Really? I was misinformed Intrepid. Read below and you will find out why I would never go to Canada for Medical Care: It looks piss poor to me and that was Canada's SUPREME COURT THAT DECIDED.
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Canada's high court opens door to sale of health insurance
Long wait for care in national system violates rights, it says
Clifford Krauss, New York Times
Friday, June 10, 2005
(06-10) 04:00 PDT Toronto -- Canada's Supreme Court struck down a Quebec law banning private medical insurance Thursday, in a decision that represents an acute blow to the national health care system.
The high court stopped short of declaring Canada's publicly financed health care system unconstitutional, but experts across the legal spectrum said they expect the decision to lead to sweeping changes.
Canada is the only industrialized country that outlaws privately financed purchases of core medical services. The Canadian health care system provides free doctor's services that are paid for by taxes. The public has strongly supported the system, which is broadly identified with the Canadian national character.
But in recent years, patients have been forced to wait long periods for diagnostic tests and elective surgery, while the wealthy and well-connected either have sought care in the United States or have used influence to jump medical lines.
The Supreme Court found that waiting lists have become so long that they violate patients' right to "life and personal security, inviolability and freedom" under the Quebec charter of human rights and freedoms, which covers about one-quarter of Canada's population.
"The evidence in this case shows that delays in the public health care system are widespread, and that, in some serious cases, patients die as a result of waiting lists for public health care," the Supreme Court ruled. "In sum, the prohibition on obtaining private health insurance is not constitutional where the public system fails to deliver reasonable services."
"The language of the ruling will encourage more and more lawsuits, and those suits have a greater likelihood of success in light of this judgment," said Lorne Sossin, acting dean of the University of Toronto law school.
Patrick Monahan, dean of the Osgoode Hall Law School of York University in Toronto and a critic of the national health care system, was even more emphatic.
"They are going to have to change the fundamental design of the system," he said. "They will have to build in an element of timely care or otherwise allow the development of a private medical system."
The case was brought by Jacques Chaoulli, a Montreal family doctor who argued his own case through the courts, and George Zeliotis, a chemical salesman who was forced to wait a year for a hip replacement while he was prohibited from paying privately for surgery. Chaoulli and Zeliotis lost in two Quebec provincial courts before the Supreme Court decided to take their appeal.
At a news conference, Chaoulli predicted the decision will eventually apply to all Canada. "How could you imagine that Quebeckers may live," he asked, "and the English Canadian has to die?"
There was no immediate impact on the national system outside Quebec, since the justices split 3-3 on the question of whether the province's ban on private medical insurance violated the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Canada's bill of rights, as the two plaintiffs contended. However, experts predicted the decision will have widespread importance.
Margaret Somerville, professor of law and medicine at McGill University, said the ruling "is extremely important" in large part because "the provinces that want to run some form of a complementary private system would probably be able to do so now."
Alberta provincial officials have long suggested that they wanted to develop a private health care system, while private diagnostic and special surgery clinics have been cropping up in Quebec, British Columbia and Ontario in recent years.
The federal government has threatened to hold back financial aid to provinces that press ahead with private health care, but Somerville said it will be less likely to do so now.
Prime Minister Paul Martin responded to the decision by saying that his government is making progress in shortening waiting times for medical services.
"What today's decision does do, however, is accentuate just how important it is to act immediately, how urgent this situation is," he said.
But he rejected the notion that the ruling will bring about fundamental change. "We are not going to have a two-tier health care system in this country," Martin said. "Nobody wants that. What we want to do is to strengthen the public health care system."
It's a good thing that Blotham got sick in the USA, but I understand the dementia had been progressing for a long time previous.
MaronT, I would suggest you never go to a masquerade with people who know you.
Health-care ruling called 'stinging indictment'
Last Updated: Friday, June 10, 2005 | 10:20 AM ET
CBC News
Some of the country's largest medical groups call Thursday's Supreme Court of Canada ruling allowing private health insurance in Quebec a "historic" decision, but Prime Minister Paul Martin is downplaying its significance.
In a 4-3 decision, the country's top court said Quebec patients should be allowed to buy insurance to cover medical treatments already provided by medicare, citing the physical and psychological suffering caused by long waits for services in the publicly funded system.
The most likely services to be covered by such insurance plans would be diagnostic tests and elective procedures such as cataract and joint-replacement surgery, analysts have said.
Albert Schumacher at the Supreme Court building in Ottawa, Thursday.
Canadian Medical Association president Albert Schumacher said the ruling "could substantially change the very foundations of medicare as we know it."
Schumacher's association, representing about 60,000 doctors, medical residents and medical students, acted as an intervenor in the case, which has been winding through the legal system for about seven years.
He called the ruling "a stinging indictment of the failure of government to respond to the needs in the health-care system...
Continue Article
Sharon Sholzberg-Gray of the Canadian Healthcare Association.
"Every day in the system, patients and their families experience excessive waiting times - waiting times that threaten the health of patients and the very viability of medicare," he said.
RELATED STORY: Top court strikes down Quebec private health-care law
But federal politicians insisted Canada's publicly funded medicare system is safe despite the ruling.
Steven Shrybman, a lawyer acting for the Canadian Labour Congress.
"We're not going to have a two-tier health-care system in this country. Nobody wants that," Martin told reporters in Ottawa. "What we want to do is to strengthen the public health-care system."
His government is doing that by committing $41 billion to health care improvements across Canada over the next 10 years, the prime minister said.
Federal Justice Minister Irwin Cotler also said the ruling does not jeopardize medicare.
"On a first quick reading, the importance, the validity and the integrity of the public health-care system has been reaffirmed," he said as he left a cabinet meeting in Ottawa.
'The end of medicare as we know it'
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation applauded the Supreme Court's decision, saying it will encourage people in other provinces to challenge similar laws banning private health-care insurance in their own jurisdictions.
"This is the end of medicare as we know it," said the federation's John Williamson. "This is a breach in government monopoly health care in this country."
He said the ruling acknowledges that Canadians are dying because they are waiting too long for medical care, and points out that waiting times are much shorter in many European countries where a private system operates side by side with a public system.
"This is one small step for patient care, one giant leap for health-care reform," Williamson said of the decision.
Provincial acts called 'clones' of Canada Health Act
Sharon Sholzberg-Gray of the Canadian Healthcare Association agrees that the ruling will open the door to litigation in other provinces.
"It's a decision that applies to the Quebec act, but clearly it's a clone of all the other provincial acts, and they're all clones of the Canada Health Act," she said.
The Canadian Healthcare Association is an umbrella group that acts as an advocate for a wide variety of hospital, medical and health-care organizations across Canada.
Sholzberg-Gray added that there's no fear of the entire Quebec medical system going to a private-payment plan, despite the ruling.
"Just because someone might be able to pay $8,000 for a joint replacement doesn't mean all Canadians can pay $300,000 for a complex cancer treatment," she said.
"If you have breast cancer and you need Herceptin, [a drug] which costs $40,000 a year, I'm not sure anyone is going to sell you insurance that costs $5,000 a year."
Private clinics predicted for simple procedures
She said she could not see private interests setting up separate cancer treatment or heart surgery centres in Quebec, because the astronomical cost would be beyond the means of all but a few patients.
However, she predicted clinics would crop up to treat relatively simple and common health problems such as joint replacements, as well as offer an array of diagnostic tests for which Quebecers must now wait.
A profit can be made from that kind of private operation, said Sholzberg-Gray.
She could see a future in which patients "have a foot in both systems," paying a couple of hundred dollars for a diagnostic test and then going to the public system for the expensive treatment.
The Canadian Labour Congress, another intervenor in the Supreme Court case, was disappointed by the ruling in favour of allowing some private health-care delivery
Oh god...
It just always is even worse than you think it is... never ceases to surprise.
Is it all an act or is he really this stupid? It looks like the genuine article to me..
YouTube: Bush on Google Maps, email
In all fairness I have an elderly aunt who wouldn't know what 'The Google' is and I wouldn't call her stupid.
But lord the Prez is cringeworthy in this clip. Is he the most inarticulate President so far?
He's more stupid than that short interview shows.
And Gore and Kerry have proven themselves worthy how?
I don't think so Tim... (Dan, or whoever you are)
Worst U.S. President ever (hate to even capitilize it): Jimmy Carter.
Loved the guy. Wish he was still pres. Name someone who loved the job more? (except the guy who was getting the Monica at the time)
Loved the job so much he broke laws to keep it. Fantastic.
hingehead wrote:Loved the job so much he broke laws to keep it. Fantastic.
Name one president in the past 200 years who never broke a law. And prove it. Dick got caught and lied about it (sound familiar?).
cjhsa wrote:hingehead wrote:Loved the job so much he broke laws to keep it. Fantastic.
Name one president in the past 200 years who never broke a law. And prove it. Dick got caught and lied about it (sound familiar?).
The FBI and presidents like jfk and lbj apparently wiretapped and spied on political figures, including Martin Luther King. Nixon was not involved in anything new. What was new was that the story got traction because the press hated Nixon.
Hi Okie,
Here's a thread I'd love to see you participate in.
http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=85361
Cheers
Cycloptichorn
I checked your thread, cyclops, and read your questions. No need to go beyond the first sub-question. A stupid question will get stupid answers, so I see no point in the thread.
haha, right.
Simple questions, that's all they are. Simple. Yet unanswerable by the right wing, even though they continually take positions of superiority on said issues as if they can ask the questions.
In fact, the first subquestion is a particularly good one, that I would like to see you answer. It isn't stupid. It's relevant to each of our lives, and fits in neatly with the various things said by Republican leaders over the last several years.
I was more right than I knew naming the thread...
Cycloptichorn
Cyclo, You got that right! Republicans have a hard time accepting blame or solving problems they create.
cicerone imposter wrote:Cyclo, You got that right! Republicans have a hard time accepting blame or solving problems they create.
Dude there's a mountain lion in your back yard. I suggest you feed it your pets.
