Oh, here we go again..... Universal health care: Is it worth the long waits?

[devilgrrl]

LINDSAY McCREITH: “We have universal health coverage (in Canada). But it failed me when I needed it the most.”

Universal health care: Is it worth the long waits?

Push is on for private insurance in Canada as residents come to the U.S. for timely treatment

By Henry L. Davis - News Medical Reporter

Canadian Lindsay McCreith came to Buffalo for an MRI after being told he would have to wait over four months for one at home.
After battling brain cancer, Lindsay McCreith is ready for his next fight: He’s taking on the Canadian health care system.
His case has potential repercussions on both sides of the border as pressure grows for health reform.

It started when McCreith, a resident of Newmarket, north of Toronto, suffered a seizure last year. He was told in Canada he would have to wait more than four months for an MRI to rule out a malignant tumor.

Rather than wait, McCreith, 66, quickly arranged a trip to Buffalo for a scan. The MRI confirmed his worst fears — a cancerous growth that a Buffalo neurosurgeon removed a few weeks later.

“If I had been patient, I’d probably be disabled or dead today,” McCreith said.

Now, McCreith is suing the Ontario government in a closely watched constitutional challenge that could reshape universal health coverage in the province by striking down the prohibition against patients buying private insurance.

On this side of the border, advocates of universal health insurance champion Canada’s popular public program as a fairer system that the United States should emulate, as seen in Michael Moore film, “Sicko.” Yet critics see the long waits for some services in Canada — mainly for non-emergency surgery — as an argument against an increased role for government in health care.

more: http://www.buffalonews.com/home/story/129344.html

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

1. Sounds very strategic.

The timing is interesting as well. Hey, down here, some people have to wait forever, since they have NO health insurance.

Sounds like the reporter has an agenda.

[dorkulon]

2. The Buffalo News is a joke.

Just so you know, it's one of the worst, least credible papers in the country.

And I'd rather wait four months than wait till...never.

[devilgrrl]

4. I couldn't agree with you more.

Buffalo's a joke too. It's the east coast version of Fresno.

[shadowknows69]

7. Hey now

my family happens to hail from that "joke" of a city you refer too. They be good people.

[devilgrrl]

11. I grew up there. They may be good people but city's a joke.

The kind of joke that makes me cry. :-(

[dorkulon]

26. Buffalo's a great example of what an entrenched political class

can do to a city. Also a leading indicator of what globalization is doing to our country.

On the plus side, rent is dirt cheap and there' not much traffic. :(

[devilgrrl]

28. I love how all the city's woes are blamed on Unions and taxes...

never are the Knox's, The Rich's, The Jacobs' and the rest of the old money families held responsible. They're the ones that are keeping investors from coming in. They want the city to themselves.

[dorkulon]

29. Yep, and the unconstitutional control boards are part of that program. /nt

[devilgrrl]

31. You're aware that Chief Justice Roberts' dad was a higher-up at Bethelem Steel?

Don't get me started on that.

[dorkulon]

40. Didn't know that, but knew he was from the Buff. But Bob Wilmers is the one

I find particularly objectionable. He hand-picked his own anti-union School superintendent (who'd been fired by Dayton, OH), and the News can't stop kissing his ass. The only source I've ever seen real coverage of these humps is the Buffalo Beast, but they've gone national and no longer cover local stuff.

[devilgrrl]

44. I read bloggers for the "real" local news in Buffalo.

I like this guy: http://buffalopundit.wnymedia.net/

and this guy for sports coverage: http://bfloblog.wnymedia.net/

I'm sorry to hear that Buffalo Beast no longer covers local stuff, I used love how they'd rip into Buffalo's very own Kathleen Parker - Mary Kunz-Goldman.

[FormerDittoHead]

38. This story was to balance out the 18,000 stories they ran on how our system killed people last year.

NOT.

"More than 18,000 adults in the USA die each year because they are uninsured and can't get proper health care, researchers report in a landmark study released Tuesday."

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/healthcare/2002-05-22-insurance-deaths.htm

[dorkulon]

41. LOL right. /nt

[asthmaticeog]

3. Whatever.

I live in the USA, I had to wait six weeks for an MRI, and they tried to postpone it the day before I finally got it, I had to fight for it. This article is propaganda. Interested parties are looking for the four or five Canadians who'll speak against free health care and pumping their stories as though they're typical in order to scare Americans away from wanting single payer.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

5. I wouldn't be surprised if there were elements in the Canadian govt. deliberately creating

this wait, just so private insurance can get their tentacles into Canada.

[FormerDittoHead]

6. Let Mr. McCreith come w/o a lot of money and we'll see. ...AS IF *WE* don't ration healthcare???

Our system's GREAT if you have a very good job - just don't lose it!

http://www.pnhp.org/facts/singlepayer_faq.php#canada_ration

The U.S. Supreme Court recently established that rationing is fundamental to the way managed care conducts business. Rationing in U.S. health care is based on income: if you can afford care you get it, if you can’t, you don’t. A recent study by the prestigious Institute of Medicine found that 18,000 Americans die every year because they don’t have health insurance. That’s rationing. No other industrialized nation rations health care to the degree that the U.S. does.

If there is this much rationing why don’t we hear about it? And if other countries do not ration the way we do, why do we hear about them? The answer is that their systems are publicly accountable and ours is not. Problems with their health care systems are aired in public, ours are not. In U.S. health care no one is ultimately accountable for how it works. No one takes full responsibility.

[MindPilot]

8. I have kaiser...

any routine appointment is six weeks out. You got an urgent problem -- go to urgent care. You got an emergency -- go to emergency.

I call BS on the "long wait" propaganda.

[NMMNG]

9. She had to wait a bit for a procedure

Many people here also wait, and others don't get it at all, because they have inadequate or non-existent insurance coverage. So this piece of propaganda doesn't change a thing.

Universal, single-payer coverage NOW.

[proud2BlibKansan]

10. I like Michael Moore's response to this

Of course we have shorter lines here. We have 46 million people who can't even get a place in the line.

[Aviation Pro]

12. An interesting conversation I had with a Canuck....

...recently. He said, that if you had to go to a clinic or hospital that you just walk in, take a seat and are seen no more than two hours later. If you have to schedule something that is immediate, the wait is no more than any wait here. He also said that if you need pharmaceuticals you just get them at the pharmacy at their low costs.

Anecdotal, yes. But kind of punches a hole in the bullshit that's vomited out of the health care industry's collective mouths.

[Canuckistanian]

60. Your scenario is correct

I've never had to wait long in any hospital emerge and I've never heard of anyone who did. Depending on how bad you are (non-emergency, non-life threatening), you're in and out within four hours.

And your wallet remains in your pocket.

And if you have a good job, it'll have full prescription benefits. Present your card to the pharmacist, and even the drugs are paid for. If not, you can write it off on taxes.

And yes, our drugs are much cheaper.

[devilgrrl]

13. Here's what I wrote to the "reporter"...

"I had to wait 4 months for a dermatologist while living in Buffalo in the 90's...

Can you write an article about that? What if I had cancer?

Sorry sir, this is propaganda and I'm not buying a word of it."

[Aviation Pro]

15. Why do we continue to use the word "sir" when debating the propogandists?

When asshole or fuckface will suffice.

[Aviation Pro]

14. Checking the average annual income....

...for residents of Newmarket, we find that it is a magnitude level above the rest of Ontario (42K vice 35K). Given noted crybaby McCreith's age (66), he's probably a member of Newmarket's wealthy set, which includes actor Jim Carrey among other notables, and which gives him the opportunity to be scared and frightened and flee to a private doctor in the U.S. to save his miserable, God-foresaken life. Let him try that if he's destitute in the U.S.

[AX10]

16. How much was McCreith paid to say this?

[stray cat]

17. How long do senators have to wait for their coverage?

I'm willing to wait as long as they have to for their government coverage ie taxpayers.

[Bitwit1234]

18. Darn longer the 30 to 45 minute wait NOW>

[NewJeffCT]

19. I would hope some Buffalo area folks write responses as LTTEs

While Canada did finish behind the US in wait times for non-routine appointments, the US still finished behind most of western Europe & Japan... and, in regards to the wait times for routine appointments, the US lags there as well.

[devilgrrl]

20. There's already some great responses here:

http://buffalonews.typepad.com/inside_the_news/2007/07/no-simple-solut.html

People in Canada compalin about the long waits and that they want provate health care. Pirvate health care will mean less doctors in the public system which is already short on them. It also means that people with the means to pay for the service will get bumped ahead of those who can't. That doesn't seem fair either.
Posted by: Mike Ventresca | July 29, 2007 at 12:39 PM

============

Way to push the HMO's agenda, adopting exactly their lobby's post-SiCKO response. Me, I'd rather wait 4 months than wait forever, because I don't have any coverage. Once again, the News shows which side its bread is buttered on.
Posted by: BS | July 29, 2007 at 11:46 AM

============

It seems we concentrate on Canadians who are unhappy with the system. Meanwhile, it is easy to forget how unhappy Americans are with our scattershot coverage.

Who enjoys arguing with an insurer about payment or seeing a specialist? Who wants to wait for hours at your emergency room? Lets not forget about the 45 million Americans who have no insurance. Then there is the dirty little secret of universal health care, ITS CHEAPER!

Now no one is claiming that the Canadian system is better in every regard. The Canadian model is just one here way in dozens of approaches to administer National Healthcare.

We have the luxury of selecting characteristics from systems around he world to tailor the best fit for us.

We can’t continue to let the perfect be the enemy of the good, while millions are uninsured or under insured.

Posted by: al-alo | July 29, 2007 at 11:13 AM

[NewJeffCT]

23. just added mine to the mix

thanks for the link.

[devilgrrl]

36. Check out the freeper entry:

To those of you who support socialized medicine:

"Because I live here I should get healthcare for nothing." Please. The rich have better houses, better cars, better vacations because they can afford them. Why shouldn't their healthcare be better too? Contrary to the apparently presumed axiom, healthcare is not a guaranteed right.

And the rich are getting tired of picking up the tab.

Learn how to support yourself.

Posted by: Tired of paying for you | July 29, 2007 at 01:32 PM


:-|

[NewJeffCT]

48. wow, what a loser that person is

Maybe he should buy his own little island so he can be king. That way, he won't have to share our taxpayer funded roads with us peons, or use our taxpayer funded electricity and gas infrastructure.

[warren pease]

49. "And the rich are getting tired of picking up the tab..."

Which would be the first time in the history of this country that the rich paid for anything that didn't directly benefit themselves. This guy is either the most thoroughly socialized rugged individualist American creation myth-believing sap in the long saga of the pissed-on classes, or the most blatant rich bastard to ever put finger to keyboard.

I'll go with a cautious #1, although the spelling and punctuation are way better than the freeper standard. Maybe he had his teen-aged daughter type it up while he stood close to her bare shoulder, breathing heavily through his nose and drooling a mixture of beer and pus from his abscessed molar...

Ewwwww...


wp

[Clintonista2]

52. The same reason the firemen come to your house for free

If it's on fire... in a civilized, compassionate society, every single person deserves life.

[Blue_Tires]

57. lol at that!

what a jagg-off---on multiple levels

[Warren Stupidity]

21. Uh - Canada's healthcare system is wildly popular in Canada.

All major parties support the current system, although each has their own ideas about how to make it better. The anecdotal disgruntlement is a chronic fascination of our own Bullshit Media System.

[Solo_in_MD]

22. The WashTimes had a different hit peice in the Commentary Section today

does that mean we are making headway?


http://www.washingtontimes.com/article/20070729/COMMENTARY/107290023/1012 for those who are interested

[FormerDittoHead]

25. Oh, great. Now I have to take a shower.

How you can read the Washington Times is beyond my personal level of touching "SKEEGE" but someone has to do it.

AS USUAL, this exceptional, cherry picked example uses medical terminology and understanding WAY beyond the scope of the average person.

I have no idea what the listed procedure is that is limited to only 12 times a year, blaw, blaw, blaw. The fact is that there are many, MEDICAL reasons why things may or may not be rationed like this.

The fact is that my PPO, which is considered the Cadillac of health insurance, has THEIR little book of what I can and can't have done...

As I wrote elsewhere, and I will repeat it here - THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING. These guys paid their CEO over a BILLION DOLLARS. They will write off the expense of massive advertising campaigns, publicity / public relations articles (like this one), Discovery Health Channel "documentaries", books with authors routinely interviewed on PBS, CSpan, etc...

The point is that this is just the beginning. This will be a long, hard fight...

[divinecommands]

39. I know the guy who wrote this...

He's poor and lives in the United States. I don't think he even has health insurance.

[iverglas]

64. a little fact checking

The Janice Fraser case referred in the Washington Times piece to seems to be real, although I can't comment on the medical isseus and outcomes.

The Washington Times piece has this:

As Janice's urologist reported to the Toronto Sun, Canada's health-care waiting lists are compiled on a "first come, first served" basis. But everyone in Canada knows there are ways to line-jump — at least for politicians and other public figures. Buzz Hargrove, president of the Canadian Autoworkers Union and an avid supporter of socialized medicine, managed to get an MRI in 24 hours when he broke his leg. The median wait time for an MRI in Canada is about 10 weeks, but Mr. Hargrove has the right political connections. If Canadian-style health care came to the United States, does anyone think those in Congress will wait in line for treatment?

Well ... I wouldn't put much past the traitorous Buzz Hargrove ... but hmm. Do people with broken legs, or any other emergency situation/injury, wait 10 weeks or more for MRIs?

Wait times data from the Ontario govt:

http://www.health.gov.on.ca/transformation/wait_times/providers/wt_data.html

Median wait time:

The point at which half the patients have had their treatment, and the other half are still waiting. For example, if a median wait time is 26 days, this means that half of the patients waited less than 26 days, and half waited more than 26 days. The median is another way of reflecting what a "typical" patient might have experienced in that time period. Unlike the average, the median will not be influenced by one or two very unusual cases (long or short), and is therefore more stable over time.

Average wait time:

The average - or mean - length of time a patient waited to have their treatment. This wait time may be skewed by a few cases which had extremely short or long wait times. The average wait time is calculated by dividing the total number of waiting days that a hospital reported, by the total number of treatments reported during the time period.
Average Wait Time = total number of days waited/number of treatments

90% completed within:

The point at which 90% of the patients received their treatment, and the other 10 per cent waited longer. For example, if a 90% wait time is 58 days, this means that 90% or 9 out of 10 of the patients waited less than 58 days, and the other 10% waited more than 58 days.

At that page, click on "wait times in your area", and a box opens with instructions for finding what you want. I'm not there yet, so I don't know what I'll find ... At Step 4, I enter Toronto, and expand the details...

MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging)

Provincial Wait Time

90% completed within (days) - 110
Average Wait Time (days) - 49
Median Wait Time (days) - 31

At least in Ontario, median wait time -- the point at which half of patients have received the service -- just doesn't seem to be 10 weeks. It seems to be less than 5 weeks.

An ordinary, reasonable person would think that of the 50% of patients who receive an MRI within less than 4.5 weeks, quite a few of them would be getting same-day or next-day MRIs in cases involving emergencies or injuries. Duh. I wonder whether a broken leg (presumably with some sort of suspected compound fracture) might be one such case.

90% of MRIs are completed within 110 days -- just under 16 weeks. In Ontario at least (that being where Hargrove lives) there is very certainly no 10-week median wait, and no reason at all to think that any old person at all would not get an MRI on an urgent basis if in the same situation he was in.


More from that screed:

According to the Fraser Institute in Vancouver, British Columbia, an operation as simple as a tonsillectomy can take a wait of more than a year-and-a-half in some provinces.

For pity's sake. Tonsillectomies are almost 100% elective. I decided to have one in 1973, when I was in law school -- my prominent pediatrician, following the rules of the art and science of the 1950s and 1960s, had declined to do it, but I was tired of bronchial infections and at that point the surgery was recommended, even though it is relatively riskier for an adult. I could have gone the rest of my life without a tonsillectomy, which may have had no effect on my life at all.

I "waited" a year for my second cataract surgery -- because I chose to. How many people choose to schedule tonsillectomies for their children when it's convenient? Most, I would think.

This is precisely what I was referring to in an earlier post -- how the Frasier Institute (a right-wing think tank) cherry-picks the criteria it uses to evaluate health care.


Now, as for TERRENCE C. WATSON, author of the screed, Google finds him in five places, one being here:

http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php?recipientID=1037
"the money behind conservative media"

16,935 - Social Philosophy & Policy Center - Earhart Foundation

To provide one graduate fellowship ($17,000 stipend and up to $17,851 tuition) in philosophy tenable during academic year 2005-2006. (Terrence C. Watson, Recipient)

Dang that money trail.

Someone here advises that Mr. Watson doesn't have health insurance. A graduate student on full fellowship without health coverage? I kinda don't think so. But who knows, maybe Mr. Watson has been unable to secure employment in the interim ...

Hmm. He seems to be a current graduate philosophy student here (Terrence Watson, email tcwatson):
http://www.bgsu.edu/departments/phil/students/students.html

Maybe the person who knows him can enlighten us.

[warren pease]

24. Here's a few differing viewpoints re Canadian health care

I'm doing a series of articles for Online Journal that begins by relating the experiences of a correspondent who wrote me regarding the insane garbage she had to go through for a simple set of blood tests in the land with "the greatest health care system in the world." (see OP on the thread linked below)

I asked members of the DU international community to read her story and describe their experiences under their various health care systems re obtaining and paying for similar blood work. The responses are too many and too long for this post, but you can look through them here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=190&topic_id=21786

Read, weep, then organize -- and maybe write a letter to the Buffalo News editor and to the columnist citing some of these FACTS, not spun industry hogwash, but FACTS. Medical reporter, my ass. Industry mouthpiece is far more accurate.

FYI: The first of three articles on this subject -- one each for Canada, the UK and Australia (with possibly a fourth for other countries, although I didn't get very many responses from mainland Europe, unfortunately) -- should be available in Online Journal by next weekend.

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/index.shtml


wp

[sammythecat]

27. I'm familiar with this story

My take is that it's obvious Canada's health care system needs work. Why can't Canada simply buy more MRI machines? It's not that they can't afford to have all they need to have. There is no excuse for someone waiting 4 months to find out if they have malignant cancer. To me, that's criminal.

Despite their problems, it's still a better system than ours. We can use their model and fix the flaws we find (get more MRI machines). Then they can copy ours and fix the problems they see. That doesn't seem like a bad plan to me. It seems like common sense. If I'm building a house and run short of bricks should I abandon the building and move into a tent? Maybe a better solution would be to just go out and buy some more goddamn bricks!

[petronius]

30. If socialized medicine is so horrible, why do all these countries that have it

do better than us on pretty much all health-related demographic indices (life expectancy, child mortality, etc)? These 'long wait' anecdotes are oh-so-scary, but they provide no insight to the larger societal picture...

[trudyco]

32. Doesn't Canada have a two tiered system? Which did this person

have? I've heard they have good preventative and good emergency medicine but this in-between situation is where Canada has issues. They also may have a disincentive to find (expensive) solutions to chronic problems. I know of a "study" done to show Hyperbaric Oxygen (kind of expensive treatment) did not help ceberal palsy. The study was flawed and the results spun so that the procedure would not have to be covered by insurance.

I know of people having to wait for years to get weight loss surgery. Severely obese people

When my brother lived in Ontario he had to wait long times to make sure he was fine after recovering from a heart attack.

On the other hand, I've heard Britain's National Healthcare is worse, Australia's is pretty good and France is excellent. I don't think Canada's healthcare is the one to hold up to the USA as the perfect system. France is better.

I like the idea of basic health care for all, but a customer specific enhanced healthcare should also be available. Employers could pay the premiums tax free, but the employee choses the coverage and can carry it from employer to employer (of if unemployed) with no penalty.

[divinecommands]

45. No two tiered health care in Canada

There's no two tiered health care in Canada. In fact, private insurance is basically outlawed. You couldn't spend your money on health care even if you wanted to.

That doesn't seem quite right, does it?

[Clintonista2]

51. Well...

The point of the Canadian system is, you're treated based on how much you need treatment, not on how much you can pay for treatment. Seems right to me.

[Kansas Wyatt]

33. Well then fuck it. Give the whiny bastards an opt out option.

Let them fend for themselves and get ripped off if they don't want universal health care.

There, all of their damn problems with universal health care are solved.

[FormerDittoHead]

43. Not opt-OUT, but opt-UP. Universal health will NOT be paid with flat fees...

A universal healthcare program will most probably be tacked on to our income taxes.

I would not favor any other plan, such as a national sales tax, or some flat amount "head" tax which would mean everyone would pay the same amount... That would mean, AGAIN, that the lower classes would pay the highest amounts as a percentage of their incomes...

This being the case, those who make the most would most probably pay more (as an amount, not necessarily as a percentage) for their universal healthcare than most.

There can be no "opt-out" option, but there can certainly be an "opt-UP" option...

The ONLY way the thing to work in ANY case is if you allow people to 1) still PAY the cost of the universal coverage but then, OK, they have to right to PAY MORE for whatever premium coverage / service they want.

We would NEED to have such an "added" option for elective / cosmetic surgery as well as elective things such as so much dental work is (like caps or whitening), private duty nurses, etc.

...but the point is that NO ONE gets to opt-OUT.

[spanone]

34. all medicine is slow and there are waits at every level

[NanceGreggs]

35. Mr. McCreith is an idiot.

He seems to have the mistaken notion that if he had private insurance, his insurance company would somehow be able to push him to the head of the waiting list for an MRI. Not possible. MRIs aren't shut down for weeks at a time just to keep people waiting - there is a line-up, and everyone goes to the end of that line. And a private insurance company wouldn't have any influence in changing that.

Of course, the alternative would be for Mr. McCreith's "private insurance" company to set up, equip and staff their own MRI centres across the country. Imagine his surprise when he gets a monthly premium bill of $1,000 per month - "Well, Mr. McCreith, SOMEONE has to pay for all of the costs associated with our new MRI centres."

And imagine his further surprise when he needs an MRI, and his private insurance company denies coverage for the procedure.

Mr. Big Mouth has obviously never dealt with a private health insurance plan - therefore, he doesn't have the foggiest idea what he's talking about. He'd be in for one very rude awakening.

[FormerDittoHead]

37. McCreith probably complains about high taxes too - wants the gov't to cut back on services... n/t

[SteelPenguin]

55. You're exactly right

He thinks that everything would be peachy with private insurance, even if he had to pay three times as much for it, and still would frequently need to wait 3-4 months to see a specialist. Oh, but on the plus side, the poor wouldn't get health care.

Yeah that sounds just great.

[NanceGreggs]

65. The thing is ...

This idiot lives in Canada (as do I), and he is NOT advocating that universal health care be abolished; simply that he be permitted to buy private insurance as a personal alternative.

I don't know what he thinks that would accomplish. A private insurer would have NO SWAY in getting one of their insured to the front of the line for any procedure. The medical provision system here is just not set up that way.

Fees for an MRI (Like ALL fees for medical services) are set, so even if his insurer was willing to pay an additional or higher fee (ha, fat chance!) to get their insureds to 'the front of the line', such monies wouldn't and couldn't be accepted.

So I really don't understand what this guy thinks having private insurance in a universal healthcare environment would achieve. He just sounds like one of those people who thinks that if he throws enough money around, he will get a better deal than everyone else.

Unfortunately for Mr. Jerkoff here, in our healthcare system, his willingness to spend more money won't get him anything more than that which every other patient gets.

[iverglas]

66. but don't miss the big picture!

That's where the people doing this have their gaze fixed.



http://www.cbc.ca/cp/health/061115/x111521A.html

TORONTO (CP) - A company that refers patients to private health-care clinics in Canada and the U.S. is trying to raise money from private hospitals to "sponsor" a threatened lawsuit against the Ontario government that it hopes could open the door to two-tier health care in Canada.

Richard Baker, president of the Vancouver-based Timely Medical Alternatives Inc., said his company wants to sue the province on behalf of a 66-year-old Ontario man who went to Buffalo, N.Y., for an MRI and surgery to remove a cancerous brain tumour.

But Baker said he doesn't have the $25,000 needed to file the suit, so he's publicizing the case in the hopes of raising the cash from private health-care providers who want to see an expansion of two-tier care.

"People who are proposing to operate a private hospital in Ontario and have been shut down because of the Canada Health Act, they may well wish to sponsor this lawsuit," Baker said.

The goal isn't really just private insurance -- it's private health care.

[NanceGreggs]

67. The OVERWHELMING MAJORITY of Canadians ...

... are not the least bit interested in changing the system that is already in place.

Those who want "private health care" would have to fund every penny of its provision out of their own pockets - and there is a very small percentage of the population that want it, or would be able to afford to opt into it.

Want a private hospital? Go right ahead - but the group of you who want it will have to pay to build it, equip it, staff it, maintain it, etc. That's a VERY LARGE bill spread out over VERY FEW people, in the great scheme of things.

Need an MRI? Sorry, your private hospital now has a waiting list for that procedure. What's that? You PAID extra to have this service available at your private hospital? So did everyone else on the waiting list, so go to the end of the line.

People like Mr. McCreith and Mr. Baker just don't get it: not all problems can be solved by throwing money at them. They also don't think that any insurance company would ever decline coverage for someone willing to pay the big buck premiums. Due to the universal system in place, they have never had any experience with that occurrence, nor have their family members or friends.

If private health care insurance is ever accepted as a legal alternative for those who want to pay for it, these people are in for a very rude awakening.

[iverglas]

68. Er

I'm Canadian, and I've been debunking bullshit about our system at DU for several years now. ;)

I'm with you, of course -- but the big money behind this case, and more broadly the big money on the other side of the border that drools when it looks across here at all the profits to be made, are a formidable enemy that should not be underestimated. Just ask any survivors of the health care electoral wars in the U.S. If enough well-funded lies are thrown at people, they can be manipulated to believe many absurd things before breakfast, the benefits of private health care being one such thing.

It's a very hard sell in Canada, but we should never think it's impossible. Slashing funding for health care and physician training and the rest of the system is one approach, and remember, they've tried that already, and we're still suffering the effects, one of which is shortages that can lead to cases like this.

The obvious stupidity of thinking that a second tier will result in more services being available is ... well, yes, obvious. I've experienced the effects of that theory, btw, in England at the nadir of Thatherism's effect on the NHS, in the dirty waiting room of an NHS hospital for hours without the most basic attention (like, ice for a head injury) ... while my friend's partner languished in a sunny private hospital getting all the tests she could eat, and eating from the room service menu. Same amount of care, just distributed a little less evenly.

"People like Mr. McCreith and Mr. Baker" actually don't give a shit about the things you cite. The motive is profit. McCreith could be stupid ... but one might suspect that if McCreith won, he'd have guaranteed free health care for life, just not from the public plan.

:hi:

[NanceGreggs]

70. Hi, there!

When I first moved up here (in '74), people here didn't really grasp the difference between their healthcare program and how it operated in the States. At that time, we actually paid into OHIP as a separate bill: $100 for family coverage, and $80 for single coverage, if memory serves.

So my Canadian friends just assumed that programs like Blue Cross were the same; you paid a hundred bucks once a year, and got the same coverage Canadians got through their provincial plans.

However, over the years, Canadians have been more than educated about the US healthcare disaster re being insured or not. Many of my friends have had personal experience with being injured or becoming ill while traveling in the States, or they have relatives who live in Florida during the winters who have had disastrous experiences.

As a result, I believe the introduction of a private health insurance system here would not be a hard sell, but rather an impossible sell. With all of the horror stories coming out of the US, and movies like Sicko, I don't think any amount of PR or spin by insurance companies can come close to convincing Canadians that private insurance is the better alternative.

There may have been a time when that was possible, but there's been too much filthy water flowing under that bridge for a while now.

The only people here who are interested in "private health care" are those like Mr. McCreith, who think that if they pay through the nose for something, they will get the bigger bang for their buck -- too dumb to realize that the ONLY bang-for-the-buck is on the insurance company's side, especially via the profits they make by denying coverage they deem expensive enough to make a dent in the bottom line.

[warren pease]

71. Hey Nance, is it the case that...

...Ottawa is looking at creating a two-tiered system -- a privatized, for-profit system for paying customers (the wealthy) and the current single-payer system for everybody else. I suppose the idea long-term is to lure the best docs into the for-profit system, starve the single-payer program, and eventually force Canadians to either accept less effective care through the taxpayer-funded system or pay obscene sums of money to for-profit insurance companies like we do here.

Any truth to this, or is that just another of those "rumors on the internets"? And if true, would Canadians put up with this kind of robbery, or would they immediately get rid of whatever politician was fronting for the Aetnas and Blue Crosses of the world?



wp

[iverglas]

72. what am I, chopped liver??

Boo.

Obviously the right wing, like the present Conservative Party, would like nothing more than a two-tier health system. I mean, other than a single-tier all-private system. It's what the Frasier and C.D. Howe institutes, the brains of their movement, have been agitating for, for years.

And remember that this isn't just about profit-making within Canada. It's about the integrated north-south economy, and the need of corporations in the US to have new markets.

If offered a ballot with two choices -- "single-tier" and "two-tier" -- what would most Canadians do?

You know, it's not like all Canadians are smart and politically aware and socially conscious all at once. One my uncles, for instance, would go for "two-tier" in a heartbeat ... well, if his heart were still beating. Seriously, he's in hospital right now after two heart attacks ... and then in the last six years there has been the prostate surgery, and the dialysis, and his wife's long-term Alzheimer care ... and the fact that he's still able to afford a nice condo ... and I know very well that he would still go for two-tier just because it is ideologically atractive to him. There are a lot of people in southern Ontario who think all things U.S. are the bee's knees.

Would he care that his brother who is also in hospital -- who, unlike him, has been unemployed and had psychological problems lifelong, and is now probably about to die of a metastacized cancer -- might not be getting quite the same care as he is? I dunno. I'm pretty sure he would just refuse to consider the question.

I had a chat last year with the third uncle, who used to be a fundie Baptist and wouldn't talk to the rest of us for years, and we got around to this subject. He's a Keith Olbermann fan. Still USAmerican, not as bad as O'Reilly anyway. His neighbour was apparently whining about waiting for hip surgery and ranting about how we should do it the way it's done in the US, and my uncle suggested that he feel free to move to the US ... and sell his house to pay for the surgery.

So there is really quite a range of feelings to start with, including the same kind of resentment of other people getting stuff at public expense that you find in the US, and there is all sorts of room for manipulation.

But it's important to remember that there isn't going to be a ballot with that choice. It's just like in the US -- the choice is between the parties, and the parties might not actually campaign on destroying the health care system, or spending a few billion dollars invading Iraq.

Stephen Harper is deeply in the pocket of the people who are behind Frasier and Howe -- that's where he came from. You won't find it on his official bio page ...
http://www.conservative.ca/EN/1002/
and you actually won't hear it talked about enough, but:
http://www.politicswatch.com/harper.htm

Beginning in 1998, Harper became president of the National Citizens Coalition, a conservative citizens advocacy group.

Well, it isn't actually a "citizens advocacy" group, any more than any of its counterparts in the US are. And in fact it was founded, many years ago back in my old home town in southern Ontario, by an insurance executive.

http://www.nupge.ca/news_2004/n08no02a.htm

It would be hard to find a more mis-named organization than the National Citizens' Coalition.

The NCC was founded 35 years ago by an insurance millionaire named Colin M. Brown in London, Ontario.

Brown liked to jet off with rich pals to the Masters golf tournament in Georgia, where blacks were barred until recent years, and women are still banned as members.

One of the fires that burned in Brown's well-fed belly when he launched the NCC was his hatred of public health care.

The motto he chose for the NCC was, "More freedom through less government." It meant more freedom for the rich, not the poor, of course.

Harper is ideologically right-wing; it's what drives him. He doesn't give any more of a shit about his fundamentalist religion (found late in life) than Bush does about his, for instance. The health care system is a symbol and actual part of everything that is, to his mind, wrong about Canada. It is not politically expedient to go gunning for it, but there are many things that can be done to kill it by a thousand cuts, as it were.

Having a Supreme Court willing to ignore reality as they did in the Chaoulli decision is about the worst thing we could have right now. Governments here don't like to do unpopular things -- like legalize same-sex marriage. They let the courts do them. And that's what could happen to health care.

[warren pease]

73. Chopped liver, indeed

And why Boo? What have I done? Anyway, thanks for the answer. And I hadn't really considered north-south market expansion as causal, preferring to dwell in the illusion of Canada's presumed sovereignty and the incorruptibility of its fine citizens.

We're so co-opted and misinformed down here that it's like living in Dunderheadistan, so naturally the dominant theme of business uber alles has much traction among the very people who have the most to gain by abandoning that idiocy and going after the elitist bastards who put out that nonsense in the first place. Peasants, torches, tar and feathers are all useful forms of communication.

As I noted on another health care thread, there's a couple of factors that keep us in the dark ages: There are a lot of people who have decent jobs and benefits, or who are rich enough to insure themselves, who are quite happy with the current system. But there's also this libertarian/right wing social Darwinist ideology that says taxes should only go to fund wars of aggression and not be used for anything that actually helps normal people. That's best expressed by this post on the Buffalo News quoted further up in this thread:

To those of you who support socialized medicine:

"Because I live here I should get healthcare for nothing." Please. The rich have better houses, better cars, better vacations because they can afford them. Why shouldn't their healthcare be better too? Contrary to the apparently presumed axiom, healthcare is not a guaranteed right.

And the rich are getting tired of picking up the tab.

Learn how to support yourself.

Posted by: Tired of paying for you | July 29, 2007 at 01:32 PM


Ohhhh, the poor are always with us. Taxes on the rich are so onerous and they're tired of picking up the tab for the rest of us wastrels. And why shouldn't they have better stuff, including health care, than the poor schmucks who, because they're deeply flawed people who are solely to blame for their own failures, aren't worth worrying about.

So the core argument here always gets down to whether health care is a right or a privilege. Currently, it's considered by a significant percentage of the population to be the latter, although I don't think many would admit it if the question were asked in those terms. "Sicko" has done much to show people who never encounter anything but mass consumption official American dogma that they don't necessarily have to go bankrupt just because they spent a couple of days in the ICU. Whether that segment of the population actually does anything with that knowledge is anybody's guess. This isn't a very activist society these days, as you've probably noticed.

Anyway, thanks again for the extremely detailed and helpful tale of Howard's love of privatization and free market ideology. How the hell did he manage to get elected in what's still a fairly progressive country, at least when compared with Dunderheadistan?


wp

[iverglas]

74. oops

That was "boo" as in "peek-a-" -- here I am. ;)

Anyway, thanks again for the extremely detailed and helpful tale of Howard's love of privatization and free market ideology. How the hell did he manage to get elected in what's still a fairly progressive country, at least when compared with Dunderheadistan?

Hee hee, yes, we're always being confused with Australia. I'm chuckling, don't worry. I've been known to say Utah when I meant Iowa ... a Prime Minister that starts with H, a state with four letters, what do you want.

That, that's a tale for another day, and the answer boils down to: don't ask me. Just remember that he received not too much more than 1/3 the popular vote, if it helps.

Seriously, though, the electorate just decides every once in a while that the Natural Governing Party needs a vacation, and elects the other guys. Any old excuse will do; this time it was corruption, and it was real corruption, petty though it was. Why the electorate does that to itself is anybody's guess, but I'd guess that voters don't see a huge difference between Liberals and Conservatives, and of course I agree with them.

There's a whole dynamic not unlike in the US, though: we effete central Canadian urbanites (the geography is opposite, the idea the same) have to be ever so careful not to offend the louts out west, and even moving among us, who believe in god 'n guns and all that good stuff. So calling their shit what it is isn't seen as wise.

And of course you have a Liberal Party élite that is barely different, in its economic ideology and its prominent personages' corporate ties and its continentalism, from Stephen Harper's, so it's hardly likely to play up Harper's economic ideology and corporate ties and continentalism when seeking votes ...

You might find this investigation of former Liberal Prime Minister's Paul Martin's corporate ties etc. interesting.
http://www.cbc.ca/disclosure/archives/030401_csl/main.html
... of course, he divested himself of all that stuff when he became PM ... just not while he was Finance Minister and creating his cozy corporate tax haven in Bermuda ...


For you guys -- keep up the public information/education campaign whenever and wherever you can. Progress can be seen, at least from up here.

[warren pease]

75. Same afflictions, different geography...

...we effete central Canadian urbanites (the geography is opposite, the idea the same) have to be ever so careful not to offend the louts out west, and even moving among us, who believe in god 'n guns and all that good stuff. So calling their shit what it is isn't seen as wise.


Lucky you. I'm hoping this doesn't apply to coastal BC? The Southern Gulf Islands are my evacuation strategy and I'd hate to end up in west Texas by mistake.


And of course you have a Liberal Party élite that is barely different, in its economic ideology and its prominent personages' corporate ties and its continentalism, from Stephen Harper's, so it's hardly likely to play up Harper's economic ideology and corporate ties and continentalism when seeking votes ...


Well, that sounds pretty familiar. We, of course, aren't allowed to use the word "liberal" in polite society, so we have to call them the Democrats, but the allegiances seem the same. How nice for you; all you have to do to find out how your future is going to turn out if you follow this path is look immediately south.

I should think we provide an ample object lesson on the lunacy of privatization, market-based medicine, the one-party system, ritual beheading of the poor and disadvantaged, government by corporatocracy and the rest of all that American wonderfulness that something like 100 million people have to self-medicate to handle every single day.


All this background and the true meaning of "boo." An embarrassment of riches.


wp

[kenny blankenship]

42. Universal Health Care: But what about the forced abortions?

Gotta love those corporate media headlines.

[cynatnite]

46. I guess we shouldn't complain about a three hour wait in the ER...

:eyes:

I wonder how long it took for them to dig her up.

[SoCalDem]

47. There is a town in Vermont that straddles the US-Canada border

The economics of the people are probably pretty much the same, so why hasn't a team of researchers gone THERE and done a door-to-door study of the true economics of how the system works.

get cancer on one side of the street (literally, some streets are one-side US. the other-side canada), and you get state of the art care for nothing out-of-pocket, BUT if you live on the other side of the street..well you may just end up dead..

[warren pease]

50. What's the name of this town?

Sound like the perfect place to be if quick evacuation becomes necessary.


wp

[LWolf]

53. Because we don't have long waits with our current system.

:sarcasm:

My grandson is 7 years old. He has never seen a dentist, despite the fact that he's had "insurance" for 3 years. Why?

There is only one local dentist approved by his insurer. He started off with an appointment. There was a 6 month wait for that appointment. It was canceled the day of the appointment when he had a different health emergency and had to see his cardiologist. It was canceled beforehand, with a phone call.

Since then, that single dentist that his insurance "approves" has refused to reschedule him. They "don't reschedule anyone on the cancellation list."

Meanwhile, he's got jaw and tooth pain. He needs a dentist. He also has a heart condition, and all available resources have gone to make sure he's getting the cardiac care he needs. There are no more dollars left for an outside dentist.

So...a dispute has been opened with the insurance carrier. They promise to "look into it."

Please tell me again, Mr. McCreith, about how private health insurance in the U.S. prevents those "long waits."

[LSK]

54. my father is getting an MRI, he has been waiting at least a month so far

In America.

[iverglas]

56. I don't know what to think about this

First, a couple of points.

Canada has a single-tier health insurance system -- for medically necessary services. If you want a private hospital room, or a vasectomy reversal, or bunion surgery (like my friend), or some non-malignant but annoying lumps removed (like me), you can pay for them out of pocket or through the private insurance most people employed by governments or large private sector employers have.

This story does not reflect any experience that I or anyone in my family or among my friends in Ontario has ever had. Our experiences are the precise opposite in all cases.

Google news finds this story in three places: the Buffalo News, the John Birch Society website, Human Events, DC and FrontPage magazine.com. Hmm. Constitutional challenges like this are usually big news in Canada. I guess this one is just slightly old news at the moment.

http://onthefencefilms.com/video/McCreithLawsuit.htm

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Lawsuit to challenge Ontario health policy

Toronto, Ontario, November 14, 2006 --– Timely Medical Alternatives Inc., a leading Canadian medical broker, today announced that it intends to launch a lawsuit against the Ontario Provincial government on behalf of a 66-year-old Newmarket resident, Lindsay McCreith. ...

... McCreith, a retired small business owner, is seeking a larger role for private health care in Canada: ...

... About Timely Medical Alternatives Inc.

Based in Vancouver, B.C., Timely Medical Alternatives is Canada’s original medical brokerage organization, providing Canadians with medical alternatives to waiting for care in the public health care system. Founded in 2003, we have assisted individuals and families across Canada to obtain timely, private surgery as well as diagnostic imaging. We refer 90% of our clients to private health care providers within Canada for services such as knee and hip joint replacement, gall bladder removal, arthroscopic knee and shoulder surgeries, weight loss surgery and cataract surgery. Typical out-of-country procedures that the Company brokers on behalf of its clients include brain surgery, cardiac surgery, spinal neurosurgery, and cardiac intervention (angioplasties). For more information, please visit www.timelymedical.ca.

Interesting that McCreith, or at least the people using him for their purposes, "is seeking a larger role for private health care in Canada". Others might be seeking improvements to the public health insurance plan to ensure that no one in his position had to seek private health care, i.e. pay for services that the public plan should be paying for.

Some Canadian news and views:


http://www.canadians.org/media/council/2007/18-May-07.html
(A letter to the very right wing Ottawa Citizen)

Dr. Fullerton refers to Lindsay McCreith as "brave." But by Mr. McCreith's own admission, he went to a public hospital once. Then he hooked up with a private, for-profit company -- Timely Medical Alternatives Inc. -- that facilitated his tests and treatments in the United States. The company states very clearly on its website that patients who go with them should not expect reimbursement from their provincial health care plan. Still, Mr. McCreith asked Ontario for money. When the province said "no," he threatened to sue, with the backing of the Canadian Constitution Foundation (CCF). The CCF promotes two-tier health care through court challenges. Mr. McCreith's so-called Charter challenge isn't about "fighting for the rights of all patients."

Public health care is the most cost-effective way to ensure health care is available for everyone. Private health care -- the "solution" suggested by Dr. Fullerton -- will only lead to more doctor shortages and longer wait times.

Guy Caron, Ottawa
The Council of Canadians

http://www.canadians.org/publications/CP/2007/summer/healthcare.html

The Canadian Constitution Foundation, an organization that openly seeks to use the Charter of Rights to strike down Canada’s so-called “medicare monopoly,” is funding both Murray and McCreith’s legal challenges.

These two court challenges are thinly disguised attempts to wedge the door open for further privatization of health care in Canada. Both Murray and McCreith were wealthy enough to pay significant sums of money to access quicker treatment. Now they are asking taxpayers to foot the bill, even though they voluntarily forked out the cash to jump ahead of the queue. And like Quebec businessman Jacques Chaoulli, they are using the court system to try to change government policy to suit their interests.

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/westcoastnews/story.html?id=272935e1-04fa-4bd8-ac41-8d6183d77c0b&p=1

VERNON - Shirley Healey has a $41,000 US bill from a hospital stay in Bellingham, but after having her surgery cancelled twice in Kelowna -- with no guarantee it wouldn't happen again -- she has no regrets about going to the U.S., because her health has been restored.

Now she wants the B.C. health care system to help defray her costs.

... on Sept. 25 and then again on Oct. 6, the operation was cancelled at the last minute in Kelowna, due to emergency cases which took precedence over Healey's. ...

... On Oct. 6, after he had run out of his weekly allotment of operating room time, Ellett found out that the hospital in Kamloops could offer the surgery, but the frustrated Healey decided to go to the U.S. instead, because she couldn't face the prospect that an emergency case might cancel her operation a third time. She made a beeline to Timely Medical Alternatives, a Vancouver company that connects Canadian patients to American hospitals.

I guess that never happens in the U.S. Of course, I'm sure that the private facility she went to in the U.S. doesn't handle emergency cases at all.

http://www.cbc.ca/cp/health/061115/x111521A.html

TORONTO (CP) - A company that refers patients to private health-care clinics in Canada and the U.S. is trying to raise money from private hospitals to "sponsor" a threatened lawsuit against the Ontario government that it hopes could open the door to two-tier health care in Canada.

Richard Baker, president of the Vancouver-based Timely Medical Alternatives Inc., said his company wants to sue the province on behalf of a 66-year-old Ontario man who went to Buffalo, N.Y., for an MRI and surgery to remove a cancerous brain tumour.

But Baker said he doesn't have the $25,000 needed to file the suit, so he's publicizing the case in the hopes of raising the cash from private health-care providers who want to see an expansion of two-tier care.

"People who are proposing to operate a private hospital in Ontario and have been shut down because of the Canada Health Act, they may well wish to sponsor this lawsuit," Baker said.

All kinda does make it clear what it's really all about.

Profit.

As usual.

What it's really about, for anyone not in the loop, is the intense desire of U.S. medical services and insurance providers to get into the Canadian market, which at present is protected from them.

If private providers or insurers were permitted to provide services outside the plans, or coverage for services covered under the public plans, there would be no basis for excluding U.S. providers, under NAFTA.

That's what it's really all about.

[FormerDittoHead]

59. Thank you for your wonderful, informative post. n/t

[iverglas]

61. you're welcome!

I was actually pretty sure what I was going to think about it, I just had to find the facts. ;)

It's worth noting that the current head of the Canadian Medical Association (the private voluntary group doctors may join to promote their own interests and of course the public interest, not the professional governing body for doctors) is the owner of a private clinic in British Columbia that skates on the edge of legality.

Lots of good critique of the Canadian system from the left can always be found here:

http://www.healthcoalition.ca/

... all of it, annoyingly, in pdf format ...

This one might be of particular interest:

http://policyalternatives.ca/documents/BC_Office_Pubs/bc_2007/why_wait_surgical_waitlists.pdf
Why Wait? Public Solutions to Cure Surgical Waitlists
New report co-published by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and the British Columbia Health Coalition (May 2007)

There's also:

http://www.openmedicine.ca/article/view/8/1
http://www.openmedicine.ca/article/viewFile/8/15
New Report: Canadian versus U.S. Health Care
Canadian system has lower death rates, provides equal or better care, and costs taxpayers half as much!!

Abstract:
http://www.openmedicine.ca/article/view/8

Open Medicine, Vol 1, No 1 (2007)
Home > Vol 1, No 1 (2007) > Guyatt
A systematic review of studies comparing health outcomes in Canada and the United States

... Results: We identified 38 studies comparing populations of patients in Canada and the United States. Studies addressed diverse problems, including cancer, coronary artery disease, chronic medical illnesses and surgical procedures. Of 10 studies that included extensive statistical adjustment and enrolled broad populations, 5 favoured Canada, 2 favoured the United States, and 3 showed equivalent or mixed results. Of 28 studies that failed one of these criteria, 9 favoured Canada, 3 favoured the United States, and 16 showed equivalent or mixed results. Overall, results for mortality favoured Canada (relative risk 0.95, 95% confidence interval 0.92–0.98, p = 0.002) but were very heterogeneous, and we failed to find convincing explanations for this heterogeneity. The only condition in which results consistently favoured one country was end-stage renal disease, in which Canadian patients fared better.

Interpretation: Available studies suggest that health outcomes may be superior in patients cared for in Canada versus the United States, but differences are not consistent.

It might be noted, in that connection, that the criteria that outfits like the Frasier Institute (right-wing think tank) use in their comparisons are very carefully cherry-picked to disfavour Canada, and are not necessarily closely connected with actual health outcomes in large numbers of cases.

[Canuckistanian]

62. I'm seeing a pattern here with this 'Timely Medical Alternatives Inc.'

They seem to find these people who want to challenge the system. At a price.

Here's an article that mentions them:

Want Runaway Health Costs? Encourage Private Surgical Clinics

Grabbing for 'market share' It's public hospitals that contain spending.
By Colleen Fuller
Published: December 8, 2006

Premier Gordon Campbell launched B.C.'s Health Care Conversation by suggesting that public involvement in health care is no longer sustainable at current levels of funding -- and that we should consider a larger role for private insurers and private providers. But according to B.C.'s finance ministry, public health expenditures increased from 6.1 per cent in 1984 to 6.9 per cent of GDP in 2005. This is hardly evidence of a public spending crisis.

~snip

The British Medical Journal reported in 2004, for example, that the National Health Service was charged 47 per cent more for hip replacements performed in private surgical clinics than for the same procedures provided in public hospitals. In 2002/03, a coronary bypass operation cost an extra 91 per cent in a private clinic in England compared to a non-profit hospital.

The experience in Canada is similar. For example, hip replacement surgery in a non-profit hospital in Alberta last year cost a reported $10,000. Hip replacement surgery in a for-profit clinic, according to Timely Medical Alternatives (which facilitates access to the clinics), can cost up to $21,780. In Canada's public hospital system, knee replacement surgery, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information, averages $8,002 compared to between $14,000 and $18,000 in a private surgical facility.

http://thetyee.ca/Views/2006/12/08/PrivateSurgery/

[iverglas]

63. good one

Follow the money, always the best place to start.

Reminds me of the current lawsuit in the US by that handful of average fed-up residents of DC to get the local firearms laws struck down ... who were assembled, and whose action is being funded by, the Cato Institute.

There used to be ethical rules in the legal profession against champerty and maintenance --

http://www.overlawyered.com/archives/002548.html

At common law, champerty (supplying clients with money in exchange for a share in the action) and maintenance (supplying them with money in order to keep their lawsuits going) were both offenses, but the prohibitions have tended to fall into disuse or to be repealed outright in recent times.

-- and sometimes one wishes they were still applied.

But then, one has to take the unintended adverse effects with the good. Public interest legal actions (that most individuals could not afford to finance themselves) are important -- like all the fundamental rights and equality rights court challenges that have achieved so much good in Canada. It's just nauseating to see profit-seeking and right-wing agenda-pushing disguised as public interest advocacy.

[Canuckistanian]

58. A consitutional challenge? I doubt it.

This is a case of a misdiagnosis, not a failure of the system.

The MRI waiting list isn't carved in stone. If there's a priority, you get an MRI within a week or so.
IMO, this physician was in error. It happens.

But this case, by itself, is not going to move any mountains. Almost everyone here realizes that this is the slipperiest of slopes.

Once you allow a second tier of healthcare in, it'll be damn near impossible to keep it from growing and taking over.

Plus, there's the little matter of the Canada Health Act. The Act actively discourages private, for-profit clinics outside the public system.

It would penalize any province or territory by withholding transfer funds earmarked for healthcare if the conditions of the Act are not met.

Some provinces have already violated the act and have paid for it by having their transfer funds reduced. So far, Ontario hasn't allowed for-profit clinics. There were some experiments, though, that ended up in scandal and lawsuits by greedy operators.

I doubt if this case will convince anyone to change a cherished part of our identity.

[walldude]

69. I never have to wait...

of course I have no insurance so I don't get any care either. But I sure don't have to wait!