This is AIMS’ most recent report on the state of Canada’s health care system. The study demonstrates that politicians and senior health officials simply don’t know where or why medicare is failing because they still lack the proper tools to evaluate the quality or timeliness of the care Canadians receive. More to the point, the authors demonstrate why, under the current system, it is not in the government’s interests to know what is really happening in health care.
This conflict of interest serves to perpetuate a system that functions as an unregulated monopoly, with no defined performance standards for the quality and timeliness of the services it provides. The result is declining standards of care, closures of hospital beds, lengthening waiting times, labour disputes, and shortages of skilled labour.