Prime Minister Mark Carney deserves praise for being open to the changes Alberta is currently implementing in health care. Like most European countries, Alberta will keep its public system but will now make it much easier for patients to pay for private treatment in Alberta if they want to.
This is good news for patients. European mixed systems perform much better than Canada’s health-care monopolies. Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway — countries Canadian progressives often admire — all allow patients to choose between public and private options. France, Japan and Australia also have public systems and non-government options. It’s no secret these countries also outperform Canada’s monopolistic system.
One reason provincial governments impose barriers to private treatment is fear of funding cuts from the federal government. In 2023, for instance, the Trudeau government reduced funding to eight provincial governments by a combined $76 million for allowing patients the option of paying for MRIs, ultrasounds and other diagnostic scans privately. Imagine! The audacity of letting people use their own after tax-income to improve their health!
Oddly enough, under the rules it’s perfectly fine for patients to pay for treatment in another province — they just can’t pay for it in the province where they live. (Quebec is an exception to this rule largely due to a 2005 Supreme Court decision: Quebecers can pay for services delivered in Quebec.)
Bans on non-government care options mean more people are dependent on the government for health care. Removing the bans not only helps those who decide to pay for treatment but enables people on public waiting lists to move up a spot whenever someone ahead of them does decide to pay privately. Like other nations, the Alberta government is moving forward with guardrails to ensure surgeons complete whatever work the government sends their way in the public system before taking shifts at private clinics.
Ultimately, government bans contribute to bad service for patients. Every year there are reports of patients dying while waiting for treatment in emergency rooms or on waiting lists for life-saving surgeries. Waits longer than a year for routine knee and hip operations are all too common. Wait-list suffering has become a Canadian tradition.
To understand just how nonsensical health-care policy is in Canada, consider Jeff Krushell’s story. He’s from just outside Edmonton and in 2022 was coping with serious back pain. Faced with a year or two’s wait for treatment in the public system, he searched for private surgical clinics across Canada. The only one offering the surgery he required was just down the road in Calgary. But they told him government rules prevented them from operating on Alberta patients. They were allowed to help patients from anywhere else in Canada, or anywhere else in the world for that matter, just not Albertans. So, Jeff headed to Atlanta for private surgery.
