The solidarity Vincent Marissal challenged the Minister of Health in a parliamentary committee to ask him to regulate the Wild West which is rife in the consultation of family doctors disaffiliated with the Régie de l’assurance santé du Québec (RAMQ) and that the we pay with our credit card. The price of certain services varies from one clinic to another from one to four times.
Minister Dubé recognized the problem from the outset and would consider regulating this western appearance surrounding private clinics in Quebec. Although the current situation needs to be corrected, the Health Solidarity Coalition considers that it is necessary to prevent the solution put in place from normalizing private practice in medicine.
For our Coalition, the solution is not to regulate the private sector, but rather to deprivatize the provision of health care and social services in Quebec. The Canadian Health Act (CHA) is clear: provinces must offer their population universal and free access to medical services without having to pay any money. It is also prohibited to overcharge and impose user fees. The Wild West in private health is in clear violation of the LCS, and Minister Dubé should demonstrate an embarrassment that pushes action other than by juggling structures.
Quebecers have great difficulty gaining access to public medical services. As health is priceless, we understand those who choose to take out their wallet. They often don’t have time to shop around and can be charged more than $1,000 for a few consultations. A Minister of Health keen to enforce law and order should respond that it is abnormal that these sick people do not have access to a doctor affiliated with the RAMQ, that he will therefore bring the 500 disaffiliated general practitioners back into the network, that it is inexplicable that we have to pay for health care provided by the State, that we cannot tolerate that we must have the means to receive care and that the prices for the same health service should not be able to vary.
Let us add that the Minister of Health could also contact the Minister of Finance to propose to relieve taxpayers of a sum unnecessarily inflating the vast deficit that he has just highlighted. We will soon have to renegotiate their employment contracts with doctors. Mr. Girard would surely like to know that 15% of public health spending relates to doctors, while they only represent 6% of the workforce. A doctor here earns eight times the average salary of other workers while, for the average of OECD countries, the ratio is three to one. Several billions escape us each year. A situation which endangers many other essential health services.
What seems obvious to the population to improve access to care, as well as the financial health of the State and families, seems to be less so for a minister busy once again reforming structures. A new reform which, like the previous ones, will only further undermine the functioning of a public network built in the 1970s precisely to get us out of an almost entirely private system. We are playing “Once Upon a Time in the West” again in Quebec. We don’t need a sheriff who sets prices, we need to leave this bad cinema and find the light of a modern, public, accessible and free network.