Private health care for Quebec - Political Discussion

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Ancalagon
AgnosticLibertarian

Registered: 07/30/02
Posts: 1,364
Last seen: 15 years, 2 months

Private health care for Quebec

#4287457 - 06/12/05 03:44 PM (18 years, 10 months ago)

Private health care for Quebec
High court strikes down ban; universal system threatened

OTTAWA -- Canada's highest court struck down Thursday a Quebec law banning private health insurance, paving the way for private clinics and threatening Canada's universal health-care system.

CANADIAN HEALTH CARE
Canada's Medicare system arose from a 1984 law that affirmed the federal government's commitment to provide mostly free health care for all, including immigrants.

Most polls indicate that Canadians support the system despite the taxes needed to finance it, seeing it as a marker of egalitarianism and independent identity that sets their country apart from the United States, where millions of people lack health insurance.

But in recent years the system has been plagued by long waiting lists and a lack of doctors, nurses and state-of-the-art equipment. Some patients wait months for surgery, MRI machines are scarce and many Canadians travel to the United States for treatment.

Under the Canadian system, it is illegal to seek faster treatment by paying out of pocket for public care. Private health clinics have sprouted up for those Canadians willing to spend their own money. They are illegal, though some provincial governments tend to look the other way, especially for minor treatments.

By the Associated Press

"The evidence in this case shows that delays in the public health-care system are widespread and that in some serious cases, patients die as a result of waiting lists for public health care," the Canadian Supreme Court ruled.

"In sum, the prohibition on obtaining private health insurance is not constitutional where the public system fails to deliver reasonable services."

Although the unanimous ruling applies only to Quebec, it is sure to bring similar cases to other Canadian provinces and act as a catalyst for a growing movement pushing for both public and private care.

Lower courts had ruled that although the law violated the constitution, it had to remain in place to protect public health.

"This is the end of Medicare as we know it," said John Williamson, federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers' Federation, which pushed for private health care. "It's also the beginning of better care."

The decision paves the way for lawsuits to be filed in Canada's other provinces and puts the country on a path toward the kind of two-tier health-care system found in most European countries, Williamson said.

"We're not going to have a two-tier health-care system in this country; nobody wants that," Prime Minister Paul Martin said Thursday. "What we want to do is to strengthen the public health-care system."

Last September, Martin promised spending to help reduce the wait patients endure when seeking surgery and other treatments.

Creation of a private health-care system will benefit only wealthy people who can afford it, said Adam Natsheh, cochairman of the New Health Professionals Network, a lobby group that supports government-funded health care.

"Private insurance and private payment is no solution to the wait-list problem," Natsheh said. A private system "would only mean that the few Canadians who can afford it will buy their way to the front of the line."

Alberta provincial officials have long suggested that they wanted to develop a private health care system, while private diagnostic and special surgery clinics have been cropping up in Quebec, British Columbia and Ontario in recent years.

The federal government has threatened to hold back financial aid to provinces that pressed ahead with private health care.

The decision also may deter U.S. efforts to adopt a system based on the Canadian model, said John Graham, director of health-care studies at the Pacific Research Institute in San Francisco.

About 45 million Americans lack health insurance, according to an August 2004 report from the U.S. Census Bureau.

The Quebec case was brought to the Supreme Court by Jacques Chaoulli, a Montreal family doctor who argued his own case through the courts, and George Zeliotis, a chemical salesman who was forced to wait a year for a hip replacement, while he was prohibited from paying privately for surgery.

Chaoulli and Zeliotis lost in two provincial courts before the Supreme Court decided to take their appeal.

In a news conference, Chaoulli declared a victory and predicted that the decision would eventually apply to all Canada. "How could you imagine that Quebecers may live," he asked, "and the English Canadian has to die?"

Quebec will ask the Supreme Court to delay the implementation of the decision, while politicians consider their options, provincial Justice Minister Yvon Marcoux said.

--------------------
?When Alexander the Great visted the philosopher Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for him, Diogenes is said to have replied: 'Yes, stand a little less between me and the sun.' It is what every citizen is entitled to ask of his government.?
-Henry Hazlitt in 'Economics in One Lesson'

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