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| Orthopedic doctor showing model of Total Knee Replacement. PHOTO BY STOCK ART /Getty Images |
If Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau is truly concerned about the creeping privatization of health care, he might want to look in his own backyard. Quebec is a hot bed of private health-care clinics and even private surgery that many people wait years for in the public system that he says he wants to protect. «ExcelleMD is a private clinic that is not part of the Regie de l’assurance maladie du Quebec,» the clinic says on their website. If Trudeau was in need of something more, he could drive 20 minutes from his office to get knee or hip surgery.
«Montreal Institute for Special Surgery is the authority in orthopedic surgery by arthroscopy of the shoulder, elbow, hip and knee,» the company states on their website. « Their names are among many waiting lists in orthopedic surgery that extend to a two-year waiting period. » This is the kind of two-tiered, for-profit, private system that Trudeau was campaigning against and warning against in Halifax on Monday. During his announcement on Monday, Trudeau was promising that a reelected Liberal government would commit $6 billion over five years to eliminate wait lists.
The Government of Nova Scotia’s wait times website states that 90% of patients see a surgeon for their initial consult within 294 days and then wait another 651 days for the actual surgery. Your knees are bad enough that they need replaced and you wait nine months just for the consultation and another 22 months for the actual surgery. Google private knee surgery and you will see a lot of ads for those private clinics in Montreal. In the meantime, Trudeau puts off discussions with premiers of all political stripes who have been telling him for years that the public system needs more money from the federal government.
Health care isn’t an issue for Trudeau and the Liberals, it’s a political tool only to be taken out at election time.
Source: Brian Lilley | Toronto Sun
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