Who will one day save our poor health system? Out of order for years, hypercentralized, dehumanized, ultra-bureaucratized to the point of absurdity, it has become staggeringly inaccessible and ineffective.
The medical staff may dedicate themselves, but nothing shakes this house which drives you crazy with disarray. Result: the creation of a Santé Québec agency by the Legault government – yet another layer of centralization – worries several experts.
How high will the heights of this new ivory tower and its private sector “top guns” climb? Huge question…
SATURDAY, The newspaper published a long file on one of the central failings of the network. Or the extreme difficulty of seeing a family doctor. The figure is striking: in an aging society, 2.3 million Quebecers still do not have a family doctor.
Not to mention all those who, even if they have one, are unable to see it for weeks or months. The consequences are lethal. Orphaned patients languish in already crowded emergency rooms.
Others have time to die on the waiting list. Even serious or fatal illnesses are not diagnosed in time. Preventive medicine is completely sacrificed.
Paid medicine
Rising thanks to the facilitating silence of governments, what can also be said of the abundant market for completely private medicine, paid for by patients using their credit cards?
Almost all care and social services can now be purchased at high prices in Quebec. A shameless betrayal of the social contract resulting from the creation of health insurance in the early 1970s.
As reported The newspapereven the Clic Santé appointment site, although subsidized by public funds, promotes the private sector!
Instead of relieving public congestion, this same private market creates two classes of patients according to their means and vampirizes public personnel. In the country, Quebec is the leader in paid private medicine. For Quebecers, it is a cruel fool’s bargain.
I’ve been writing on the subject for about fifteen years now. You might as well preach in the wilderness. At this sign, run and read Santé inc.: Myths and bankruptcies of private healthrecently published by Écosociété.
The researcher and doctor in political science Anne Plourde provides a relentless demonstration of the obvious failure of private health.
Quebec is a vast waiting room
And what about our unsafe emergencies? Thousands of caregivers forgotten by the system? Extremely rare home care? Caregivers trained in a hurry even if they will take care of the most vulnerable people?
And what about the CRDS – the famous Service Request Dispatch Center to see (perhaps) a specialist doctor? General practitioners are obliged to register their patients if they need a specialist.
The problem? It’s a big digital black hole. Depersonalized. Centralized. With little or no control from the general practitioner over the choice of specialist. In short, patients do not know which specialist they will see, where, when, or even if they will see one in time.
This is a bureaucratic scam and silo medicine of the worst kind. All of which makes access to a specialist ever more difficult. Quebec has become a vast waiting room.
The lamentable state of our public health network being what it is, if by the October 2026 elections the Dubé reform were to fail in addition, the electorate, already turned away from the CAQ for a year, will be without pardon.