National Post: "''Access to a waiting list is not access to health care,'' Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin and Justices Jack Major and Michel Bastarache wrote in one of the two majority opinions.
''There is unchallenged evidence that in some serious cases patients die as a result of waiting lists for public health care.''
Legal experts said the high court's voluminous, complex 4-3 ruling yesterday opens the courtroom door to a flood of legal challenges to government restrictions in all provinces that outlaw private health care in various ways, and to the immediate purchase and sale of private medical services and insurance in Quebec.
''It fundamentally reshapes the landscape of medicare in Canada by forcing governments either to guarantee timely care, or if they are not prepared to do so, they must allow Canadians to spend their own money to take care of themselves when they are sick,'' said Osgoode Hall law dean Patrick Monahan, who represented an intervener in the case, Senator Michael Kirby, chairman of a Senate committee that studied medicare."
No comments:
Post a Comment