Canada's government-run national health system, often held before Americans as a model method of delivering medical care, has been gradually falling to pieces in recent years, and last week it received what many fear will prove the knock-out blow.
That blow came from Alberta where the provincial Conservative government of Premier Ralph Klein is defying federal laws intended to safeguard the system against private medical practice. Klein unveiled a plan to institute a controversial "two-tier system" in his province – meaning two levels of medical care, one run by the government and delivered without fee, the other delivered privately with a fee attached.
From the article In Canada, private medicine spreads we learn that Canada was the only industrialized nation that prohibited private medical services.
However a recent Canadian supreme court decision found the Quebec ban on private medical services to be unconstitutional when people were suffering or dying because they were on the waiting list for appropriate medical service. This decision has apparently open the 'flood gates' to private medical practice.
One should not expect that this socialized medical program will go away quietly as it still has central government support and as is the case with most government programs, they have extreme resistance to dissolvement.
Read both articles.