Editor: Re: public vs private health care clinics.
How do our tourists access health care when they are visiting B.C.? Surely, they can鈥檛 go on our ridiculous waiting lists.
We spend millions trying to attract tourists 鈥� as the huge cost of the 2010 Olympics was intended to showcase our province and appeal to visitors.
Metro Vancouver is an international port region, so you would think we could make our health care more accessible with a healthy mix of private care. Wouldn鈥檛 private, for-profit clinics be the most ideal for this purpose, as well as relieving more pressure on the inadequate public system?
Because of our dysfunctional public system, more than 9,000 B.C. residents and more than 9,000 Albertans annually choose to avoid growing waiting lists, seek more accessible private healthcare in the USA and are willing to pay for it.
Evidently, Germany, Switzerland and other European countries have almost 50 per cent competing private/public systems with higher quality care and very low waiting times, at comparable costs. It鈥檚 not as if we have to re-invent the wheel.
It鈥檚 no secret that the unions have a stranglehold on the public system with big, self serving and political interest in preventing private health care from gaining ground.
It鈥檚 recognized that WCB and other productive workers cases are considered essential (for our safety and the economy) and allowed to jump the queue, which prolongs others鈥� waits.
Why shouldn鈥檛 you be able to spend your own money on your own health care for quality of life and/or to fend off the 鈥榙eath panel鈥� who will decide that the limited rationed public resources should go to someone younger?
Our current anti-capitalist system is like something you would expect in a communist country, which is why we need better political leadership that will represent us overtaxed, unimportant citizens.
Personally, in our public system, I waited nine months from the time of diagnosis of a bothersome hernia treatment (which is considered a routine operation).
Kudos to Dr. Brian Day 鈥� who operates two private clinics 鈥� for championing the issue of unattainable health care due to long and growing waiting lists.
He is willing to challenge this all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada at his expense and we should support him.
Roland Seguin
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