No study was needed because the solution is becoming more and more obvious each day. The aging of the population allows us to see deeper into the relationship between living longer and being rich. Equalizing life chances means breaking this relationship. If the society allows the old wealthy persons to get free healthcare, they will bequeath their wealth to there children who will then reproduce social inequalities.

So if I understand you the solution to the problem should be solve if our generation Legalize euthanasia whuahahaha.

Where is the problem? The aging people are the richest members of our society.

What??? The aging people are the richest members of our society.

Where the hell did you find that ????

Quebec report rings health care alarm

Medicare backers fear calls for greater private care will impact what happens across the country

MONTREAL–Rockland MD sits in a low-slung, modern building, wedged between the railway tracks and strip malls that delimit Montreal's exclusive Ville Mont Royal neighbourhood.

The clinic stands at the forefront of a growing number of private health institutions in Quebec, where nearly one of every three health-care dollars, about $7 billion, will be spent in the private realm this year, much of it on pharmaceuticals.

And the private sector in Quebec, which has flourished over the past decade, may soon gain even greater influence as the province decides which elements of a controversial new committee report on the future of health care it wants to enact.

Indeed, the Castonguay report on health, which calls for a greater private-sector role, has stoked new fears among defenders of universal, public health care.

"Quebec has gone much farther than Alberta. ... There is a very serious structural change happening in Quebec that is outside the framework of the Canada Health Act, and no one seems to be doing anything about it," said Mike McBane, a spokesman for the Canadian Health Coalition, a pro-medicare lobby group with ties to labour unions, anti-poverty organizations and seniors' groups. "You can't keep this limited to the borders of Quebec... and what gives the Quebec government the right to sabotage the Canadian health-care system anyway?"

Lost amid the political brouhaha over the latest report, drafted by a group led by former health minister Claude Castonguay, who established medicare in the province and later became an insurance executive, was a medical incident involving Rockland MD.

Earlier this month, a gleaming operating theatre at the centre, referred to as an affiliated clinic, contracted to provide 300 surgeries to Montreal's over-burdened Sacré-Coeur hospital as part of a pilot project to alleviate wait times, hosted its first publicly funded surgery.

It emerged last week that on Feb. 6, the very first day of the new arrangement, a Rockland MD nurse mistakenly administered a massive dose of a painkilling narcotic directly into a hernia patient's vein rather than into a muscle.

The patient's blood pressure crashed, and although she was soon revived thanks to the efforts of a quick-thinking anesthetist, an ambulance was called to transfer the patient back to Sacré-Coeur. An internal investigation is underway.

An official at Rockland MD told La Presse, which revealed the incident, that it was dealt with swiftly and safely, and that nearly all the procedures in the institution have gone off without a hitch.

Since Rockland began its six-month contract – where the hospital pays about $9,000 a day to rent facilities and nursing staff – reports have also surfaced that the Sacré-Coeur's operating theatres routinely sit empty, a result of the paucity of surgical nurses working in the public sector.

Still, Quebec has signalled its intent to eventually step up the initiative, and at least five more hospitals have indicated they are anxious to strike deals with private clinics.

The government has also said it will act on Castonguay's recommendations to improve productivity in the health system, which includes exploring the possibility of hiring private companies to manage public hospitals.

Last week, Premier Jean Charest rejected the more sensational aspects of the Castonguay report, raising the provincial sales tax and instituting a health premium.

Implicit in those comments is a recognition that it would be political suicide for an unpopular minority government to put its hands in people's pockets to scrounge for more health-care money.

But if Charest is rejecting a full-scale reform of health care, he supports a series of incremental steps of the sort that have carved out a niche for outfits like Rockland MD.

"If you're going to eat an elephant, you have to do it one bite at a time," he told reporters this week.

Though most of the headlines in the province suggested the government has already shelved the report, the reality is more nuanced.

Quebec Health Minister Philippe Couillard said that while he doesn't support the idea of having a health-care deductible added to provincial tax forms – a type of user fee that Castonguay insists is legal under the Canada Health Act – "We should have the debate."

On the question of lifting a ban on allowing doctors to practise in both the private and public sectors, Couillard isn't opposed on principle, but because Quebec does not have enough doctors to allow it.

All of which present a thorny problem for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who loosed a verbal rocket at former Alberta premier Ralph Klein for considering some of the same initiatives that Quebec is currently looking at.

This week, a spokesman for federal Health Minister Tony Clement issued a statement saying, "Our government is committed to the principles that ensure that Canadians have universal access to medically necessary, timely and quality care based on need and not on an ability to pay... We are respectful of provincial jurisdiction in the delivery of health care."

The opposition Action démocratique du Quebec will press the Liberals to implement the Castonguay recommendations.

The Parti Québécois also sees the willingness of the other parties to encourage private-sector health development as a ready-made election issue.