Ottawa slams Saskatchewan over private MRIs that let ‘people jump the queue’
REGINA — Federal Health Minister Jane Philpott says Saskatchewan needs to stop allowing people who can pay for private MRI scans to jump the queue or risk losing health-care funding.
Saskatchewan’s legislation — which allows private MRIs as long as the clinic does a second scan at no charge for a patient on the public wait list — is “bad policy” and “bad medicine,” Philpott said. It also violates the Canada Health Act, she said.
“The foundation of our health-care system in Canada … allows Canadians to know that if they become ill, that they should not have to worry about whether they can pay for it,” she said Monday in Ottawa.
“We will fundamentally uphold that act and we see that these aberrations are bad policy and they’re actually bad medicine, too. Decisions on who gets an MRI should be done on the basis of who needs one for medically necessary purposes.”