Full-page ad looks like news article.
from Friends of Medicare
Friends of Medicare is concerned that a recent full-page ad that looks like a news story in the Edmonton Journal is designed to mislead Albertans.
"The Copeman Healthcare Center's advertisement in the Edmonton Journal, misleadingly presented as a news article, is a clear indication that the proponents of private, for-profit clinics are actively attempting to normalize the idea of American-style health care in Canada," said Sandra Azocar, Executive Director of Friends of Medicare.
For years now, she said, promoters of for-profit health care have been doing their best to convince the general public that the only way to improve Canada's health care system is to open it to private, for-profit interests. The promotion of for-profit care includes the suggestion that private medical facilities may provide faster access to those who pay.
"In Alberta, private facilities, and even some public facilities, do offer enhanced services. If enhanced services are of higher quality and private facilities allow people who can pay to have quicker access, then access and quality of care received will be based on the patient's ability to pay. The Copeman clinic's very existence shows that we already have two-tiered care in Alberta," said Azocar. "The 'queue jumping' evidence that came out of the preferential access inquiry shows that such activities are already present in our system."
“For years now, promoters of for-profit clinics have been doing their best to convince the general public that the only way to improve Canada’s health care system is to open it to private, for-profit interests.”
"Canadians and Albertans know that if we lose our public health care system, most people would not be able to afford health care," she added. "Allowing for-profit clinics to operate threatens the equality of access to medical services. They distort the public system. They don't save money, they don't fix any problems that the public system itself can't fix and they introduce a whole world of new problems. You cannot turn doctors into medical entrepreneurs with a completely different set of incentives and expect the system to work the same way."
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