About half of Quebec’s budget is devoted to health. However, despite this significant investment, the system is struggling to accommodate the approximately 1,400 additional patients who need care due to COVID-19. How is it possible? For André-Pierre Contandriopoulos, professor emeritus at the School of Public Health of the University of Montreal, this is due to decisions taken in the past.
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The professor points out from the outset that it is normal that a large part of a state’s budget is devoted to health care, since it is part of the government’s main mission. But such a large investment does not necessarily mean that the system meets expectations: Obviously, he has a hard time answering them. He is not agile enough to adapt to new situations. And one can wonder if it is not because of a whole series of restrictions which, since the Eighties, occurred in the system, and which make that today, it does not have practically any more margin. maneuver.
André-Pierre Contandriopoulos believes that the performance efforts that have been emphasized in recent years may have undermined the ability of the health system to respond to the unexpected.
The pandemic worsens the already existing limits of a health system which has suffered numerous cuts in recent years.
He recalls that emergencies were already overflowing and that the deadlines for operations were already long even before the arrival of the pandemic.
And to those who advocate greater integration of the private sector into the health system, André-Pierre Contadriopoulos affirms that this is a speech ridicule
. He says that one need only look at the United States to see that a mixed system costs more per capita than that of Quebec, without being able to meet the needs of the entire population.
André-Pierre Contandriopoulos believes that the solutions to make the health system more flexible have been known since the failure of the Barrette reform: more decentralized management and budgets better distributed among the different groups of professionals.
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