National Post – Oct. 25, 2010
Editorial: Health care choice for all
From Saskatchewan, cradle of medicare, comes news that members of the Roughriders football club there are able to queue-jump public MRI waiting lists by paying $4,500 to cover their scan and two others.
According to Bill Carney, spokesman for the Regina Qu’Appelle Health Region, the Riders use about six MRIS a year, which are scheduled where there have been cancellations, or after regular hours. The extra money actually allows the system to fund more after-hour scans, which can be offered to patients on the long waiting list. Has this provoked outrage? Public demonstrations and remonstrations?
Hardly.
“The Riders are a special case in Saskatchewan. We have the Rider nation,” Mr. Carney says. “There seems to be acceptance by the public.”
The Roughriders scenario illustrates everything that is wrong about the Canadian health-care arrangement, and everything that counsels for allowing parallel private delivery of such care. Some patients, including sports figures, whose livelihoods depend on being in top physical condition, cannot wait for MRIs, and have the means and desire to pay for them. (Less wealthy or “urgent” patients would also have access, were they allowed to purchase private health insurance.) The extra money the Roughriders currently pay increases access for other patients in the public system. Should more patients be allowed to go private – with or without paying “extra” fees – they would remove themselves from the public waiting lists, thereby reducing wait times for everyone.
The Roughriders aren’t the only group in Saskatchewan that gets speedier treatment than average. If a person is injured on the job, and treatment is covered by Workers’ Compensation, that person also moves closer to the front of the line for treatment. This is the case in other provinces as well. In other words, Canada already has “two-tier” health care — you just have to belong to the right category of sick people to access it.
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