If you mention private or privitization combined with healthcare anywhere in Canada and you will be attacked by the spirits of socialized medicine of the past.
Don’t mention private care or you will be shut out. Cancel culture at work.
But what if we invent a new and much kinder and acceptable word for private care.
The new word seems to be liberalization.
Some formal defintions of liberalization:
The loosening of government controls.
Reducing the monopoly of public sector.
The process or means of the elimination of control of the state over economic activities.
That is actually a very good word to describe what is needed to solve the wicked problem that exists in healthcare in Canada.
We , of course, will want to preserve universal healthcare. Everyone has and will continue to have universal healthcare. No one goes bankrupt to healthcare costs.
But we might allow private schemes to co-exist. Collectives, cooperatives, not for profit private health insurance, for profit private health insurance and the like.
So I look forward to seeing where the innovators and nextgen healthcare leaders are and if they are motivated to exercise their creativity and resilience in tackling the liberalization opportunity, if is real.