Health

My family moved to Canada from Russia 5 months ago and we really like being here. In the recent rating U.S. News Best Countries Rankings 2018 Canada holds 2nd place while Russia is 26th. I can agree, from my own experience now, that Canada is better than Russia in many different ways.But you can always spot something that could be better, especially if you have another example to compare with. I’d like to share my thoughts about Canadian healthcare, based on my personal experience.

Healthcare in Canada is free and guaranteed to use for everyone but is it really as great as it sounds? For example, in New Brunswick, where we live now, about 50 000 residents don’t have a family doctor and it’s not because they don’t want to. There aren’t enough doctors here for all the people in need. Ourselves, we have been waiting in the queue to be assigned to a family doctor for 4 months already. We don’t know how much longer we have to wait. Without a family doctor, you have the option either to go to Emergency Room at the nearest hospital or to use a walk-in clinic. Last time at the hospital we had to wait for 5 hours to be seen by a doctor. And the doctor was so busy, he barely spent one minute with us. No chance to be diagnosed correctly in such short time. Walk-in clinics are no better. They don’t live up to their name. You can’t just walk in there, you have to call the phone which is answered for one hour per day to make an appointment for the same day. That’s the only way to be treated at a walk-in. If you show up there without appointment, you will be advised to make an appointment by phone. Last time I did that, I dialed the number 82 times before I got through and won my 1-minute audience with the physician. We had no such problems with seeing a doctor in Russia. When Soviet Union collapsed, Russia was left with a healthcare system that was free of charge and of very poor quality. But in the past 25 years of free market economy in modern Russia plenty of private clinics have emerged as a viable alternative to governmental healthcare and there are no workforce problems in the healthcare system in Russia now. It practically works as a 2-tier system. The first tier is the governmental healthcare system of questionable quality and poor accessibility. But it is covered by state funded health insurance and free for those in need. The second tier is a broad choice of private clinics of any quality, anytime, anywhere. Those are covered by additional insurance, paid by employer or bought separately. It worked for us perfectly. And honestly, I don’t think it’s possible in the real world to come up with something better than let the free market do its job.

A shortage of medical workforce is not the only healthcare problem I noticed in Canada. Too many drugs in Canada are considered prescription only and not available over the counter. Even if you know exactly what your health problem is and which drug would help, you cannot buy it without prescription. And I’m not talking about narcotics here. For example, I need my asthma treated sometimes and for that I use an inhaler. In Russia, I would just go to any pharmacy and buy the inhaler if I needed it. Here in Canada I had to spend a good half of my working day just to see a physician for one minute and get my prescription for the inhaler. No check-ups were conducted, I just told him I had asthma. Not only it’s inconvenient and time consuming for patient, but each time you go to see a doctor for a prescription, you take away the time from the doctor and queues at ER and walk-ins become longer. So, over-regulation of drugs also contributes to physician shortage.

When I think about something managed and regulated exclusively by the government (that’s how Canadian healthcare is) I immediately remember Economy Planning in Soviet Union. There were no private companies in the Soviet Union, any entrepreneurship was considered a major crime and punished by law. All Soviet enterprises and factories were managed by rules set in Moscow by the central governmental administration. Being unable to effectively answer to local changes and trying to manage everything with a uniform approach, Economy Planning failed in the end and the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Canada’s current approach to healthcare looks too much like the Soviet Union to me.