The National Post reported last Friday that "Canadian health care spending is expected to reach $183.1-billion in 2009 or $5,452 per Canadian, according to figures released yesterday by the Canadian Institute for Health Information."

Our health care is expensive. But is it effective?

This month, the Fraser Institute reported on the extra cost patients must absorb because of the time they must wait for necessary medical treatments.

In 2009, an estimated 694,161 Canadians were waiting for care after an appointment with a specialist…These Canadians waited, on average, 8 weeks for treatment, though those wait times varied significantly when broken down by province and medical specialty…The estimated cost of waiting…was slightly less than $600 million—an average of about $859 for each of the estimated 694,161 Canadians.

Additionally, there is growing concern over the fact that Canada has a severe shortage of doctors. This shortage is not due to a lack of doctors graduating in Canada, but rather to a lack of funding to provide placements for them in Canada. Yes, you read right—just last year about two hundred Canadian trained doctors were forced to leave Canada to complete their residencies elsewhere.

Our government funded healthcare has failed us in three areas: Cost per person, waiting times, and doctor shortages. Canada already has the world's second most expensive universal access health insurance system; simply pouring more money into it is no longer an option.

The CHP has been advocating for years that health care reform is desperately needed, and it's encouraging to see that many of our CHP 'Better Solution's' for improvements to the system are echoed in Nadeem Esmail's recent Fraser Forum article recommending sensible health care reform in Ontario.

1. "Cost sharing—that is, requiring patients to share in the cost of their care*…the reasoning is straightforward: people spend their own money more wisely than they spend someone else's."
2. "…[C]hange the way hospitals are funded and allow more competition in the delivery of publicly funded services."
3. "…[H]ospitals receive a set amount of money each year and thus see every patient as a drain on their budget. Instead, the province should move to activity-based funding, through which hospitals would be paid per patient."

These initiatives would free up the much needed funding to be invested in creating placement opportunities for our Canadian trained doctors to ensure they remain in Canada, and in upgrading our outdated medical equipment to the cutting edge treatment technologies available today.

Canadians deserve this type of reform, but it requires real leadership to spearhead these issues at the federal level. This takes innovation and a willingness to make the hard decisions—something the major political parties have been reluctant to supply. CHP Canada will provide the leadership that will give Canadians medical care that is available, cost effective and timely.