Top court strikes down Quebec private health-care law

The Supreme Court of Canada ruled Thursday that the Quebec government cannot prevent people from paying for private insurance for health-care procedures covered under medicare.

Even though I have no love for our system as it stands I alway hoped we would continue Public insurance but add private care..seems we will have the opposite??

/What I don't get about the whole mess is whats to stop me from going to the states and getting my knee fixed The goverment going to sue me or something ?If thats the case were living in a communist style state and things need to be changed

You can go anywhere you want to have you operation the problem is that until this ruling you could not buy insurance to cover it.. I am presently so pissed I can stand it. My Dad needs a complicated Hernia operation..not just the general type. He became aware of the hernia in Feb, he will not see a specialist until Nov. the set up for the operation who knows when?? If he could have had private insurance or I had an extra 20,000 bucks ha! I could have had him see a specialist in Pennsylvania in 3 days and book his operation in one week...Yep the U.S. system leaves some people out of it..but if thats the only difference then this country could just pay for thoses who can't pay and let the rest of us get it from work!!

I agree OB If you can pay the system would be better served .Not to mention your dad

And yet I have to put appointments off because they happen too quickly. Of course we never had to suffer through Mike Harris as premier here....

Thats not the case out here Rev

Man I love how everything continues to be Mike Harris's fault in Ontario it's getting a little lame. The reason there are few specilists in Ontario is two flod. One thew Peterson Liberals cut medical placements years ago and we are feeling the effect of it. and 2 the specialist that are here are overworked and can receive more money for less hours working in the States..so guess what they do....Yep some come back because they don't like the U.S. medical enviroment but most don't ..they stay. That leaves us with too few Doctors seeing a progressivle older population.

Besides all this Rev, you guys are alway convenient when it comes to health care. A federal proplem becomes a provincial one and a provincial problem becomes a federal one whenever convinient. The Federal Gov is the one who ripped all the moeny out of health care then slammed Provincial governments when the did what they had to do to deal with it.

I have no doubt that this is a federal problem that started under Mulroney and got worse when Martin was Finance Minister. I also doubt that happened by accident...I think the underfunding was a purposeful attempt to destroy medicare. It ties in so nicely with free trade.

Martin has been forced to back-pedal on that because it is so unpopular though.

The waiting times in Ontario have a lot to do with the cuts that Harris made though...not just to health care, but to education. We have waiting times here too, and a shortage of GPs, but the waiting times aren't as bad for most things. Being a smaller province with less money, there is a reason for that...and it ain't that everybody is young and healthy.

Peterson may have cut placements, but Harris did too, and deeper. Harris did it when it was already apparent there was a crisis. So did Filmon here.

This ruling today will either lead to a two-tiered system where the rich get better care than the poor, or it will kick the government in the ass enough that they actually fund health care properly.

Well guess what Rev..whe partially agree. I don't have any time for two tiered healthcare either. I don't like private insurance I have personally seen how an employee can be fired at a U.S. company because they are draining the provider to that company. Of course when this happens it is at the time that that person needed the coverage. Now with that said I see no reason why we should not us private providers of service if they are more effective or cheaper..As long as it's gov. insurance paying for it....Before you jump all over me as usual ..you must admit than this system as it stands is not working very well. I would like to knoiw what you would like to see...and not who caused the problem?? eh hmm whats that

RB,

I'm back after a long hiatus!!!

Just to let you know your perfect system in Manitoba had my mother waiting over 4 months for serious cancer surgery! I was just in to see a specialist yesterday and boy is he ticked at how the government is treating health care.

We had a long talk and both agreed that it is time that the system changed to allow those who have the money to spend it in Canada rather than cross the border and spend the money in the US.

Let's face it, the rich are going to spend money to have quicker access to health care. Why can't we come up with a system that keeps that money in our own health care system. How does it hurt you if someone uses a machine that is normally sitting idle???

This notion of "Canada doesn't have two-tiered health care" has been a fallacy for far to long. Its here, let's deal with it in a reasonable fashion.

The first thing to do is cut costs and the time spent. Here's one example...

Tuesday I went Health Sciences. They sucked enough blood out of me to leave me light-headed, cut me three times to see how long I bleed for, and had me piss in a cup. It took longer to get checked in than it did to have the tests taken.

To get to that stage, I had to see my GP for a referral.

The tests are unneccessary. I already know what the results will be and so does everybody in my family...it's a genetic condition and all the men have lived with it all of our lives. I've had similar tests before, but things are more modern and accurate now. The doctor has to cover his ass too. If I died on him and he hadn't done the tests, he could be in trouble.

Now, when those tests are done and they want to give me the results, I have to go see a doctor again. This time it will be a different specialist. The results will also be sent to my GP and the first specialist.

After all of that, they can perform a minor procedure. All these tests are just to pick a medication I need before the procedure. Depending which medication they choose, it might be an out-patient thing or they might keep me in overnight to load me up with an IV drip.

Now, if the system was changed slightly I could go in and say, "When my uncle had this done they gave him these pills and it was fine." At that point I should be able to sign a waiver. That would also keep the bastards from locking me up where I can't smoke for a night.

At the very least, they could give me my test results on the phone, or e-mail them to me, or mail them to me, or whatever. The problem is that it takes time for the doctors and/or their staff to do that. They don't get paid unless you show up in person though. If they could bill a lesser amount to give results by phone or mail, it would save money and time.

The supreme court ruling was in respect to the Quebec law preventing private health care. In respect to the health act the court was split evenly with one abstaining, thus it did not immediately change the health act but it will force change upon it and a precedent for even more rulings. Clearly the Liberals answer which was to throw more money at it and hope it goes away (41 billion over 10 years. 4.5 Billion toward wait lines) is not a solution. The supreme court has forced the governments hand and now they will have to do something a long last.

How the heck can a judge abstain???? I assume they have an odd number of judges on each case just in case there is a tie. We all know that the current health care laws are against the constitution but for some reason the supreme court didn't want to come and say it so one of them disappears????

Just goes to show you that the Left have everyone wrapped around their finger!!! Even the supposedly unbiased Supreme Court Justices.

Usually he just makes his wife mad. Kind of a forced abstention, but an abstention none the less.

I am of the opinion that a Canadian Two-tierd Health Care system could potentially be the biggest boon for the service, however the worry is that since the specialists will then have a choice of starting a publicly run system and earn what the gov't gives them, or running a private facility and earning whatever they feel like, which path would they be more inclined to follow.

I think a solution along the lines of half public/half private where an individual specialist can see as many patients in a day as they can fit, but they are able to charge the gov't what they think is fair for the procedures they do during the day.

Or maybe even a system such as E.I. where a (designated by you to your employer) % of your paycheck goes to your own gov't run "Health Insurance fund" and you can draw from that to pay for health care. Sort of like public-ifying a private health care insurance provider.

Or maybe specialists / GP's would be able to ask the patient if they'd like to pay out of pocket or not and bill accordingly, providing they make it known that out of pocket will put them in a different (shorter) waiting line than a publicly paid for patient.

Anyway, i'm just brain storming here, i'm sure there are many numbers of potential problem solvers here but our genius liberals in power can't seem to sit down and work out a solution with the provinces with all these other scandals they have to deal with in the mean time.

Just so you know I do think the Liberals can fix this, they just need some serious support and input from all parties and, most importantly, individual Canadians. But that's why minority governments exist right?

Sounds like they may invoke the notwithstanding clause if the Supreme court does not give them two years to implement it.

Martin is in a tough place on this one. He is the guy who cut most of the funding and created the problem in the first place.

Yup he is.

Two tier will not be good for Canada as I believe a lot of good doctors would go work for priviate companies and cater to the ones who can afford to pay for it.

I don't think it will go two tier...that's election suicide. We're already 70% public, 30% private (France is 80%/20%) so they have no way to sell it.

My guess is that funding will start to rise and we'll start to see the money saving parts of the Romanow Report being brought into play.

Too funny..Martin who would avoid the NWC when it comes to same sex marriage is now urged to use it for this rulling...

It's there own damn fault this happened. I am not much for private insurance but if that had allowed private delivery and paid for it with public funds we wouldn't have this problem right now...

The real downfall was when things became completely free and people lost the notion of cost related to their care. Even Tommy Duoglas wanted some sort of user fee even minor to keep people aware..Now where are we??

Btw, private does not have to mean U.S. style..most of the world uses some sort of mix..there's a reason most of the world doesn't have public only ..we are living proof of why this was a bad idea

I guess I was not too clear, apologies. Not Martin invoking it but the (lame duck) Quebec liberal government is considering invoking the notwithstanding clause.

I must add why were there only 7 judges hearing this. I know they use as few as five at times, but since this was such an important issue, I believe all 9 should of been hearing it. It was a 4-3 decision and I wonder how it may or may not of turned out if all nine were hearing it, would it be 6-3? 5-4? or 5-4 the other way? .....any thoughts?

It's not that simple. Who would pay for those who could not afford private health? It would have to be the people who pay for private health... so they would be paying both for public and private health. Pretty soon, those people would get angry, marginalise those who couldn't pay for healthcare, and all of a sudden, there's not enough funding for public health. Then you have what there is in the US... the haves and the have-nots. Versus the concept of everyone has something.

The best thing to do is to work on improving medicare from all angles so that people like your dad don't have to wait so long. That means more funding, more doctors, and cleverer techniques to lower demand (i.e. more preventative care, community clinics for common maladies, etc...). Even now, your dad may have to wait nine months for his operation (and let's hope that time gets reduced)... but that still puts him in the ranks of the world's lucky few who have access to that kind of operation at all. I can understand being annoyed, but it's not life-threatening, and to suggest scrapping one of the world's most enviable health care systems because you have to wait a bit is just a little bit spoiled, don'tcha think?

There are several way we can improve medicare and reduce wait times.

McDonald

I think Ottawabill wrote that about six months ago.

Oh, I guess I should have looked at the date... Well, I hope everything turned out all right for his dad.