Only Private Enterprise Can Save Health Care

Tommy Douglas, the CBC’s Greatest Canadian, brought us universal health care. But even his plan didn’t originally pay for everybody’s ingrown toenails. His primary goal was to make sure nobody faced financial ruin if they got sick.

Today we have a system where controlling costs is more important than treating patients, and where ideology is crippling us. In some places, including Toronto, people go blind waiting for cataract surgery. The government could restore their sight tomorrow simply by sending them to a private clinic instead of to a hospital. The cost to the government would be exactly the same. But in Canada, private is a dirty word, and so the government would rather you go blind. Poor Tommy would be spinning in his grave.