Public Service Alliance of Canada BC

The Globe & Mail, Aug 16 2006

The Canadian Medical Association has recently recommended that private competition be introduced into medicare by allowing physicians to bill patients (or private insurance plans) for services that are covered by medicare, and allowing medicare to purchase covered services from for-profit private facilities.

Those who champion privatization claim these modifications of Canada’s publicly funded health-care system would save money, help eliminate waiting times and possibly even improve the quality of care.

Policy-makers need only look to the United States for the evidence such claims have no merit. The U.S. experience shows that private, for-profit medical insurance and investor-owned medical facilities are a bad deal for the public, and that a health-care system that encourages physicians to behave like private entrepreneurs leads to extravagant costs.

Those who would deny this obvious evidence are either blinded by unshakable faith in market ideology or are biased by their interests in businesses that profit from the privatization of health care.

Read more at globeandmail.com.