Canada: Private Health Care Continues to Erode

Prime Minister Stephen Harper pledged to enforce the Canada Health Act during the 2006 federal election, but has now spoken out in favour of for-profit health care delivery.

There’s something about Canada’s health care system that business leaders aren’t telling you. In fact, it’s Canada’s best kept secret.

Canada’s health system, studies continue to show that public health care is more efficient, cost effective, and better for patients’ health than any private model. Contrary to what for-profit promoters would have you believe, the Canadian health care “crisis” has been largely overblown, and the solutions to Canada’s health care problems can be achieved within the public system.

March 20, 2008

As reported by CBC News on March 12th, Nova Scotia Health Minister Chris d'Entremont announced that the province agreed to sign a one-year, $1-million contract that allows surgeons with the Capital District Health Authority to use operating-room facilities in Dartmouth, N.S., owned by Scotia Surgery Inc. This private orthopedic clinic is renting its facilities out at a rate of $500 an hour for 500 publicly-paid surgeries over the next year, starting in April 2008.

UPDATE (April 16, 2008): THE CONTRACT WAS OFFICIALLY SIGNED MARCH 28TH, 2008...

This contract marks the beginning of a slippery slope towards the privatization of our health care system in Nova Scotia.  

The False Creek Surgical Centre in Vancouver has announced that it will open an emergency department that will charge patients a fee for medically necessary procedures. The Minister of Health has known about the proposal for months but failed to take any measures to stop it. This comes only one day after news that the Kamloops Surgical Centre is allowing patients to pay to jump the queue to see specialists. Minister Abbott was caught unaware of these developments and he has refused to crack down on other private health care schemes at the Copeman Clinic in Vancouver and the Options Clinic in Victoria.

"Gordon Campbell has no choice but to replace Health Minister George Abbott," said James."His litany of failures, inaction and refusal to protect public health care has gone too far. In Crisis after crisis, Mr. Abbott proves to be ignorant and negligent. He needs to be held accountable for his failures to protect B.C.'s public health care system.

The decision by the provincial government to allow the Urgent Care Centre at the False Creek Surgical Centre to re-open means the debate over private health care in British Columbia is essentially over.

The Urgent Care Centre offers private medical care, pure and simple. Anyone can walk in the door, pay the requested fees and see a doctor. There is no quibbling over whether the treatment being sought is medically necessary as defined by the Canada Health Act.

B.C. Health Minister George Abbott says the clinic can operate legally under provincial statutes because it is totally outside the public system. Doctors who work there will not be billing the province. Patients will not be reimbursed by the Medical Services Plan for the fees they pay to use the clinics.

Canadian Health Coalition

The Canadian Health Coalition is a not-for-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to protecting and expanding Canada’s public health system for the benefit of all Canadians.

So private surgical clinics, led by Brian Day, are suing the BC government so they can charge patients for services that they, the patients, already pay for through their taxes.....I’d love to tell you what Dr Day said, but his sidekick, Zoltan Nagy, kicked me out.

  No doctor should be able to practice on both sides of the medicare fence. All that would be required is a simple amendment to the Medicare Protection Act.

Counterclaims against the five Plaintiff Clinic...Here, in handy point form, are the key allegations in the Counterclaim:

1. That Cambie Surgery (Day’s outfit) and the SRC have refused to provide information or allow audit inspectors on the premises so that the Medical Services Commission can determine whether these two companies have violated the Medicare Protection Act. The goverment has asked for an injunction “restraining Cambie and SRC from hindering, molesting or interfering” with inspectors who are trying to carry out the audit. 

2. That Cambie and the SRC charged patients for services listed on invoices as “surgery”, “overnight”, “administration fee surgery”, “facility fee”, “consultation/assessment”, “surgeon’s fee”, “anaesthetic fee”, “escort services” (escort services?), and “prepayment for surgery”. These services are either fully covered under MSP or, if charges are allowed, the charges exeeded the amount permitted. The government has asked for interim and permanent injunctions restraining Cambie and the SRC from violating medicare laws.

3. That the Extra Billing Clinics, jointly and individually, “have themselves been engaged in unlawful billing practices…and also have aided, abetted, assisted, and facilitated the unlawful billing practices of others who practised in the Exra Billing Clinics or who arranged payment through or with the participation of those facilities”.  

4. The government also alleges that patients were required to sign “Acknowledgement Forms” which falsely informed patients that the services for which they were being charged were not covered under the Medical Services Plan and committed patients to forego reimbursement from MSP or any other public agency. The waivers also forced patients to agree not to file any complaint with any government body regarding the circumstances of the benefits provided by the Extra Billing Clinics. Patients also undertook” not to disclose any information to any government regarding the particulars of the beneficiary’s surgery”, including costs. If the patient does disclose, the waiver “purports to require the beneficiaries to indemnify the Extra Billing Clihic for damages and costs arising from [the] disclosure”.