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Exercise
or surgery?
This article was published in The West End
Times August 6, 2011.
Do we spend too much time
worrying that our health care
system will become like the American system? Are we under the illusion
that we
have a system that is better? Do we think that we can ride the tide and
things
will improve by magic? For how long will we blame the rising health
care costs
on the “Ageing Population”? Let’s wake up and place
the BLAME where it
belongs…..on poor health! Take a look at the dollars spent per
capital on
health care in Canada
($4079.00) and the USA
($7538.00). The much dreaded USA
system spends significantly more per capita than we do in Canada.
Although Canada’s health care
system is
typically seen as publicly funded, private sector expenditure
constitutes a
sizable share of total health care spending. In 2009 for example, the
private
sector picked up
some 29.8% of the total
health care charge; a share that has stood unchanged for most of the
past
decade. Canada’s reliance on private
sector funding is high compared with
other developed countries. In 2008, the share of Canada’s
private sector in total
health care spending was 7th highest among 26 countries. In the G7
countries, Canada
is second only to the U.S. when it
comes to participation of the private sector in health care spending. The burden of private
health care spending is somewhat evenly shared by households and
private
insurers with households’ out-of-pocket payments contributing
14.8% and private
insurance programs picking up another 12.8% of the total health care
bill in Canada.
It is only because
we
think that Canadian Health Care is free that we continue to accept
“same OLD,
same OLD” and believe that our way is better. I am not, for a
minute advocating
a system that leaves so many uninsured and helpless. I am only talking
about the
overall cost of Health Care and would like to dispel the myth that we
have no
private health care.
Forced
by soaring health care cost increases, many American companies are
beginning to
invest more in “Wellness.” Should we wait
for the total collapse of
our system to start to look at wellness and prevention?
Just look at the
cost related to surgeries like hips and
knees. If we invested in fitness programs for weight loss, we would
need less
surgery for knees and hips based on the relationship between weight,
hip and
knee replacements cited by CIHI.
When it comes to exercise, we
can find all kinds of
excuses….the kids need us, or the nearest gym is too far, we
just have no
energy, we are too busy at work… As the American health care
premiums continue
to rise, more and more companies are offering programs to target
wellness in
the workplace, with the reasoning that healthier, happier employees are
more productive,
take fewer sick days and cost less to insure. Nearly three-quarters of
companies that provided health benefits last year also offered some
sort of
wellness program, up from 57 percent in 2009, according to an annual
report by
the Kaiser Family Foundation. Programs include on-site fitness centers,
weight-loss and smoking cessation initiatives and personal fitness
trainers.
AT&T, which has several
fitness centers across the
country, recently launched an online forum where employees can seek
advice from
nurses and build personalized fitness plans.
But exactly how much do
wellness programs really help a
company’s bottom line? Quite
a bit, as it turns out. For every dollar a business spends on wellness
programs, it saves $3.27 in medical costs and $2.73 in absenteeism
costs,
according to a recent study by three Harvard University
researchers. The
day we realize that this might work here in Canada,
we might be forced to
follow the American way. This would not only decrease health care costs
but, lo
and behold, we might even have the bonus of healthier Canadians, and
there will
be no excuses.
Thoughts,
comments, suggestions are always
welcome.
Contact me at donna@ashcanada.com
Health Access, Home and Nursing care
514-695-3131
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