Private clinics in Vancouver told to stop extra-billing

Ok, so these people are criminals, wrongfully billing their clients for services that they are going to be re-imbursed for again by the government. To the tune of over 1/2 a million dollars!
Investigation? These people should be in jail, if I robbed someone of that much money I'd be locked up for sure.

I don't agree with the practice, but I don't agree with your post either. They're trying to set a price for their services higher than the govt pays. The govt says they can't, doesn't make them criminals. What the govt should do tho, is make the clinics pay back the extra billing to the clients.

I'd be interested to know what the fees paid for. Without that, you don't have the full story.

Are you using criminal as a legal term to apply to a criminal offence, or as a general term for someone breaking the law?

The act is clear, and they are in violation of the law as it stands, and have even already lost a court case to the BCSC about the issue.

Dr. Day comes off sounding like an idiot, 'They shouldn't have wasted time on an audit beacuse we told them this is how we acted'. That might be true but if they didn't follow the rules and conduct a fair audit he would likely be bitching about that.

The real stink in this case in my mind is that it took 2 years to conduct the audit, for something that might take a month if they took a lot of time. Everything aside to the private funded healthcare issue, why does it take 2 years to review the work and books of a 2 small clinics?

At the end of the day, clinics and doctors are a business.

A business regulated so much that they're told how much they can charge for everything. Some would say that's unconstitutional.

Cases like this are just the beginning for the much needed change in our system going into the future.

Criminal offense. That's what it means. We don't call speeders criminals.

The govt is coming off like an idiot, because they don't really want to enforce the law. This should not have dragged on for all these years. Smack those clinics (civilly) and smack them hard. But the Liberals are actually sympathetic to privatization, just don't want to come out and admit it because they know it isn't popular.

Doctors are granted an exclusive privilege by the government to hold a monoploy over health care. While some forms of health care might be delievered in a for profit business manner, they are hardly the strongholds of the free market.

However many other clinics operate within the law in a for profit manner, and do very well for themself. If the services being offered at other clinics in a legal manner can be profitable at the government rate, why can't these guys?
Under what grounds is regulation of prices unconstitutional? I think you can make a stronger argument for unfair, or immoral before you can make one for unconstitutional.

Yes lets jump on the insanity train and ride it to paying twice as much for health care, you can tell it's better because you paid more for it! Just ask anyone with an apple product.

Health care could stand a review to incress it's quality, efficency and cost effectiveness, but that should be an ongoing activity of everything.

The proper manner to reform or improve health care isn't in the court system.

To me Dr. Day is saying I want to use my subsidized education, in my government protected monoploy, to sell a service that will be subsidized by the government for the customer to a degree that is profitable to my business, and I want to charge more on top of that in violation of the rules... because it's not fair to have the government tell me what to do!

These clinics lost their constitutional arguments - preventing extra billing is not unconstitutional.

Clinics are a business. If you can't make sufficient profit running one under the rules set forth, go try your hand in banking or something.

Doctors are forced into a monopoly. It's not a privilege to practise here, they're doing us a service.

Further, who are we to tell anyone how much income is "too much". One man's profit may not work for another.



The only think insane about this is the fact that we're on a path to financial ruin as our health care system isn't sustainable and you're talking quality, efficiency and effectiveness. All of that means dick-all if you can't pay for it.

Who held them at gun point in school and forces them to become a doctor? Who shows up and drags them to work each day?

They are not forced to do anything, and the professional orginizations of doctors are the ruling body of doctors, and they have desided to demand a government enfoced monoploy.

So at best they did it to themself.
We are the people that must pay for it. If they want to run business the demands payment above the government rates they can change their line of work. If they want to incress their profit maybe they should cut their costs, become more efficent, or take on more work. If they are unhappy with the caree choice they made and feel they are not paid enough, well welcome to the buyers remorse education edition.

As a nation we limit the ability to demand higher payment as a price control messure. Everyone in the health care fields should have known this going into it, and accepted it.


Canada pays about 7% of it's GDP for health care, all other developed (and most developing nations) can deliver UHC for between 4%-10%. The USA with it's private/public patchwork system pays 14% of GDP.

You think we are on the path to financial ruin? Well that's a totaly different argument that reaches out to topics of fiscal and monetary policy, taxation, social economic status and so on.

I also don't see how a more cost effective and efficent system is unrelated to a sustainable system.

After living in the US for 15 years, trust me, you don't want to end up with a two tier HC system: one for the rich, and one for the poor. If doctors are not paid well enough for their services, that needs to addressed. But you don't want to go down a path of letting some doctors just charge what they please. There should be equal access for all, without some being more equal than others!

Exactly. And, by the way, I'd like to thank you all for educating my new cardiologist (he's from Sask) and then encouraging him to come practice in California. Much appreciated!

Details would entail a breach but I guess it was for applying for coverage or types of treatment and then billing the patient for it.

Pretty straight forward. Somebody had a knee operation that was covered under MSP, and then was billed xtra for it. Ie MSP was billed, as was the patient. Then they complained. While I have no use for Brian Day, and think these clinics should be barred from xtra billing, to for the patients to complain afterwards seems hypocritical.