Readers think more than band-aids are needed to move the health care system into the recovery room
The Vancouver Sun, December 7, 2006

Is a pay-as-you-go urgent care clinic what British Columbians really need? Instead of applying Band-Aids, we need to fix the problems that our health care system is facing. Privatization of essential services is not the answer.

Supporters of private clinics do not realize that in order to run them, we are robbing the already depleted public sector of trained health care professionals. For example, while the wait lists for orthopedic surgeries are steadily increasing, some surgeons choose to practise only within private clinics. Instead of losing our doctors and nurses to hospitals south of the border, they are being misplaced within our own province.

We are mistakenly under the illusion that establishing a handful of private clinics will reduce the strain on our health care system.

A privilege of living in Canada is that, regardless of the ability to pay, we all have access to health care. B.C. does not need private emergency care; what it needs is a health care system that works. By the time Premier Gordon Campbell tallies the results from his Conversations on Health Care, it might be too late to dig ourselves out of the mess that health care is becoming.

Michelle Guadagni, Indy Heran
Fourth-year nursing students
Douglas College Bachelor of Science in Nursing Program