Supreme Court Showdown for Private Clinics
How two BC lawsuits could change health care in Canada.
Dr. Brian Day, who co-owns two for-profit clinics in Vancouver that are involved in complex litigation this fall. Photo by Tom Sandborn.
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Copeman Clinic: The Tipping Point?
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Private Clinics: No Quick Fix
Two-tier systems haven't reduced wait times.
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Dr. Day's Doublespeak
How Canada's top MD views medicare.
A pair of legal cases coming soon to the B.C. Supreme Court may greatly change the way health care is delivered in the province and across Canada.
Disgruntled former patients who say the province's for-profit clinics are regularly breaking the law on extra billing went to court last December demanding the government properly enforce the Medicare Protection Act and end the alleged extra billing by private sector clinics.
Meanwhile, in January, a group of these same clinics launched a court action against some of the government players targeted in the patients' litigation. This second action, brought by, among others, Vancouver's Cambie Surgeries Corporation and the for-profit clinic umbrella group the Canadian Independent Medical Clinics Association, is arguing that the law that underlies the delivery of health services in B.C. is unconstitutional.
They are calling on the Supreme Court of B.C. to rule that provisions of the Medicare Protection Act of 1996, which they claim "directly or indirectly prohibit or impede access to private health care and patient choice in primary health care," are in violation of sections 7 and 15 of the Charter of Rights.
The clinics also call on the courts to stop the B.C. Government from auditing the books of Vancouver's Cambie Surgeries Corporation and the Specialist Referral Clinic. (The Specialist Referral Clinic has been added as a Defendant by Counterclaim to the case as it has evolved this year). The audit is intended to determine whether those companies, both partly owned by privatization advocate Dr. Brian Day, have been involved, as alleged, in illegal extra billing.
Court documents say that Day's two clinics so far have actively refused access to government auditors.
Sources close to the case have told The Tyee that the two legal actions, which have become more complex as more interested parties apply to be added as respondents and interveners and additional affidavit material is submitted, may be joined and tried together this fall or winter.
Either way, the implications for the delivery of health care in B.C. Are immense.
Private clinics argue Canadians' rights are violated
If the suit initiated by patients against the government and the clinics is successful, it will represent a setback for those in the business and medical world such as Day, who is past president of the Canadian Medical Association. Day is the stock-owning medical director for Cambie Sugery Centre and the Specialist Referral Clinic in Vancouver.
The for-profit clinics argue in their action that the Canadian health care system is grievously flawed because of its reliance on government funding and primarily public delivery. Privatization proponents like Day would like to see a ruling that the current status quo in health care operates to deny Canadians their Charter right to timely health care under section 7 (the right to life, liberty and security of the person) and section 15 (equal protection of the law without discrimination).
They are calling on the courts to open the doors to more extensive use of private payment and for-profit clinics as a way to end wait lists and make health care delivery more efficient. In doing so, they rely on the landmark Chaoulli case in Quebec in 2005, which ruled in a 4-3 decision that a ban in that province on private health insurance violated the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms. Only a minority of the justices in the Chaoulli case agreed that the ban violated the Canadian Charter as well. The Chaoulli ruling currently is binding only in Quebec.
A win by the clinics in their B.C. action might open the door across Canada for an expansion of for-profit clinics and private health insurance.
'Equality, fairness' threatened: BC Health Coalition
"This lawsuit threatens Canadians' ability to access affordable health care when they need it. It threatens the principles of equality and fairness that are fundamental to our Canadian health care system," Leslie Dickout of the B.C. Health Coalition told The Tyee, referring to the action brought by the for profit-clinics and their umbrella group.
But Brian Day takes a different view of the litigation he and his allies have launched.
"I'm of the fundamental belief that in a free and democratic society, there is nothing immoral, unethical or illegal about an individual who's suffering from a lack of health care using their own money to purchase that health care. It's a fundamental human right in a free society," Day told The Tyee.
Day went on to explain that he and other doctors at his clinic charge the provincial Medical Services Plan for their own services, while the clinic charges patients a facilities fee for use of the operating room and the salaries for nurses.
Billing methods in dispute
Mariel Schoof, who is one of the plaintiffs in the patients' case against the for-profit clinics, she says her litigation is about fairness and access to health care.
"I was the first one to challenge what the clinics are doing," Schooff told The Tyee. "I'm doing this because I want people to get the health care they're supposed to be getting. The province should see everybody gets medical treatment. We shouldn't be a backwater."
According to documents filed by her lawyers in December, Schooff had sinus surgery performed at the for-profit False Creek Surgical Centre in January of 2003.
False Creek now is among the defendants in the patients' litigation launched by Schooff and others.
The documents say Schooff personally paid $6,150 for her surgery, and her surgeon, Dr. Amin Javer, also billed the Medical Services Commission for procedure done on Schooff.
It would appear that this is not an incident isolated to False Creek Surgical Centre.
Day told The Tyee it is common knowledge that his and other private clinics bill patients above and beyond what the doctors invoice through the government-funded MSC. But he said that the clinics' billings were not for the doctor's services, which were paid by MSC. Those billings, he explained, are for renting the operating room and paying nurses and other operating room staff, what he calls "facility fees."
Those billings are illegal under the Medicare Protection Act, counter the government lawyers defending Medical Services Commission and others against the lawsuit brought by the private clinics. In their statement of defense they state it is impermissible "extra billing" to charge the MSC the amount it stipulates as the appropriate fee for a procedure and then bill the patient for collateral costs.
Government audits rebuffed by private clinics
The B.C. Medical Services Commission has been trying for at least a year to investigate this disputed pattern of charging, but private clinics have not cooperated in allowing the commission to audit their billing. In a July 23 sworn affidavit, Bob DeFaye, the chair of the B.C. Medical Services Commission, alleges that:
"When the Commission made its decision to audit the clinics, it was aware of correspondence from approximately 30 individuals, from which it concluded that the clinics, either individually or together, had charged beneficiaries for medically required service in contravention of the Act."
The clinics being referenced in this section of the affidavit are Cambie Surgical Centre and the Specialist Referral Clinic. Day is medical director of both clinics and is a stockholder in both.
In February of this year, Day told Canwest News Service, "There is no hiding the fact we charge facility fees, so the audit is absolutely unnecessary."
Marjorie Brown, one of the lawyers representing Mariel Schoof and the other former patients in their action against both the clinics and the government bodies, disagrees.
"The audit attempt was absolutely the right thing to do," she told The Tyee. "My clients needed medically necessary care and they were referred to doctors practicing under the Medicare Protection Act, and told by the doctors or their staff that there would be a big delay for their treatment unless they paid for it privately. The doctors' practice sets up two wait lists: one for those who wait in the public system and one for those who can afford to jump the queue. But these doctors still rely on the public system, billing both MSP and the patients for the care they provide and in the process breaking the law. It is shocking to see some doctors flout the law in this fashion."
'Staff poaching' from public health care: study
Brown said her clients are motivated by a concern that others not be denied care because they don't have money. "This action is about preserving a system," she said.
Recent research sponsored by the anti-privatization B.C. Health Coalition suggests what may be at stake in both of the clusters of litigation that will be considered by the B.C. Supreme Court this fall. One of its findings:
"Our research reveals that for-profit clinics are siphoning scarce personnel from local hospitals and the public health care system. In at least two provinces, we found a demonstrable reduction in capacity of public non-profit hospitals as a direct result of staff poaching by nearby for-profit clinics. Ontario's for-profit MRI/CT clinics led to cuts in MRI hours in local community hospitals. In Manitoba, the for-profit MRI clinic caused a reduction in MRI hours in the Winnipeg Health Sciences Centre. In addition, staff poaching from local hospitals was found in Nova Scotia and British Columbia."
On the other hand, some critics say the Canadian health system is so flawed that it needs massive reform, not preservation. For example, Nadeem Esmail of the pro-privatization Fraser Institute has argued in a recent article in the June 2009 Fraser Forum that the Canadian system is the second most expensive universal access system in on the planet, only outspent by Iceland. Further, he says, and in this he echoes Brian Day and many other advocates of health care privatization, Canada's wait lists for medical treatment are among the worst in the world.
'Opening the door' to NAFTA challenges?
Dr. Randall White of the Canadian Doctors for Medicare, a group that has applied to be an intervenor in the case between Mariel Schooff and the other unhappy ex-patients and the MSC and the clinics, doesn't see the privatization option favored by Day and his clinic associates as a useful one or one likely to improve Canadian health care delivery. In an email interview with The Tyee, White wrote:
"If Canada opens the doors to commercial health-care delivery and insurance, we can expect NAFTA challenges that could well dismantle our publicly funded, non-profit system... The cost of commercial health care is high. Many studies have found higher costs attributable to ubiquitous elements of for-profit insurance and hospitals such as administrative activities, marketing, profit generation, and executive pay. When it comes to health care, the assertion that markets are most efficient is absolutely false. The U.S. is the most market-driven industrialized health system and also the least efficient. Canadians could expect greater cost inflation with the advent of market-driven health care."
The B.C. Supreme Court, when it rules on these two related cases, will be turning its attention primarily to matters of law and the Charter, not the policy concerns variously advanced by pro- and anti-privatization advocates. Nevertheless the court's judgments are likely to have profound policy implications for Canadian doctors, patients and taxpayers. ![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
ME2
06-09-2009
Typical neocon duplicity
Since the arguments regarding the many inefficiencies of privatised US health care are so obvious and incontrovertible, it is clear that the ONLY reasons our governments are pushing for privatisation are POLITICAl and NOT financial - beyond any question.
Camero409
06-09-2009
Thin Edge of the Wedge
The audacity of for profit medical clinics to ask the Supreme Court of BC not to be audited for alleged dou8ble billing is proof that the for profit clinics have something to hide. They are lining up at the trough and Campbell and the LIbEralS are complicit in that they are not vigorously pursuing this travesty. They are allowing the thin edge of the wedge of private health care to flourish in BC with the long term goal of collapsing our public health care system. NO THANK YOU GORDO!
OilbertaRedTory
06-09-2009
No audits please - we're private business.
Just trust us ...
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/13/business/reuters-health.html
From the desk of Harper's US advisor: http://mediamattersaction.org/factcheck/200906180005
"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary."
Adam Smith / The Wealth of Nations
Fiat lux
07-09-2009
The advertising agency by
The advertising agency by the name of Fraser Inst. claims that the Canadian medicare system is the second most expensive.
If double billing for profit care is permitted, it will be the most expensive.
There's no question that if the privatization is legalized, NAFTA will ruin our health care system, as it has ruined the rest of our economy already.
How much do some of these doctors demand and want? They're already probably the highest paid profession. When is enough enough?
Ed Deak.
moodyguy
07-09-2009
Fraser Institute???
When is this lobby group going to be seen for what it is, a lobby group that pushes, in its own words "for market solutions to social issues". In other words, to any question they seek to address, there is only one predetermined answer-privatize it!!!! Please stop stooping to the level of most media outlets by referencing, without qualification, this organization.
moodyguy
07-09-2009
Balanced article
Overall a balanced article- this area is incredibly important and deserves clear public scrutiny and discussion, hopefully with more understanding and deliberation than we normally see in public discourse. An efficient public health system is something that everyone can complain about when they have it (and all developed countries have one except for the US have well developed publicly run health systems) but try living in one of the many countries in the world that does not have one, maybe people would then find something to complain about rather than relatively minor irritants (which need to be improved) magnified by well funded lobby groups.
Hughes
07-09-2009
Accountability? Transparency?
Does the CMA support universal health care or for profit health care?
It seems that the president of the CMA, Dr. Robert Ouellet is in favour of a combined approach. In his speech to the Montreal Economic Institute in June he said:
“Canada's physicians believe that we can have a universal health care system that meets the needs of patients but certain things must change. Change must be undertaken to put the patient's interests at the centre.”
“Now is not the time for us to stick our heads in the sand. We need to take a hard look at all potential avenues including the appropriate role of private delivery health care services within the public health care system.”
Dr. Ouellet also stresses the importance of accountability stating that there must be, “Increase[d] accountability and responsibility at all levels. Health care in Canada suffers from a general lack of accountability,” and that “ensuring accountability” must be done in a “transparent manner.”
If the fee collection protocol at Dr. Day’s Cambie Surgery Centre and the Specialist Referral Clinic is legitimate, and even constitutional, then why have government auditors not been permitted access?
Why is it that Dr. Day is permitted to operate his for profit clinics as both a public and private entities collecting money from both MSP and patients and yet is not open to the accountability and transparency Dr. Ouellet speaks of?
Makes one wonder what sort of sway the for profit health care promoter, Dr. Day, might have had upon the principals of universality in health care during his tenure as president of the CMA, all the while, operating under and behind the same closed door policy he continues to employ at his private clinics.
Accountability and transparency. Now, where have British Columbians heard that before?
guystone
07-09-2009
healthcare
someone wrote that privatization is done for political reasons - not financial reasons
I would suggest the complete opposite.
First of all, it would be political suicide to privatize hospitals. Has the person that wrote this ever read any type of Canadian polls? Only a small percentage of Canadians want to see health care privatization (rightly or wrongly so - this is clearly a fact!). All the political parties in the election debate strongly stated they are against privitization. Don't you remember Harper giving the jab (I'm the only one here that hasn't been to a private clinic)
In Europe's health care has been proven to be better overall than Canadian health care. In the latest study we were dead last (bang for the buck) versus 29 other countries all European. What was similar between all these countries is that there was no private insurance - everyone was covered by a government run program. My opinion is - this is very important and makes Europes' and Canada's health care so much better than the USs.
Now the main difference between Canada and the other 29 countries that had better health care than us:
The other countries allowed private hospitals to compete against government run hospitals.
Now for the attackers of the fact above:
1. You are brainwashed (by government unions and the people they had brainwashed) into thinking that if you allow privatized hospitals you must pay. This is not the case - its two completely separate issues:
a) who pays for the health care
b) who provides the health care
I guarantee you that if you look at any government union pamphlete, website, discussion, etc. etc. they will drill into you A and B are the same. Everyone is scared they will have to pay for health care so they combine A and B to scare you into B. They have hundreds of millions of dollars to lose if B occurs in Canada and they are not going to lose that money standing still.
Don't take my word for it - pay attention to what they say and do.
Fiat lux
07-09-2009
The biggest lie is that
The biggest lie is that privatization would cut waiting times.
How ? The only way waiting times can be cut is with more personnel, and facilities. Which means higher expenses paid for by the public, one way, or another, which is an open admission of higher expenses.
Another sordid fact nobody dares to mention is that the vast majority of illnesses, which means the explosion of medical costs, are now manmade, mainly through the thousands of chemicals in our foods, air and water. They didn't exist before the present economic system, permitting the use of unlimited chemicals and "globalization" causing pollution and lack of inspection became the norm.
What is causing child cancers, diabetes and now autism, if not the criminal economic system? When stats were first kept, 1 in 40,000 children had autism, now it is 1 in a few hundreds and nobody know why ?
How about using some brains to figure out why no children had cancers even 50 years ago, except in very rare, almost unheard cases?
Ed Deak.
OilbertaRedTory
07-09-2009
Better Medical Services ...
... can not be delivered by private for-profit corporations.
http://www.ecmaj.com/cgi/content/full/166/11/1399
Canada already has private hospitals.
Canada already has for-profit medical services insurance.
The main difference between European systems (which one ?) and Canada is the higher proportion of private (insured and out-of-pocket) medical care in Canada [~30% vs 15% or less in most of Europe].
http://secure.cihi.ca/cihiweb/products/FundRep_EN.pdf
http://www.euro.who.int/Document/E87954.pdf
http://www.euro.who.int/document/e87303.pdf
If only the zombie privateers could have their brains washed they wouldn't try to eat ours.
wssides
07-09-2009
Private clinics
European countries have a huge concentrated population and a much higher doctor to patient ratio than Canada. Europeans do not regard "world's lowest taxes" as a first requirement for quality of life. Our small scattered population interferes with "economy of scale" operation. To get to the standards of top world health care we have to put more money per capita into the system than others do. Quadrupling our medical school capacity would help (and cost money). Also, we need to compare health care spending on the basis of percentage of GDP, not percentage of provincial budget.
Bob Watts
07-09-2009
Need more cash then MOVE AWAY!!!
It's just about Greed. If I want a private Doctor I can fly to Seattle for $100 no thanks.
Want to see a good example of private medical in Canada then just look at our private Dental system, most poor people have their teeth rotting out of their heads. Even people on welfare with a underfunded dental plan are not welcome at 99.9% on dentist offices...Ya,Ya if your in pain they'll help, what a joke that is, they just turn you away at the door and say go see the next dentist, or pay cash up front and then send welfare the bill, sorry welfare doesn't pay that way and if all your food money is gone you can get a max. crisis grant of $20 for the month for food. The healthy kids dental program is under funded as well, EG: a kid just got her wisdom teeth out the extra bill was about $200 or 80% of the family food money for the month. We tell the poor to go find a job, but would you hire a person with five black and rottening teeth smiling at you???
Marysue52
07-09-2009
healthcare privateering
Private healthcare is always going to cost more than public healthcare, because a profit has to be wrenched out of operations to give away to the privateers like Dr. B. Day. A profit is an added, needless cost to healthcare! This is not a brainer, Guystone. The only way private healthcare could possibly cost less than the public one is if the privateers cut their workers' wages (you can be sure the docs won't lower theirs!), and if they chintzed on the equipment and lowered the quality of the service provided to patients. What we need is more doctors trained, and we would have had that, except for greedy doctors who prevented potential doctors from getting trained. I'd like to see free post secondary education--or at least room and board tax deductible--so that more doctors can be trained. More nurses, too. They shouldn't have to be rich to become doctors.
notgormley
07-09-2009
a few trump all?
Bob Watts has it right, if a doctor wants a private medical care system with insurance companies, go practice in the United States, or if you want to pay for your private medical care get on a plane and fly to wherever you wish. You will not find ANYONE stopping you from taking this option. How can several indivuals or a corporation trump the welfare of all of the rest of us Canadians to OUR right to universal medical care in Canada. Are we all willing to leave it up to the courts, to the politically appointed pompous judges, completely out of touch with the economic realities of all of us "pee ons"?
coyoteman
07-09-2009
Staying the course...
There are so many goddamn things going wrong and haywire within capitalism everywhere right now, assaulting the standard of living and well being of ordinary folks, that it's getting downright scary. (I mean even tiny Cuba, impoverished and constantly bullied and circumscribed by the armed might of the US Empire, is still able to provide public, cradle to the grave health care to its citizens, acting as a beacon to the whole of Latin America.) It's hard to know where to begin sometimes, to get this period turned around and taken out of the intiative of ruling class hands, or to know what it is finally going to take to set the masses of folks in motion, challenging their power.
And it isn't just that they are about to steal our medical system and put it into the corrupted and already failing profit making system of capitalism. The failure and theft is going on along the entire broad front of society, from a collapsing fishery and other natural environmental systems, including water and even the viability and safety of the food system, to the social contract order that had grown up in the post war, arising out of the successful union and other social struggles of the Great Depression and WW2 generation to improve "the people's" lives and make them more secure.
It is fast approaching the point where the assurances of "recovery just around the next corner" are losing all credibility, and are taking on an air of fantasy. Such that is being left no alternative but that will set in motion, the increasing necessary movement of people, of sufficient rage, that will either sow sufficient fear of the loss of their power and privilege into the ruling class that they will reverse course quickly here, or be overwhelmed and rendered extinct by fast moving events. And even then, if things have not already progressed too far, such that it is even possible any longer for "them" to undo the damage they have done to their own ruling class interest. For it is much easier with their greed, cutbacks and undoing of progress, to collapse the economy, then it is to put their Humpty-Dumpty order back together again.
When you harm working class people's lives, unsettle and impoverish them sufficiently, you run the danger of finally killing the very goose that lays the golden egg for you.
Think about it, you dumbf___ Neoconazis, if there is but a part of a brain that you can muster between the lot of you.
On the other hand, of course, you stay the current course, you do the likes of me a favour, for which we will be eternally in your debt-, even long after you are all long gone. Keep it up. Please. :-)
Eventually, the worm does turn, you stay the course long enough.
Dan the socialist
07-09-2009
I don't think the BC Supreme
I don't think the BC Supreme Court will be the final answer. I think the SCOC will be the ones settling this.
This will be the death of out health care and we will have a system like the US if private health care is allowed, thanks to NAFTA and Mulroney.
But Canadians will just sit back and take it and do nothing (other than complain on forums and blogs) about it anyway. That is what we do, we just complain from our keyboard and do not do anything else). When was the last time you saw great mobs in the streets protesting something? I do not mean 10-30,000 people but in the hundreds of thousands?
Politicians know people in this country are cowards and never stand up for themselves. Politicians are not afraid of the people like in some European countries.
Too true
07-09-2009
Govt. neglect of healthcare doesn't mean Day can euthanize it.
Deceitfully arguing that the problem with public healthcare is its “reliance on” (rather than its shortage of) government funding, is an attempt to distract people from the fact that making healthcare MORE expensive solves nothing. When we have to pay for the service, PLUS a profit to the private clinic, PLUS a profit to the private insurer, it is a mathematical certainty that it will cost more.
Everyone contributing into a pool of healthcare services so that it will be there to help each of us when we need it, is the cheapest possible way to pay for it. It’s bulk buying from a nonprofit source.
The ONLY thing contaminating our healthcare pool is a dense layer of pond scum that the bulk of our money gets stuck in. Too many politicians have created too many ‘managers’ set with the task of making the healthcare system operate ‘more efficiently’, knowing full well that if the managers were all fired and their funding was used to fund actual healthcare, the system would be fine.
That totally unrelated distraction of a red-herring-argument aside, the premise that as long as the government is failing patients, that somehow gives Day the right to both fail AND EXPLOIT patients, is ridiculous. "Aw, but he gets to do it," is not a legal argument. Day may think he wants to see a ruling that the public system is violating our charter rights, but it does not follow that if the public system is doing it, then he can do it too.
Day attempted to defend his actions by saying, “There is nothing immoral, unethical or illegal about an individual ... using their own money to purchase that health care.”
Day is certainly not the first scum bag to change the subject and hope no one will notice, but it makes me sick every time I see it.
Day’s argument only excuses the PATIENT; NOT the doctor. No one blames the patient; he is under duress. A doctor, however, who uses that duress to FINANCIALLY EXPLOIT his patients, and sabotage the public healthcare system, is a completely different story. That is totally immoral, unethical and illegal.
It does not make a criminal any less criminal, to prove that his victims are innocent. It’s the equivalent of trying to defend loan sharking by saying, “The victim really needed the money.” No matter how desperately someone needs money, no one is allowed to exploit that need by lending it to him at a rate of 100% interest per week.
Similarly, no matter how desperately a patient needs medical attention, no doctor is allowed to EXPLOIT THAT DESPERATION by using it to EXTORT extra CASH from him.
lynn
07-09-2009
what lies ahead
coyoteman, a number of us here, I'm sure, would identify with the overwhelming feeling of uncertainty - and the precarious nature of these times that your words convey so well. These are indeed complicated and confusing...and scary times.
"For it is much easier with their greed, cutbacks and undoing of progress, to collapse the economy, then it is to put their Humpty-Dumpty order back together again."
All kinds of Royal Economic Straw Houses.
Humpty-Dumpty. Lazarus. Phoenix.
They all start to look alike after awhile.
And they all, no doubt, come with unintended consequences.
Though.... as you also note, some of those unintended consequences may just work in our favour for a change.
Sure hope so.
MacKenna
07-09-2009
Canadians must stop being complacent about what they have
As Obama fights (not quite tooth and nail) for public health care in the US, forces are at work to severely weaken Canada's public health care system. Behind this move are greedy doctors who want more money (as if they don't earn enough already), private insurers, and neocon politicians who've been on the rise in Canada since the eighties. Canadians are idiots if they support privatization. There isn't a single middle class person in Canada who can afford privatization and yet you hear the occasional reform idiot weighing in that it represents choice. Yeah, right. The choice between personal bankruptcy to cover your hospital bill and maybe paying a slightly higher public premium. WE MUST FIGHT TO KEEP HEALTH CARE PUBLIC IN THIS COUNTRY. The doctors who want to set up private clinics and charge an annual fee in the thousands are thinking of their yachts, holidays, and mansions, not our health.
carfreed
07-09-2009
snobs
There are always some who think they are too important to take the bus.
ME2
08-09-2009
hypocrits
Wssides notes:
"To get to the standards of top world health care we have to put more money per capita into the system than others do. Quadrupling our medical school capacity would help (and cost money)."
Of course we should, esp since rural doctors are so overworked they're leaving for urban areas.
Who are the main opponents of doing so? Right, the doctors. These worthy promoters of "Free Enteprise" hold that introducing "competition" for patients would "lower health care standards"
Go figure.
Skywalker
08-09-2009
The sheer hypocrisy of these guys.
Imagine if the private clinics could not rely on payments from MSP. Imagine if they had to get all their revenue from the patients. Imagine if there was no fall back health care system if things went wrong. Imagine them having to bring in the credit agencies to get payed. No they are parasites on a public system.
sicntired
08-09-2009
Campbell and Day along with the new health miser
These people are trying to destroy health care by starving the system,misplacing funding,causing waiting lists and delaying surgeries and by trying to scare people into thinking a two tiered system is the only answer to the problems they have created.It's the funneling of major funds out of the system that is causing much of the trouble.Dr.Day is trying to destroy the system and would like us to think he is doing it for the benefit of all.He does it for himself and Gordo and the new health minister are behind him 100%.This has been coming for a long time and the complicity of the provincial government cannot be ignored.This Liberal government has stood by and watched as pirates like Brian Day have cherry picked the system for easy profit while Campbell says nothing and appoints health care talks that cost millions and do NOTHING.
lynn
08-09-2009
Universal: Without Discrimination
"The for-profit clinics argue in their action that the Canadian health care system is grievously flawed because of its reliance on government funding and primarily public delivery. Privatization proponents like Day would like to see a ruling that the current status quo in health care operates to deny Canadians their Charter right to timely health care under section 7 (the right to life, liberty and security of the person) and section 15 (equal protection of the law without discrimination)"
What a twisted lie of knots that is.
"The right to life, liberty and security of the person"...and "equal protection of the law without discrimination" is exactly what has always defined universal health care.
Mr. Day's private system on the other hand is fueled by and depends on the discriminatory principles of.... cash.
Problem is, as Skywalker notes, the private system is a cocky cashsucker that likes to boast while leeching off our public health care system.
So let us not "impede or prohibit" Mr. Day's private system any longer.
Let us not stand in your way, sir.
Let's remove all access to our public funding from the private system ...remove all the public floatation devices from their flailing grasp.
These guys couldn't dog-paddle on their own.
Deny them any kind of public funding.
Then let's sit back and watch how long Brian Day and his hypocritical privateers are able to tread water.
G West
08-09-2009
Well put Lynn
Bring it on.
Let's sit back and watch how long Brian Day and his hypocritical privateers are able to tread water...
It won't be too long. I think they're on life support now.
I especially like this line:
...the private system is a cocky cashsucker that likes to boast while leeching off our public health care system.