Editor:
What good is a free healthcare system if you can’t get healthcare? No doctor or clinic in the Bow Valley, Cochrane and several ones in Calgary is accepting new patients. It's painfully obvious, that the so-called free public health care system is broken.
I read years ago that by 2030 the entire provincial budget will be needed to pay for health care. The way to push that deadline further into the future is by cutting access to healthcare as we are currently experiencing. The current system is simply not sustainable. And if NDP leader Rachel Notley promises to fix it, it can likely only be done by taking on more debt which is not a solution either.
On the other hand, nobody wants a private system like south of the border. From memory, the United States has one of the highest costs but ranks somewhere in the mid-30s in global ranking when it comes to the quality of delivery. The solution is somewhere in between. So, where should we look?
Graf Otto von Bismarck – the former chancellor of the German Empire in the late 19th century and known as the Iron Chancellor – is called by some the inventor of the modern social security system. In 1884 he established the first compulsory healthcare insurance system which resulted in a significant increase in life expectancy and general health. It survived the Kingdom of Prussia, Imperial Germany, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich and is still in use in today’s Federal Republic of Germany almost 140 years later. Maybe it's worth taking a closer look.
The core idea of Bismarck’s healthcare insurance is based on the not-for-profit principle of a health insurance fund krankenkasse whereby you become a member as opposed to a customer, much like Credit Unions. The board of the fund then negotiates on your behalf fee schedules with doctors, hospitals, etc. This would remove healthcare from governmental bureaucracy and incompetence as well as from for-profit enterprises.
In my opinion, it would be the best compromise between the socialist and capitalist extremes. Premiums are based on the solidarity principle such as a person’s ability to contribute and are based on income. Also, the premium is split 50-50 between employer and employee. I do remember, however, it was never an issue to book a doctor’s appointment.
Freeing the government from the burden of publicly funded healthcare would also take discussions for a provincial sales tax off the table. The downside? It would deprive the government of some of its power and control. I for one could well live with that. It may not happen overnight, but maybe worth to start a discussion.
Dieter Remppel,
Canmore
