We can discuss for a long time the relevance of keeping restaurants closed or of imposing the vaccination passport in supermarkets.
This is not the essential debate.
If the measures are more severe in Quebec, it is for one reason only: to protect a health system that is more fragile than elsewhere.
“Minoune”
In plain language, it is so that we do not have to tell a person bedridden in a hospital or awaiting serious surgery that his place must be given to someone who has not been vaccinated.
Normally, our system is already operating at maximum capacity.
It only takes a little to disturb him. When the crisis is massive, it cracks everywhere.
Basically, we are short of beds and understaffed.
France has 3.1 hospital beds for every bed in Quebec. They are not training additional personnel at full speed.
There are those who say: if we have to make reforms to regain our freedoms, what are we waiting for?
To repair a boat from top to bottom, you must first bring it back to dry dock.
But when the worst is over, what to do?
Invest other billions in the current system? We did it, we see the results, and half of Quebec’s budget is already spent on it.
Those who are proposing to sink more money into this plugless bathtub have a duty to tell us that they do not believe that Quebeckers are taxed enough or what other public services they would cut.
Changing structures? We did it and we see the results.
Dig into the big bag of clichés, of the “reinforce-the-first-line-to-unclog-the-hospitals” style? We’ve been doing that for ages and we see the results.
When a horse is in agony, whipping it further is not a solution.
“A crisis should never be wasted”, said Churchill, but see in it an opportunity to be seized.
Essentially, our system is a state monopoly.
Its foundations have not changed since 1970. Successive reforms have been made without questioning them.
A wall was removed, the rooms were remodeled, repainted, but the frame and foundations of the house remained the same.
The problems with a state monopoly are that the lack of competition does not force it to improve, that the citizen has no choice, and that there are limits to what can be require the 65% of taxpayers who pay taxes when 100% of people eventually get sick.
As for the 35% of people who do not pay tax, it is because their income is too low. We can’t ask for more.
Europe
For a long time, in the name of “no-two-speed-medicine”, slow speed has been imposed on everyone.
The private sector plays a much bigger role in France, in Germany, in Scandinavia, elsewhere in Europe, and it has nothing to do with the United States.
All are properly cared for.
We are there.