Mr. Speaker, in reference to skating, I think he checked me into the boards and it was not very nice at all. I meant that as a joke, it is not true at all.
On the issue of a two tier system, personally I reject two tier medicine. My colleague from Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca who is also a physician has chosen that as his solution. That is a personal solution. That is not the alliance position.
I have already suggested the sort of thing I think would be useful to innovate in health care. We need to have more responsibility for knowing what the costs are and have a reason to husband the resources. Let me take this opportunity to put forward another suggestion.
Every patient for every service in Canada should get a bill that shows the date for the service, what the service was and what the cost was and they should have to sign it. They would not pay a nickel for that bill, but they would simply sign it to say that they received it. That would do two things. It would let them know what the procedure cost and it would also prevent extra billing or padded billing by physicians. Some physicians put in bills that are not really appropriate. My colleagues do not like me to say that, but it is accurate and true. This would be a mechanism for bringing some of the responsibility back to the individual patient. There is none today.
My colleague across the way said that I skated around. I hope that is as direct and forceful a way of saying what I believe should be some of the changes.
I am willing to listen to others. Would the Minister of Health say the same thing? I wish he would.