Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his question.
What is wrong with setting up private clinics so that people who want to pay can pay? We only have to look at the United States where people who want to pay can pay and buy as much as they want whether or not they need it and people who cannot afford it have inadequate and inappropriate access to health care.
A major determinant of health is socioeconomic status. Poverty is the greatest determinant of health. Poor people need more services. We are basically saying that we have some false savings here. We will not save any money. The people who need the services more will be the people who cannot afford them. They will still be going to the public sector. That is the first point.
Second, if we look at the United States model, private clinics have tended to create massive costs and inefficiencies in the system. They have taken away clinical autonomy from physicians who no longer have the ability to choose what they do for their patients but have to ask a non-medical person, some insurance adjuster, what they should and should not or can and cannot do. That is not what I consider to be choice.
We have choice in this country. In the United States they are not free to choose a physician. They are only free to go to a physician who is under a particular insurance plan and works for a particular insurance company. In Canada we are free to choose a physician anywhere and everywhere we like.
We have what is known as access to anyone we want to see. That is choice. In this country we are free to go to any hospital we choose. We are free to have a bed in the hospital next to anyone we choose to be with. We do not have to go to one for the poor if we are poor. We can sleep under a bridge or lie next to some multimillionaire in a Canadian hospital.
What the member is considering is wrong. If he does not believe me, let him think about what happened in the United Kingdom. I did my medical training in the United Kingdom. Its wonderful easy answer was that it would take care of the poor and those who could pay would pay. We have seen a two-tier system in which the poor have been relegated to second rate medicine. Physicians do not want to work in the areas where there are large poor populations. The United Kingdom is sending for physicians from developing countries to go there to provide care. That does not create equality of care. That is what is wrong.