Doctor shortage ‘myth’ and taxing boomers: UBC study’s provocative findings

A provocative new report is questioning the widely accepted premise that long wait times for care are due to a shortage of doctors.

British Columbia has more doctors than ever, so why are there such long waits for medical attention in primary and acute care settings? That’s the question a UBC professor set out to answer, putting him on a road that has him making provocative and uncomfortable recommendations to government.

But the idea of incentivizing doctors to work more while drawing more taxes from wealthy seniors who benefited from short-sighted governments of yesteryear is likely to be an unpopular and difficult discussion, if people are willing to have it at all.

“It’s a story of poor planning,” said Paul Kershaw. “It’s a story of, ‘It’s just convenient to kick this problem down the road.’ The problem is we’re now down the road and it is a massive problem.”

As the co-founder of Generation Squeeze, the population and public health professor has spent years advocating for those who amassed wealth and resources during economic boom times to consider the challenging circumstances of those younger than them, particularly when it comes to the cost of living and government supports.

“(Baby) boomers didn’t fully prepay for what they want to use,” Kershaw said. “As a result, right now, the cost of that care is being left for their kids and grandchildren in the form of larger deficits, but also much less urgent spending on their education, their post-secondary, their child care, their housing.”

His report points out that while seniors made up 10 per cent of the population in the 1970s, it’s now 20 per cent. Add that to the fact that people are living longer, and it’s easy to see why he’s concerned about how to pay for the beleaguered medical system.

Kershaw’s suggestion that doctors be incentivized to take on more shifts, however, is also proving contentious.

“I wouldn’t recommend trying to push physicians to work more because they’re already working 120 per cent,” said Dr. Charlene Lui, president of the Doctors of BC.

Early in her career, she was one of the physicians working 80 hours per week with a 40-hour workweek considered “part time.” When CTV News pointed out that many of her peers had spouses supporting them in the household, Lui agreed, and added that we now know how unsustainable those hours are – and that the practice of medicine has changed in such a way that comparing physicians to population isn’t an easy task.

“While the complexity of the medical issues has increased, the complexity of the diagnosis and the imaging and the lab work that we can do now is much more complex as well,” she said.

In the last several years, multiple doctors have told CTV News that the large sums of money being thrown at them to pick up more shifts in emergency departments, for example, isn’t doing much to motivate them when they know they’ll be working short-staffed without enough nurses or support staff to provide quality care.