Our healthcare system is gated and too many don’t have the key
Photography by Forest City Fights Back
Written by the London Community Foundation
While public health and safety have been a very clear priority due to the pandemic, cuts to provincial healthcare and a reluctance to expand our universal health care programs to include necessary services like psychotherapy and dental care shows us that our public priorities have been out of order for too long.
In 2016, only 70% of Londoners visited a dentist, 46% an eye care specialist, and alarmingly only 15% spoke to a mental health care professional. We could interpret these numbers as our community having the brightest pearly whites, the sharpest eyes, and immense strength of mind and spirit, but the likelier explanation is that for many, these resources are simply out of reach financially.
A healthy life is more than just a life free of affliction – the pain of poor health extends far beyond the limits of the body. Poor dental health can make finding a job difficult. A child with poor eyesight whose family cannot afford glasses will surely suffer in school because of it. Joint and muscle problems that could be addressed through physiotherapy prevent many from working a steady job. By not providing holistic, universal healthcare coverage, we are expressly excluding those without means from living truly healthy lives.
The pandemic has shone a light on how dependent health is on wealth, and by extension, race. When cross-referencing COVID-19 cases with both the neighbourhood diversity (race) and material deprivation (poverty) dimensions of the Ontario Marginalization Index, it was found that both the most deprived and most racially diverse neighbourhoods in London had far more COVID-19 cases than their less diverse and wealthier counterparts.
Marginalized populations cannot afford to work from home, self-isolate, take time off, or stockpile supplies. They are the Londoners who cannot afford to get sick.
While this may not speak directly to the issue of holistic universal health care, it most definitely speaks to the health-privilege afforded by wealth and the related struggles of visible minorities in our community. So much of our healthcare system is gated behind a paywall. This barrier has a profound affect on employability, perpetuating the cycle of poverty in our community and leaving those who can’t afford to be healthy behind, forgotten and ignored.
We cannot continue to let this happen. Canada’s current version of universal healthcare is good, but it could be great. It’s time we advocate for more upfront spending on preventative healthcare, a more holistic approach to what is offered through provincial health insurance, and more thoughtful and deliberate leadership during times both uncertain and stable.