CKNW Editorial
for September 18, 2000

So we have an enquiry into the doctors situation from the NDP – Judy Korbin again. And we had the premier, last week on this show, pledging his undying loyalty to the publicly funded health care system.

The day before the premier’s visit here we had opposition leader Gordon Campbell giving us his pledge to the same system while announcing that the Liberals would tour the province and find out what the people wanted – within the confines of the public system, of course.

This is like a person doing everything he possibly can to cover up recurring spots without seeking the source of those spots.

It’s time it was spelled out carefully so we all know where we stand. We do not have a government monopoly on healthcare now. A very substantial part of the cost of healthcare is funded privately.

Start with chiropractors, naturopaths, physiotherapists, acupuncturists and the like who are partly paid out of public funds but very substantially funded by the individual user. There are senior citizens and other long term care facilities which take in a lot of private money, especially in the capital costs area.

There are uninsured services which must be borne privately.

There are clinics like Dr Brian Day’s which mysteriously perform surgery outside the plan and there is the burgeoning eye surgery business where laser surgery can be and often is paid for by the patient entirely. One of my close family is to have laser surgery on cataracts and will have it done within days of the appointment to take the measurements. I can afford it so why should we wait 6-9 months for MSP and add one more person to that waiting list? There are the private medical plans which somehow get athletes into surgery within hours of the need instead of months.

Moreover, the reasons there are long delays in surgeries are many. Doctors timetables, shortage of nurses and shortage of operating theaters, especially the latter are amongst the reasons.

Now let me say again that I’m not for turning the medical system over to the private sector. Even if one could demonstrate that this is a good idea it would never work in Canada where we have built our entire system on another basis. What I do ask is this … if we already use private medicine to ease some of the strains on the system can we not find other places it can help? Are Canadians such idiots that they can’t do this without surrendering the system to American insurance companies?

But I get back to the hearings proposed by the premier and the leader of the opposition. Both are no doubt, in themselves, not bad ideas. But they miss the point which is that Canadians ought to have all the facts in front of them and have an informed national debate on just what sort of system they want, It’s foolish to simply repeat the mantra that Medicare is what we want when year by year we nip away at its edges. Canadians are not dumb. In fact they vote with their wallets every year for some involvement of the private sector as they use bits of it and pay for it out of their own pockets.

As long as the debate is one where the left can shout down those who would amend the system by screams that the Yanks are coming … as long as we remain in ignorance of what others have done and are trying … we will continue to struggle with a system we can’t afford – except by yielding in an undisciplined way to bits here and bits there of private money slipping in.