Premium Healthcare

Some clinics in Canada offer private services to patients. A clinic in Calgary is now charging membership fees for enhanced levels of service: shorter wait times and longer appointments. Health Canada officials have expressed concern about how this trend may contribute to ongoing healthcare shortages, as professionals and patients experiment with more privatized economic models for accessing and providing medical care. Some might argue that people should be able to do almost whatever they want with their money — including purchasing private healthcare. Doing so does not seem to directly harm or infringe upon the rights of others.

If a Canadian citizen would have to wait over a year for a knee surgery, why should she not opt to spend her hard-earned money to get it done sooner? Must she sacrifice her time and well-being in order to wait for her turn? If she can pay privately for other services she wants, like cosmetic surgery, just to enhance her quality of our life somehow, why not include timely surgery, if she is able and willing to pay for it?

Others will point out that Canadians are rightfully proud of their public healthcare system and willing to undertake responsibilities to work together — and even maybe suffer — to support and defend it. These critics fear that privatization could compromise our public system, threaten social equity, and ultimately even reduce the quality of medical care for those left without easy access to alternatives and enhancements. Privatization could draw talent and resources away from what is available in the public system due to increased competition for professionals. This shortage could add pressure to an already stressed medical system, increasing the risk of labor shortages. If enough citizens become accustomed to opting out of public systems (or at least upgrading their care), would they continue to be sufficiently invested in making sure this system works well enough for all?

Can innovative, privatized forms of health care work to take pressure off the public system? Or do they add stress to its very foundations, potentially causing more burdens for many of us? Canada’s publicly-funded health care system is certainly facing challenges, and both patients and professionals confront ethically complicated choices in the current landscape. Does the fate of socialized healthcare depend on the ethical and personal decisions of professionals and patients facing hard choices?

Discussion Questions

Further Reading

• “Understanding Public and Private Health Care” by the Canadian Medical Association (n.d.)
• “Converting Doctor’s Offices to Premium Clinics Could Spawn a New Health-Care Crisis” by Jason Markusoff (2023)
• “Myth: “Privatization” Can Help Everyone Access Health Care” by Canadian Doctors for Medicare (n.d.)

Bibliography

Canadian Doctors for Medicare. n.d. “Myth: “Privatization” Can Help Everyone Access Health Care.” Accessed August 2, 2024. https://www.canadiandoctorsformedicare.ca/myth_privatization.

Canadian Medical Association. n.d. “Understanding Public and Private Health Care.” Accessed August 2, 2024. https://www.cma.ca/our-focus/public-and-private-health-care/understanding-public-and-private-health-care.

Markusoff, Jason. 2023. “Converting Doctor’s Offices to Premium Clinics Could Spawn a New Health-Care Crisis.” CBC News, July 26, 2023. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/boutique-doctor-clinics-calgary-public-private-analysis-1.6917832.

Williams, Avontay. 2023. “Case 8: Premium Healthcare.” In Ethics Bowl Canada 2023-2024 Regional Case Set, edited by Ethics Bowl Canada Case Development Committee. n.p.: Ethics Bowl Canada. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mY2bsD2RqhrVnPrLWO_RZxvgZ-X2ddIS/view.

Attribution

Unless otherwise noted, “Premium Healthcare” by Avontay Williams (2023) [and the Ethics Bowl Canada Case Development Committee], via Ethics Bowl Canada, is used and adapted under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

The Ethics Bowl Canada Case Development committee gives permission to third parties to use the Case Sets it has developed between September 2021 and March 2024 under the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license. The Committee also asks that users notify Ethics Bowl Canada of their use of the case sets, especially if they are adapting or remixing it. This can be done by sending an email to contact@ethicsbowl.ca.