Canadians pride themselves on their publicly funded healthcare system, so it stung when Donald Trump singled us out in a recent presidential debate for traveling south to the US to pay for medical procedures (even if medical tourism is a reality, at least for some people who live here).
Now, the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) is calling on the Minister of Health to give more teeth to the existing law and to “punish violations” by levying fines, in order to stop privatization from sneaking into universal healthcare.
Canada is grappling with the fate of its publicly funded system. In September, orthopedic surgeon and former Canadian Medical Association president Brian Day launched a legal challenge against the B.C. government to lift a ban on private insurance, which he says violates patients’ rights by forcing them to endure long waiting times for medical services.
If Day is successful, the CMAJ warns, it could be the beginning of the end for our cherished single-payer system.
Editors at the CMAJ acknowledge the current system has problems, like its notoriously long wait times—one woman in Quebec waited nine years for a medical appointment. A consequence of this, they say, is the emergence of a two-tiered system that allows well-off people to opt for private treatment abroad, or here in Canada, which has seen private clinics springing up alongside the rise of extra billing for certain procedures.