39% of people polled by Angus Reid are against the idea
A new Angus Reid poll shows that 39% of people still strongly disagree with paying for health care, while the rest either support privatization or are cautiously interested in the idea.
Early in February, a non-profit organization polled just over 2,000 Canadians and found that they fell into one of three groups: public health purists, people who like private care, or people who are interested in possible changes but aren’t sure yet.
39% of Canadians fall into the first group, which means they see “little to no place for privatization” and think that any move in that direction would only “make the problems in the system worse.”
On the other end of the spectrum, 28% of respondents supported private care. This group thinks that more privatization or hybrid models are “necessary evolutions” for the best care.
33% of the curious but hesitant crowd thinks that hiring for-profit doctors and paying for operations could be useful, but they are very worried about low-income Canadians getting access to care and about possible staff shortages.
Toronto surgeon David Urbach is worried that an increase in private clinics could lead doctors and nurses to leave the public sector in search of better pay. This would cause hospital wait times to get longer and the quality of care to go down.
Urbach said, “I’m really worried that people don’t fully understand what some of these changes will mean in the long run.”
The poll results come at the same time that the federal government and Canadian premiers are working out the details of a $46 billion health care transfer deal, which Ottawa is promoting as a long-term fix for a broken system.
Ontario is the latest state to help get rid of the long wait lists caused by the COVID-19 pandemic by paying for surgery at private clinics. Alberta and Saskatchewan did the same thing before them.
In 2021, health officials in British Columbia will give $27.2 million to private clinics. B.C. Health Minister Adrian Dix said that more than 13,000 private surgeries, or 4% of all surgeries, were done through contracts that year.
The Angus Reid numbers show that Canadians also have different ideas about what private health care is.Over half of the people asked (51%) said that having the government pay for surgery at a private clinic qualifies, while 33% said it doesn’t.
When it comes to paying for care out of pocket, there is more agreement. Seven out of ten people who answered the survey said that it was privatization.
A health researcher in British Columbia named Andrew Longhurst says that when a province pays for surgery at a private clinic, the cost is kept secret.
“That’s one of the reasons why it’s hard to figure out the relative costs in the for-profit sector: provincial governments usually won’t let you look at the records of those contracts, citing commercial confidentiality.”
According to data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information, Canada spends about $330 billion a year on health care.
The survey was done online by the Angus Reid Institute. For comparison, a probability sample of this size would have a margin of error of plus or minus two percentage points 19 times out of 20.
Tap here to see the whole report, including how it was made.