On the Public vs Private Healthcare Debate

This public/private healthcare debate has been a contentious topic in Canada for decades. And it got renewed energy when the Ontario government recently announced its plan to fund surgeries at private clinics. The discussion, however, is fraught with both misunderstanding and misinformation.

Despite Canada’s reputation as a bastion of public healthcare, most of our healthcare today is actually privately delivered.?Your family doctor, for example, is probably a private corporation.?You likely get your blood tests and imaging from privately owned clinics.?Those of us over 65 get medication at no cost from privately owned pharmacies.?But you aren’t paying for those services – they are publicly funded and privately delivered.

The Liberal-NDP federal government has promised to pay for dental care for those who need it. That dental care will be delivered by private companies. Is that public or private healthcare? Ontario’s plan to pay for surgeries performed by privately owned clinics to help with surgical backlogs is essentially the same thing, but has become much more controversial.

In Canada, there are three primary models of healthcare:

1) Publicly Funded/Publicly Delivered

Because of the high level of infrastructure and staffing, this is typically a very high-cost provider of healthcare, and best suited to very acute and complex patients, such as a public hospital.?

2) Privately Funded/Privately Delivered

This is what many talk about as the death of public healthcare, but there is actually not that much of it happening in Canada.?This is best suited to non-essential healthcare, like a cosmetic botox injection for example, where you pay out of pocket for this service.

3) Publicly Funded/Privately Delivered

This makes up the majority of healthcare in Canada today, and should continue to grow.?Given limited funding, an efficient and high-quality health delivery system is pretty much the only realistic option we have to maintain and improve our government funded healthcare.?You pay with your provincial health card, funded through your taxes.

Our dream – our goal – is to have more of our programs funded by the government, allowing more access to effective addiction and mental health treatment for Canadians. More on this and how EHN Canada is working to make it happen will be shared over the coming weeks.

We have a mission to ensure that every Canadian has the right to mental health care that is accessible (meaning low wait times), affordable (paid for by governments and employers) and excellent (as measured by clinical outcomes).?Publicly funded/privately delivered mental health care is the fastest way to get there, and we are working with almost every province and territory in this country to make it a reality.

At EHN Canada, we are hopeful that the general public will gain a better understanding around healthcare in Canada (particularly treatment for mental health and addiction) and how it works. We want our clients – and Canadians at large – to have access to credible information. That’s why we will be sharing more articles like this in the coming weeks. Stay tuned for more.

This article was written by Joe Manget , the Chair and CEO of EHN Canada.