What Happens When Health Care Becomes a .gov Bureaucracy?

It turns out that a lot of people don't want to work for a .gov bureaucracy. Canada Short Nearly 69,000 Health-Care Workers: Federal Report. There are probably also issues with pay, but that is just a guess on my part.

This is based on a report from the Canadian health care system itself.

Researchers concluded that Canada is short a total of 68,564 health-care professionals, which includes 22,823 doctors and 42,057 nurses. It also noted the country is in need of 1,866 occupational therapists, 2,543 physiotherapists, and 1,614 pharmacists.

There are couple follow-on effects. Shortage of workers leads to excessive overtime. Excessive overtime leads to burnout. Burnout leads to people leaving the profession, which brings us right back to that shortage of workers.

That memo said there was a shortfall of 29,655 registered nurses and 13,560 licensed practical nurses, and noted 40 percent of health-care workers said they felt “burned out” and 50 percent intended to leave the profession.

The other impact is death. More than 74,000 Canadians have died on health-care wait lists since 2018: report. These people aren't waiting for a pizza to be delivered. They are waiting to be treated for serious disease.

At least 15,474 Canadians died in 2023-24 alone before receiving various surgeries or diagnostic scans. The true number is likely double.

Why double? Because there is a lot of missing data. The data only represents health care organizations covering 62% of the population. So maybe not quite "double."

This doesn't include the effects Canada is seeing from Medical Assistance in Dying. It seems they've discovered that killing people is much cheaper than treating them in a lot of cases.

I'm not saying that the US does a better job. But this is the system usually (or often) held up as an example of what should be the US health care system.