I think this is a mistake, and I am not wealthy by any description.
IMO, the waiting times in Alberta, and the rest of the country are caused by one or two problems, or both: Lack of doctors and lack of facilities. My thought is that if there are private hospitals provided, and we can have surgeries done at these facilities, with the cost coming from the public system at the same cost as the same procedure done in a public hospital, what is wrong with that? For instance, if Doctor A works in the Calgary Public Hospital (just a name, not really a hospital), and Doctor B has put up money to build and run Doctor B's Hospital, and the cost of a surgery for, say, a knee replacement is $20,000 (I have no idea what the actual cost is, just using a number), and if a patient can be sent to Doctor Bs hospital who will be paid $20k for the knee replacement, same as Doctor A does in the Calgary Public, what is the problem? Both places get paid the same, from the same source, but now we have two facilities instead of one. No one jumps a que, its just the next in line.
Using private facilities for publicly funded medical procedures for the same cost cannot be bad, and opens up a new avenue for these procedures to be performed.
Alternatively, here is another option. Instead of our surgical beds operating less than 24 hours a day, should we not insist that our publicy funded public hospitals operate around the clock, and if you surgery gets scheduled for 3:00 am, thats the luck of the draw? Why do we accept that our MRI's and CT machines operate only 8 - 10 hours per day for the public? Surely in a system that provides a publicly funded system we should demand nothing less than 24/7 medical coverage?
The insurance provision is already in place in Canada for many employees, and also for people who already purchase private insurance, such as Blue Cross.