CAE Seminar | Toward a two-tiered, publicly administered health care system for Canada: A fourth way in the public vs private debate

W. Maurice Young Centre for Applied Ethics Public Seminar

Speaker: Daryl Pullman, Professor of Bioethics, Memorial University of Newfoundland

While Canadians often pride ourselves on our so-called ‘universal healthcare system’, that system has faced steady erosion over the past several decades. While publicly funded healthcare has struggled to provide timely and effective services, privately funded clinics have been making inroads into the healthcare sector. Indeed, the principles of the Canada Health Act which were initially intended as prescriptive to ensure the universal and equitable distribution of healthcare services across the country, now function as largely aspirational ideals with increasingly marginal application. This presentation reviews some of the recent history of the increasing privatization of healthcare in Canada. A variety of approaches to the combination of publicly and privately funded delivery are considered and an alternate ‘fourth way’ is offered. This fourth alternative allows for a two-tiered system in which the option to pay for some services is available to those willing and able to pay, but where any such private access must be publicly administered.

Daryl Pullman is Professor of Bioethics at Memorial University of Newfoundland. He received his MA and PhD in philosophy from the University of Waterloo. He has broad and diverse research interests including genetics and ethics, end-of-life care, and ethics and aging. He has served on many national ethics committees including the CIHR Stem Cell Oversight Committee, the CIHR Standing Committee on Ethics, as the “Ethical, Legal and Social Issues” lead for the CIHR Institute of Genetics, and as co-chair of the Ethics Advisory Committee for the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging. Daryl has published widely on issues in research and clinical ethics. He has a particular interest in the concept of human dignity and its relevance to discussions of genetics and identity.