But even a victory for the province should serve as “a huge wake-up call to government decision-makers that we dodged a bullet” and urgently need to improve how care is delivered, she said.
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“We should still expect to have a universal system, but in which you have some element of competition and choice for patients”, he said, adding that a win for Day and the introduction of a hybrid health-care model would be a “revolution”.
Gall said the government’s approach of rationing access to treatment as a means to reduce health-care costs, such as restricting operating times, wastes the expertise and availability of doctors who are already on hand and able to perform the procedures.
Indeed, the B.C. government argues any growth in private clinic business would drain the public side of physicians, thus increasing existing wait times.
Dr. Brian Day, the Vancouver orthopedic surgeon and co-owner of the Cambie Clinic who has become the public face of private health care in Canada, is trying to achieve two thing with his constitutional challenge of the Medicare Protection Act: Strike down the ban on the sale of private insurance for “medically necessary” care (meaning hospital and physician services), and quash the law that says physicians can not practise simultaneously in the public and private systems.
“The medicare system in Canada is not fulfilling its promise”, Day said.
None took concrete action to rectify the dire situation.
It involves a private health care clinic run by Dr. Brian Day (along with some of its patients) suing the B.C. government because it won’t allow people to buy private insurance for medically necessary services that are covered in the public system. “It’s a problem that has been going on for so long it is intractable and it can not be fixed, certainly not in our lifetimes”.
These services included stays in a rehabilitation facility or care from home health aides.
Adam Lynes-Ford of the B.C. Health Coalition, one of the interveners in the case, says a core Canadian value ensures patients have access to medical care based on need, not on ability to pay, but this case could derail that concept.
A lawyer for the Cambie Surgery Centre in Vancouver and Dr. Brian Day says easing restrictions on private health care for medically necessary services would free up resources and shorten wait times in the public system.
While the Chaoulli ruling was groundbreaking, it did not throw the doors open to private care in Quebec, as many predicted.
Would it be a bad thing if Canadian doctors could work in both private and public healthcare systems?
Led by Cambie Surgeries Corp., the clinics responded by launching the constitutional challenge.
This is especially true if the case should go up to the Supreme Court of Canada and become a nationwide precedent.
Federal Health Minister Jane Philpott.
Gall told Justice John Steeves at the opening of the trial that the government has consistently failed to provide British Columbians with timely access to treatment, which prolongs their suffering and harms their physical and mental health. “Change has to happen to make this system better”.
The case is expected until at least February next year. After all, private healthcare will have to be better than public healthcare to survive.
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In his view, an entire generation of politicians abdicated their responsibility – come on down NDP premiers Mike Harcourt, Glen Clark, Dan Miller and Ujjal Dosanjh, and you, too, Liberal premiers Gordon Campbell and Christy Clark.
