Posted on 06/09/2005 7:18:46 AM PDT by youngtory
Supreme Court strikes down Que. medicare laws CTV.ca News Staff
The Supreme Court of Canada has decided to strike down Quebec's prohibition of using private insurance for services covered under medicare
Four of the court's seven judges decided that denying patients the right to seek private health care insurance violates the Quebec Charter of Rights.
But the court was divided on whether the Canadian Charter of Rights has been violated, so it's unclear how the ruling will affect the rest of provinces.
The case stemmed from a Quebec patients who argued that his rights were violated by long waiting lists under the current medicare system.
George Zeliotis brought his fight to the Supreme Court along with Dr. Jacques Chaoulli, a Quebec physician who says he's fed up with the current system.
They asked the court to overturn portions of the Quebec Health Insurance Act and Quebec Hospital Insurance Act that prohibit payments for medically necessary services.
Zeliotis spent more than a year in pain, waiting for a hip replacement in 1997. He finally got a new hip but says he should have had the right to pay earlier for the surgery himself, even though it's illegal to pay for health services covered by medicare.
He and Chaoulli argued that spending months waiting for surgery amounts to a violation of their constitutional rights to life, liberty and security of the person.
With Thursday's ruling, it appears the Supreme Court agreed with their argument.
The court could have ruled in one of three ways: allow the existing law to stand, strike it down, or require governments to provide a so-called "care guarantee" to patients on how long they have to wait for treatment in the public system.
Phillippe Trudel, who's representing Zeliotis, told Canada AM ahead of the ruling that he didn't believe that a decision in his client's favour would lead to the destruction of the public health system.
"It's important to point out that my client is in favour of a very strong public system. But what he wants is the option to go outside the public system if the waiting times are too long."
Someone else mentioned to me something about a "notwithstanding" clause. Is that the same?
Rush just talked about this.
Just want to know, are the unions for the Big Three going to want this?
There's No Place Like Home: What I learned from my wife's month in the British medical system.
The Wall Street Journal Opinion Journal | June 8, 2005 | David AsmanArticle and comments quite interesting.
A nice kick in the balls for the socialists and Marxists in Canada.
This is a wonderful development for two reasons.
First, it might actually lead my fellow Canadians to have a reasonable debate on health care. For far too long, our medicare system has been elevated almost to the status of a state religion. Despite numerous studies and commissions on health care, and several elections at both the provincial and federal level being fought on health care issues; there has been no real, honest debate. Supporters of the status quo accuse anyone criticizing the system of supporting "American-style" health care. The fact that even "progressive" European nations all have mixed public/private health care is left out of the debate. Perhaps now Canadians will actually engage in a real, and possibly productive debate about the issue.
Second, it was the Supreme Court of Canada, in an instance of judicial activism that brought down this decision. Left-wingers, and "social progressives" have staunchly defended judicial activism since the advent of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms gave our Supreme Court much the same power as the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down legislation it deems "unconstitutional". Now, the public program most sacred (literally) to the left has been attacked by the infalliable Supremes. I imagine that heads must be exploding, trying to reconcile these facts. Perhaps now, we Canadians can also have a reasonable debate about judical activism.
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