canada health insurance 2022

Canadian healthcare is a long-running debate in popular culture. Is it affordable? Does it work? Can we afford it? Does everyone get it if they need it? Or does the best care happen when you’re lucky enough? Do doctors care for their own patients or are paid by people who pay them? And, how can we make sure that more of our population has access to quality health coverage through this country? There are many ways to answer those questions and there are some good things about living in Canada – like its high standard of living – but there are also many bad things about it as well. One thing that most Canadians know is that free health care isn’t universal. There are some countries where this is not an issue. Japan is one, Switzerland is another. In Canada, free health care is only available in certain provinces (Ontario being one) and only that province provides it for all of their citizens, regardless of whether those who live there want it or not. Canada is also known for having healthcare costs that are significantly higher than other developed countries; these include hospital visits and prescriptions. These are expensive. People with lower incomes pay much less for care, so any kind of preventive treatment that was funded through federal money would be costly for them. That cost could be passed on to the patient. The other thing that makes it quite difficult to have universal health coverage is that some provinces require prescription drug prices to go down. This means that when prescriptions are priced in Canada, pharmaceutical companies in Canada have to either find new ways to create new drugs which are cheaper for the customer or look into finding medicines from suppliers outside of Canada, often countries that don’t manufacture quality medication. This means that Canadian pharmacies often aren’t able to deliver the latest, safest, most effective medications. If a person chooses, say, a generic brand instead, they will pay the expense. The result is that people with very little money to spend on medicine, or extremely low-income earners, cannot afford it. So what should we do? Should we be trying to fix the broken system or just throw everything out the window? It doesn’t mean that every single person in Canada needs to buy insurance, but what if we can help provide a bit more choice? What if we could give people the option of choosing a different provider, or the choice of seeing doctors who are better trained in giving out prescriptions? We could even offer support for people who take less-expensive drugs so that they don’t needlessly have to pay the extra charge or, perhaps, the added side effect of taking medication at all. At a time when most are struggling financially due to pandemics, economic insecurity, job loss, rent increases and student loan debt, now when the public healthcare system is broken and our government refuses to intervene, our society shouldn’t expect our government to fix everything or turn us into socialist countries. But, it has to be said that this is still a complex problem for which the solution is not easy. Not only because of the lack of funding available to change things, but because it comes with all the complications of a country where people tend to be reluctant to try anything drastic. In my opinion, it’s just one of those problems where the ‘right’ answer is obvious sooner or later, but until then I believe that all Canadians should be able to have universal coverage when they need it. For those interested in helping support the ongoing fight for better and fairer healthcare funding in Canada and elsewhere, please visit our website and sign up for updates on our blog. Thank you for reading!