Madam Speaker, to my physician colleague across the way, I think those are both very sensible suggestions.
First off, should the government be the one that delists services? In my view absolutely not. The delisting of services should be done by public input through professional bodies. The nursing and medical professions should certainly be involved. That is a very good and significant point. Of course delisting of services has been done without much input and I think in some cases very foolishly.
On the issue of accountability, the accountability in our health care system is not good. Here is my simplistic way of looking at it. As long as there is no interchange with the patient and the provider, it is free. There should at least be a bill presented to every patient for every service in Canada stating how much it costs, the date that it was received and the patient should sign for it. They would then look at the bill. They would have to pay one nickel of the bill. They would look at it and say, “An ultrasound costs $69.30 and I thought it cost about $5”. That is the sort of innovation on accountability which I think we need.
I think my colleague across the way knows full well that a lot of things are done in this medical system for legal purposes as well. I would like to address that.