The Villanueva inquiry has taken nearly a year and has been among the most expensive public inquiries ever done in Quebec. La Presse’s Caroline Touzin gives us a timeline and summary as the inquiry finally begins to wrap up. No deadline is mentioned for the eventual coroner’s report to come from the lengthy process.
Updates from November, 2010 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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We live in a culture of bribes. Interesting piece exposes how some doctors accept “envelopes” but there’s no recourse for those who pass over thousands and don’t get the special treatment they expect they’ve paid for.
A somewhat different story at the CHUM, where doctors sidestepping the bureaucratic bind of the public system have opened a private clinic where patients can be seen, although they have to pay.
Either way, the ideal of medical care not depending on a person’s income is pretty much dead in the water, and the health minister is basically saying he doesn’t know about it. We need somebody in charge here who’s capable of coming to grips with the situation as it is.
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mdblog
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ant6n
This sounds a bit like how the Panama Canal authority gives slots to ships (the most expensive slot ever auctioned off was to a cruise ship).
The problem is that it is possible that those who can’t pay will be pushed much farther back in the line, or possibly even indefinitely, as long as there is somebody in front of you willing to pay. It also sanctions and even sponsors inequity in the health care system, which should be the same for ever one.
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mdblog
If the money that is collected from ships went towards building a second Panama canal right next to the original thus increasing capacity and decreasing wait times then yes, the scheme described above would be like the Panama canal.
In the short term, some people will get bumped back but over the long haul everyone is better off. It’s better that the bribe money be used towards reducing the conditions that make bribes worthwhile in the first place than having it go into the pockets of corrupt physicians and administrators.
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Stefan
health is not something that can be compared to transport. it is your life vs. speed of goods from A to B.
there seem to be 3 ways of prioritizing treatment (there does not seem to be a society as rich as it can treat all of its citizens and do so in a timely manner):
the U.S. treats the rich, so the poor die. in canada, it is by waiting list, so you are treated equally but you may die as well while you wait. whether as in certain european countries, it is a gremium of expert doctors who decides who gets treatment and how quickly. i.e. a 85-year old may not get a hip replacement/new heart or whatever because it is more necessary for a 25-year old, who will expect to live longer with it. the ethical reasoning is surely not simple but i am convinced that this is the best way to go. -
Ian
While this is all very scandalous, it all seems an awful lot like hearsay based on a handful of people pointing fingers at doctors at the Jewish. Yes, Quebec has been notoriously corrupt sonce, well, forever, but I’d like to see some real evidence beyond one lady mad that her bribe didn’t work and a few “anonymous sources” before we start getting up in arms. My ob/gyn won’t even accept thank-you presents.
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As deplorable as this kind of behaviour is we shouldn’t be surprised. Canada has been seriously underfunding healthcare since the early 1990s and levels of service have suffered – as have patients. However there is a solution to this problem that I can see. Instead of fighting this kind of corruption, perhaps we should embrace and use it to the benefit of the greater good.
Here’s the idea:
If someone wants to skip the line for anything in the healthcare system, whether it be a diagnostic test such as an MRI, seeing a specialist, or going in for surgery, we should let them do so provided they pay a very high price for doing so. How much you pay will determine how close to the front of the line you get. We could either have a market mechanism such as an auction that would determine the fair market price for skipping or we could come up with an exponentially increasing pay scale based on how far up the line one wants to go. The money collected from people who pay to skip would go into an account earmarked specifically to pay to decrease waiting times for everyone else.
Example: Pay $10,000 to skip the line to get an MRI sooner. That $10,000 goes towards buying a new MRI machine and covering its operating costs.
The beauty of this solution is that patients who can’t afford to skip will eventually get service faster thanks to the “donations” of those who could afford to do so. In other words the problem takes care of itself.