Roy Romanow Lashes Out Against Private Health Care

C.B.C. TV
The National
November 7, 2002

PETER MANSBRIDGE: An emotional Roy Romanow lashed out against private health care today. He said there’s no proof a private, for-profit system would solve Canada’s health crisis. On the contrary, he charged, it would be counterproductive and too expensive for the average person. Romanow’s comments came after a speech in Montreal which offered more hints about what Canadians should expect from his final health care report due later this month. The story from Christina Lawand.

CHRISTINA LAWAND (Reporter): Something as simple as this is an exercise in pain for Ange Fatel.

ANGE FATEL: For me, it’s like being stabbed in the back.

LAWAND: Spinal surgery, her only real hope for relief. But to get an operation date, she needs a diagnostic MRI, and getting that could take up to a year.

FATEL: The longer you have to wait, of course, the worse it gets.

LAWAND: Access is the number one health care concern of Canadians and a big target of Roy Romanow’s plan.

ROY ROMANOW (Health Care Commissioner): The current situation is absolutely untenable.

LAWAND: But while the commissioner remains short on specifics to reduce waiting lists, he is crystal clear on what he believes is not the cure – private MRI clinics that offer speedy service for a fee.

ROMANOW: You become, in effect, party to a kind of form of queue jumping.

LAWAND: But Romanow’s disdain for private delivery goes well beyond diagnostic tests and is becoming increasingly blunt.

ROMANOW: Show me the beef! Tell me where private-for-profit provides better health outcomes, and tell me where it is more efficient.

LAWAND: A view that clashes head on with some provinces and with the recent senate committee report on health care. The Kirby report encourages private-for-profit providers like clinics as long as the services they offer remain publicly funded. something Alberta firmly believes in.

GARY MAR (Alberta Health Minister): Private surgical facilities may have that possibility of being able to focus on a limited number and a high volume of a particular procedure and, therefore, have better outcomes.

LAWAND: Quebec’s Health Minister is far less polite.

FRANCOIS LEGAULT (Quebec Health Minister): I don’t need the help of Mr. Romanow to know what to do with our health system in Quebec.

ROMANOW: They say this is the future. I can take you to the future! I can take you to the future 50 years ago where that’s all we had was private-for-profit, and people lost their houses!

LAWAND: Romanow says thanks to Ottawa’s surplus projections, tax hikes may not be needed to fix the health care system. What’s needed above all, he says, is political will and an end to jurisdictional bickering. Christina Lawand, CBC News, Montreal.