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Breaking the taboo
A landmark Supreme Court ruling challenges Canada's long-held health care assumptions
JOHN GEDDES
The Supreme Court of Canada just wasn't buying the familiar old case in favour of a public health care monopoly. In rulings that stunned Canadian politicians last week, judges on the top court looked hard at some well-worn arguments against allowing private care -- and tore that threadbare thinking apart. In key passages, the outrage of some judges seemed to be showing through their cool, deliberate prose, as they described how intolerably long waiting times for public treatment put individual Canadians through pain and psychological torment, or even allowed them to die because their names fell too far down some specialist's list. "Delays in the public system are widespread and have serious, sometimes grave, consequences," wrote Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin and Justice John Major. "Inevitably where patients have life-threatening conditions, some will die because of undue delay in awaiting surgery."
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