Allow public to access private MRI scans
It began when Premier Brad Wall suggested to a caller on my radio show that he is considering whether Saskatchewan people should be able to pay for private Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) services, something that is presently prohibited.
When he left the radio studio Wall turned to social media and asked on Twitter, “is it time to allow people to pay for their own private MRI’s in Saskatchewan like they can do in Alberta?”
Next to trying to justify why only government should be allowed to sell liquor, there are few issues where the ideology of the political left is more trampled by reason and common sense than private MRIs.
MRI units are available throughout the province — ironically, often purchased by private volunteer fundraising — and their operations are generally funded by government medicare dollars and offered to patients at no charge. But there is a cost — long wait times.
This occurs because MRI access is rationed so government does not have to pay for too many MRIs per year.
As a result, patients with urgent or critical needs are seen first while everyone else waits, in some cases for months of pain, impaired mobility and a deteriorating quality of life.
Like many other aspects of government single-payer health care, limited MRI access is part of the Faustian bargain that every Canadian willingly makes when we kneel before the altar of government and allow it to exclusively fund hospital and physician services.
It should be noted that not everybody is on their knees. Workers’ Compensation and SGI pay privately for MRIs so their clients can be fast tracked. Ditto for the Saskatchewan Roughriders, who aren’t standing beside you in public health-care MRI lineups.
Unlike the bad old days of government monopolies being enforced at the point of legal coercion, the MRI issue is simplified when our neighbouring province of Alberta permits anyone to walk into a private MRI clinic, often with a wait time of one day, and pay out-of-pocket for a scan.
As a politician well skilled in the art of “thinking out loud” and pre-emptively floating ideas, the premier received positive feedback to the MRI idea, including a tweet from pro golfer Graham DeLaet — the pride of Saskatchewan on the PGA — who wrote “Yes! I may not have the back issue I have today if that was available 15 years ago. After a month (of waiting for an MRI) I just chose not to do it.”
Allowing private MRI access in Saskatchewan keeps money and jobs here, alleviates long wait times for public MRIs and makes sense. Beyond the narrow ideology of the “medi-scare” community, this idea is a winner.
In the category of “the more things change the more they remain the same”, a friend looking at the University of Saskatchewan archives passed along the story of the “Crisis of 1919”.
Ninety five years ago, a senior faculty member, after accusing U of S President Walter Murray of falsifying a report about university finances, was fired by the board of governors along with three faculty members who had abstained from a faculty council vote of confidence in the president.
With “the public and the press clamouring for an explanation” of the firings, hearings were conducted by the province’s lieutenant-governor, who concluded that the board’s decision was “regular, proper and in the best interest of the university”.
It was also decided that the professors were not protected by tenure, but were employed “at the pleasure of the board” and their jobs were the price of their disloyalty.
This “crisis of 1919” should disabuse anyone that recent controversies at the U of S will linger and forever harm the school’s reputation. Everything passes.