Letter to Greg Melchin
I spoke to you briefly after the PC association meeting at the Ramada and promised to send you some links to why I don't think Bill 11 is a good idea. There are two articles on my Web site (one fairly long) with a number of links in them:
http://www.mike-warren.com/articles/bill-eleven-remix.html
and
http://www.mike-warren.com/articles/bill-11.html
Also, the Parkland study I mentioned (compares BC and Alberta to the rest of the provinces) can be found at http://www.ualberta.ca/~parkland/CompstudyABBC.html.
I realize Bill 11 doesn't introduce ``American-style'' privatization as Klein claims, but we will see far more privatization than we have right now. Bill 11 will result in vastly increased user fees for increasingly essential procedures, as has been the case with cataract surgery. How? ``Enhanced Service'' will increasingly include things which doctors will highly recommend and thus force patients (who can't be expected to know enough to question the prognosis of a doctor) into paying for.
I think the misinformation Klein has put out surrounding the Bill is enough to highly question it: Klein repeatedly claims that Medicare will continue to pay for procedures, and that more procedures will be done, yet doesn't include increased public health spending in this formula: where does the money for these extra procedures come from? It must come from private spending, and I don't believe this is a Good Thing. These fees for enhanced service will also increasingly make doctors salesmen who get more money if they sell more service; this is not what doctors should be doing.
Increased spending on health care, whether from private or public funds, is not an option. It must be done. The only question to ask is, should the increased funding come from private expenditures or from the tax base? I believe it should come from taxpayer dollars. The biggest reason is increased trust of doctors (who are not selling you services, but being paid a salary to deliver service, like school teachers) but it is also more cost-effective, overall, than a fully private system like the US, as many studies have shown. It is true that occasional studies show that private medicine can be as cheap as public, and a couple studies claim that private medicine can even be a little cheaper, but for the off chance of saving a small amount, we are risking quite a lot with Bill 11; I would like to see more research done to the NAFTA-related risks of Bill 11 before passing it is even an option.