Over the weekend I had a conversation with a neighbour about the state of healthcare here in Ontario. We both observed that comparing dental care to the wider public healthcare system was like night and day.
People in Ontario do not complain about the state of dental health care.
There are no “wait times” for any dental procedures, in fact when you arrive at most dental offices you’re treated very well.
There are no shortages of dentists and no problems with access.
Dental patients have the option of either paying cash, with credit card, or taking out a dental care insurance plan.
For those Ontarians living on welfare, there is a very comprehensive dental plan in place to care for them.
There are no concerns about any inferior quality of dental care, even though it’s privately delivered.
Even though they need about the same amount of education as general practitioner doctors, and must invest a great deal of their own money, dentists are able to make a decent living, and are not tempted to leave Canada and practice in another country.
In other words, the dental health care system in Ontario appears to be working pretty good when compared to the public healthcare system.
Well, not according to NDP leader Howard Hampton:
Ontario NDP calls for public dental plan
Howard, please, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.
Howard says “the current system is broken”, yet he doesn’t mention anything that’s not working with our dental system.
I especially like his argument that our system must be fixed because “Ontario has the lowest spending on dental care in Canada.” Huh? So Howard measures the quality of any program by the amount of money a government wastes on it? I think I’ll try that method with my boss at work… Project X is not doing very well, because we haven’t spent much money and it’s running under budget, however, project Y is a smashing success because it’s sucking up all of our company resources, is terribly inneficient, and requires a lot of administration.
Ya gotta love that socialist logic. Unless it’s paid for by the taxpayer and provided through a bloated government administration, it’s just not good enough.