There is no doubt that the little “new” money that the provincial premiers obtained from the federal government in transfers for the next ten years will have harmful consequences on the Quebec public health network.
François Legault wanted $6 billion in “new” money a year. He will only receive one. On an annual budget of 53 billion, it’s a drop in the ocean.
It is true that the serious dysfunctions of the public network are not only a question of money. For 25 years, the multiple failed reforms under various governments have also had a lot to do with it.
In an aging society, the fact remains that health services are also a question of money. This is why a very concrete danger, regarding which we speak very little, awaits us.
That of seeing the use of “private-private” care and services expand even further. This is not regarding private individuals covered by the RAMQ, but pure and hard private individuals. The one where you are asked for your credit card or your private insurance and not just your health insurance card.
In Quebec, this private-private sector has already been spreading its tentacles for years. Its recipe is simple. The less efficient the public network is, the more the private-private sector benefits, in every sense of the word, to expand its market.
The list goes on and on
It is an open secret. In addition to repeatedly starving the front line of family medicine, our governments have turned a blind eye to the rise of private-private.
Result: in Quebec, the list of care and services that can be purchased directly at high cost is growing visibly.
In private-private, including in a growing number of clinics of the same water, everything is quickly found to who can pay. Family doctors see you quickly for a few hundred dollars an appointment.
Ditto for specialists who, if they follow you, will cost you thousands of dollars in the end, whereas for the public, the wait can last months or more than a year.
For several hundred dollars per blood test, private labs will deliver your results right away while to the public, hyper-centralized labs are increasingly lagging behind.
A Quiet Revolution Betrayed
Ditto for scans and other diagnostic tests. For several tens of thousands of dollars, you will even have surgery. To the public, the wait will be long and unpredictable.
For a lot of money, private companies will sell you a la carte home care. To the public, good luck. For a few hundred dollars, a private social worker will complete your form on the spot. etc., etc., etc.
In short, far from relieving the public since it vampirizes its staff, the private-private also creates a social divide between those who can afford it and the majority who, unable to do so, hang around on the public waiting lists.
However, this phenomenon clearly betrays the letter and the spirit of the Quiet Revolution, one of the vital objectives of which was to offer all Quebecers, regardless of individual income, quality care and social services, accessible and paid for. by public funds.
With the rise of private-private, this social and political contract is breaking down. Worse still, in generalized naivety.
The reality is, however, that if the current government does nothing to curb it, the expansion of private-private health care and the serious social inequities it creates will continue inexorably.
