Care Card?

We Don't Want Your Stinkin' Care Card!

WhoNeedsUniversalCareAnyhow?
ThinEdgeOfTheBleedingWedgeVille

Looks like the folks behind the private False Creek Urgent Care Centre are going back on their word, again:


CBC News, January 4, 2007

The operators of a new private emergency clinic in Vancouver are cutting back, complaining it can't afford to treat people for the standard fee it gets from the province's Medical Services Plan.

The False Creek Urgent Care Centre had struck a deal with the provincial government last month, agreeing to take patients with a B.C. Care Card.

But a spokeswoman for the clinic said they have now decided not to accept those patients, because the province pays only $35 per patient visit.

Sherry Wiebe says that's far less than the $199 the clinic would like to charge for a basic evaluation, plus other costs, including $50 for X-rays and $70 for an arm cast.

"We haven't resolved our talks with the government at this stage, and we're just not able to take MSP patients, simply because we're not able to subsidize the public system any longer."

Sure.

And when somebody needs more than the $199 basic diagnosis/treatment and can't afford to pay the extra grand or five, will Ms. Weibe and her paymasters with the deep pockets pick up the tab if we were to say that:

' We are simply are not able to subsidize your private killer of universal healthcare any longer'?

Sheesh.

Have we, the people of Canada, already forgotten why we fought and scrapped so hard to get universal, single-payer, healthcare in the first place?

Or maybe the real problem is that it has worked too well, and thus it has been too long since scores of people in this country lost their house and life savings because somebody in their family got catastrophically sick*.

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*And in case you didn't know it, that sort of thing is happening, right now, every day, south of the 49th parallel. In fact, approximately one half of all the personal bankruptcies in the United States are due to the high cost of medical bills. And even when people just get the usual bumps and scrapes many still get soaked for out of pocket costs on top of what they pay in private insurance, especially the poor. Kinda puts that shimmering bit of ephemeral flim-flammery from The Fraser Institute that is being used by the Wingnut Welfare Whirltizer to whack the Canadian healthcare system up the side of the head in a whole new perspective doesn't it? All of which has us wondering if the FI and it's very fine friends and donors, some of whom no doubt just love the idea of the Copeman and False Creek clinics (and just maybe, perhaps, might have a financial interest in them), will figure prominently in Michael Moore's upcoming film on the issue.
Image courtesy the folks at CUPE Local 606.

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