A little known, jaw-dropping case before the B.C. Supreme Court is coming up in September.
If we (the public) lose, it could erase our Canadian public Medicare and replace it with a U.S.-style two-tier health-care system. It is being called the most significant constitutional challenge in Canadian history.
So significant for all of us that it is like thinking the unthinkable. How can that be! Are we really at risk of losing our public health-care system in 2014?
The attack is driven by Dr. Brian Day, owner of a Vancouver for-profit Cambie Surgery Centre. Dr. Day claims that the defining principle at the heart of Canadian Medicare “that health services be provided according to patient needs, not their ability to pay” is unconstitutional, claiming that these rules violate the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Dr. Day has been exposed by a provincial audit for unlawfully billing both taxpayer and patient for money.
In one case, a patient was billed $7,215 for services that would only have cost $1,288.04 in the B.C. health-care system. Auditors also found over $66,000 in overlapping claims evidence of double dipping for the same service. In 30 days of billing, it was found patients were unlawfully extra-billed $491,654. However, some people believe that having more private for-profit clinics would relieve the public system and improve wait times.
Evidence shows that when for-profit- delivery becomes part of the health-care system, it results in longer wait times for care. We know that doctors and nurses are drained from the public system to the for-profit system.
Think about the consequences if Dr. Day wins this case against the B.C. government’s provincial health legislation that limits the for-profit delivery of medical necessary services. The public system that Canadians rely on and overwhelmingly support will be dismantled across the country.
That is why the B.C. Health Coalition and Canadian Doctors for Medicare have joined this case as interveners.
Spread the news, your friends and neighbours may not know; put it on social media. Courts have an ear for public opinion. Get the full story at bchealthcoalition.ca and canadiandoctorsformedicare.ca.
Elsie Dean, Burnaby
