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Thursday, May 24th, 201212:00pm ET

factors that explain Canadians’ attitudes toward healthcare

four topics: healthcare issue salience (or the prominence of healthcare issues), spending on healthcare, support for private hospitals and support for paying to obtain quicker access

Women are more likely than men to consider healthcare important, to want to augment health spending and to oppose a two-tier system.

The report, which contains some 400 recommendations, is part of an austerity agenda that, if implemented, will gut public services such as child care, health care and education.

CUPE Ontario's submission to Drummond detailed new revenue sources including increased taxes on banks and corporations and new tax surcharges on individual incomes over $300,000 and $500,000 annually. Recent Angus-Reid polling shows Ontarians overwhelmingly support such measures.

CUPE Ontario says its proposed changes would increase revenue by more than $9 billion a year, reducing the current provincial deficit by more than 50 percent.

there's a tremendous groundswell of support for transforming health care to make it focused on the needs of patients.

Over the last year, Canada's doctors and nurses have criss-crossed the country to hear directly from Canadians about what they want from their health-care system. We have heard two inseparable yet paradoxical truths: there is an abiding allegiance to our system of medicare, but also a deep belief that it needs to be modernized to meet 21st century needs.

A CMA poll released today shows that more than 90% of Canadians said that we need national standards for health care, and an overwhelming 97% continue to believe the federal government's responsibility for the Canada Health Act is important.

The study from the University of Toronto and New York's Cornell University says U.S. doctors pay an average of nearly $83,000 each for administrative costs associated with insurance documents. In Canada, for doctors based in Ontario that cost is significantly less at just over $22,200.

In addition, nurses, medical assistants and other hospital staff dedicate nearly 21 hours per week to filing insurance papers and other duties required to push insurance claims through. For the same duties in Ontario, just 2.5 hours are spent each week.

published in the August edition of the journal Health Affairs

This report presents a synthesis of the last four years of public opinion polling data (2002 – 2006) on the Canadian health care system. These data are used to understand how Canadian perceptions have changed since the Romanow Commission – including whether Canadians see the system as improving or deteriorating, and how they view governments’ performance on health care issues. In addition, the report examines the state of Canadian opinion on issues such as government spending, private health care, problems with the current system, and priorities for future policy developments, including home care and pharmacare. This overview – Canadian Perceptions of the Health Care System by Professor Stuart Soroka – was released as a companion document to the Council’s report, Health Care Renewal in Canada: Measuring Up?

But Canada doesn’t simply need “protection” of current transfers. It needs a Grand Bargain, where greater, more transparent and more reliable federal funding is combined with a realignment of the way the provinces deliver those services, and of the whole fiscal relationship between the provinces and the federal government.

Without more federal support – now stuck at 20 per cent of total provincial spending – current reforms could stall. New ones will not get off the ground.

The provinces and the federal government should take a hard look at options such as European-style social insurance, in which health and welfare spending are funded by payroll deductions that are split off from the regular income tax stream.

Nov 24, 2011

An overwhelming 94-percent of Canadians support public - not private, for-profit - solutions to making the country's healthcare system stronger - with an equal number of Conservatives flying the banner for public health care.

By the account of a new Environics poll, a majority of Canadians now believe inefficiency, rather than underfunding, is the biggest threat to health care. Perhaps all those dire warnings from politicians and think-tanks and media outlets about costs growing unsustainably are starting to penetrate.

Among the most inescapably necessary reforms is hospital restructuring. In Ontario, governments dating back to Bob Rae’s New Democrats have recognized that it’s no longer practical for hospitals, particularly in rural areas, to function as one-stop shops. Much more cost-efficient, and often better for patient outcomes, is to centralize difficult and expensive procedures in fewer places.

for policy-makers, a certain cold-bloodedness is required

ive Southern Ontario hospitals to be closed; replaced with acute-care centre Add to ... KAREN HOWLETT AND ADRIAN MORROW The Globe and Mail Published Monday, Jan. 13 2014,

The Ontario government has given the green light to a long-awaited new hospital near Niagara Falls – one month before voters in the region go to the polls in a by-election.Health Minister Deb Matthews announced on Monday that five hospitals in Southern Ontario will permanently close their doors and be replaced with a new acute-care centre, as part of a massive overhaul of the troubled Niagara Health System. The province is providing funding of $26.2-million to help develop plans for the new hospital plus two urgent-care centres, or walk-in clinics.

Mar 12 2014

During the 2011 federal election, the federal Liberals ran a poll on their website asking Canadians to choose their favourite anti-medicare quote from Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Although it’s the social program most cherished by Canadians, universal health care has been under attack from both Liberal and Conservative governments almost from its inception.

April 8, 2014

OTTAWA – Health care and homelessness top the parliamentary agenda today in Ottawa. The Mental Health Commission of Canada is releasing its final study that shows the effectiveness of federal investments in ensuring homeless Canadians get off the streets. The commission says as many as 30,000 Canadians are homeless on any given night, with many facing mental health or addiction issues. Other events happening on and around Parliament Hill include: — The Canadian Medical Association and Nik Nanos reveal new polling results on what kind of care seniors and baby boomers want from their federal government;

The Collingwood Enterprise-Bulletin Fri Jun 20 2014

(NC) Canada's healthcare system has been a source of national pride for decades with citizens benefitting from universal and accessible care. But sadly, with the current spending trajectory, the future of the system as we know it is unsustainable. Our cherished healthcare system is being challenged by demographic shifts, increasingly high prevalence of chronic disease and the advent of very expensive specialty and targ eted therapies. We are now spending $23 billion dollars on drugs, significantly more than on the physicians who treat us. Simple chang es to our healthcare choices will ensure a sustained system for future generations. And these chang es will actually have no impact on Canadians at all -except for keeping more money in our wallets and more money available to be reallocated into other important health innovations.

The results of a poll conducted by Leger, the Research Intelligence Group, on behalf of Teva Canada indicates that at minimum 78 per cent of Canadians already know that generic medicines have the same effectiveness as brand-name medicines, contain the same amount of the active ing redient and must abide by the same quality standards as brand-name manufacturers.

Ottawa Citizen Sat Sep 27 2014

Her tax dollars hadn't earned him a room fast enough for her, but had paid for this: his third stay in neuro-recovery, after three brain operations, countless weeks of tests in hospital and out, pre-and post-op consultations, social work and psychologists and therapy. She had been too stressed to think about that.

In fact, health outcomes in the U.S., where about 45,000 people a year die for lack of proper health care, are not better than Canada's. And according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information, Canada performs better than average in nearly all categories when compared to the other 33 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development or OECD countries. According to them, Canada spent about $211 billion on health care in 2013, which breaks down to about $6,000 per patient. We invested more of our economic growth since 2005 in health care than the OECD average, which might explain why our outcomes are better. An American ex-pat was complaining over dinner about our health-care system. He insisted profit is the necessary incentive to make health care work. Public financed medical system doesn't cut it. A friend across the table, a nurse, said, "You just had eye surgery. For free. You had no complications and you hardly waited at all." He had no answer for that.

The Globe and Mail Fri May 1 2015

Smokers and banks will pay more to help finance Manitoba's infrastructure spending in a deficit budget that comes close to draining its rainy-day fund. The governing NDP tabled a $15-billion budget Thursday that boosts tobacco taxes by $1 on a carton of cigarettes that costs $128. It also increases the capital tax on financial institutions to 6 per cent from 5 per cent. The budget - which includes a $422-million deficit - also increases tax credits for caregivers of vulnerable relatives at home and boosts rental assistance for welfare recipients by up to $271 a household. "We made a decision to invest in infrastructure. We made a decision to invest in health care. We made a decision to invest in education," Finance Minister Greg Dewar said Thursday. "Other provinces have taken a different route." The budget draws $105-million from Manitoba's rainy-day fund to pay down debt and support infrastructure spending. That leaves $115-million in a bank account that boasted $864-million in 2009.

That will be replenished at some point "as the economy grows," said Mr. Dewar, a longtime backbencher who took over the portfolio last fall after a partial caucus revolt against Premier Greg Selinger. The fiscal blueprint promises $1-billion in infrastructure spending as part of a five-year stimulus plan that was announced when the government raised the provincial sales tax in 2013. The budget also includes modest spending increases in health care and education. It records the latest in a string of deficits as the province delays balancing the books until 2019 - four years later than originally promised. Mr. Dewar disagreed with Statistics Canada's assessment that Manitoba's economy grew by 1.1 per cent last year. He suggested the province is "on track to have the strongest economy in Canada." But that's not enough to balance the books in the near future, he said. "We're starting to see good numbers now and we're anticipating that we shall return to surplus as long as we continue to spend less than we have coming in."

May 03, 2015

A Nanos research poll released last week found 73% of Canadians are concerned or somewhat concerned that they would not be provided with a desired level of comfort and support if they or loved ones faced a life-threatening experience or were nearing death. We asked two GTA-area residents about their recent experiences with the quality of care provided in hospital.

The Globe and Mail Sat May 23 2015

It's 4:30 on a Friday afternoon at her Sherbrooke, Que., clinic and Marie Hayes takes a deep breath before opening the door to her final patient of the day, who has arrived without an appointment. The 32-year-old mother immediately lists her complaints: She feels dizzy. She has abdominal pain. "It is always physical and always catastrophic," Dr. Hayes will later tell me. In the exam room, she runs through the standard checkup, pressing on the patient's abdomen, recording her symptoms, just as she has done almost every week for months. "There's something wrong with me," the patient says, with a look of panic. Dr. Hayes tries to reassure her, to no avail. In any case, the doctor has already reached her diagnosis: severe anxiety. Dr. Hayes prescribed medication during a previous visit, but the woman stopped taking it after two days because it made her nauseated and dizzy. She needs structured psychotherapy - a licensed therapist trained to bring her anxiety under control. But the wait list for public care is about a year, says Dr. Hayes, and the patient can't afford the cost of private sessions.

Meanwhile, the woman is paying a steep personal price: At home, she says, she spends most days in bed. She is managing to care for her two young children - for now - but her husband also suffers from anxiety, and the situation is far from ideal. Dr. Hayes does her best, spending a full hour trying to calm her down, and the woman is less agitated when she leaves. But the doctor knows she will be back next week. And that their meeting will go much the same as it did today. In its broad strokes, this is a scene that repeats itself in thousands of doctors' offices every day, right across the country. It is part and parcel of a system that denies patients the best scientific-based care, and comes with a massive price tag, to the economy, families and the health care system. Canadian physicians bill provincial governments $1-billion a year for "counselling and psychotherapy" - one third of which goes to family doctors - a service many of them acknowledge they are not best suited to provide, and that doesn't come close to covering patient need. Meanwhile, psychologists and social workers are largely left out of the publicly funded health-care system, their expertise available only to Canadians with the resources to pay for them.