Quebec abandons health care reform

Winnipeg Free Press ^ | 10/27/10 | Mark Rovere

[Nachum]

The Quebec government had the opportunity to be the first province to enact meaningful reform in health care, but instead it got cold feet.

By cancelling its planned $25 user fee for seeing a doctor, Quebec caved in to special interest groups that refuse to acknowledge the necessity of changing how we pay for health care in this country.

Quebec Finance Minister Raymond Bachand, acknowledging in his budget speech earlier this year that Quebec's health care system is in serious financial trouble, proposed two new measures: the $25 user fee for seeing a doctor, and a new health tax applied to all Quebec taxpayers.

User fees are common in the health insurance systems of virtually all other industrialized nations that have universal access to medical services. In fact, Canada is one of only five OECD countries that does not require some form of patient cost-sharing for health care services.

[Alberta's Child]

I’m not surprised that Quebec refused to adopt this measure. I’m actually shocked that they even considered it.

[Hostage]

It illustrates that universal healthcare can bankrupt a state. The budgetary pressures are so enormous that taxes and fees are considered.

Why be shocked that a progressive state such as Canada would consider taxes and fees to address runaway healthcare costs?

I am not shocked at all. How else can they pay for their socialism?

[Para-Ord.45]

Quebercors are already paying for Govt run Deathcare, adding “fees” aka taxes, is adding inury to insult while they are on waiting lists.

In 2005 Quebecor George Zeliotis and his doctor successfully sued the Quebec Govt. denying it to prevent citizens of that Province from buying private insurance for health-care procedures covered under medicare from anything from from MRI tests to cataract surgery.The Supreme Court of Canada ruled 4-3 that “Access to a waiting list is not access to health care,” .