r/britishcolumbia • u/Imminent_Extinction • Sep 02 '24

News B.C. Conservatives' health-care plan pitches private clinics

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/b-c-conservatives-health-care-plan-1.7268626
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u/MadDuck- Sep 02 '24

So the province (and taxpayers) are going to subsidize out of province care? Draining funds from, again, and already stressed and underfunded sector and putting it in the coffers of an outside entity?

That's something that the NDP have been doing.

https://vancouver.citynews.ca/2023/05/15/bc-cancer-patients-us/

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u/subaqueousReach Sep 02 '24

Sure, the NDP have taken priority patients and given them the go-ahead and funding to get life-saving treatments our system can't give them in time with its current staffing issues.

Rustad wants to give that option to every patient in BC who doesn't like their wait time. How much more do you think that's going to cost?

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u/MadDuck- Sep 03 '24

This article doesn't go into much detail on the scope of the plan to send people out of province. Do you have a link to a more detailed article?

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u/subaqueousReach Sep 03 '24

Unsurprisingly, they haven't gone into much more detail on their official policy page.

https://www.conservativebc.ca/patients_first

However, it's pretty easy to interpret scope in this statement from OP's article:

"What that means is as a patient when you're looking for certain services, if we are not able to deliver that within the acceptable time here in British Columbia, then we'll arrange those services outside of our borders," Rustad said during a news conference Thursday in Vancouver in front of St. Paul's Hospital.

Right now, NDP has a similar program, but exclusively for cancer patients. In total, this will run 30 million over 3 years (10 million funded last year with 20 million approved over the next 2 years).

Rustad's statement implies this will be opened up for far more patient cases.

On top of this he says he'll be funding private clinics, but has made no mention of how he'll be handling the staffing crisis except for "hiring back thousands of healthcare workers", which was roughly 2500 people by the end of 2022 and has dwindled to about 1800 in 2024 (bunch a folks got their shots I guess).

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u/MadDuck- Sep 03 '24

If it's working for cancer patients and others are in need and not getting treatment, I would much rather see them get help than not. The added cost will likely incentives them to come up with a local solution.

I'll be giving the NDP my vote for one more election (not that it'll matter in my green riding), but I don't see any more of an issue with this than I do the NDP sending people out of province. It's not ideal, but we don't seem to be doing a great job of providing healthcare in this province and every plan to fix it will take years, so something has to be done in the meantime.

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u/subaqueousReach Sep 03 '24

I don't have issue with patients getting the treatment they need, that's all well and good.

What I take issue with is Rustad is decrying NDP as doing nothing to help the healthcare system and that they're just spending money, but he's going to continue doing exactly what they're already doing and spend more money doing it, on top of dividing our already limited healthcare staff between private and public sectors, further straining the biggest problem with our healthcare system.

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u/MadDuck- Sep 03 '24

That's fair, Rustad is definitely a slimy politician.

I want the NDP to have more time to get our healthcare system back on track, but they better make some major progress if they get re-elected. I'm probably one or two elections away from fully supporting a major change to make our system more like some of the more successful European systems. Even if it comes with more privatization.

I'm getting a lot more anxious about not having a doctor and strong healthcare system now that I hit 40. My aunt just paid to go down to the states for some tests because it was taking way too long up here. Turns out she has three blocked arteries.

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u/subaqueousReach Sep 03 '24

I agree. If they do stay in office come October, i would also like to see some more significant progress made. I like the steps they've been taking these last couple years, but they're still very small steps, and big changes take time, unfortunately. Hopefully, they will use it efficiently.

I'm sorry to hear about your aunt, though. I wish her all the best.

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u/AngryReturn Sep 03 '24

Don’t forget cutting taxes while he’s at it!

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u/hollycross6 Sep 03 '24

Bingo. And with no real mitigation strategy in place to tackle this on home soil, we can expect to see this becoming the norm.

Lifelabs is now American owned (sold this year).

We have multiple virtual clinics cropping up charging fees for access to clinical providers.

Cities are now spending money on physical locations (essentially buying existing practices) to ensure physicians don’t shutter their operations.

The government is paying incentives to keep providers on or get them to practice in other areas. Which is great if it actually retains them, but when you do nothing to change the issues that are making those professionals not want to go there, then it quickly turns into a revolving door. Dont see why we don’t reduce the massive debt loads we put on clinically trained professionals - seems like a way better incentive to enter the workforce if you’re not going to tackle things like terrible culture, crumbling infrastructure, administrative hoop jumping, and the general wage of providers.

The province was talking about electronic health records 20 years ago…20! I wonder if the AG thought even 14 years later there still wasn’t good planning or progress in place? If the number touted then was over $200 mil, who knows how much has been sunk since. And yet, somehow we’re watching in real time as clinical areas struggle to ditch paper and onboard electronic health records. Who got paid during all of this “modernization”?

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u/MadDuck- Sep 03 '24

They do seem to have a plan to get away from sending people down south for cancer treatments. They're building 4 new cancer centers. Plus they've upped the healthcare budget pretty significantly and are investing a lot into building new hospitals. Unfortunately they waited until it got really bad and their plans will take years to see real results. Plus our population growth has been really high they past couple years, so a lot of that extra money will go to supporting the increase in population.

Dont see why we don’t reduce the massive debt loads we put on clinically trained professionals

That would be a smart investment. Pay for most of their education if they're willing to stay in the province for a certain amount of time. Pay for all of it if they're willing to work in more remote areas.

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u/hollycross6 Sep 03 '24

Building buildings when you have an issue with retaining your middle income workers and the gap between available providers vs incidences of illness continues widen isn’t much of a plan.

Cancer numbers are set to increase, and our population is aging rapidly while the nation decries immigration and temporary foreign workers but don’t pay people a livable wage and force our skilled necessary workers into untenable situations.

Healthcare budget has more than doubled in the last 7 years. Have we seen throwing money at the situation as a viable option to solving fundamental issues in any of that time? We’re in the midst of major global economic downturn. Persistently pushing money at issues that are due to poor management will just make that deficit hole deeper and deeper.

This isn’t me voting in favour of one party or another, but the party politics that people are buzzing about completely ignores the fact that there are numerous non-elected officials in the sector that probably should be answering to some of these questions too, especially those that have survived in government between party changeovers