Canada’s parliament has passed a bill that that will cover the full cost of contraception and diabetes drugs for Canadians.
The Liberal government said it is the initial phase of a plan that would expand to become a publicly funded national pharmacare programme.
But two provinces - Alberta and Quebec - have indicated they may opt-out of the programme, accusing Ottawa of interfering in provincial matters.
Opposition Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, whose party is ahead in national polls by a wide margin, does not support the legislation.
So, have you been to a doctor? When you walk in with high blood pressure, do you think they don’t mention reducing your weight, sodium, and cholesterol? Some people follow that advice, some don’t. Some don’t know how to achieve that.
A lot of the things you talk about already happen, at the most superficial level. It isn’t working. But, much like drug addiction, people would rather vilify those who are so weak as to succumb to addiction (or overeating) rather than providing the resources to help them beyond a handy little pamphlet telling them everything they already know.
But that isn’t what you started with advocating. Rather than advocating better resources to help people deal with the causes, you promoted the idea of removing help treating their symptoms if they didn’t meet your criteria of trying enough to fix the underlying causes, of what I imagine are your personal pet peeves.
Look, we have to prioritize treatment, since our healthcare system is extremely stretched at the moment.
We are paying for a lot of lifestyle related illnesses to continue without any patient effort to correct it.
Most don’t, which is a problem when you have people who need care through no fault of their own.
Obesity is Canada is something like 1/3. We’re talking about increases in just about every health problem under the sun.
Now, we can continue as we are, prolonging poor health and managing the results of poor lifestyle.
Or, we can find ways to motivate patients to get better without expensive and ongoing treatments.
Will this work for everyone? No, because not every health problem is lifestyle related. But enough of it is, and we can unburden our doctors by putting responsibility back into patient’s hands.
We would benefit far more as a county if money was spent on ways to prevent and reverse illness, even if that means giving away free bikes and produce.
Keeping people sick is cruel and benefits only pharmaceutical companies.
I’m going to say this real slow one last time. Then promote funding for helping people to change their lifestyle rather than removing healthcare. Another wildly inconceivable idea is to add funding to healthcare, rather than cut it every year. Yes, taxes may have to increase, yes, people will call that socialism, and yes, quality of life will go up for most people, without even requiring those you find morally reprehensible to die sooner than necessary.
Literally what I’ve been saying. We both agree.
We agree here, too.
But without unlimited funds, you’ll need to allocate where the money goes.
Do you want it to go towards paying for medication for otherwise reversible illnesses, or to fight childhood cancer?
Do you want to use that money treating smoking-related illnesses, or dementia?
Do you want doctors treating unvaccinated adults, or helping someone with an autoimmune disorder?
It’s not always an easy call, since everyone has a right to healthcare. But give voters the opportunity to decide where funding goes, and I’m sure that it won’t be a 50/50 split.
I never mentioned denying healthcare to child rapists, but ok.
If you’re talking about regular sick people, I don’t want anyone to suffer longer than they need to. That includes being on a lifetime of medicine that’s not solving their underlying issues, rather than giving them the power to get healthy.
I’ll say this slowly: Keeping people sick when better solutions exist is cruel and completely unnecessary.
Make it a referendum, but everyone who is engaging in an activity that risks their health has to vote against removing treatment for lifestyle diseases, and you’ll be at 80% before the ballots are printed. Most people think their poor lifestyle choices aren’t that big of a problem, just everyone else’s.
That’s the wrong way of looking at it.
“Risks their health” could be their job.
If someone has a curable/reversable illness, then we have to focus on getting them there. Not expensive, prolonged treatments that keep them sick.
So what’s your plan to get people to exercise 150 minutes per week in the current adult generation? This would reasonably cost almost nothing and dramatically reduces your risk for diabetes, yet, 60% of Canadians are overweight or obese. I don’t imagine reducing their access to medical services is going to change that, besides making them die faster, yet that’s what you first proposed.
And as you said, and as I was trying to point out, there are a lot of health risks, and many of them are entirely within their power to change.
I’ll go ahead and say the obvious: health takes effort.
When you consider that “Canadians spend 21 hours a week watching TV and video content”, I can’t sympathise with excuses.
Prioritizing 150 minutes (at a minimum) out of 1,260 spent watching TV should be easy.
Replacing even a single errand from car to bike is a simple way to do this. Replace your commute from driving to cycling or public transportation/walking, and you don’t even have to think about “finding time” to move.
I personally feel that if the government gave each family an ebike, you’d have a massive net benefit in more areas than one.
But it goes beyond just exercising, and one area that I think our government should focus on is making healthy foods cheaper and more accessible (through subsidies, consumer rebates, etc.) and unhealthy foods more expensive (through taxes).
Perhaps I didn’t explain it properly, so that’s on me.
Access should be universal. Nobody should be denied access to healthcare.
Where my opinion shifts is whether taxpayers should fund medication that prolongs treatable illness or not.
Why not fund programs that reverse disease? Make community center fitness programs free, and see what impact that has. Kids sports programs should also be free.
Give every family a monthly rebate that can only be spent on produce, and see what happens.
Ultimately, people will still need to decide on whether their health, or the health of their family, is important. But the government can certainly incentive positive choices to make things easy and accessible for everyone.