In Canada: A Private health care option
October 7th, 2009 | by Brian Schwartz |From the Los Angeles Times:
In British Columbia, private clinics and surgical centers are capitalizing on patients who might otherwise pay for faster treatment in the U.S. The courts will consider their legality next month.
…
Hoping to capitalize on patients who might otherwise go to the U.S. for speedier care, a network of technically illegal private clinics and surgical centers has sprung up in British Columbia, echoing a trend in Quebec. In October, the courts will be asked to decide whether the budding system should be sanctioned.
More than 70 private health providers in British Columbia now schedule simple surgeries and tests such as MRIs with waits as short as a week or two, compared with the months it takes for a public surgical suite to become available for nonessential operations.
“What we have in Canada is access to a government, state-mandated wait list,” said Brian Day, a former Canadian Medical Assn. director who runs a private surgical center in Vancouver. “You cannot force a citizen in a free and democratic society to simply wait for healthcare, and outlaw their ability to extricate themselves from a wait list.”
Yet the move into privatized care threatens to make the delays — already long from the perennial shortage of doctors and rationing of facilities — even longer, public healthcare advocates say. There will be fewer skilled healthcare workers in government hospitals as doctors and nurses are lured into better-paying private jobs, they say. …
In many ways, the prospect of private investment is alluring in British Columbia, where the provincial government, like those all across Canada, funds the healthcare system. Provincial officials recently announced a $360-million shortfall in the $15.7-billion healthcare budget for the fiscal year that ends in March.
The shortage will mean fewer surgeries and longer waits.
The Vancouver Island Health Authority has said it would reduce the number of nonemergency MRIs by 20%; nonemergency patients now are being booked for scans in March [article published Sept. 27].
Read the whole article: In Canada, a move toward a private healthcare option.
(via Galen.org)
tags: Canada health
