Saskatchewan selling health care as a status symbol

Perhaps they learned from Alberta's foray into allowing more private investment in for-profit health care (hint: it hasn't worked very well). But when Saskatchewan signed its own deal with the feds last week on health-care funding, they also won a year's grace to test a middle-ground test on for-profit MRI clinics.

Not long ago, Canada's 13 provincial premiers and territorial leaders trashed a federal offer on a pan-Canadian funding formula which they said was just too lean. Since then, seven of the 13 leaders have hammered out their own side deals for health-care funding.

Thus Saskatchewan, Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, plus Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut have all completed agreements outside the pan-Canadian offer the feds withdrew when it was rejected the first time. Together, they represent about 10 per cent of Canada's population.

Whether that constitutes a significant breach in provincial ranks is a question for another day. As well let's set aside for now, the question of whether making side deals on funding will result in some provinces getting more money than others for our supposedly national health care program.

What Saskatchewan has achieved could well change how Canadians think about our “free” health care system, while making queue-jumping a new status symbol for the well-to-do.

Saskatchewan's deal comes with three riders: $190 million over 10 years specifically earmarked for home-care services; $158.8 million over 10 years for mental health care; and a one-year licence to allow private MRI scanning services outside the national health care plan.

In Alberta, you can book an MRI at a private clinic, not having to wait in line for services within the public system. Since adopting that model, private investors have made Alberta second from the top in the country for the number of MRI machines per capita (according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information).

That may be good for investors, but Albertans still wait anywhere from 87 days (mid-range for the country) to 247 days (the 98^th percentile) to access a scan.

Saskatchewan's wait times range between 28 and 88 days, yet all the talk is about people from Saskatchewan having to come to Alberta and pay for an MRI that their doctors say they need.

Bottom line: Alberta's abundance of MRI machines has done nothing to shorten wait times in the public system.

A Globe and Mail inquiry in 2015 found that publicly-funded MRIs in Alberta can cost between $550 to $1,000 — and you'll wait weeks or even months to get it. You can get one privately much more quickly for anywhere between $750 and $2,450.

Brad Wall's deal will allow private MRIs — with a catch. Sure, if you're rich you can get a private MRI within days, but the clinic will also be required to give one free MRI to someone on the public waiting list.

That makes the wealthy private patient into someone's benefactor.

Think a bout it: a wealthy person can boast at cocktail parties about getting that knee replacement fast, thanks to having quick access to an MRI. While also allowing some poor slob the same advantage, without that person developing an addiction to opiates for pain, while languishing on the public wait list.

If that's not selling health care as a status symbol, I invite you invent a better one.

Send your suggestions to Brad Wall. He's open to great ideas like that.