Canadian Healthcare Tries Two Tier Model

From The Calgary Sun:

Canada's national health system, often held up before Americans as a model method of delivering medical care, has been gradually falling to pieces in recent years.

Last week, it received what many fear will prove a knock-out blow from Alberta, where Premier Ralph Klein is defying federal laws intended to safeguard the system against private medical practice.

Klein unveiled a plan to institute a controversial "two-tier system" in his province -- meaning two levels of medical care, one run by the government and delivered without fee, the other delivered privately with a fee attached.

This would end in Alberta the utopian socialist vision that inspired the institution of state medicine in Canada four decades ago, wherein rich and poor alike were to get the same level of care.

But it was a vision increasingly belied by reality, because the rich could acquire the best care simply by travelling to the U.S.

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