Healthcare collapse predicted in Canada
by Ian Mulgrew
Published: March 25, 2019
Stephen Skyvington is on a mission to have an adult conversation about the dire state of health care in Canada and the need for revolutionary change.
Hired as manager of government relations by the Ontario Medical Association in 1995, Skyvington opened his own PR company PoliTrain Inc. in 2001 — he’s a lobbyist, consultant, pundit, veteran of the health care wars.
“Unfortunately, my detractors would have you believe I have a hidden agenda, that my goal is to foist on Canada a U.S.-style, two-tier health care system,” he quipped.
“The irony, however, is that if we continue to keep our heads buried in the sand like we have for the past 50 years, trying to prop up a system that simply isn’t sustainable, then we’ll indeed end up with exactly what our neighbours to the south have: a health care system that’s a bloody mess.”
In his new book, This May Hurt A Bit: Reinventing Canada’s Health Care System, Skyvington concludes it is time to properly fund Medicare or “free it,” citing the long-running Cambie constitutional trial as a potential watershed moment that might prompt the long-needed transformation.
Or not.
With the face of the challenge, Dr. Brian Day, founder of the private Cambie Surgery Centre and a former president of the Canadian Medical Association, supplying a cheerleading foreword, Skyvington offers a 200-odd-page indictment of the current health care system.
He has nothing but scorn for the present crop of politicians — too mealy-mouthed to tell the truth and too spineless to act.
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