Wall’s musing not a magical solution: Mandryk.

Gee, it’s almost as if Premier Brad Wall knew his musings on private MRIs would create a political uproar.

There actually shouldn’t be that much debate over private MRIs or any other thing that should enhance our publicly funded health system. Notwithstanding the NDP’s penchant to draw lines in the sand on all health-care related issues, the lines related to diagnostics — or any aspect of health, for that matter — are anything but permanent. Technology and medical advancements mean things are always changing.

And when it comes to private MRIs, the NDP’s own government did its share of line-erasing.

Out of its own sheer convenience and self-interest, it was an NDP government that started sending both Workers’ Compensation Board clients and Saskatchewan Government Insurance injury claimants to private MRI clinics in Alberta to speed along the process.

We are long past the days of hearing “health experts” who happened to show up at NDP conventions to tell us that the entire province could somehow get by with a single MRI machine. And, hopefully, the NDP is long past its mean-spirited belief that private MRIs are a fundamentally evil threat to healthcare delivery. (The Regina Lakeview constituency, at the NDP annual convention, once proposed the health system disallow any medical information gained from private MRIs to be used in this province. The resolution was defeated.)

MRIs are an everyday diagnostic tool and should be available to us as much as necessary.

So doesn’t it all just come down to the simple question Wall is posing: If private MRIs can be used to reduce waits for public MRIs, why not have them?

Well, the problem is that Wall is likely posing the wrong question ... or at least not one that gets to the nub of the health-care problems. Moreover, Wall’s reasons for posing it seem a little suspect.

That he would first muse about this on the Saskatchewan Party’s friendliest radio program, as a result of a caller who just happened to phone in as his government is entertaining offers from a private MRI company wanting to set up shop, is more than a little suspicious.

That he would do this an hour before calling a byelection in Lloydminster and then eagerly tweet about what the rest of the province thinks about this — knowing that the NDP would likely bite on his attempt to make this a wedge issue — perhaps tells you all you need to know about what this is really about.

The real question is: Do private MRIs meet the end goal of decreasing surgical wait times?

Well, most evidence points to more problems than solutions.

According to the Fraser Institute, Saskatchewan surgical wait times are already a disaster because they require a patient to get his doctor to refer him to a specialist, who refers him to a surgeon who asks for an MRI and only places the patient on the surgical wait list after the MRI results. (Unfortunately, the province only starts the wait-time clock after the surgeon places the patient on that list.)

If there were private MRIs in this province under the current system, it would mean massive queue-jumping of the surgical wait lists by those who could afford private MRIs over those who would be waiting for a public MRI. In some cases, those waiting the longest might be in the worst shape.

At the very least, the health protocol would have to be changed. So rather than blurting out political trial balloons on talk shows or tweeting out to the public to ask them what they think, perhaps Wall should have instead consulted health professionals on the impact.

Tom McIntosh, dean of political science at the University of Regina, who worked on the last national commission on medicare, is one who wonders if the problem is an overly bureaucratic wait system that’s too reliant on MRIs.

“You don’t always need an MRI for a diagnosis,” McIntosh said, “We have to ask: Is this (private MRIs) really the best issue we can focus on to improve the health system?

“I’m not sure (any) MRIs are the biggest issue (in health care).”

It sure seems they are not the solution in Alberta, where wait times for public MRIs (and, thus, surgeries) have actually increased — even surpassing MRI wait times in Saskatchewan — since private MRIs opened shop, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information.

Maybe the private MRIs aren’t the source for the long waits in Alberta, but it casts doubt on Wall’s argument that private MRIs could relieve pressure on the already over-burdened public system here.

This is not to discount the benefit of private MRIs. After all, people are going to Calgary now, anyway. It may be worth it to them as an investment in their own peace of mind.

But Wall’s glib musing is no small change. It has big ramifications.

And the premier would be well advised to consider those before he muses about private MRIs again.