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Toula Drimonis: How exactly would cutting services save Quebec health care?
Posted on 02/12/2024
Posted on 02/12/2024
When Geneviève Biron was introduced as the head of Santé Québec, she promised “an innovative approach.” Cutting services we barely have access to would be anything but innovative.
The Gazette’s Aaron Derfel has a knack for breaking important stories. His scoops involving Quebec’s beleaguered health network always manage to contribute to my stress level, which, ironically, is problematic for me since I’m among the one in four Quebecers without a family doctor.
Derfel reported last week that Santé Québec, the new agency created to overhaul and improve the province’s health-care system, is contemplating, as a last resort, “a selective reduction of services” as part of a plan to slash $1.5 billion in spending within the health network. My immediate thought was: What does “selective” mean, exactly?
Actually, no. If I’m being totally honest, my first thought was: Are Quebec taxpayers paying Santé Québec head Geneviève Biron an annual salary of $652,050 for the first two years of her mandate just so she can turn around and instruct health facilities to cut $1.5 billion in spending? Because if slashing is the miraculous solution, I could have done that for free and saved us all more than half a million dollars in salary expenses.
Snarky comments aside, the health-care situation in Quebec is worrisome, so indulge me if I’m prone to a little existential screaming.
Telling Quebecers more cuts are coming is not reassuring.
How exactly does one rectify the lack of services by … cutting more services? Call me crazy, but as a lowly patient occasionally forced to navigate this under-pressure, messed-up system of ours, I’ve developed a wild, perhaps a little out-of-the-box theory: The lack of services can only be rectified with … more services.
When Biron was introduced as the agency’s head, she announced that her main focus would be making our health-care system “more human and more efficient.” Instead, the opposite appears to be happening, even before Santé Québec assumes control of the network on Dec. 1.
Biron promised she would have “an innovative approach and a vision,” and yet her decision right out of the gate is to consider cutting services we barely have access to? That’s neither innovative nor visionary. If anything, I’m getting intense flashbacks to former Quebec Liberal health minister Gaétan Barrette’s austerity measures, which were pretty much the party’s undoing in the 2018 election. His merciless budget cuts were largely responsible for voters turning to the Coalition Avenir Québec, the party that promised all Quebecers would have a family doctor once it was in power.
We all know how that turned out.
In another recent feel-good story, Derfel told us how Quebec doctors are abandoning the public system in record numbers. Every doctor that leaves the public system translates to longer waits for those of us unable or unwilling to pay for the privilege of seeing a doctor in private practice. It’s also bad news for those who believe in equitable access to medical care.
Virtual appointments with family doctors in Quebec are at risk, too. Since the pandemic, telemedicine has been covered by RAMQ and is vital to many Quebecers, especially those in rural areas.
There’s no way that drastically reducing spending in our health-care system won’t affect Quebecers’ access to doctors and quality of care, and won’t result in longer wait times for surgery. But with Quebec facing a record deficit of $11 billion this year, the CAQ government is looking to slash. What’s left to cut? I’m not sure.
In the meantime, readers tell me they’re on year-long waiting lists for surgery, it takes them hours on hold listening to Muzak to book an appointment, and they’re instructed to address only one health problem per appointment.
The irony in all this is that conservative governments pride themselves on being fiscally sound. Not only are we facing major deficits, but by reducing access to services even more in a bid to save money, the CAQ government is choosing to ignore the well-documented long-term financial returns of investing in better health care.
Toula Drimonis is a Montreal journalist and the author of We, the Others: Allophones, Immigrants, and Belonging in Canada.
