Medical clinics injunction a win for suffering patients

Kudos to columnist Ian Mulgrew for his continuing superb reporting and commentary on the private medical clinics’ constitutional challenge. The plaintiffs’ successful injunction application is a huge victory for the estimated 65,000 B.C. residents per year who otherwise would be forced by government fiat onto lengthening waiting lists for medically necessary diagnostic or surgical services.

Presumably, this injunction can be extended until the final judicial decision is made respecting this matter. That could well be four, five or more years from now. If so, the potential reduction in patients’ unnecessary pain and suffering, possible loss of life, as well as the burden on increasingly inadequate public health care facilities will be enormous.

In her judgment granting the injunction, Justice Janet Winteringham found that the plaintiffs had established a “sufficient causal connection” between increased waiting times for medically necessary services and physical or psychological harm caused to patients. Isn’t this the central issue under consideration in the constitutional challenge itself ?

If this judge gets the point, it’s most likely others will too. No doubt this is why the province is using every legal tool at its disposal and spending inordinate amounts of taxpayers’ money in the process, to delay a judicial determination of this case.

It’s an outrage that the provincial government continues to obdurately pursue this matter before the courts in its misguided effort to impose an ideologically instigated constraint on the fundamental right of British Columbians to obtain timely access to medically necessary health care.

David Marley, West Vancouver