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Facing long waits and substandard care, a growing number of Canadians are willing to pay for health treatment, leading to a booming private business in Canada -- a country often touted as a successful example of a universal health system.

Private for-profit clinics are a booming business in Canada -- a country often touted as a successful example of a universal health system.

Facing long waits and substandard care, private clinics are proving that Canadians are willing to pay for treatment.

"Any wait time was an enormous frustration for me and also pain. I just couldn't live my life the way I wanted to," says Canadian patient Christine Crossman, who was told she could wait up to a year for an MRI after injuring her hip during an exercise class. Warned she would have to wait for the scan, and then wait even longer for surgery, Crossman opted for a private clinic.

Canada Sees Boom in Private Health Care Business - Political News - FOXNews.com

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A TIPPING POINT? It caught almost everyone by surprise, the decision last month by St. Paul's Hospital in Vancouver to contract out 947 publicly funded surgeries to three private clinics. But as a sign of the times - of the national mood, in fact - it was right up there with Ralph Klein's, or for that matter Gordon Campbell's, bellowing calls for health-care change. That's because St. Paul's is not some creaky old institution. It is a UBC teaching hospital with 500 beds, 800 doctors and about 1,400 nurses. But for want of a dozen speciality nurses in its OR - over a six-week period, a handful retired, two others returned home to Australia, one moved because of her husband's job - the hospital realized it just couldn't cope. So it turned to the private sector.

According to this seventh annual Health Care in Canada survey, a solid 53 per cent of Canadians favour contracting out - that is, allowing medicare to pick up the tab for routine surgeries like knee or hip operations at private clinics - to deal with a public system that can be painstakingly slow.


That's the basis of a grievance now before the Supreme Court - a case, some say, that could crack medicare wide open. Known as Chaoulli and Zeliotis vs. Quebec, this is a five-year-old appeal of a decision involving a Montreal doctor and his patient who, upset at the long wait for hip replacement, wanted Quebec to order it done expeditiously at a public hospital, to be paid for by private insurance.