The Globe and Mail
April 29, 2004
Pettigrew clarifies health-care statements
By Campbell Clark and Brian Laghi
AND
Calgary Herald
April 29, 2004
From good to bad in hours
By Tom Olsen
Health Minister Pierre Pettigrew backtracked yesterday from his statements about allowing private health-care delivery…
Canada’s Health Minister Pierre Pettigrew:
“Unfortunately, I now realize that I have left the impression that I favour increased private delivery within the public health system. That was in no way my intent, nor is that the intent of the Government of Canada.
“To put it as plainly as I can, the ambition of the federal government is not to encourage private delivery even within the terms of the Canada Health Act. Quite the contrary, our ambition is to expand public delivery because, as Roy Romanow said it very well, public delivery provides Canadians with the best system possible.”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20040429/HEALTH29/TPHealth/
http://www.canada.com/calgary/calgaryherald/news/story.html?id=84d78fc4-0220-4ad5-aa0f-8f7b38c34cd7
Comment: Some construed yesterday’s message as an attack on the profits that can be realized in the health care delivery system. In my comment, I referred to “the perverse incentives created by including for-profit corporations and their passive investors in the health care delivery system.”
In discussing the problems with for-profit corporations, the operative term is not “profit” but rather “investor-owned corporations.” Profits are just as essential in health care as they are in any other sector of our economy. But the primary mission of health care providers should be to deliver the best possible health care services and products while retaining a fair profit.
The primary responsibility of a board of directors of an investor-owned corporation is to provide maximum shareholder value through stock appreciation and distributed dividends. And boards of for-profit corporations frequently reward themselves with significant ownership. This clear conflict of interest between shareholders and patients leads to a health care delivery system that, as Mme. Desjarlais indicated, is “more costly, less efficient and even more dangerous to patient care than the regular public system.”
It is a relief to see that Health Minister Pettigrew now sees that the Canadian citizens are quite serious when they say that they want a health care system dedicated to patients rather than investors.