A senior economist from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives says the BC Green Party and the NDP are aligned on some aspects of healthcare while the BC Conservatives are taking a different, and contradictory approach.
CCPA Senior Economist Marc Lee says the BC Conservatives plan for increased privatized healthcare isn’t a solution.
“The Conservatives plan to introduce more private healthcare options, and that will magically produce new healthcare professionals from Mars, maybe it’s not clear. They don’t really have a plan on the professional side, and that’s the crux of the issue, particularly with their more privatized healthcare plans, ultimately, there’s a limit on the number of healthcare professionals,” he says.
Lee says on the other hand the NDP has made it a “major priority” to expand the number of spaces in BC colleges and universities which could cover gaps in recruiting doctors to work in BC.
Another wrinkle that Lee sees in the BC Conservative’s healthcare plans is their push for “activity-based funding” for hospitals, which would tie how much funds a hospital gets to how many procedures are performed at the hospital. He says that this will “create more administrative bureaucracy.”
Lee says that activity-based funding was already tried in BC during the 2010s and ran for around 8 years before being scrapped.
The Greens and the NDP aren’t so far apart, says Lee, pointing to their shared opposition to privatization and focus on “team-based care”.
He adds that the Greens have good policies regarding community health centres, and the CCPA is aligned with their plans to open one in every riding in BC.
Lee says that the BC Conservative’s plan for healthcare opens good discussions but overall is “smoke and mirrors and ultimately just shuffles, who gets access first in favour of people who have more money.”
– with files from Eric Richards, My Cowichan Valley Now staff
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