I respectfully disagree where the expansion
of two-tier health care would be a deathblow to Canadian
universal medicare if the provincial government strictly
controls the private sector's growth.
I have proposed to politicians across the
country, including federal Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh, to
enshrine in the Canada Health Act the concept of limited
two-tier health care where the universal public system would
always be the leading provider. In other words, the private
sector would always be smaller than the public sector.
In short, a provincial government, if it
decided, could limit the private sector presence in health care
to 25 percent of the total health care in their province.
However, by proposed law in the Canada Health Act, this private
sector limit must be less than 50 percent.
If wealthy persons are using private sector
health care for whatever reasons, this means they are not using
the public sector. This in turn means the government is not
spending taxpayer dollars taking care of the wealthy.
Ultimately, the government has three choices
when the rich are using private health care.
- Spend less and tax less (equal to the
amount the wealthy are not using the public system).
- Keep spending and taxation the same while
improving health-care service for the poor and all those who
cannot afford the private sector system.
- A combination of options one and two.
Here are the main principles of a limited
two-tier health care system I have developed:
- To guarantee the universal public health
sector is more dominant in the number of health-care
professionals and medical space, area versus the
private sector. The provincial private sector
cannot equal or exceed 50 percent of the total number of
health-care professionals and medical space area in a province.
Medical professionals cannot work in both the public and
private health-care sectors. Similarly, medical space cannot be
used by both the public and private sectors. A government
tendering process would be used in the distribution of private
medical labor licences and medical space
construction/sales/lease/rent agreements.
- To guarantee the complete separation of the
private and public health sectors except in cases when the
public sector immediately requires more capacity. The private
sector cannot refuse medical service requests made by the
public sector. The public sector would not be engaged in the
contracting out of public health care services except for the
mentioned reason and for essential-only cosmetic
surgeries.
- To guarantee private sector pricing as
unregulated except in cases where the public sector requests
medical services from the former. The private sector is in the
business to make profits in a competitive and price-unregulated
atmosphere.
- To ban cosmetic surgeries performed in the
public health sector. The public sector may contract the
private sector to perform these procedures in times of
necessity.
Though Dosanjh appears to be arrogantly smug
with regard to single-tier public universal health care in the
face of its crackdown by a dangerously divided Supreme Court of
Canada, expertly reflecting the attitude of his boss no doubt,
he may now secretly believe in the tooth fairy after previously
receiving the principles of limited two-tier health care to
save Canadian universal medicare and taxpayer dollars.
Yves Villeneuve
,
Sudbury