Private-Sector Care Gaining Ground in Single-Payer Countries

Posted by Grace-Marie Turner in Health Care on Jun 12th, 2009 | no responses

Post this to Twitter

As the U.S. is on the verge of rushing toward government health care, Canada is reforming its system in the opposite direction, wrote Dr. David Gratzer in the June 9 WSJ.

For example, Dr. Brian Day, an orthopedic surgeon, grew increasingly frustrated by government cutbacks that reduced his access to an operating room and increased the number of patients on his hospital waiting list. He built a private hospital in Vancouver in the 1990s. Dr. Day estimates that 50,000 people are seen at private clinics every year in British Columbia.

According to The New York Times, a private clinic opens at a rate of about one a week across the country. Public-private partnerships, once a taboo topic, are embraced by provincial governments, said Gratzer, himself originally from Canada.

And in the United Kingdom, the present Labour government has introduced a choice in surgeries by allowing patients to choose among facilities, often including private ones.

Even in Sweden, the government has turned over services to the private sector. Americans need to ask a basic question, said Gratzer: Why are they rushing into a system of government-dominated health care when the very countries that have experienced it for so long are backing away?

• No Related Posts