| The Conservatives and the NDP are attacking the Liberal party for allowing private health care to rapidly expand in Canada under its watch, and both parties have cited a controversial new private primary care clinic, Copeman Healthcare Centre in Vancouver, as a prime example.
Meanwhile, Don Copeman, the clinic’s CEO and founder, says he’s planning to open one in Calgary, as well as 36 others across the country.
The clinic boasts on its website that its physician-to-patient ratio is four times better than an average family practice, allowing doctors to spend more time with patients to "provide a complete, state-of-the-art medical service, including comprehensive and advanced preventive health care." Patients who pay the $1,200 registration fee and a $2,300 yearly fee will receive immediate access to doctors and will also be able to speak to a physician on the phone whenever they want. The website says that in some cases, physicians will even make house calls. As well, patients can be referred to specialists employed by the clinic, allowing them to avoid long waits to see specialists in the public system. However, patients at the private clinic don’t have to pay for services deemed medically necessary because they will still be paid for by the public system.
Health care expert Steven Lewis says such clinics allow patients who can afford it "the best of both worlds" because they’re going to a clinic "that only serves people with money" and yet the government will pay for medically necessary services.
He says the federal government should be stepping in and challenging such health clinics.
"They’re just kind of openly defying (the Canada Health Act). They’re providing what by any reasonable definition is a medically necessary service," says Lewis. "I think the Copeman clinic is a perfect test case. Yet they’re silent on it. Ottawa isn’t even raising these issues."
In a press release, the NDP argues that the Liberal government hasn’t adequately enforced the Canada Health Act because it hasn’t aggressively gone after provinces that allowed violations of it.
However, Copeman says there’s now more of an appetite for private health care because the public system isn’t offering people what they need.
"The winds are shifting," he says. "Public opinion has clearly shifted towards people wanting the private health care options when they face long waiting lists in the system and when they face very short doctor’s appointments and difficult access to experts."
Copeman says he’s a "big supporter" of universal health care but the primary care model in the public system is broken.
"What happens is in the three and a half to five minutes a doctor spends with a patient, they don’t have the time in many instances to really properly investigate a medical condition," he says.
Copeman says patients at his clinics receive a "comprehensive disease screening," nutritional counselling, fitness assessments and diagnostic tests on top of regular doctor’s visits. He says the emphasis is on preventive medicine so people don’t end up sick or requiring hospitalization.
"We’re unabashed about the fact that what we do is sell a better health care service for money. If I say to you our clients get better health care by paying $2,300 a year, that’s not an agreeable comment to a lot of people because we basically live in an egalitarian society," he says.
Copeman says the reality is that people with money get better health care every day in Canada, regardless of his clinic’s existence. He gives the example of optical and dental care, as well as physiotherapy.
"We understand what the source of the controversy is and we hope the controversy continues because we think Canadians need to intelligently debate this point, but it’s all about…. raising the standard of health care in Canada. Our system is completely broken down."
Lewis agrees that changes need to be made in the Canadian health care system, but he says it remains a quality system.
"I have little doubt that the quality of care and in most cases the accessibility of care in Canada is better than it’s ever been," he says, adding that provinces are making progress on reducing wait times for medical procedures.
Lewis says if there’s more of an appetite for private health care, the media is partially responsible.
"I think the propaganda war has been very successfully fought by the people who want more private medicine…. The public is systematically seduced by tales of horror, which are by far the exception rather than the rule in health care. You also have a media that is almost unanimously sympathetic to more privatization. The editorial lines of most newspapers in this country would be privatization to some extent," he says. |
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