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COMMENTARY: Health care in P.E.I. needs new ideas

I have recently been disenfranchised. That is a correct assessment, because part of enfranchisement is fundamental rights. But also it can be said that I have been removed from a position of privilege in our society, which I did not hesitate to enjoy. I am one of those persons who recently, as the result of retirements or simple departures, no longer has the privilege – and it is a privilege – of the care of a family physician.

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I have now summarily been dumped on the dung heap of the “waiting list,” where, given the timing, I occupy something around the 40,000 position. I am 81 years of age and I will never have a family physician again in my life.

It is, as I have said, a disenfranchisement, and here is the reason. We have made health care a public good in Canada at large and in P.E.I. in particular.  In our “free and democratic society,” public goods must be equally available to all persons. My previous privileged position gave me a prior claim on that public good. I freely admit it, and I wrongfully enjoyed it. But the legitimate, moral, political, constitutional reality, again in our free and democratic society, is that such privilege should not exist unless it is available to all.

I have now summarily been dumped on the dung heap of the “waiting list,” where, given the timing, I occupy something around the 40,000 position. I am 81 years of age and I will never have a family physician again in my life.

When I simply “walked in” off the street in 1994, at the age of 50 – having decided that I likely needed regular medical examinations – and........

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