Canada a Mecca for Medical Tourism

Let's get this straight. The reason that it is important to cut wait times is so that we can make money serving the US and other medical tourism markets. This fellow would love if we subsidise people to buy private insurance that would make more profit for insurance companies. The aim of the medical profession apparently is not to provide the best health services possible to Canadians but to make money. Wait times are a problem not because they cause people to die or their conditions to deteriorate but they make impossible a medical tourism business. You doctors are missing on a great market to milk. This guy took the Hypocrite Oath.


Canada a mecca for medical tourism?
Oct 13, 2007 04:30 AM
Joseph Hall
health reporter

Eliminating wait times in Canada's health care system would allow this country to become a mecca for medical "tourists," the president of the Canadian Medical Association said yesterday.

Controversial for his well-publicized push to bring more private investment into public health care, CMA head Dr. Brian Day also called on the government to ensure that the 30 per cent of Canadians who lack private insurance have the same access to drugs or dental care as people with extended health coverage plans.

"Consider that the biggest consumers in the $40 billion medical tourism business are Americans," Day told a meeting of the Empire Club in Toronto, referring to people who travel out of their country to seek specialized medical care.

"This is a potentially massive new industry for Canada (but) a prerequisite is the elimination of our wait times."

Day said Americans travel to far-flung places like India, Thailand and Russia for more novel or cheaper medical procedures than they can obtain in their own country.

"By changing our focus we, too, could soon tap into that market and reap the rewards for our public system," he said.

"Since Canada has virtually no non-government hospital infrastructure, the potential income from medical tourism will benefit public hospitals and unionized hospital workers. Naysayer union leaders need to reflect on this matter."

Day, the founder of a private orthopaedics clinic in Vancouver, has drawn fire from medical unions and other health groups for his advocacy of more private funding for health care in Canada.

But yesterday, Day – who says he's been called everything from "Dr. Profit" to "Darth Vader" since he took over the one-year CMA post this summer – focused more on bringing what he called "business management principles" to the funding of hospitals and other health services.

In particular, he said governments should stop funding hospitals with yearly budgets, which are eaten up bit by bit with every patient they have to treat.

Canada should follow the example of several European countries that fund hospitals on a per-patient basis, and add to a hospital's revenue every time patients visit the facility for treatment.

He said this would shorten wait times by making hospitals compete for business, which would force them to become more efficient.

Natalie Mehra, head of the Ontario Health Coalition, said the idea was fraught with danger and had not worked in jurisdictions that have tried it.

The coalition supports a one-tier, universal health system.

Mehra, who spoke at a press conference before Day's Empire Club speech, said a group of British health experts warned the CMA chief of the funding scheme's shortcomings.

In a letter she presented from the British physicians' group National Health Service Consultants, doctors warned Day it had produced "perverse" and unintended results such as an increase in hospital admissions as facilities scrambled for extra revenue.

Day said that private insurance companies already play a huge role in Canadian health care through the provision of extended care policies for drugs, ambulance rides and other medical needs.

And, he said, it was unfair that all Canadians do not share in the benefits of such plans. "What about the 30 per cent who don't (have coverage)?" Day asked.

"Hypocritically, many of those who reject the concept of private insurance have it themselves. I've never heard one of them offer to opt out of their two-tier private plan on moral grounds."