What a Joke

This characters operations should have been shut down years ago. Instead this government lets him continue while pretending to investigate/shut him down with false threats. If the Gordocons were at all pursuing this, his clinic would have been out of business years ago.

I had an uncle (who is now

I had an uncle (who is now long been dead) who was a doctor and thought that the public health was such a wonderful idea cuz now he was being paid. Before public health he didn't know if he was going to be paid. He got paid in kind, like some acreage in some remote parts of BC (which you can't eat), or a chicken here or there. Before he died he thought the younger doctors were kinda stupid cuz they didn't know what it was like before; people went broke if they had a serious medical problem.

When your sick

all you want is to be healed and end the pain. You don't care where you have the procedure done. and lets face it the longer you wait the worse the outcome. My wife had to wait 3 years for her rotator cuff repair due to fighting between WCB and the Orthopaedic surgeons of BC. 10 years later and 3 surgeries later she's lost 25% use of the arm and WCB is paying her $1338.00 per month as a pension.
What we don't want is a system where the private sector only does procedures where they make 300% profit or more and leave the money losing procedures to the public system. This is what we have with the Private Labs like BC Bio and LifeLabs.
If you get your blood work done at the hospital all that profit would go into the hospitals general revenue. E.G. a CBC (complete blood count) costs $1.50 for a lab to do. MSP pays the lab $8.75.
If everyone in Farser Health got their blood work done at the hospital it would generate about $50million for the Health Authority.
You'd have to wait a little longer but eventually hospital management would get the hint and fund the labs accordingly. You can provide really good service at 700% profit.

Audit

The MSC should be independent of any government ideological influence however, it is clear they are being dictated to by this one. The Commission should simply go and do the audit as they are legally allowed to do and tell the government to quit interfering with the right of the people to health care delivery via our single payer system. If money was actually put into health care delivery instead of devising examples to undermine it there would not be any wait times...

I used to serve that guy coffee

at the Bean where I worked for more than three years. He was always polite.

Citizen's "Rights"

Does John Q. Public have the same medical "rights" as a WCB client? Does he have the same "rights" as an RCMP officer, off work due to injury?
Well, WCB and the RCMP BOTH pay the clinics EXTRA to get their people into surgery. Does John Q. have "the right" to pay extra? I would think so.
Adrian Dix would probably jump the cue, also.

Work Safe BC

is allowed to use private clinics. Been to a private clinic twice for an on the job injury.
Now that it's reinjured, I am having surgery in hospital on Friday. After 6 months, instead of 2 weeks, which I could have paid for privately, but will not do.

Many of the private clinics will operate for cash up front. Day's not the only one.

What's good for the goose is good for the gander

"Day said he and the clinics would like the courts to decide on whether British Columbians have the "right to avoid the pain and suffering" of being on a wait list for surgery"

The courts should also decide at the same time if Canadians have the right to avoid pain and suffering if they don't have enough money.

Methinks that would put Dr Day out of business.

So he's polite when he buys coffee.

The guy is trying to undermine universal healthcare because of greed. It is all about money and more money. Maybe if he did some pro bono work I might have a higher opinion. While he threatens healthcare, I have no sympathy for him. I don't care if he is polite when he buys his coffee.

Quebec vs BC - abortion clinics private too?

Interesting that some of the oldest medical clinics in Canada are Dr. Henry Morgentaler (Order of Canada) profitable abortion clinics in Quebec (first opened 1969). Are all abortions done in hospitals in BC, or are there also private abortion clinics at work?

Right wing governments

There isn't a right wing government anywhere in north america that will shut down private for profit medical clinics. Two years ago there were already 130 or more private clinics operating across Canada and now I believe it's close to 300. All breaking the laws of our Canada Health Act. Governments are making protest noises about this but none have done anything about them This is a coordinated effort to get the public conditioned to accept them and it's been effective and successful. Now the clinics are going to challenge the law itself. With right wing governments ruling the vast majority of Canadian institutions it's just a matter of time before the law gets changed. The rich will be ok but the rest of us will be like the Americans and go broke if we ever need surgery to save our lives.

IT"S EVERYWHERE? So are bedbugs!

So's lying cheating and chiseling. If the argument 'it's everywhere' had any relevance there would be no reason for any laws...Interesting that the people who shrug their shoulders and think queue jumping is a 'great' way to limit THEIR pain and suffering happen to be the ones with the extra scratch who also think that they shouldn't pay progressive taxes on their income.

The same guys who think socialism is fine and dandy for big corporations while insisting on the 'values' of free enterprise and dog eat dog competition for everyone else.

Doctors who bill MSP in BC made an 'average' of about $311,000.00 in 2009-10. The 'average' wage in 2008 for an individual woman was $30,200 and for a man $46,900.

Even if we assume an average wage of $50G in 2010 (something which is clearly a stretch in a province with the lowest minimum wage in the country) it's not difficult to see that the average doctor is getting at least 6 time what the average worker is.

What the fuck is wrong with this picture?

And why would anyone defend the idea of extra billing and screwing with what could be the best medical system in the world - for everyone?

Anyone who supports a vampire like Dr Day belongs in a hall of shame exhibit with [EDITED]. He should be ridden out of the medical profession on a rail by his colleagues.

What's the problem?

Presumably Day is being paid by the public as well as individual clients for a medically necessary service. If that's what the audit finds, let's hope there's a vigourous prosecution and penalties sufficient to cause Day (and any others) to take their hands out of the public till.

As for the RCMP and Workmens Compensation, these loopholes should never have been allowed in the first place--as this weakens the pressure for an efficient public system. But do they also receive funding from the general Medical Insurance system? If so, that should be stopped immediately.

Armed forces are a different situation: their separate system is required to meet special demands and is, I understand, fully paid by the employer, us, until retirement. which leads to another story in the headlines these days.

The rich will be ok but the

The rich will be ok but the rest of us will be like the Americans and go broke if we ever need surgery to save our lives.

Why?

The average person is likely to prefer getting a medical procedure for free through public health care to paying for it at a private clinic. However, if people need to have some surgery done and the waiting list is very long, why shouldn't they be able to pay a private clinic to get it done?

Everyone benefits. The rich people who go to private clinics spend less time in pain; the waiting times for public health care become shorter because the rich aren't in line any more. The majority of people come to appreciate public health care even more than they do now, because they can get treated sooner. I don't see private clinics as a massive threat, given that public health care is immensely popular in Canada.

This guy is engaging in straightforward civil disobedience, which the left has long recognized as a legitimate tactic. He's accepting the consequences of breaking the law in hopes of causing people to see that the law should be changed. I don't believe that makes him a bad person.

Whoops, the first line in my

Whoops, the first line in my post was meant to be formatted as a quote of Conducter274.

Katherine

Where do the doctors and nurses that staff private clinics some from?

If private clinics didn't exist they'd be part of the public health system.

Which of course means everyone doesn't benefit when rich people can go to private clinics.

The mere existence of the private clinic means poorer people will have to wait longer.

Its not by accident that we have both longer waiting lists and more private clinics.

Katherine

And my first line should have read "come from" not "some from".

Au contraire Katherine

"...if people need to have some surgery done and the waiting list is very long, why shouldn't they be able to pay a private clinic to get it done...".

This approach might be okay if all of the private clinic patients didn't have any side effects, or complications related to their surgery. However, when patients have adverse effects and need emergency treatment they go to a general hospital. That affects the wait times and it's called cherry picking.

Responses

To "for a better world": that would be true if private clinics have a proven record of producing more side effects and complications of surgery than public hospitals. Is there evidence to that effect?

I have to say I don't understand how certain procedures are "profitable" for public health care, as people aren't charged for specific procedures - we pay for health insurance and get what we need (that's the point of having public health care, isn't it). I apologize if I'm being dense; I'm not versed in the debates on this issue.

As to the point that having private clinics means that the people in them aren't working for the public health care system: those people might not be working in public health care even if Canadian private clinics didn't exist. Many of our trained doctors emigrate to the US or other nations if they want to pursue a private practice. Allowing private clinics might keep some of those people in Canada, increasing our number of health care practitioners and decreasing total wait times.

a reason to keep all healthcare public

"However, if people need to have some surgery done and the waiting list is very long, why shouldn't they be able to pay a private clinic to get it done? "

If 'rich' people can bypass the line, then they will support politicians who make it easier to bypass the line. If no one can bypass the line, wealthy people will support politicians who work to improve the system for everyone. That's a compelling reason in my book to disallow private surgeries, etc. For those who want (and can afford) private, immediate health care there are numerous options in other countries they can take advantage of. They should be free to do so if that's how they want to spend their money, but to my mind, creating two tiered health care is simply allowing people to buy additional rights that the rest of us can't afford. I don't think that's something we want to encourage as a society.

Katherine

"Allowing private clinics might keep some of those people in Canada, increasing our number of health care practitioners and decreasing total wait times."

Private clinics have been here for more than a decade and what you hoped would happen, didn't. The opposite occurred.

In the face of that will you change your conclusion about allowing private clinics?

Chris Keam and Frank

Chris - Your argument is certainly the most compelling one against allowing private clinics. However, the vast majority of the Canadian people greatly value public health care (we did vote Tommy Douglas as "greatest Canadian"). I don't think that pressure on politicians to maintain a good public health care system is going to substantially decrease if a relatively small proportion of the population start using private health care.

Certainly, rich people have disproportionate political influence; but on the other hand, Canada has quite strong campaign finance laws (only $2300 per person), and the middle and lower classes, who make up the vast majority of Canada's population, also do vote. For example, Britain allows private health care, but it's still basically political suicide to attack the NHS - the the point that a UK Conservative budget that heavily cut almost every other department actually increased spending on health (or, if you account for inflation, left it pretty much flat).

Frank - In what respect are private, for-profit clinics already in existence in Canada? If the changes have already been made, why are there such vigorous political arguments about whether we should allow any of them?

This characters operations

This characters operations should have been shut down years ago. Instead this government lets him continue while pretending to investigate/shut him down with false threats. If the Gordocons were at all pursuing this, his clinic would have been out of business years ago.
============

Gordo like Harper and the BC Libs saviour Dianne Watts are all low wage conservatives who only care about the bottom line of their business buddies. they could care less if you get healthcare or not or living under the bridge provided your out of site.

This country has gone down the drain and will only get worse. private Healthcare USA style is coming, just a matter of when because people keep electing twits like Gordo & Stevie...

Katherine

There's been hundreds of private clinics operating in Canada over the last decade. Dr Day set up his back when the NDP was in power back in 1996.

Many of us don't think they should be allowed but they've been here for as long as 15 years.

The evidence is available. They haven't shortened waiting lists, all they've done is remove doctors from the public system.

In order to reduce waiting lists you have to put money into the public system, Campbell has instead greatly reduced the amount of money per person in BC going into public healthcare.

Rather than fund surgeries at public hospitals the Liberals have reduced the time operating rooms are available and thus created a market for centres like Dr Day's.

Its not rocket science.

Katherine

In regards to your answer to Chris, public healthcare spending per capita declined compared to the rest of Canada.

To quote from Will McMartin's article on this subject :

"At the beginning of the decade, Victoria's health spending on a per capita basis was 9.7 per cent above the national average. By 2005 B.C. had slipped to slightly under the national average, and in 2010, we will be 4.1 per cent below the country as a whole."

and

"According to the CIHI, private-sector health expenditures represented 26.1 per cent of total health spending in B.C. when Gordon Campbell became premier in 2001. A decade later, the comparable figure is 29.2 per cent."

So almost 30% of our healthcare spending is private and we have fallen behind the rest of Canada in public spending on healthcare.

Whatever else you may want to believe the fact is private sector health has a history and its results can be measured and conclusions can be drawn.

We don't need to rely on a theory that says the private sector will save the public sector by removing rich patients from the queue. We know that doesn't help the rest of the population because doctors are removed in a greater ratio than patients.

Yes, different procedures

Yes, different procedures have different levels of "profit". Payments for certain procedures supplement the costs of others. If the "profitable" procedures are dealt with by new private clinics. That leaves the expensive stuff to be born by the public through insurance.