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The Canadian Medical Association has called for a ban on payments for procedures long covered by public systems and is warning about contracting services out.
With perhaps 6.5 million Canadians finding themselves without a personal doctor and with seemingly endless waiting times becoming almost a norm for some medical procedures, private medicine is increasingly being pitched as a solution for those and other problems in Canada’s public health system.
Private medicine comes in various forms. Ontario’s Progressive Conservative government is planning to expand public funding for cataract surgeries and M.R.I. scans in private clinics and contract out hip and knee replacement surgeries.
In Quebec, doctors have increasingly been dropping out of the public medical system entirely to open private medical clinics where patients pay thousands of dollars each year to see a family doctor. Elsewhere, clinics are exploiting a loophole in current laws that ban payment for essential medical services by using nurse practitioners rather than doctors.
Canadians impatient with wait times have long flown to other countries for surgeries they pay for themselves.
And many hospitals across the country are coping with nurse shortages, which became widespread during the pandemic, by bringing in temporary nursing staff from for-profit agencies.