Public Solutions to Health Care Wait Lists

Michael M. Rachlis

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, 2005

Waits for care are the biggest political issue facing Canadian health care. Both citizens and providers are concerned that too many waits are too long and put some patients at risk. In June 2005, the Supreme Court added to the sense of crisis by striking down a Quebec ban on private insurance for Medicare-covered services: the Chaoulli decision. Despite the narrow scope of the decision, the verdict was widely seen as a repudiation of Medicare. Across Canada, the operators of private clinics and their supporters have seized upon the Chaoulli decision. They are aggressively developing for-profit clinics to sell services to the public sector and any individual who has the cash to jump the public waiting lists. Some advocates for more for-profit delivery claim that wait-lists would be solved if the public system contracted out its services to for-profit providers. This paper takes a different approach, arguing that, before going private, Canadians would do well to consider public sector solutions.