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Canadian Health-Care Groups Vow to Fight Move Towards Private System

Posted on: Thursday, 18 August 2005, 21:00 CDT

EDMONTON (CP) - A move by Canada's doctors to support a parallel, private health care system is a wake-up call to Canadians and politicians to move quickly to protect medicare, national health advocacy groups warned Thursday.

Members of the Canadian Medical Association, who say they're frustrated with long wait times for patients, decided in a vote at their annual meeting in Edmonton this week that patients who can't get timely care in the public system should be allowed to use private insurance.

"I'm hoping it will wake Canadians up to get more active politically," said Michael McBane, national co-ordinator for the pro-medicare Canadian Health Coalition.

"We now need political leadership to protect our public health care system from the elites in Canada who are trying to take it away," he warned in an interview from his office in Ottawa.

McBane argued that supporting a parallel, private health system has little to do with cutting wait times and a lot to do with lining doctors' pockets.

"It seems to me they're putting their economic interests ahead of their patients because all the evidence shows that the two-tiered system that they're advocating actually produces longer wait times," he said.

The federal government should strictly enforce the Canada Health Act and make doctors either opt in or out of the publicly funded health care system, said McBane, so physicians can't double-dip.

Other groups predicted the decision will create a controversy that could catapult health care onto the main stage for the next federal election.

"If we thought health care was the number 1 priority last federal election, this winter we'll see an even stronger stand," said Linda Silas, president of the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions.

She said advocacy groups will now have to work harder to mobilize the Canadian public and politicians to preserve and improve the public medicare system.

But Silas doubts doctors alone will end up changing the face of health care.

"The CMA, as powerful as they are, they will not change the system. It will be a politician," she said.

"Politicians want to get re-elected, so they won't change the system."

Lucille Auffrey, executive director of the Canadian Nurses Association, maintains that helping to solve staffing shortages and allowing nurses and pharmacists to perform more tasks are ways to fix medicare.

But she said CMA members are off base in attacking what her group believes is a fundamental Canadian value.

"What's wrong with our colleagues here? They have not got the solution right at all," Auffrey said.

An Ottawa emergency room physician huddled in the pouring rain with a small group of protesters in downtown Edmonton Thursday to call for more support for public health care.

Dr. Atul Kapur admitted he's disappointed with the way his colleagues voted on the issue at the CMA meeting.

"They've been fighting for 10 years to get more resources, and right now they're grasping for any solution," he said.

"Even one that, in the end, will turn out worse for Canadians," he added.

But he rejects criticism of doctors' motives for examining a parallel, private system.

"I believe my colleagues are sincere about their compassion for their patients," he said.

Doctors are now recognizing what citizens of Alberta have been telling them for some time, said an Alberta government spokesman.

"Albertans want a public-health care system that offers more choice and better access," said David Dear, an Alberta Health and Wellness spokesman.

Pilot projects in Calgary, Edmonton and Red Deer, has contracted out hundreds of hip and knee surgeries to private clinics - something the Alberta government hopes could cut wait times by up to 6 months.

Alberta is also studying whether it's practical to set up a private insurance scheme that would allow Albertans to purchase extra health insurance for non-emergency procedures.

Iris Evans, the province's health minister, is expected to report back to caucus on that issue in the fall.

Source: Canadian Press

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