What quality of care will your parents be entitled to? In 20 or 30 years, what will your journey in the healthcare network look like if you fall ill? As the Legault government prepares to present its plan to reform the health care system, these are major questions that need to be addressed. The state of the health network will indeed have a significant impact on our lives, especially with the aging of the population and the intensifying climate crisis.
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Here are five reasons why the state of the health care system concerns us all.
1 – Because our parents could get hurt
It is no longer a secret for anyone: the population of Quebec is aging. And our health system is not ready to welcome all these elderly people, warns Anne Plourde, researcher at the Institute for Research and Scientific Information (IRIS).
“Old age will act as a shock on hospitals, private residences for the elderly, CHSLDs, and shocks are poorly managed. During the pandemic, we even saw scenarios where we were not able to feed, wash, change diapers or properly hydrate these seniors, ”she warns.
According to the Statistical Institute of Quebec, the number of people aged 65 and over will increase from approximately 1.7 million to 2.5 million in 2041. The proportion of citizens aged over 85 will double during the same period, reaching 555,429 people.
The weight of this aging will be particularly heavy to bear.
We need only think of Alzheimer’s and other diseases that cause a significant loss of autonomy. The National Institute of Public Health of Quebec (INSPQ) predicts that “almost one in five baby boomers” will suffer from such a disease in their lifetime.
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The number of people aged 65 and over suffering from these diseases is already on the rise. They were 120,000 in 2015 and they will be more than 200,000 in 2030, according to the INSPQ projection.
2 – Because we risk having to pay for treatment
When something goes wrong in the public, “it gives ammunition” to the private sector, which is becoming more and more attractive to those who have the means to afford it, notes Anne Plourde.
And as the role of the private sector has continued to grow since the 1980s, we risk finding ourselves in a two-speed system, she warns. This would mean that you will pay more, for less. This week, Prime Minister François Legault also warned that 20% of the solutions that his government will propose to reform the health network “go through the private sector”.
“We will continue to pay taxes, but in addition, we will have to pay directly out of our own pocket to have access to certain private care,” warns the researcher.
“People in the means could resort to the private sector and those who will suffer are the least well-off, the most vulnerable, since the solutions would no longer only go through the public.”
3 – Because the climate crisis is a public health crisis
Heat waves, air pollution, extreme weather events: climate change is now the main threat to human health, warns the World Health Organization (WHO). Already, one in four deaths in the world is linked to the environment.
In Quebec, the INSPQ estimates that more than 20,000 people will die from extreme heat by 2050. Heart and lung diseases linked to air pollution will also increase, not to mention the urgent needs that could emerge. disasters such as floods, tornadoes or hurricanes.
Photo Martin Alarie
“It will put enormous pressure on our health system, since it is not at all equipped to deal with this kind of crisis. It’s fascinating: everyone agrees on this, but we are absolutely not doing what is necessary to prepare for it, ”denounces Anne Plourde.
4 – Because there will be other pandemics
It is absolutely necessary to learn from the mistakes made during the current crisis and to better prepare the health system for the future, because one thing is clear: this pandemic will not be the last.
“There is a phenomenal number of viruses in the world and we are far from knowing them all, so there is no doubt that there will be other pandemics. The question is knowing when”, maintains virologist Benoît Barbeau.
Joel Lemay / QMI Agency
It is because the current context means that a growing number of these viruses are able to cross the species barrier, he continues.
“Deforestation means that we are increasingly in contact with animals that can transmit viruses to us, such as bats. Then, global warming causes viruses transmitted by insects to become more capable of infecting populations,” he explains.
5- Because it will cost you more and more
For all these reasons, the healthcare system should cost you much more than it does now. And it’s already started. Health costs have been rising steadily for 17 years, according to data from the Department of Finance. They have gone from $22 billion in 2004 to just over $45 billion in 2020, which is equivalent to 43% of Quebec’s budget totaling $107 billion.
It is also an average of $5,232 per Quebecer per year.
As it is very unlikely that the population will accept seeing the system deteriorate, Maude Laberge, professor of health economics at Laval University, believes that governments will continue to inject more and more money into health.
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“It will cost more, because the demand for health will increase. Not only because the population is aging, but also because we will one day treat diseases that we are not currently able to treat. In general, new technologies and new drugs that allow us to do this are very expensive.”
According to its latest projections on government health spending published in 2013, the Center interuniversitaire de recherche en analyze des organizations (CIRANO) estimates that this amount will increase to $61.1 billion in 2030. As the Institute of Statistics of Quebec projects a population of 9 million people in Quebec at this time, expenditures will be $6777 per person annually on average.
Reference-www.24heures.ca