Challenge to Ontario ban on private medical insurance

Lindsay McCreith says he was almost killed by Ontario's health-care monopoly. Now he hopes to get even with a constitutional challenge that, if successful, will pave the way for private care in a province dead set against it.

 

After suffering a seizure in January 2006, McCreith, a 66-year-old retired body-shop owner was told he had a malignant brain tumour. But he had to wait four-and-a-half months to verify that diagnosis. Unwilling to risk the wait and suspecting the growth was cancerous, McCreith got an scan across the border in Buffalo, USA, the next day. The scan revealed the tumour was malignant.

 

Even with this diagnosis in hand, the Ontario system still refused to provide timely treatment, so McCreith had surgery in Buffalo to remove the cancerous growth.

 

Now McCreith is challenging the province's monopoly on health care in court so that "other Canadians will not have to die on waiting lists."

 

The challenge seeks to strike down Ontario's ban on private medical insurance and private billing by physicians, claiming that they infringe on his constitutional right to "life, liberty and security of the person."

 

The case will test the landmark 2005 Supreme Court decision that struck down Quebec prohibitions on private health insurance. That case, named after the Montreal physician who launched it, Dr. Jacques Chaoulli, permits patients to use private care when faced with long waiting lists.

 

It's an option Ontario's Liberal government has rejected.

 

John Carpay, executive director of the Calgary-based Canadian Constitution Foundation, a group backing McCreith's challenge, says it's absurd that Ontarians can buy medical insurance for their pets, but not their children and points to countries like Germany, Sweden and Australia where parallel systems co-exist.

 

McCreith says he spent about $45,000 US on his US care. "I don't care about the money we spent, it's gone. The system stinks. I don't understand why there isn't a rush on government, why people say I'll wait a year for a hip replacement, a year and a half to find out what's wrong with my brain."