Supreme Court Cracks the Dam on Private Health Care

You likely heard about the Supreme Court of Canada case released last week dealing with private health care.  A Quebec law prohibiting private health insurance was struck down as being unconstitutional. 

The upshot is that, in Quebec at least, you can now buy private health insurance and pay for private medical care.

The politicians say that this is not the “thin edge of the wedge” to a two-tier health care system.  Hogwash.  Thanks to the Supreme Court of Canada, welcome to American health care.  The proverbial dam is cracked.

I used to sit on a committee trying to recruit more family doctors to my city.  I learned a lot about our health care system.

Here are a few facts: 

Ontario (I don’t know about other provinces) has a shortage of family doctors.  One reason is that the method of compensating doctors favoured specialists over GPs.  A GP would get $16 for an appointment with a patient.  It did not matter if the appointment took an hour or five minutes.  It did not matter if you had five problems or just one.  Sixteen bucks. 

Many doctors started practicing exclusively in walk-in clinics.  Why?  With a whole lot of people waiting (no appointments, of course), you don’t expect to have more than a few minutes with the doctor.  More patients in a day equals a better paycheque.

Doctors now interview potential patients to see if they will be accepted.  In general, if you are old, have complicated diseases or need a lot of appointments, fuggeddaboudit. 

There are retirement homes that have offered free office space, fully furnished and even staffed, to doctors who would agree to work in their premises and see their residents (among others) as patients.  No takers.

Medical students have been focusing on being specialists, not GPs, partly because of the difference in earning potential.  With six figures in student loans, who can blame them?

Many GPs are leaving or cutting back family practice to work in research or clinical tests.  Those fields are not limited by OHIP’s pay scale. 

What do we think is going to happen with the delivery of medical services, now that two-tier health care is coming?  Many, many good doctors will only take on patients with private insurance or who are willing to pay cash.  OHIP doctors will become like legal aid lawyers:  rare and often regarded (fairly or not) as not good enough to work for paying clients. 

I may be proven wrong (see below), but I bet that we will come to regret the Supreme Court’s decision.

On another note, OK, I admit I was wrong.  Karla Homolka was slapped with a grocery list of conditions that will affect her mobility and freedom upon her release next month.  I still think that those conditions will make it harder for her to live a life without crime.  No matter what we think of her, making it more likely that people will commit crimes is NOT what we are supposed to be doing.