In Ontario, which is grappling with staffing shortages, temporary emergency room closures and surgical backlogs, more publicly covered surgeries will be performed at private clinics, Health Minister Sylvia Jones announced last month.
That announcement has reignited a long-standing debate over privatization of the Canadian health-care system, with other provinces weighing their options.
While some experts consider privatization a possible solution to staffing shortages and long wait times, others see it as a threat to public care.
“Canada is the only country in the world where it is illegal to obtain private health insurance when there are long wait-lists. That surely says something,” said Dr. Brian Day, medical director of Cambie Surgery Centre in Vancouver and past president of the Canadian Medical Association (CMA).
Day, whose private clinic in Vancouver has been up and running since June 1996, has long been advocating for a parallel private system in the province.
He launched a legal challenge to the B.C. Medicare Protection Act, saying wait times in the public health system are too long and stopping patients from paying for those services outside the public system violates their rights.
However, in their ruling, the judges accepted that the act’s provisions “deprived some patients’ right to security of the person by preventing them from accessing private care when the public system had failed to provide timely medical treatment.”
Days says the funding model needs to change in the country, adding that the “state-run monopoly” is killing Canadians.
“The promise was that we would have a universal system where everyone was treated, but people are dying on wait-lists,” he said.
Currently in Canada, the public sector pays for 75 per cent of the total health expenditures across the country, while 25 per cent comes from the private pool, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI).
Dr. Michael Rachlis, public health physician and adjunct professor at the University of Toronto, said privatization is not the solution as it creates inequalities, costs more and compromises quality of care.
“Privatization of anything would make no difference in the emergency room wait times next week or a year from now. It’s just zero difference. They’re completely different issues.”
