Cambie Corp. goes to court : Legal assault on universal health care

Everett Coffin, then-president of the CMA, protested that the Act was “a rape of the spirit, if not the legal stipu- lations, of the Canadian Constitution.”7 The CMA encouraged its provincial counterparts to undertake a variety of actions to oppose the Canada Health Act, including opting out of medicare, strikes and lawsuits. [...] They asked the B. C. Su- preme Court to declare that the Act prohibited access to private health care and patient choice, and requested that the Court “stay or enjoin” the MsC’s audit until a final determination on their claim.12 The Court agreed to a temporary stay of the audit, which finally took place in 2012. [...] In these cases, the patient applies for reimbursement from the MsP; the physician cannot bill both the patient and the MsP for the same service. [...] The Legal Assault on Universal Health Care 15 The Defendants The defendants in the case are the B. C. Minister of Health, the Attorney General, and the B. C. Medical Services Commission (MSC). [...] The first will describe the impacts of the Chaoulli decision in Quebec and underscore the ways in which the Cambie Charter challenge represents a much broad- er and potentially far more harmful attack on the public health care system.