Murray Soupcoff:
THE LAWSUIT THAT COULD REVOLUTIONIZE CANADIAN HEALTH CARE AS WE KNOW IT
By Marni Soupcoff, National Post Newspaper, Toronto Canada, May 29, 2014
Last week, I read an email asking for money to help defeat a “dangerous legal challenge” that will “weaken the Canadian economy.”
The scourge that had got the sender into such a lather? A lawsuit based on the audacious premise that Canadians who are suffering or dying on a wait list should be able to pay to access the health care they need.
Pay for our own care, or that of a loved one? Why it’s virtually sacrilege to even think it. That would be “U.S.-style” care, the email explained — a label that is supposed to end all debate.
But the debate is happening anyway. And that is driving Medicare purists such as the above-quoted e-mailer (B.C. Healthcare Coalition co-chair Rick Turner) nuts.
As the “Toronto Star” newspaper reported last month, Toronto doctor Danielle Martin (whose telling-off of a U.S. Republican senator spawned a viral YouTube clip earlier this year) saw fit to warn a union gathering that this legal case is “the biggest threat to [Canada’s] medicare system in this generation.”
Given the rhetoric, you might think that some bogeyman is trying to take “free” health care away from Canadians.
But here’s what’s actually happening:
Four British Columbians who suffered real physical harm while waiting for access to health care will be in court in September, along with Vancouver’s Cambie Surgical Centre, arguing for all Canadians’ right to make their own healthcare choices. That includes paying out of pocket, or through private insurance, for an MRI or other crucial test or surgery if the government can’t make it available when it’s needed.
These plaintiffs aren’t individuals out to destroy Canada’s public healthcare model. They are human beings who have been forced to pay with their own well being [health], or even their lives, for an abstract government-imposed ideal.
Three of the plaintiffs in the case are teenagers whose young lives already have been negatively shaped by the ban on accessing private care. They include:
Walid Waitkus, a 16-year-old with progressive spine deformity, who was paralyzed after a 27-MONTH wait for care;
Chris Chiavatti (18-years-old) who suffered permanent damage while waiting for treatment of his knee injury.
Mandy Martens who saw her colon cancer spread while she languished on a WAIT LIST.
And note that TWO other British Columbians were originally part of the action, but they DIED waiting for the case to go to trial.
These plaintiffs aren’t individuals out to destroy Canada’s public healthcare model. They are human beings who have been forced to pay with their own well being and lives for an abstract government-imposed ideal that has long since ceased working in practice.
These aren’t people asking for “U.S.-style” care. They are patients asking for the healthcare choice that is available to residents of every other democracy in the world except Canada [and North Korea]:
They are simply asking for the option to pay for needed treatment, to end or reduce their own suffering, if the government can’t end or reduce it for them.
As the executive director of the Canadian Constitution Foundation, which is supporting the constitutional challenge, I have heard many arguments against the case. Most of them declare that a system in which everyone can pay privately for access to timely healthcare is inferior to a system in which the government pays for access to timely healthcare for everyone.
As the B.C. Healthcare collation puts: “Canadians take pride in a system that looks after all of us when we need it.”
The problem is that this venerated system, which “looks after all of us when we need it,” DOES NOT EXIST IN CANADA.
If it did, it would have looked after Walid, Chris and Mandy, and there would not be 1-million other Canadians currently waiting for necessary health care.
But isn’t paying for private care “queue jumping”? A better metaphor for seeking to pay for one’s own care is removing oneself from the queue entirely and thereby shortening the wait for everyone else. Which is not such a terrible thing. Indeed, it may be the only thing that will relieve enough pressure on the public system to allow it to deliver care (specialists, diagnostics, procedures, surgeries) when it’s needed.
A lawsuit that seeks to empower Canadians to care for their own health will be seen as a “dangerous legal challenge” only by those who value “medicare” as a CONCEPT, more than they value the VICTIMS it is supposed to serve.
What is ultimately more compassionate? A system that proudly eschews private money while holding its patients hostage; or a system that guarantees public funding while allowing its patients to choose their own path to health?
[Marni Soupcoff is executive director of the Canadian Constitution Foundation, which is supporting the Cambie constitutional challenge in B.C. You can reach her by e-mail at: msoupcoff @theCCF.CA]
MY OWN RESPONSE:
Well, I told she knows what she’s talking about.
But it’s not out of paternal pride that I include this important commentary on these pages.
No, it’s because I think it’s a warning to American’s, in particular, where they’re headed in the future — unless the Obama/Pelosi/Reid unaffordable “affordable health care act” (aka OBMACARE) juggernaut isn’t halted very soon.
Yes, welcome to the very systemic abuses that Democrat apologists have insisted can’t happen: (1) health-care rationing by nameless bureaucrats; (2) systemic abuses, similar to the current VA Administration scandal, including the UNNECESSARY DEATHS of patients — but in this case, the toll could be in the MILLIONS; and (3) ultimately the greatest scourge of socialized medicine — DEATH PANELS.
Well, they can forget it. First, allowing individuals to pay to get off of waiting lists smacks of favoring the wealthy, allowing people of means to use what they can afford rather than politely dying on waiting lists like the rest of the common folk. Secondly, show all the cash you want, but if there is no room at the inn, you are wasting your time and money. Lastly, in the view of a socialistic government, these people probably can’t contribute much to the collective, so it would be just as well if they just went ahead and died.
Meanwhile in the US: HHS board rules transgender Medicare recipients can seek coverage for sex-change surgery
Yet, those on medicare have had pharmaceutical coverage cut for many medications that they need. This shows where the Democrat’s priorities are in healthcare.
Why would anyone think that Obama Care will be any different? The VA medical system is operated much like the Canadian system. Canada has legislated out free choice. Now where are those pesky lefties who are going to show us how different Obama Care is from the Canadian system after their fearless leader has extolled that system in his “If you like, you can keep”
speecheslies.I do know of a difference of hospital care, my niece had a medical plan paid at her job,
in a lawyer firm,
she used it every time she needed it and had a priority entry in front of the people,
she never had to wait in line,
as opose to my sister once needed to have her blood cloge on her leg checked,
i accompany her, she was hurting because of it, after one hour, i went in the space where the doctors are,
i just open the door, and was told to shut it and go back to my seat, i told them she waited one hour,
and they just said to wait more, after 5 hour total, i went back and open that door, telling them that i will report all of them publicly, that was the magic sentence, one doctor said to other , i will take her,
it told me enough to keep away from that system as much as i could, she end up having the care she deserved,