Distrust in the Healthcare System Creates Interest in Privatizing

The Quebec government is striking a deal with family doctors to provide more and easier access to patients, which will allow for thousands of Montrealers on a waiting list to receive a family doctor, to be paired with one.

Many Montrealers have been going to the emergency room to receive simple things like requisitions, as they cannot get a timely appointment with their family doctor. But could this new deal change this? This agreement will allow other healthcare workers like nurses or pharmacists to provide requisitions. 

Guillaume Herbert, researcher for IRIS, says he doubts this will reduce wait times in the emergency rooms, but that the government needs to focus on access to services in a timely manner.

Herbert says cuts to the HCS have led to distrust in the system, and as a result, he says this has generated interest in privatizing the healthcare system.

Herbert said we had austerity under Philippe Couillard, former Premier of Quebec ( 2014-2018). As a result, this made a lot of damage to the healthcare system, says Herbert. 

He says we never fully recovered from these waves of austerity. Herbert says that due to cuts to the healthcare system over years and decades, the public is frightened and always crushed by cuts. He said we end up having a population that ends up not trusting the system and thinks the public healthcare system is bad.

Privatization isn’t the only threat to Quebec’s HCS, as controversial Bill 96 is in the final stages of becoming a law. The Bill will mandate French in both public and private life. As a result, doctors have the ability to refuse to speak with patients in English, and only French.

While this poses a threat to the future of our healthcare system, the last two years have shown just how fragile and ill-equipped this system is.

Herbert says during pandemic, we were confronted with impact of the government mistreating the healthcare system, citing the high death rates in long term care facilities. He said many people died.