Ep. 80 Primary Healthcare as a Legal Right for New Brunswickers [Part 2]

if you're a resident of Canada you are familiar with when you need to see a doctor or you get hurt you take your provincial Health Care card uh in New Brunswick that's Medicare uh and you head to the doctor or the hospital or wherever you need to go and you present that card and you do not need to pay out of pocket for the services that you receive now this is guaranteed under the Canada Health act the Canada Health Act is a legislation Federal legislation that essentially guarantees that residents of Canada receive reasonable access to health care services and do not need to pay out of pocket for those it is understood that the taxpayer money tax dollars go towards uh providing for health care now we don't have a nationalized health care System it is administered by the provinces 10 provinces three territories oversee the Health Care system in each of those jurisdictions and so when you do any Google searching on on Health Care Systems uh just in the world whether they're PRI public or private you are going to see a lot of talk about Universal Health Care which essentially just means that that tax money is used to fund the health care services that are received and so the Canada Health Act is an example of that where transfer payments from the Federal Government Federal taxes that are collected are given to each of the provinces to administer their Health Care Systems we have two Health authorities in New Brunswick called Horizon and vital we've talked about that weeks ago I believe in July previous Parts what we are saying here and what we are seeing now is that uh the Canada Health act does not seem to be enough because 180,000 new bronckers do not have a family doctor 7 million Canadians do not have access to Primary Care Now Primary Care is defined as point of contact uh doctor to Patient or nurse practitioner to Patient a healthc care practitioner is in direct contact with a patient giving them the medical services that they require this is why and I'm going to draw heavily on uh Jane philpot's work she came out with a book recently called health care for all I do have the penguin publisher Link in the description here and she's arguing that the Canada Health Act was was a lofty goal it is definitely something that we are proud of on an Ideal level and yes I can go down to the hospital or the doctor present my New Brunswick Medicare card and not have to pay out of pocket for x-rays or Specialists or any of that uh care uh and so that is something that we are grateful for as Canadians but all of a sudden when we cannot get the basic care when the primary care we need is not accessible to 20% % of us everybody seems to know somebody who does not have a family doctor or went to the hospital I was knocking on doors this morning in Sage Steven and talked to a resident who went to the hospital with a serious ailment uh because he doesn't have a family doctor and waited four hours in the emergency and just decided that was too long and left and and did not get access that front door access to Primary Care Now covid exposed posed a lot of the problems in the system Jane Philpot Jane Philpot by the way was the minister of health and she is currently the dean of Queens health services at Queens University uh a very long resume in healthc care she's a doctor Etc she uh notes how new medical students coming into the system to be trained are deciding not to go into family practice or or General Medical Practice they are uh in a the majority of them are choosing specialization uh to become specialists in a medical field and so like so many things we are seeing a lack of doctors in the system contributing to this inadequate uh primary care and she says that is because of the demands placed on doctors they are just not wanting to go into family practice and receive payment based on a perp patient model and then of course having to do charts all night long and on weekends etc etc uh a friend of mine when I was in university uh her uh both her parents were doctors and and I saw what that was like always doing charts while watching television in the evening in the on the weekends and so a lot of new medical students are deciding to go into specialization instead of that so what we need to see uh and what she's advocating for are centers where people have a medical home and the medical home essentially means it's what we've been talking about as greens for years a community health center uh where your chart resides your medical records reside and you can go to that facility and be seen by a primary care practitioner whether that is a doctor doctors who are on rotation whether that is a nurse practitioner based on your needs and so that is uh what she is advocating for because the shortage of doctors is contributing to this and and she thinks we need to go one step further an Green's have been talking about this for a while Health Care Primary Care not just access reasonable Access to Health Services but Primary Care can be a right and you see Norway has done this uh this is another example of the plans are out there the models are out there we just need to implement them new brunswickers can stand up and say we are not going to settle for 20% of us not having access to what our taxes pay for whether you're rural or whether you're Urban uh in St Croy there are you know 20 plus percent of us who do not have access to primary care and if New Brunswick were to enshrine this as a right and Norway did this uh we would see because it would be mandated and guaranteed that everyone has access to primary care so Jane Philpot is advocating for this on a federal level but she wants to see this on provincial levels as well because again Health Care is provincially administered it is we don't have a a national federal health care System it is it is provincial jurisdiction I mentioned yesterday how the finger pointing happens and so if we had a New Brunswick Primary Care Act and Jane philon wants to work on a Canada Primary Care Act it would guarantee that every resident of New Brunswick has access to Primary Care and again our taxes are paying for that transfer payments are coming in and we would see a very quick radical pivot to making sure that when it is a right that those services are delivered again this happened in Norway and now 99% of residents of Norway have access to Primary Care that is the kind of thing we want to see greens have worked hard and successfully gotten the primary care uh that they need the community health centers Etc in their writings uh that is what I want to do for St Croy that is a baseline but what we want to make sure of is that you know even when you get these centers up they fill up very quickly and then we have to get another one or we're waiting for more staff we basically need a complete pivot a change in the system and I'm going to wrap up here because of time tomorrow I want to talk a bit more about what greens have said about this and relating to health uh making a clean environment a right as well that is that greens are always fighting for your rights as a resident so that your life is better getting the services we