“We have no intention of not treating our patients, or telling people who are suffering in pain that we’ll do nothing for them,” [Dr. Brian Day] said. “So we’ve told the government, ‘Go get your injunction and we’ll see you in court.’
“We’re still waiting.” The Christy Clark government, represented by the B.C. Medical Services Commission, conducted an audit of Day’s clinic and concluded he was breaking the law by charging patients directly for publicly insured services.
[…]
“I’ve said all along that politicians of all stripes – NDP, Liberal, Conservative – union leaders, including leaders within the nurses’ union, high-profile people of all types – they’ve all been to our clinic for treatment.
“Yet, at the same time, many of these same people will say they don’t support the private sector in health care. There’s a lot of hypocrisy that goes on.”
The “system” is about money and control of it. Doctors who operate outside of it … are a threat to that system. So are patients … who are seen as liabilitiess to the system. The system will kill you if you are a liability.
Doctors and nurses who are employed by the “system” and stick up for it… do so to protect their own status within the system. Even politicians and bureaucrats who are the system … will not allow themselves to become statistics of their own system.
Ans so it goes … that those of us who PAY for the system are the ones being forced to die by the system.
How dare you?!! How dare you tell me that I am not allowed to spend my own money, on my own health, in my own country?!!! Torches and pitch forks!
He should refuse to treat any union nurses, especially when they jump the queue with a Worker’s Comp injury claim.
phil, could you explain how Day is ‘sucking from the public trough’ while taking a private fee?
You can’t do both. Either you charge the government for the treatment or you charge the patient. So?
Lets see if it is unconstitutional to deny a man to merry a man. Then it is unconstitutional to deny a medical practitioner the right to charge as they see fit.
I know our system is so fantastic that people are crossing our boarder in hordes trying to get at it but Doctors still have the right to practice privately.
Hmmm. Bad case of Phil Disease around these parts today.
You can almost smell the stupidity.
Wouldn’t it be interesting …if PHIL were one day put on a waiting list for just long enough to make him realize that his life isn’t worth a shit to the bureaucrats?
Jack! (NDP hero) Layton went to a private clinic to have his hernia fixed. The pubic ‘free’ system is a smoke screen, it is not an insurance policy, it is a political football and a dumping area for bureaucrats to ‘park’ and cash in at the expense of a population intent on preserving a fairy tale idea the the gument and Doctors care about the personal welfare of every breathing soul in Canada.
Dr. Day has exposed the hypocrites at the top. It just does not get any better for those of us who have stopped believing all those stories we heard from the Pinkos in the past. Bottom line is Kate’s “No one has to become a Doctor”. It is fine to have ‘free’ healthcare if there are Doctors and nurses to deliver that care…otherwise ….
Dr. Day does not play God, he does not decide who is ‘worth’ treating; as the example cited in the article explains, the ‘free’ public system does. Money has no value to s patient if he/she is dead.
All I gotta say is that I hope to god Obama is thrown out because America is your only hope if you ever get sick in BC.
It would be helpful if the client list was found in a dumpster outside the clinic…
It would be helpful if there were more doctors as well as overall hospital competition for patients within an entire union-free health system.
I’ve used private medical in BC myself, Day is not the only one in this Province providing it.
Also purchased a kidney transplant in Pakistan.
I am with Day in that I hope they sue me for spending my own Money.
Finally a doctor with enough balls to take on the hypocritical statists. I sent lots of patients to the Cambie clinic when I practiced in Vancouver. People appreciated being treated like a customer instead of a burden on the system.
One of the Cambie clinics satisfied customers was a patient of mine who had a meniscal tear in his knee and the knee was locked in half extension. In addition to being excruciatingly painful, he was very limited in mobility. I sent him to the local hospital ER thinking that this was an orthopedic emergency. The ER docs agreed with me but not the orthopedic surgeon on call in the public system. That orthopod sent him back to me to get a prescription for narcotics and made an appointment to see my patient in 2 weeks for an office consultation; not surgery. A surgery date might be 2-4 weeks after the consultation. Needless to say my patient, who had a business to run, was somewhat perturbed.
A call to the Cambie clinic resulted in a laparoscopic knee surgery being performed the next day and my patient was able to walk again and pain free. The patient felt the $5000 he paid for the surgery was appropriate use of his money as he would have lost far more had he been laid up for a month taking morphine and unable to work. That type of financial calculation seems beyond the capabilities of the statists who support the N. Korean style Canadian medical system.
You’re not allowed to use your own money to pay for your own health care in Canada, but on the bright side the government will give you free heroin at the Insite centers….
phil – so you would have Dr. Day turn away the 79 year old woman with torn knee cartilage, and whose only wish was to stay active and play golf until she succumbed to her lung cancer.
Sorry, phil, but that lady’s life has value, and only people who share your twisted morality would deny her the right to obtain care.
It was Germans and Russians of exactly your stripe who looked the other way or otherwise condoned the killing for the Soviet state, and for the Nazi’s.
So, according to the government and those who are more equal than the peasants it is against the law to treat people who are ill in private clinics other than them.
Now I will read the rest of the comments.
I have now read the comments and there are so many good ones.
Good for you Loki.
Of course one commie rat has also shown up.
Once Adrian Dix is Premier, the unions will force him to come down on Day. His clinic is not to be allowed by the looters and thug guardians of the Canadian Health care monopoly. Much better to force Canadian taxpayers to spend their own money in a foreign country rather than encourage more doctors to practice where the rationed “system” won’t use them.
“Free Health care” is the modern “beads and blankets” when it comes to exchanging liberty for the illusion of security.
Until health care funding is based on services performed and not the overhead consuming it, nothing will change. When a health care system is told, basically, “Here’s your budget for the year, make it last”, all it has to do is bulk up on executives, managers, facilities and staff. If it treats a few patients, it’s done its job.
But if funding were based on services delivered, I believe there would be an entirely different result. What would happen, for example, if there was a fee-for-service schedule and hospitals were paid on that basis? When I was in business, suppliers would pay my company for parts and labour for warranty work. As a result, we sought out as much business as we could handle and customers, suppliers and my company all benefited. But if the supplier had offered us a set amount each year, with the admonishment, “Make it last”, we could have easily done so by not servicing any machines. Rather reminds me of the current health care system.
The CMA is a political lobby group filled with government brown nosing toadies. If doctors want to truly free themselves of the rationing, the ineffectiveness, shortages of leading edge treatments and unionist pillaging of the current system they will have to speak out for themseves and blow the whistle on their masters.
The current system is unsustainable as it is now, so it is being managed with a soviet style rationing agenda which has prioritization set on helping the majority. The very young and very old with treatable but rare conditions are rationed or curtailed. I speak from experience as a caregiver of an octogenarian parent for whom I must fight the system to get him the treatments he needs. They are reluctant to expend high end costly medial services on old people – this is the impression I get.
So aside from the rationing aspect of this system the other thing it has in common with the soviet systems is a built-in eugenics aspect.
Six months ago I fel on ice. Two weeks after the fall an ultrasound showed complete tears in two tendons.
My doctor in Alberta refered me to an orthopedic surgeon.
After waiting four more weeks in pain, I decided to look elsewhere – False Creek Clinic in Vancouver.
Paid my money and 2 weeks later had surgery. About 75% recovered now. According to the doctor it will take another 4 months before full recovery. However no pain for almost 3 months.
Still haven’t heard back from the orthopedic surgeon in Calgary about an appointment to assess my condition.
You gotta love a Socialist.
When Duffus McGoofy first campaigned for election in Ontario, he put fear into the electorate by warning that the evil Conservatives were going to savage healthcare by cutting health services.
He said that only the Lieberals would protect the populace.
Within one year, he (through his surrogate health minister, Slitherman,) delisted Chiropractic, Physiotherapy and Optometry.
The little fellow is now going to battle with the physicians of the province.
The system is in the throws of the early signs of collapse. It’s obvious to anyone who is looking.
Remember this. There are only 3 countries in the world that do healthcare the way it’s done in Canada.
Canada, North Korea and Cuba.
Enough said.
“Free Health care” is the modern “beads and blankets” when it comes to exchanging liberty for the illusion of security.
Posted by: John Chittick at August 19, 2012 2:32 PM
Great metaphor, John Cittick. And those blankets were often ‘infested’ with nasty diseases. Most pre 1492 North Americans died of disease. Maybe the WHO(agenda 21) outfit have been ‘reading ahead’ or ‘rereading history’, in this case.
Our system is all over the place.
Free abortions, but not free root canals.
Free sex change operations, but not free eye exams.
Free methadone, but not free insulin.
Everything just needs to be opened up.
More Canadians by the day6 see Monopoly Medicine for what its is. You can bet even line ups would go faster than if we didn’t have this system of graduated triage medicine by the State. Government officials, sports stars, big wigs already get in front of the lines. The Honest people go to other Nations for treatment.Getting treatment is already a caste system. By allowing Private medicine as competition it would just be acknowledging an already endemic lie, that this one shop Medical con is equal.
Fact is unless people yell about it, its to useful for politicians to play this particular political violin to the tune of fearful things.
Dentistry is Private. How many lack of dental clinics do you see or lack of dentists?
No lack of dentists nor clinics, but dental care is largely dependent on affordability.
So is eating.
That evil old socialist is so not dead enough…
She said “McPherson, who calls Day a “profiteer” and wants his clinic shut down, accused the Liverpool-born surgeon of breaking his oath of doctor-patient privacy.”
One can get curious about the “profiteer”, isn’t the whole health care scam about profiteering nurses, doctors and the socialist administration?
Anything the socialists touch they turn into gold for themselves.
What do you, peasant, have to say?
Actually you, peasant, have no say.
Might as well pour a cold one and make yourself feel good.
A somewhat over 70 relative needed new arteries. Somehow waiting for a bypass became no fricking way. And get out of our hospital. Despite many older people getting bypasses they determined he was too high of risk. I am sure he would have chosen to die from unsuccessful surgery than in the nursing home where he died two weeks later. He was handed a death sentence by the system that granted him no choice to pay himself as I’m sure he would have.
I have a friend that belongs to a cancer group whose members have outlived their death sentences. These people have done the Mexican quack route after all treatment but pain killers had been cut off. My friend is pushing five years and a member of her group died 8 years after receiving his death sentence. Apricot pits and a bucket of other drugs from Mexico seem to go a long way.
Lev…exactly!
Head of E-health, and her cohorts
Head of ORNGE
LHIN ’employees’
And don’t get me started on the top heavy admin in each hospital.
Just as Kate says:”Tommy Douglas, not dead enough!”
Er, phil seems to think the doc is double-billing. That would be fraud, which I did not see mentioned.
As I read the article, it seems to be the government position that if it is possible to get treated by government then no matter how impractical or even impossible that is, it is illegal to be treated by a non-government agency. This sort of thing is why, even knowing next to nothing about it, I prefer the French system of “national health service” to the UK or CA system. The French pay tax and have “free” (tax paid) care – but also a thriving private insurance, hospital, and treatment system. If you want faster or “too expensive and/or rare for government” treatment and have insurance or other financial capabilities, no problem. Indeed, the NHS in the UK has been known to send patients to “private” beds and treatment in France.
Meanwhile, in the socialist system, double billing regularly happens. Docs charging both workmens comp and the other communist system for their services.
Communist systems are guaranteed to defile even the most righteous in the name of one size fits all mediocrity.
And why not? The whole system is built on the lie that a system run by nameless, faceless bureaucrats is better than a face to face interaction between individuals.
In the 30’s doctors were often paid with farm produce, or work in kind. Try paying your taxes that way.
“In the 30’s doctors were often paid with farm produce, or work in kind. Try paying your taxes that way.”
Exactly. This also happened in the 40s, as both my wife and her brother needed surgeries and the bills were paid with farm produce.
Phil:
Who the hell are you to say how I spend my own money? Last year I spent $17K for private treatment for my wife. Of that, $5800 was spent in Canada on series of MRIs from private clinics in Vancouver, the balance was spent at a private clinic in California.
This year I am on track for spending perhaps $4 – $5K on her treatment.
But it is my money, Phil. It’s after-tax dollars, the money that I have left after paying exhorbitant taxes to support a bunch of non-productive former hippies, leftists and other complete wastes of oxygen.
I am spending it because our so-called health-care system is merely a system of rationing, enuring that everyone is reduced to the lowest form of treatment possible, but…well, gee whiz, we’re all treated the same….badly.
So don’t presume to tell me or others that we can’t do what is necessary to preserve the lives of those important to us.
When someone does that to me, I tend to get testy…and you don’t want to meet me when I’m testy…
Liberal fascist don’t have a problem with us going to the USA and spending our own money on our own health care, they just don’t want us doing that in Canada.
So they are OK with us crossing a border to buy health care but don’t want us crossing the street to buy health care.
So where’s Harper?
Ladies and gentlemen, particularly those of you who live in Ontario: get ready for extra billing. It will be coming soon. It may be overt office support fees, it may end up being under-the-table baksheesh style, but it is coming.
Also be prepared to see your old relatives get refused more than palliative treatment at Ontario hospitals. Frequent flyers may get turned away at the door.
Coming soon, five years at the most. My prophecy.
LASm “So where’s Harper?”
I think he’s the first PM to read actually read the BNA Act and find that health care is a provincial matter.
Johnny T – did you watch the video? The man was on a bike-he did not cross any barricades, he did not say a word period-he held a Israeli flag and was harassed by cops who said he was inciting a riot by simply waving a flag.
There are also videos online from the Calgary Al Quds where Canadians are said to be imperialists (funny that anti-zionists and staunch Muslims have no qualms about living here). The Calgary group stated that Harper is a treasonous terrorist.
I am wondering why you attended Al-Quds when you reiterated, what can be summarized as “who cares”-take your fight elsewhere and then went to the trouble to comment about it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1aXCtu7j_Iw#!
Johnny T – did you watch the video? The man was on a bike-he did not cross any barricades, he did not say a word period-he held a Israeli flag and was harassed by cops who said he was inciting a riot by simply waving a flag.
There are also videos online from the Calgary Al Quds where Canadians are said to be imperialists (funny that anti-zionists and staunch Muslims have no qualms about living here). The Calgary group stated that Harper is a treasonous terrorist.
I am wondering why you attended Al-Quds when you reiterated, what can be summarized as “who cares”-take your fight elsewhere and then went to the trouble to comment about it.
I’d post the link, but its getting caught in the filter.
I’ve had this health care discussion with ‘liberal’ friends for years. Their argument ALWAYS centers on the concept of ‘fairness’ – that no one should be able to ‘jump the queue’.
So I put it to them this way. Ten people are in the queue for knee surgery. All 10 have paid their MSP premium. One is willing to step out of the queue and pay for private care.
Now there are 9 people in the queue, but the 10 MSP premiums remain to support the care of the 9 – shorter line, more money in the system to provide better service to those who cannot or will not opt for private care.
What’s not to like?
But socialists would rather suffer longer than see someone else get something they do not.
Apparently, ideology trumps pragmatism.
I think he’s the first PM to read actually read the BNA Act and find that health care is a provincial matter.
So why doesn’t he do something about the federal proscription of private health care?
LAS writes:
So why doesn’t he do something about the federal proscription of private health care?
For the same reason that PMSH hasn’t abolished the Commie broadcasting corporation yet. There are far too many moonbats in Canada who believe that there is something special and unique about the Canadian healthcare system. When a good chunk of the population defines being Canadian as having 5th rate healthcare, then clearly a gradualist approach is required.
What I find curious is why the SCC court decision on medicare applies only to the province of Quebec. Should Dr. Day get his day in court, I expect that the matter would go to the SCC and the odious medicare protection act would be found unconstitutional. Maybe that’s why the moonbat premier of BC hasn’t initiated prosecution of the Cambie Surgical Center yet as the government knows they’re going to lose in a matter of dictating how people spend their money.
The various unions that get obscene wages for working under a socialized system will fight any measure to bring in private medical care. What surprises me is the number of doctors who are still in support of a government monopoly on medical care despite being fully aware of the failure of the current system to perform; generally in discussions with medicare true believers I’m told that all that is needed is more money from the government. Considering the fraction of the provincial budget that medicare currently takes, that is magical thinking and puts these doctors into the “a unicorn in every garage” crowd.
Gord Tulk @ 1:45 p.m.: “It would be helpful if the client list was found in a dumpster outside the clinic…”
Yes, it sure would. Exposing hypocrisy is always good. And hypocrisy is the leftists’ modus operandi.
Stan @ 2:09 p.m.: “You’re not allowed to use your own money to pay for your own health care in Canada, but on the bright side the government will give you free heroin at the Insite centers….”
The Supreme Court could hardly rule that getting private health care is illegal while getting government to pay to help you break the law is legal. However, Chaoulli had three dissenters (Binnie, LeBel, Fish) while Insite was sadly unanimous.
Occam @ 2:46 p.m.: “They are reluctant to expend high end costly medial services on old people – this is the impression I get.”
Also, Scar’s comment @ 7:42 p.m.:
That’s how rationing works. The leftists thought it was crazy talk about Obama’s “death panels”, but they’re here.
I almost wonder how doctors and nurses who support the current abomination can keep their licenses, since they’re obviously not interested in healing the sick.
The Phantom: “Ladies and gentlemen, …………..: get ready for extra billing”
On one hand it is obvious- that in decaying system – politicians after blaming providers, will shift the negative toward the users.
On the other hand if medical care system would be structured as an insurance, there would be some financial responsibility on the part of the user. It is just schizophrenic that you pay full dentist bill (out of pocket or thru private insurance) and there are not even copays at regular doctor’s visit which cost measly $30.
Someone should send this Blog address to the good DR to know hes not fighting alone.
Personally Aim smelling a change in the wind in Canada over health, care no Matter what Ontario says, or any other Province.
Being in a group like Cuba or North Korea seems somehow a betrayal of humanity.
Not to mention we are spending ourselves into a corner with no benefit except to Medical administrators. Albertans are well versed in that.
xiat said: “On the other hand if medical care system would be structured as an insurance, there would be some financial responsibility on the part of the user.”
Well no, there isn’t. That’s the problem they’re having in the USA, people want every damn thing paid for by their insurance, because its so expensive they want to “get their money’s worth”. Plus companies have been paying insurance for people as part of their benefits package, so the -user- of the insurance isn’t the one paying for it most of the time.
This of course leads to all kinds of distortions in the market, with bad results. Every layer of bureaucracy you put between the guy with the money and the guy who’s getting paid screws things up. That’s why the medical profession offers all kinds of options to sick people that none of them could afford to PAY for, because they aren’t paying for it. Except in the grander sense, of course.
The only reasonable model is when the patient pays cash at the doctor’s office the same as they do at the dentist. You have insurance in case something catastrophically expensive happens to you, like a car accident or a major illness. Otherwise you save up for stuff the same as you’d save up for a car in a saner fiscal regime.
Important to note, this does not work in a high tax, high inflation environment such as the one we have. As all the value in society gets sucked into government, so government has to pay for these types of services or they don’t get delivered. Nobody can get hold of and maintain enough savings, it gets washed away by tax and inflation.
There is no “federal proscription of private health care”. I’ve read the Canada Health Act; I know.
The Chaouilli case was decided against the government of Quebec, which does not recognize the Charter. Therefore the case was decided under the provisions of the Quebec human rights code. The provisions are to the same effect in both code and charter and there’s no reason to doubt that the result would be the same under either.