When most people talk about two tiers of health care in Canada, they often talk about private versus public health care.
The wealthiest Canadians have the option of going to private clinics or out of country and pay for better care. And with all due respect to the excellent work provided by health-care professionals in the public system, more timely treatment, more doctors, more nurses and a more pleasant environment for recovery leads to better health, which is why the rich are willing to pay for it when necessary.
The Westbank First Nation, already one of the richest in Canada, is getting into the private health-care business with its plans to build a private hospital on its reserve lands overlooking Okanagan Lake. Once it opens, that hospital will make so much money that the Canadian Mint may as well set up a printing shop in the basement. The federal government may mount a legal challenge to the construction of the hospital, arguing that the hospital falls outside of the First Nation's area of responsibility, but that would be a waste of tax dollars to pay lawyers.
No chance of winning, no matter what the constitutional experts say. Politics, not legal precedent, will rule the day.
Rather than worry about whether health care is public or private, B.C. residents north of Kamloops and east of Kelowna concern themselves with the difference between rural and urban health care. The citizens of Northern B.C. and and the Kootenays simply don't enjoy the level of health care available to residents of the Thompson-Okanagan, the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island.
Anyone living in small and isolated communities needing anything more than basic care will have to make their way to a larger urban-based hospital. It's inaccurate, however, to describe the difference between urban and rural health care as being on two tiers, where residents receive one or the other, based on where they live and their proximity to urban centres.
Just like population is on a sliding scale, so is the amount of health care available to residents. Thanks in no small part to the Northern Medical Program, Prince George residents are blessed with a teaching hospital, a cancer centre and numerous specialists. On that sliding scale, the level of health care in Burns Lake or Chetwynd is not as good as the level of health care in Prince George, which is not as good as the level of health care available in Metro Vancouver.
Dr. Bert Kelly, the executive director of the Northern Medical Society, would like to see University Hospital of Northern B.C. truly grow up with the addition of a trauma centre and a "surgical tower" to house upgraded operating rooms, surgical beds and a helicopter landing pad to receive residents needing serious emergency care from across the region.
But don't mistake the cheery response to the idea from election candidates to mean the project will be put out to tender the day after the election. Candidates are happy to entertain all sorts interesting ideas during campaigns, regardless of the extent of that idea's relationship with reality.
It's a great idea that's, unfortunately, a decade or more away. The cost of a similar facility in Kelowna cost a tidy $218 million, Kelly admitted. His argument that we're deserving because the area covered by Northern Health generates 70 per cent of the province's economic activity is appealing on the surface, except that expensive medical facilities are built to treat people, not segments of the economy. Population, not industrial productivity, will be what justifies spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a trauma centre.
Still, Kelly's dream is a noble one that should be pursued along with the dream to see Prince George's population exceed 100,000 residents and other Northern B.C. communities grow in number and diversify their local economies.
Only then will the level of health care area residents receive come closer to matching what Vancouver citizens get.
