For-profit health care

The government wanted to get the nurses on side, to convince them to back the private financing of health infrastructure. [...] In this paper, we will touch on: the role of for-profit players in healthcare provision and funding; the private financing of infrastructure; the downloading of payment responsibility for services from provincial health plans to patients themselves (generally called de-listing); and the quest to introduce “market principles,” broadly speaking, into care. [...] In this instance, the CMA is not explicit about whether it envisages all such costs falling to the public tab, or just a portion.3 Clearly, were the latter to be the case, Canadians could end up with an additional subsidy for those who are able to foot the bill for the remaining costs not covered by the Fund. [...] In its 2006 document More for Less, A National Pharmacare Strategy, the Canadian Health Coalition – no friend of the CMA when it comes to prescribing cures for the system – notes, “the rapid rise in drug costs is primarily due to the ongoing substitution of newer, more expensive drugs in place of existing, less expensive products.” And yet, citing 117 products introduced in Canada between 1998 and [...] Or, to frame this last question in terms that better reflect the concerns of Medicare advocates, why do politicians from B. C. to Alberta to Québec seek to surreptitiously expand the scope for private insurers without engaging the public in an open conversation about the dangers of such a course?