Canada's first private emergency room won't be allowed to accept patients from ambulances or let patients stay more than 24 hours when it opens next week.It's certainly no secret that Campbell and company have been looking for excuses to move toward greater privatization of health care (among other government services). But the lack of any response to Godley's plan demonstrates that the B.C. Libs' commitment to destroying government is matched only by their cowardice: rather than so much as responding privately to the centre's plan, they seem to have tried to ignore the issue themselves in hopes that nobody would notice what was happening.
The False Creek Surgical Centre, which already performs private surgeries for a fee, is slated to do a test run of emergency services on Monday and plans to be open for patients next Friday...
Godley (the centre's medical director) said he doesn't know how the centre falls under the Canada Health Act and he declined to talk about its fee structure.
Godley said the centre wrote to the provincial health minister about its plans several months ago, but received no reply and so decided to proceed.
Sadly, to the extent the Libs' goal may have been to enable privatization by stealth, it appears they've managed to get what they wanted, as the opening of private emergency service is now a fait accompli without any public input. And no matter what the outcome of the "conversation", the real question now is whether privatized care will have spread so far as to be irreversible by the time the Libs' faults get them removed from office.
Update: B.C. Health Minister George Abbott now says it would be difficult see how the emergency room can operate legally. Funny that he couldn't be bothered to say the same when he was asked in time to influence whether it would open or not...
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