K'JIPUKTUK, HALIFAX - The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Nova Scotia regulates the medical profession. It licenses physicians and defines standards. It's where you go if you want to file a complaint against your doctor.
Now it wants to expand its mandate to include the regulation of private healthcare facilties.
But not because it is in favour of private healthcare, just because private healthcare is here to stay, the college argues.
"We're not supporting the privatization of medicine. We're just trying to respond to what's happening on the ground," college CEO Dr. Gus Grant told the Chronicle Herald.
For Dr. Timothy Bood, a family physician who practices in Halifax, this announcement by the college sounds too much like an endorsement of private healthcare. He finds Dr. Grant's explanation a bit disingenuous.
"That statement that private healthcare is the way of the future suggests an inevitability that we don't think is warranted," Dr. Bood tells the Halifax Media Co-op.
"If you look at the facts, private healthcare is poor healthcare. If you look at the facts private healthcare is not the way of the future, it is the way of the past."
Dr. Bood and other members of the Nova Scotia Citizens' Health Care Network were outside of the college's office on Bayers Road in Halifax to hold an information picket.
Later some members entered the reception area to file a formal complaint against the college's future plans.
The Health Network sees many issues with the privatization of healthcare.
For one, private healthcare is more costly and less efficient than its public counterpart.
"Knee replacement surgery in the public system costs roughy $-10,000. You go to a private clinic and the cost will be twice that," says Dr. Bood, blaming the need to turn a profit.
Bood also points to the United States where healthcare costs are much higher than in Canada and many European countries. But the quality of healthcare in the States is inferior, says Bood.
As well, private healthcare clinics acts as a drain on their public counterparts. Studies have shown that private clinics increase wait times for patients because they take workers out of the public system, Dr. Bood and the Health Network argue.
And it makes the healthcare system fundamentally unfair, because patients are treated based on ability to pay rather than their need, Bood says.
"It would be a great for the college to take a stand, to show that it is actually seriously concerned that we maintain a healthcare system that best serves all Nova Scotians, rather than a two-tier system where the wealthiest one per cent can go to the front of the line," says Bood.
See also:
Public healthcare advocates rally at Victoria Park
Coalition rates political parties on healthcare platform
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