Canada Health Act the Implementation

Canada Health Act

The Implementation of the Canada Health Act an Medicare System

Canada's healthcare system is in many ways a great example to other economically successfully, free market nations, the United States high among them. Its ambition to ensure that all Canadians have access to some form of healthcare, whether through publicly funded assistance or through self-pay or employer-pay insurance coverage, marks it as a leading exemplar for a nationalized healthcare system. And as the research conducted here below will demonstrate, this reflects a cultural and political will to ensure that equality and fairness are governing forces ensuring the rights of all Canadians to some form of healthcare access or, where needed, assistance. Therefore, the research conducted tends to suggest that there is a present system is in place which would be hospitable to the terms of a Canada Health Act that incorporates a Medicare System.

Beyond that, the impetus for the endorsement of such an Act comes from the argument that there are still quite a few regards in which the Canadian government has fallen short of its lofty ambitions. The difficulty of insuring healthcare for all Canadians is revealed by the practical challenges to the equality which is here sought, which speak to a set of populations that are particularly vulnerable to treatment or payment inaccessibility. Most particularly among them are the elderly and those living in Canada's many remote rural areas. Often, these two demographic qualities are incidental to one another. Additional issues relate to Canada's increasing ethnic diversity, which may be attributed to immigration patterns chiefly and which have direct correlation to socioeconomic conditions as well. The major initiatives of the Canada Health Act to be discussed here, therefore, would be outreach programs designed not just to bring Medicare coverage to these groups in need, but further, to make sure that such citizens are aware of the assistance and service available to them; have direct knowledge of facilities to which they have access; and have a positive community orientation toward facilities, healthcare workers and the healthcare system as a whole.

The Canadian government has taken it upon itself to guarantee healthcare to all, to deliver this in a matter that is both of high quality and of expedience. Still, as with most modern industrialized nations, Canada must battle certain social conditions which have created impoverished populations, disenfranchised regions, ethnic disparities and geographical disadvantages in the areas of economic robustness, resource availability, educational or professional opportunity. This means that the standards of quality, expediency and access that are intended for all Canadians are in some areas not met. Thus, the research here is designed to inform the framers of the Canada Health Act of the obstacles to realization of a refinement to its greater effectiveness, addressing the matters of diversity and population patterning that must be considered in moving forward.

Therefore, this discussion will focus on the modern demands placed upon leadership in Canada's healthcare capacities with respect both to the provision of effective leadership and the accommodation of diversity needs. The primary thesis of the composed research is that the Canada Health Act should be implemented through an improvement of community engagement, primarily by providing resources for a community-based hiring outreach initiative. This serves as the best way to helping the disenfranchised rural populations, isolated elderly demographics and disadvantaged communities realize the promise of universal healthcare proposed by Canadian society.

The socialized state of healthcare here dictates that the onus falls upon the Canadian government to ensure that all facilities and practitioners are abiding a shared standard of quality. Thus, one of the key challenges to the government's implementation of its nationalized system is the demand placed upon it to work to establish a streamlined standard for the monitoring of quality and the improvement of adherence to such a standard across a variety of healthcare settings. This ambition for equality is at the root of a Medicare System as here proposed. The recommendations which will be observed here will consider the primary factors in determining the best course of improvement in personal coverage, healthcare staffing, and facility access. These categories of consideration also refer to stakeholders which may be addressed as health system users in some context as well. Collectively, these stakeholders are beholden to the administrative imposition of the Canadian government and its two-tiered Healthcare System, which shapes policy, approach and financial allotment. Allowing Canadians to choose between a private provider of their selecting or coverage through the national system, Canada cites that "central to the objectives of Canadian national health insurance were the principles that health is a basic right that should be open to all and that all Canadians, regardless of their ability to pay, would be provided with publicly financed comprehensive hospital and medical services." (Badgley, 673) This is therefore the orientation which the Health Act must strengthen, especially with respect to both reaching out to, and accommodating, the diverse array of Canadians that fall in the publicly financed category. The senior citizen population, ordinarily of fixed income and often relegated to limited range of travel or communication, is especially intended to benefit from the improvement of the localization of the Medicare system.

One of the ways in which the government can seek to localize its healthcare program is through the partnering of territorial authorities and the federal government. Rather than forcing its users to, in effect, wait in a federal line for their healthcare benefits, the system can be designed with a bit more sensitivity than that. Particularly, according to the government's own website, "instead of having a single national plan, we have a national program that is composed of 13 interlocking provincial and territorial health insurance plans, all of which share certain common features and basic standards of coverage." (HCSC, 1) This is a structure which is intended to improve the flexibility of individual regions to respond to the unique needs which are stimulated by their demographics, geography, economy and political identity. This offers a useful point of consideration for this discussion, which centers on the implications of healthcare quality in each of these provinces. It is suggested that the system be strengthened where necessary to serve the needs of even more specific locales, making more sensitive its capacity to channel national funding to the precise needs of elderly or isolated province populations.

Inherent to this challenge is the population pattern in Canada, which is increasingly taking on a multicultural face, even as both healthcare providers and the communities where their focus is trained tend to be of a homogenized cultural identity. This is something which is due for change. Particularly, as contended in the proposal for this research, "as a result of increasing international mobility, there are a more diverse communities in Canada and an increased need for developing strategies for their inclusion into social and political structures." (Ozcurumez & Wylie, 1) This has developed into a population pattern which is occurring at a faster rate than are healthcare providers changing their outlook to accommodate these conditions. Improving this condition would be a primary goal of the Canada Health Act, which should legislate the proper funding of staffing diversification.

In most regards, it is true that the institution of a federalized Canadian system has begotten widespread success in improving the access of most Canadians to some form of healthcare. But with Canada's increasingly desirable stature as a destination for immigration, and with the costs of healthcare precipitously rising, "these changes have not been matched by any significant realignment of the health status of Canadians relative to their economic circumstances, nor as yet by the full removal of economic constraints affecting accessibility to health services." (Badgley, 1) This means that much is still needed in terms of public campaigning and outreach, as well as an embrace of the needs of those groups which are obscured by their relative poverty, ethnicity or cultural isolation. By and large, evidence on the subject suggests that many of Canada's ethnic enclaves are subject to inadvertent oversight, and thus, exclusion from the benefits of a national system. Particularly considering that these immigrant populations have the capacity to strengthen economically moribund regions to the benefit of the elderly demographics often inhabiting them, it is wise for the Canada Health Act to pursue improvement in the immigrant healthcare experience as well.

This also speaks to the larger impetus for proper funding of the Act, which carries with it significant implications to the improvement of Canada's economic fortunes as a whole. To this extent, "the overall goal of the Canadian Health Care system (known as Health Canada which oversees the Medicare system) is to make Canadians among the healthiest people in the world. They believe that promotion of health and prevention of illness and disease can keep costs down and improve the quality of life for all citizens." (Quan, 1) In a large regard, this is the underlying premise of nationalized healthcare as a concept and practice, justifying a greater public investment in the improvement of such crucial factors as the manner in which provincial facilities are staffs.

One of the recommended responses to the condition of diversification in some reasons is the facilitation of high healthcare worker morale and the embrace of workplace diversity. This resolution should be carried out not through conscious racialist hiring, but through a hiring outreach to those communities which are most overlooked. Such an approach can be the first step in stimulating a relationship to these communities which removes them from obscurity. An article published by the Canadian Women's Health Network (2001) refers to the "invisibility" of "immigrant, refugee and racialized minorities," noting that these groups are at a critical disadvantage due to a general lack of outreach between public agencies and these specialized populations. (CWHN, 1) Hiring within these communities will serve in a multitude of ways to bride a gap which both prevents healthcare organizations from recognizing the needs of such groups and which prevents such groups from being represented within the healthcare profession.

This is a perspective which is endorsed by research supporting the Canada Health Act, with our account which finding that there is a crucial need for the Canadian healthcare system to reach out to those which might serve in its labor population as a way to beginning a relationship with communities otherwise ignored. Accordingly, one article notes that "the improvement of services for ethnically diverse communities involves both institutional practices and decision-making processes that grant them representation." (Ozcurumez & Wylie, 1) The article makes as its primary argument the idea that a more ethnically and geographically diverse personnel will result in an improvement in the capacity of the organization to address and satisfy a diversifying patient population. This drives us to a discussion on the need for healthcare organizations to find ways to accommodate a more diverse personnel.

With respect to Canada's healthcare system, the relationship between it and its many publics is afflicted by the isolation of those groups which appear unable to take advantage of the national system. Therefore, the core interest of the Canada Health Act will be in removing obstacles to this awareness through the initial step of engaging the hiring outreach. This is based on a finding which suggests lack of awareness or information impacts the perspective on accessibility held by many in the population. To the point, Canadian Women's Healthcare Network reported in 2001 "recent studies sponsored by the Maritime Centre of Excellence for Women's Health (MCEWH) have exposed a critical knowledge gap in the Atlantic Region about accessibility of health care for disadvantaged subpopulations in general and women in particular." (CWHN, 1) This is a problem which is philosophically inconsistent with the mission of the Health Care system, which as we have noted proceeds from the view of healthcare as being an entitlement to all Canadians. One of the major consequences of its failure to achieve a shared standard of quality healthcare to all is the incapacity to transcend entrenched social patterns of living standard inequality. The social conditions in some parts of Canada have had the impact of imposing obstacles upon the effective delivery of its promises for the Heath Care system, and have placed considerable pressure upon the system itself to overcome such broader conditions.