Doug Ford defends health-care treatment at Ontario pharmacies - "Ontario Premier Doug Ford is defending his government’s decision to allow pharmacists to handle more ailments instead of doctors, saying it’s one of the most popular moves his government has made. The Ford government announced last week that it has started consultations on expanding the number of health problems patients can get treatment for at pharmacies... The new consultations announced last week (opens in a new tab)will look at expanding pharmacists’ scope of practice to include treating other problems such as sore throats, mild headaches, shingles, and sleep disorders like insomnia. The move has been slammed by the Ontario Medical Association (OMA), as well as a chorus of doctors on social media. In a recent post on X, the OMA said(opens in a new tab) it is concerned the move will “fragment an already fractured health-care system” and jeopardize patient safety."
Left wingers hate choice and love protectionism, so of course they were bashing him
Pascal Anglehart 🇨🇦 on X - "In Canada, if you earn $75k annually, you pay around $7,1k in taxes toward healthcare. You struggle to find a family doctor, ERs are overflowing, you spend years on waiting lists. In the USA a good Gold plan costs about $7k annually. You can access a doctor in minutes, literally"
Breast cancer death: Montreal woman dies at 32 - "A Montreal woman who was told by health-care professionals that she was too young for breast cancer but later diagnosed with it, has died from the disease. Valerie Buchanan was 32 when she died... Throughout 2020, Buchanan sought answers for a lump in her chest but had said she was reassured by multiple health-care professionals in Ottawa and Montreal that it was a benign cyst without sending her for imaging to confirm. After 13 months, Buchanan eventually went to a private clinic and was diagnosed with Stage 3 triple-negative breast cancer – a biologically aggressive subtype of breast cancer. Just a few months later, she learned it was Stage 4."
Clearly, this shows why private healthcare is a horrendous evil that should never be allowed
Ontario to spend $14B building Canada's largest teaching hospital - "Ontario has announced more than $14 billion in new funding to build the largest teaching hospital in Canada. The new Peter Gilgan Mississauga Hospital will triple the size and fully replace the existing Mississauga Hospital to help provide health care to an estimated 2.2 million people, the province says."
Time to bash Conservative governments again for underfunding healthcare
BC consulted U.S. Batten disease experts who had links to drug company - "Almost all the U.S. research experts the B.C. government leaned on to make a decision to reinstate a $800,000-a-year drug treatment for a 10-year-girl have, or had, relationships with the pharmaceutical company that manufacturers the drug or foundations that advocate for treatment, a Postmedia examination has found. The province’s decision went against its own 58-member advisory committee. Of the 12 physicians and one neuroscientist who signed a letter sent to B.C. Health Minister Josie Osborne calling on treatment to be reinstated, eight of the signatories have declared conflicts in the past five years in papers written for scientific journals or for public presentations because they have consulted for, been paid by, or received grants from California-based BioMarin Pharmaceutical Inc. Another doctor reported being a consultant for BioMarin for four years on a resumé posted online and was paid by BioMarin to be on a medical podcast... one of the U.S. doctors that signed the letter owns shares in BioMarin, two have been quoted in BioMarin news releases and three former BioMarin employees sit on one of the U.S.-based Batten research foundations. Experts in bioethics and pharmaceutical policy say the conflict-of-interest revelations raise questions on why the B.C. government overruled its own advisory committee, why it depended on the opinions of U.S. doctors with relationships to BioMarin, and whether it took those conflict-of-interest relationships into consideration... Following the reversal, 10 members of the advisory committee quit and B.C. Premier David Eby has now called for a review and overhaul of the decision process... Schafer, who formerly worked as an ethics consultant for the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority, said he believes the B.C. government capitulated and caved to pressure, as he believes most Canadian provincial governments would. “And I think the resulting decision is not morally justifiable,” he said. Schafer noted the effectiveness of these expensive rare-disease drugs is often unproven, underscoring the importance for governments to have independent expert advice when making difficult decisions in the face of emotion, public pressure and scarce resources. Other experts have made similar observations. Pierre-Marie David, a professor in the faculty of pharmacy at the University of Montreal who has been researching access to exceptional drugs, said a key to making these decisions is building trust in provincial health agencies, particularly given there is a large pipeline of these expensive drugs with uncertain effectiveness for rare diseases, which means more difficult decisions and increasing costs... Another group, the Beyond Batten Disease Foundation, has raised $35 million to help fund research to find treatments and has partnered with the Batten Disease Support and Research Association. The research association has several chapters around the world, including in Canada. The 10-year-old B.C. girl’s mother, Jori Fales, is on the board of directors of the Canadian chapter, according to the latest filing of the group for registered charities in Canada."
If a doctor prescribes something to a patient, there's no reason to deny it. We are justified in murdering anyone who denies coverage.
This is why left wingers hate Postmedia so much
A new era: Rare disease drugs can cost millions of dollars per patient - "The B.C. government has listed 35 of these expensive drugs that it will fund. The costs for these drugs are very high. At the low end, they include $119,000 a year for Zavesca, which is used to treat certain rare genetic disorders including Niemann-Pick type C disease that primarily attacks the nervous system. At the high end, they include Zolgensma, which is listed at a one-time cost of $2.9 million. It is a gene therapy used to treat spinal muscular atrophy. In B.C. spending on expensive drugs for rare diseases was $22 million eight years ago, according to provincial pharmaceutical spending reports. Last year, it hit just under $200 million. The annual increases jumped significantly starting in 2022, increasing by about $50 million a year. Medical observers and experts are concerned that if increases continue at that pace, spending on these expensive drugs could hurt the ability of health-care systems to treat larger populations. The just under $200 million B.C. spent on these drugs last year provided treatment to 600 people. That’s about 10 per cent of the money the province spends on its pharmacare program, which provides drugs to more than one million people... Lexchin, who was also an emergency physician, said he knows of no country that has a good policy to contend with the myriad issues. These include the high costs of the drugs, and patient groups and clinicians who want publicly funded treatment even as the effectiveness of rare disease drugs is sometimes unclear. These types of drugs have often not been studied for long periods and trials take place with fewer people than for drugs for common diseases. There’s also a lack of understanding of why these drugs cost so much because the drug companies don’t release that information, said Lexchin. And then there’s what is called the “rule of rescue,” which describes the strong human impulse to help identifiable individuals facing death or serious harm even when the costs of doing so are high, added Lexchin. “If they get publicity, you’ll spend a lot of money.”... “The hypocrisy of it is just astonishing to me. They say no one wants politicians making decisions about your health. Well, that’s exactly what they did,” said Sirrs. Sirrs had been part of the review process for drugs for rare diseases since its inception. She has also quit as the medical lead for rare diseases at the Provincial Health Services Authority, which provides provincewide specialized health services. Sirrs says patients with rare diseases should not be discriminated against, but they also should not be given an unfair advantage. Decisions on a drug should not be made based on negative publicity generated by media attention, she said. It ultimately harms the ability to negotiate prices for drugs for rare diseases with pharmaceutical companies, ending up with prices being based on a government’s willingness to pay, said Sirrs... In the past few weeks, one of the strongest opposition voices against the decision to halt the drug treatment for the 10-year-old girl came from the Canadian Organization for Rare Disorders. After Osborne said no stone was left unturned in assessing the drug, the patient advocacy group’s CEO, Durhane Wong-Rieger, said the B.C. health minister did not know what she was talking about. But some bioethics observers have raised concerns about corporate donations that these advocacy groups get from pharmaceutical companies. The Canadian Organization for Rare Disorders lists 20 corporate partners on its website, almost all of them in the pharmaceutical industry. Those included some of the biggest names in the industry such as U.S.-based Pfizer and Amgen, and Danish company Novo Nordisk. The total annual revenues of these companies is nearly $600 billion. In some years, pharmaceutical company representatives have sat on the patient advocacy group’s board."
Time to "tax the rich" to pay for these drugs, because health is priceless, so we need to spend unlimited amounts of money on healthcare
The Healthcare in Toronto is so much better than Ottawa/Montreal? Why is that? : r/montreal - "There's a bunch of problems with healthcare in quebec. A lot of it comes from the need of the government to micromanage everything. Another big problem is the heavy bureaucracy linked to healthcare. Physicians can not practice where they want unless the provincial government gives them the ok; what is commonly called PREMs and PEMs (these are the sole purview of the government) It's divided into administrative areas (sometimes it's by hospitals, sometimes by geographical area); So if an area needs 10 orthopods, but the government says nope you'll be fine with 5 (and give out 5 PEMS). Guess what ? You can't recruit more orthopods. Now the government, thinking of next year's election and their dwindling popularity, has come up with the genius idea to micromanage even more... So we now have a law that prohibits graduating physicians from leaving quebec or go into private practice... which seems great on paper... but if you go into med student reddits, you'll see some discussions about this, and basically, the consensus is to avoid quebec medical residencies like the plague. (And no residents, no new physicians). Now they're going to put forth a new law within the next months with productivity linked penalties... which against might sound ok on paper... but it's ill thoughout. In the hospital nearest to me, some of the available ORs are not open (fully functional ORs) surgeons do not operate as much as they would love to, because of staffing issues. Now, the government tells them to "operate more with the same ressources", and when asked about this, their answer is "figure it out". On top of this, these quotas will be by administrative areas, so if there's 2 of you in a specific specialty in that area, and you are see a bunch of patients (above your quota) but your collegue isn't cuz they don't feel like it... you both get screwed. So what's the incentive to work hard if you're getting screwed anyway ? And so, a bunch of physicians might think about retiring early (the average / median physician age is quite high), and others will migrate to other provinces. Again, making things worse. (And things will unfortunately keep getting worse). Again, this is my 0.02$, but to me, the biggest problem is that need to micromanage, especially since it's done incompetently with a governing idea that changes every voting cycle (that and the incredible amount of bureaucracy created: https://thenorthstar.media/2025/05/bureaucracy-and-health-care-costs-explode-the-caq-betrays-its-commitments/
https://www.montrealgazette.com/opinion/columnists/article825153.html"
Damn conservative governments underfunding healthcare!
Of course, elsewhere in the thread people claim that healthcare in Quebec sucks because they allow private healthcare
The Healthcare in Toronto is so much better than Ottawa/Montreal? Why is that? : r/montreal - "Quebec requires grads to
apply to a specific region of the province and if you decide not to respect that, 30% pay cut
do 12 hours a week of work outside of a clinic (chsld, hospital, ER, home care etc..) or else you get… a 30% pay cut.
get in with an institution but has to respect an institutional manpower plan. So that way a hospital isn’t allowed to have too many staff to just get more people in their area
essentially be forced to practice in a family medicine group where the government pays certain things (a certain amount of rent, computers, nursing hours) but in exchange they own you. If you’re too small you can be forced to merge with another clinic or lose all your “benefits”.
To my knowledge no province has any of these. This started after an embarrassing death in the late 80s or very early 90s of a man who died being transported to another hospital while having a heart attack because a regional ER was closed. The government knew it would be closed and they were embarrassed to they vowed that would never happen again so they started their insane micromanagement In Ontario you can do what you want, go wherever in the province etc… it’s up to you. Think about it: you have the most mobile desired professionals in the country and you micromanage them to death. So nobody wants to go into family medicine anymore. And it’s precisely that micromanagement that has killed family medicine."
Martyupnorth®- Unacceptable Fact Checker on X - "Alberta's former health minister Sarah Hoffman giving advice on staying healthy and preventing our healtcare system from getting overwhelmed. "Get jabbed". Nothing about eating good food, exercising, drinking lots of water and getting a good night's sleep. Nope. Get jabbed by big pharma."
Ottawa says provinces should pay for nurse practitioners, gives one-year grace before penalties - The Globe and Mail - "The federal government says provincial health plans should start covering the services of nurse practitioners who provide primary care as of April 1, but will delay enforcement for non-compliance for a year. Some of the estimated six million Canadians not connected to family doctors have turned to alternative health-care providers, often staffed with nurse practitioners, that may charge fees for services that would otherwise be covered by public insurance if provided by a physician... Provinces receive billions of dollars from Ottawa to pay for health services, and some of that money is clawed back if a province is found to be allowing health care providers to inappropriately bill patients. In the 2024-25 fiscal year, Ottawa transferred $52.1-billion to provinces and territories for health care and levied $62.2-million in penalties for inappropriate patient charges."
Clearly, since provinces are responsible for healthcare, this is proof that the federal government has nothing to do with why healthcare all over Canada sucks
Across the political spectrum, ageist provincial budgets fail the young - The Globe and Mail - "Both are directing the lion’s share of new spending toward medical care. Both are running large deficits to do so. Both are allowing investments in housing, postsecondary education, child care and support for young workers to grow far more slowly. That two governments who disagree on so much arrived at this same point because of something embedded in Canadian political culture: a willingness to protect older voters at almost any cost, even when it shifts the burden to younger generations. Unless citizens confront this inversion, provinces will keep tabling budgets that are anti-child, anti-parent and anti-young worker, regardless of which party holds power. The warning signs are visible: new data show B.C. now has the highest rate of children starting kindergarten developmentally vulnerable in a quarter century – the worst in the country. These children face higher risks of school failure, incarceration and preventable illness. When Alberta last collected comparable data, its rate was nearly as high. Demographics are part of the pressure behind this fiscal pattern. Canadians over 65 use roughly four times as much medical care as those under 50, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information. As baby boomers move into their 70s and 80s, demand for care inevitably climbs as the share of seniors doubles compared with when boomers were young. That much was predictable decades ago. What was not predetermined was the response. Provinces chose not to modernize revenue systems to prepare for aging-related health costs. By contrast, Ottawa reformed the Canada Pension Plan in the 1990s, raising premiums by 68 per cent so boomers would pre-fund a substantial share of their retirement benefits... Expanding it without matching revenues – and covering the difference with debt – is a political choice. Governments could have paired rising medical costs with new contributions tied to aging. They could have slowed health spending growth to free more funds for generations being crushed by housing prices, navigating underfunded postsecondary systems or entering a fragile labour market. They chose not to. Part of the explanation is electoral arithmetic... Expanding medical care is now treated as a moral imperative – almost beyond scrutiny – while asking financially secure retirees to help finance their longer lives is framed as politically perilous. Across party lines, the safer path is to protect age-linked medical spending and let the fiscal consequences fall elsewhere. That “elsewhere” is younger Canadians: slower investment in housing and education, and deficits that leave them unpaid bills. Every year we delay modernizing how we finance boomers’ healthy retirements, the costs deepen and younger Canadians remain the collateral damage. Partisan battles may dominate the headlines, but beneath the political theatre the fiscal outcome is the same: budgets that discriminate against children, parents and young workers."
This won't stop left wingers insisting that "conservative" governments like the BC NDP deliberately underfund healthcare so it will collapse and they can privatise it
Where do our health care dollars go? - The Globe and Mail - "When it comes to spending money on health care, Canada is doing well compared to other developed countries. Charts measuring spending per capita generally show Canada falling in the middle, a rank that would be higher if the figures were age-adjusted. (Health care costs rise rapidly as people age and most European countries have older populations than Canada, so they should be spending more.) But what are Canadians getting for those health care dollars? When it comes to medical technology, such as MRIs and CT scans, Canada ranks dead last, below countries that spend much less per capita, including Slovakia, Croatia and Turkey. If we’re not spending on technology, then where is the money going? Is it going toward better access to emergency care, major medical procedures, hospital beds or family doctors?... Canada spends a disproportionate amount on end-of-life care, more than the United States and many European countries. A 2021 C.D. Howe Institute study found we spend nearly double on end-of-life hospitalizations compared with England and the Netherlands. Yet, there’s little to show for it in terms of higher life expectancy or quality of life at advanced ages. And even though they spend less than Canada, I would guess that Europeans do not believe they are any less compassionate toward their elderly. Another potential factor relates to a trend identified by economist William J. Baumol known as Baumol’s cost disease. His theory noted that salaries in any given sector will rise higher along with the rest of the economy, even when there are no productivity gains within that sector itself. When additional public funding becomes available, a disproportionate amount gets spent on raising salaries rather than on productivity improvements, infrastructure or technology."
Clearly the problem is not enough spending
EDITORIAL: Canada’s family doctor shortage was engineered - " To borrow a phrase from Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Davos speech, Canadian politicians for generations posted a sign in the window no one believed. It said: “Canada has the best health care system in the world.” Canadians stopped believing that a long time ago. A recent poll by the Angus Reid Institute found half of Canadians surveyed don’t have a family doctor or struggle to see the one they have, up from 40% a decade ago. Seven in 10 say the quality of health care in their province has deteriorated over the past decade, the same number who are dissatisfied with their provincial government’s performance on health care. While health care spending nationally has nearly doubled over the past decade, from $219 billion in 2015 to $399 billion in 2025, almost 60% say they’re worried they will not get timely access to health care if they have an emergency. International surveys show Canadians, while paying a disproportionately high price for health care, face some of the longest medical wait times in the developed world among countries that have universal health care... Canada’s shortage of family doctors was no accident. It was the result of deliberate government policies. In the early 1990s, provincial governments became convinced the best way to control medical costs was to cut the number of family doctors. They got this idea from university academics — so-called health-care economists — whose flawed advice was an example of the dangers of relying on “experts” with little knowledge of front-line health care. Despite warnings from Canada’s medical colleges that this would inevitably lead to a national doctor shortage, the provinces stalled funding, cut enrolments in medical schools and capped residences. As predicted, that led to today’s doctor shortage, even as Canada’s aging population requires more care and the baby boom generation of doctors are retiring. Pay for family doctors has not kept pace with compensation in the medical specialties, exacerbating the shortage."
Privatization means longer waits, less access for surgery: report - "Privatization of surgical services in Ontario has not improved wait times, but instead has forced patients to wait longer while negatively impacting access for all but the wealthiest residents, according to a new report from the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions and the Canadian Union of Public Employees."
Clearly, union-backed studies have no conflicts of interest, because conflicts of interest only exist when alleging that helps the left wing agenda
Why Canadian-trained doctors should be allowed to practise anywhere in Canada without additional licensing - "While politicians tout the benefits of reducing interprovincial trade barriers to unlock prosperity amid escalating trade tensions, our most precious health-care resources — fully qualified doctors — remain shackled. Physicians face a maze of regulations when attempting to practise beyond their home province... The answer lies not in medical competence, but in bureaucracy. Despite national standards for training and qualification, the power to grant a licence rests with 13 separate provincial and territorial regulatory colleges. This fragmented system creates artificial barriers, limiting the mobility of our highly skilled physicians across Canada."
Meme - Shuv Majumdar: "Canada spends among the most on healthcare in the developed world, yet ranks near the bottom for doctors, hospital beds, MRIs, and timely care. In Carney's Canada, you pay more, wait longer, get less."
"Canada is a HIGH SPENDER on health care, but has POOR PERFORMANCE compared to other universal health care countries"
Proof that healthcare in Canada is underfunded because conservatives want the system to collapse so they can privatise it and bring in US healthcare!
The myth of universal health care in Canada - The Globe and Mail
She says privatisation is a dirty word because of US horror stories, but this doesn't get at the role that Canadian patriotism as expressed through reflexive hatred of the US plays (besides, as she points out, 30% of Canadian healthcare is privately funded, including mental health)
