Quebec patients are increasingly confronted by a dilemma: wait or pay, says CSN president Caroline Senneville.
The Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN) is ramping up the speed in its struggle against what it perceives as the deterioration of the Quebec health-care system in demanding Health Minister Christian Dubé act to stop the exodus of doctors from the public to the private system.
In a communiqué published Sunday morning, the union cites statistics from the public health insurance system, the Régime public d’assurance maladie (RAMQ,) indicating in 2024, 500 family doctors left the public system to go private — a figure that has quadrupled since 2019.
According to Caroline Senneville, president of the CSN, Quebec’s second-largest trade union federation by membership, the provincial government could put an end to this exodus promptly. She said in the communiqué “the government has no excuses” for these departures from the public system to the private system.
In an interview later Sunday, she said “it’s the law that sets the framework permitting doctors to go private.” Quebec law does not allow doctors to practise at the same time in a private and a public establishment, “but what the law does permit is that you can work privately and in the public system if you practise telemedicine. We could stop that.”
Senneville said doctors are able to alternate between the public and private systems. “You can work three months in the public system, three months private, three months in the public system … that’s really perverse, because you work three months in the public system, you receive patients and then you tell them, ‘if you come in the public system, I have no time to see you for an operation for two years or one year, but if I put you in my private practice, I can offer you a place in two or three months.”
Senneville said she objects to the fact Quebec patients are increasingly confronted by a dilemma: wait or pay. And waiting seems increasingly to be a less acceptable option since, according to a survey of 1,002 people conducted at the end of September by the Journal de Québec and market research company Léger, Quebecers were 17 per cent more likely than five years ago to turn to the private sector for care.
According to the same survey, 50 per cent of Quebecers age 34 and younger have paid for medical care in the past five years, compared with 36 per cent of those age 55 and older.
Said Senneville: “Increasingly, we take it for granted the public services does not meet our needs. We have become resigned to paying. But we are saying: ‘No. Let us stop being resigned and give us the means to have a public health-care service that is strong and effective.’”
The CSN says it plans to propose a series of measures at a gathering on Nov. 23 at the Colisée Vidéotron in Trois-Rivières. It follows a campaign the CSN launched several months ago calling for “no profit on illness.” In French, it rhymes: “pas de profit sur la maladie.”
While no specifics were provided, Senneville said proposed solutions should guarantee access to health-care services “be based on our needs — and not on the thickness of our wallet.”
The minister did not respond immediately to a request for comment.