VANCOUVER — A lawyer for a group of patients who support Canada's public health-care system says a private surgery clinic's legal crusade to change British Columbia's medicare laws puts profit over people.
Marjorie Brown told a B.C. Supreme Court trial that Cambie Surgery Centre's lawsuit challenging restrictions on private health insurance and doctors' billing threatens the well-being of all Canadians by undermining the foundation of the country's health-care model.
The centre, headed by private health-care advocate Brian Day, argues that those restrictions violate a patient's charter rights by forcing them to endure unreasonable wait times for treatment.
Brown says checks on a parallel private system don't worsen wait times but ensure that patients can access medical care based on need and not on the ability to pay.
She says private facilities hurt the overall system by "skimming" the easiest, most profitable patients, leaving the complicated, costly procedures to the public system, as well as allowing those with money to jump the queue ahead of patients who may have a greater need for treatment.
The trial is scheduled to go through to February of next year.
