By refusing to end it's private-pay MRI scheme [scam?] in the face of federal transfer deductions, #skpoli has become the first province to declare that it effectively no longer supports the principles of the Canada Health Act. 1/7
The CHA explicitly forbids provinces either directly or indirectly allowing patients to be charged for insured services and allows Ottawa to deduct such charges from a province's allocation under the Canada Health Transfer. 2/7
For nearly 40 years every province has publicly professed adherence to the principles that provincial health insurance be comprehensive, universal, accessible, portable and publicly administered (even when their actions demonstrated otherwise) 3/7
To be clear, the CHA principles are weakly defined and have been, to date, poorly enforced by Ottawa. But their rhetorical & symbolic importance to Cdns kept provincial governments from going too far or too fast in undermining the public provision of health services. 4/7
Provincial demands for increases to the transfer were always accompanied by public protestations that they were needed to insure the principles of the CHA could be upheld. But that may have changed in the last 48 hours. 5/7
But Saskatchewan can't legitimately have it both ways. It can't demand ever increasing transfers in order to 'save the health care system' while refusing to be bound by even the weak conditions imposed by the CHA. 6/7
Ultimately, this is a political fight, not a legal fight. SK is fully within its rights to allow private MRIs. Ottawa is within its rights to reduce the CHT in response. The question is on which side will the people of Saskatchewan fall in this game of health care chicken? 7/7
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