It is one of the great myths of Canadian political life that for-profit health care is discouraged in Canada.

Sure. If by "for profit," one means private clinics, hospitals, and private medical insurance, some of that is discouraged through government policy and legislation. But even there, myths abound. Your doctor is a private small businessperson, not a government employee, and if you see her in her office, you're visiting a "for profit" private medical facility.

And while private medical insurance - for what politicians and bureaucrats define as medically necessary - is verboten under the Canada Health Act. That puts Canada in league with Cuba and North Korea as the only countries that forbid parallel medical insurance. (In contrast, Europeans have universal health care coverage without Canada's restrictions on private insurance or care.)

But quite apart from the confusion over what is forbidden by a political document, i.e., the 1984 Canada Health Act, the idea that this country forbids for-profit health care is nonsense. Those who currently "profit" the most are those health care workers most adept at pressuring governments to direct cash in their direction.
Two recent examples illustrate this point perfectly: doctors, who are generally thought more philosophically sympathetic to the new BC government (the current fee dispute aside), and the Hospital Employees' Union, which could fairly be described as not so sympathetic. (And note that the situation was reversed for both groups under the last government.)

As it concerns the HEU, their recent report on the possibility of a privately built and run hospital in Abbotsford argued that savings would be miniscule. The BC Finance Minister argued back that the savings to taxpayers could be substantial, at maybe $60 million. What no one thought to ask was the obvious comparison: how on budget have recent government-built projects been SkyTrain The Tech BC building in Surrey The Vancouver Island highway All over-budget. Or how about the best known government overrun, the fast ferries Original projection: $210 million. Final cost: $463 million, or an overrun of 120%.

Anyone who thinks government can build and manage things smarter than the private sector should visit the hospital floors constructed by the Socreds, many of which sat empty during the past decade. The Jimmy Pattison pavilion at Vancouver General Hospital is now estimated to have chewed up $100 million in unnecessary tax money over the past decade. Health care unions opposed to privately built hospitals are waging a long-term battle to protect their near-monopoly on health care delivery. They should no more succeed than teacher unions should be allowed prevent the building of schools built and run by independent associations - say Christians, Sikhs or Jews. Health care unions are not opposed to profits; they just want the cash channeled to them and not to private clinics or non-profit hospitals that might actually offer health care more effectively.

But if health care unions are fond of shaking down taxpayers wherever possible, so too are nurses' unions and doctor's associations with demands that are unreasonable given BC's poor economic performance in the 1990s. The Nineties saw real average income drop for British Columbians, a situation that won't be rectified overnight. That fact should be taken seriously by nurses, doctors, and others as it concerns their wage demands.
Tax increases in the February budget amounted to $758 million dollars. And the provincial government flip-flopped on taxes specifically to deliver $392 million of that to doctors, $164 million to nurses, and $161 million to other health care workers. That's $712 million or about 95% of the February tax increase.

"For-profit" health care already exists in Canada. What doesn't exist is much competition in who (will build facilities and) deliver health care services to the public.