Alberta touts expansion of private health care while Ontario tries to quash it

Both the Alberta Tories and the Ontario Liberals are making headlines this week for guiding their health care systems into seemingly opposite directions.

Gary Mar, one of the front-runners in the leadership race of the Alberta Progressive Conservative party, says his province must offer private health-care options for wealthy baby boomers or risk losing out on an economic opportunity.

"The demographics will make it increasingly difficult for governments to resist the idea that people should be able to pay for their own services if they want it," Mar told the Edmonton Sun editorial board.

"It will be difficult for governments to say to (boomers) that if you've got this money, you can go buy a recreational property, you can buy a new vehicle, but you cannot pay for your own health services."

Mar added that Albertans are already travelling to other provinces, such as B.C. and Quebec, for faster access to private health care services.

"(Choosing private health care options) is a choice that Albertans are already making and to suggest that you can't do it within the parameters of the Canada Health Act would not be correct."

But what falls under the auspices of the Canada Health Act seems to be a matter of opinion.

The Act forbids health-care providers from charging patients directly for services that are covered under medicare. Various private health care providers have cropped up in Quebec, B.C. and Alberta in recent years, however, with little interference by the federal government.

In 2008, a group pro-medicare organizations conducted a national survey and found that Canada had 89 for-profit clincs in 5 provinces that did appear to breach the Canada Health Act.

While Mar would like Alberta to shift towards more private care, the Ontario Liberals are trying to stop it in his province.

Ontario has taken the unprecedented step of setting up a toll-free snitch line for people to report cases of illegal private health care — and says it has triggered 35 investigations in barely a month.

According to a story in the National Post, the service was prompted by evidence that doctors and clinics are routinely flouting medicare rules with sometimes creative methods of generating extra income. One private clinic, for example, charged a patient $100 for a post-0perative glass of orange juice.

"There's no doubt in my mind that people are trying to get around (the law)…. I think it's really important that we all protect our universal health-care system," Deb Mathews, Ontario's Health Minister, said in an interview.

"It's just important that we are ever-vigilant."

This is a tale of two provinces - it's a tale of two opposite ideologies.