at healthcare in countries pre-universality to see how big of a quality-of-life improvement it truly was and is. Something as important as this has to be rigorously protected by serious actors in and outside of the government. However, right now we are failing on that front.
On May 29, breast and prostate cancer patients started being transferred out of British Columbia and southwards into Bellingham, Washington for radiation treatment as part of a two year program to ease strained waiting times. Health Minister Adrian Dix said up to 4,800 patients will be sent to one of the two clinics in Bellingham with travel costs being fully covered by the province over the next two years.
Critics have noted how this plan is a damning indictment of the present state of B.C.’s healthcare system. Having to send people across international borders for treatments that are available here but hard to access due to wait times is not a good sign of how things are going. However B.C. is not entirely alone in this troubling issue.
Ontario and Quebec governments have been making moves which see federally-granted dollars subsidizing private, for-profit healthcare facilities. Danielle Smith, premier of the recently re-elected government in Alberta, has a recorded past of supporting healthcare privatization. Whether it is a deliberate “starving the beast” or mismanagement of priorities, one thing remains clear: the people lose no matter what.
Returning to B.C., we see that this is a solution, but not necessarily the solution either. By paying cancer patients to receive treatment in the U.S., B.C.,and by broader extension, Canada, is conceding ground that should not be so easily given away.
If this is not an admission of defeat, then it is dangerously close to being one. Patients are being forced to make an unfair decision, either they uproot their lives to get treatment they are more than entitled to, or stay where they are and face a backlog-induced wait time that does them zero favours.
Decades of severity are paying out dividends that ordinary people are feeling now more than ever before. Canada’s healthcare system was built on the federalist principle of cooperation between provincial and federal governments. Today, we are seeing that cooperation disintegrate as neoliberalism has geared policy making towards market-based solutions that will further abandon people to the wolves.
Navigating this issue is something that will not be easy given the constitutional division of powers in Canada.
Right now, we are seeing provinces and territories failing to fulfill their responsibility towards healthcare delivery, and a federal government that looks to be content with throwing more money at the problem with minimal oversight on how that money is spent.
We are on the road to healthcare catastrophe. It is a dire situation that requires drastic solutions. In order for action to happen we must apply unbearable levels of pressure to the governments, politicians, and private healthcare interests that are threatening Canada’s healthcare system.
