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It costs Quebec tax payers $1 billion a week to maintain and is the subject of a much-heralded reform by the Legault government, yet only five per cent of Quebecers say health care in this province has improved since the Coalition Avenir Québec’s first full year in power in 2019, a new poll suggests.
The online survey by Léger was conducted Sept. 27-29 with 1,002 Quebec adults and published Tuesday in the Journal de Montréal. It found that 56 per cent of respondents felt the health care system had worsened over the past five years, compared with 32 per cent who found it unchanged and just five per cent who said they had noticed an improvement.
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The survey suggests that while 25 per cent of respondents sought health care paid for by private medical insurance prior to 2019, that proportion has since grown to 42 per cent. Asked to assess the quality of care received in the public sector, 39 per cent said private sector health care was superior, compared with eight per cent who believe the opposite.
Decided respondents were evenly split on whether Quebec should expand private clinics, 38 per cent saying the province should do so while 37 per cent opposed the idea. Twenty-five per cent did not answer.
Younger respondents were more likely to have paid for medical care than their older counterparts, with one out of two respondents under 34 saying they had paid for health care over the past five years, compared with 36 per cent of those 55 and over.
Respondents with children were more likely to pay for health care through the private sector (56 per cent), compared with those without children (37 per cent).
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