Emad Barsoum writes: Healthcare and the Nation’s future
The three prime factors determining a nation’s progress, stability, and prosperity are Food Abundance, Quality of Education, and Healthcare. Lacking any of those elements would halt the country from maintaining its position as one of the best places in the world to live in, which consequently would lead to a slowdown in immigration, thus negatively affecting the economic system, if not destroying it.
Since the Covid 19 pandemic, we have observed a massive decline in the Healthcare system, longer waiting times in Emergency rooms, delays in surgical operations and all medical diagnostic procedures, resulting in more suffering to patients and higher risks of complications, and even more burden on the Healthcare system itself.
There is a vast number of experts who are providing theories and ideas about the deterioration of the Healthcare system and the way out; however, from ordinary citizens’ prospect, who are only striving for secure and trusted Healthcare, the last thing that they want to encounter is simply the idea of Privatizing the Healthcare system!
This idea acts like pouring acid into people’s wounds amid inflation, exceptionally high-interest rates, and significant rises in the cost of living and energy. While everyone struggles to make ends meet, how would people survive when an additional Healthcare bill is added to their burden? The objective is not to work hard to live hard but to enjoy a true quality of life which is the slightest hope a strong, stable, and modern economic system should provide.
The Healthcare system was one day the pride of Canada among nations and an example of social justice, equality, and security for the people when they grow in age and need more care with fewer resources. It is the exemplary model of how a civilized, progressive nation fulfills its duties and its part in the social contract and deserves the trust that the citizens have granted to their elected officials; now, privatizing Healthcare would be the last bullet that will terminate any aspiration for a better life.
The primal fear is the thought that such an attempt to privatize the Healthcare system is only serving a minor sector of the population, the investors, who want to augment their wealth through the pain and suffering of the ordinary people; in the meantime, we keep hoping that the government whether provincial or federal is an accomplice with those investors, who clearly present the highest donors to all parties and the lobbyers who influence the governments’ decisions.
Keep our country the haven for its people, the reason why citizens of many other countries have made it their chosen home forever, the place where they feel secure for their children and the insurance for a dignified life when they become senior citizens.
The solutions are there through various approaches known to the experts. Still, they appeal only to the majority, not the favored minority. The government must implement these solutions to enhance its Healthcare system rather than sell it to the highest bidder.
