My Fight for Canadian Healthcare by Dr. Brian Day Whether you agree or not with the idea that the Canadian heal care system would be improved with the addition of private insurance and private providers, one thing most would agree on is that Dr. Day has remarkable staying power. He has been a tireless advocate for private care for decades and this book is the culmination of his many years of writing about, debating and ultimately taking the government to court over the idea that patients should have the right to use their own financial resources to manage their own health. Despite many setbacks and a torturous 14 year legal battle (which he lost) he has never given up nor backed down on his quest to have his message heard. The BC Medicare Protection Act renders illegal any provision of private healthcare services that fall under the rubric of Medical Services Plan i.e. public, coverage and Dr. Day does an excellent job of exposing the reducio ad absurdum consequences of this Act which allows patients from out of province to seek private care in BC while prohibiting BC residents from dong the same, a situation made even more outrageous by the fact that patients are seeking private care in the first place due to unacceptably long wait lists in the public system. Day also exposes the hypocrisy embedded in the system where politicians, federal prisoners, police, WBC workers and others can and do access expanded private care through various private insurance schemes while others cannot. The bigger question raised in this book is what to do about our failing public heal care system in the first place. Clearly a single payer monopoly run by hidebound government bureaucracies will always struggle to innovate. We need brave, informed, non-ideological politicians to initiate change in our healthcare system, perhaps using examples from other countries with better performing systems than us. Unfortunately, despite many Royal Commissions, various task forces and billions of dollars being thrown at the problem, our system continues to deteriorate. It’s debatable whether access to private services would substantially improve healthcare in Canada without radical change to the way we deliver public services occurring at the same time. What is clear though is that no government should be able to legislate away a citizens right to pay for his or her own healthcare with their own money. Hopefully, as Dr. Day heads into retirement, someone else will continue to fight for this basic right.
