Delta South voters who believe any private involvement in the public healthcare system is heretical may want to think twice before voting for independent candidate Vicki Huntington. Asked on Public Eye Radio yesterday whether she thought private healthcare should have any place in that system, Ms. Huntington responded, "Well, what I find difficult within the public healthcare system is the inefficiencies that seem to be built into it. If private healthcare that is publicly funded in terms of your ability to obtain the same services that are covered with the normal medicare process can help increase the efficiency and the access to healthcare, I'm not so sure it's such a terribly bad thing - as long as the medical system continues to provide the same level of care that the private system can help them cope with."
"What I feel is wrong with our public healthcare system at the moment is a lack of efficiency in using the infrastructure. It's the same problem I have with our transportation infrastructures that are being proposed by the government. They're spending $1 billion to build a new hospital in Surrey when you have existing hospitals that are used five days a week, basically eight hours a day."
"If you even increased the use of those hospitals to six days a week, 18 hours a day you would increase the efficiency of our physical plant in this province to the point where you could service the waiting lists," she continued. "You have $1 billion physical plants throughout this province that are basically silent - in operating rooms and its technology divisions and its lab systems - 18 hours a day. Well what level of efficiency is that?"
I can't see how the public system can provide the same level of care if a private system sucks our professionals out.
Billions spent on new P3 hospitals is an ideologically driven, wasteful spending priority that requires actively neglecting the obvious: funding our existing capacity.