The Bottom Line

The Alberta government is looking to the private sector – and in particular to private health insurance – to solve health care problems. However, private health insurance is mired in myth and misunderstanding. 

The Bottom Line summarizes a huge body of evidence to get to the truth: private health insurance is more expensive and actually reduces access to health care. Evidence reveals that a manufactured cost crisis is driving the push for more private health insurance.

This book examines the implications of the recent Supreme Court Chaoulli decision in Quebec, and offers vignettes of life before medicare. The Bottom Line concludes that the Alberta Conservative government is needlessly pursuing a US-style health system.

In this highly readable and well-researched book, Diana Gibson and Colleen Fuller get to the real story behind private health insurance and offer viable solutions for strengthening Canada's public health care system from within.

Praise for The Bottom Line:

"You need to know what you are going to lose. Read this book and join the fight to stop the Americanization of Canada's health care system before it is too late"
- Shirley Douglas, daughter of Tommy Douglas

"This important and easy-to-read book deftly exposes the myths about the benefits of private health care."
- Linda McQuaig, author and journalist

"Private health insurance is being spun as new cloth ... The Bottom Line makes it clear that it is actually very old cloth with lots of holes which Canadians threw out for good reason a long time ago."
- Gillian Stewart, co-author of Clear Answers

The Bottom Line: The truth behind private health insurance in Canada is available from Parkland Institute. Contact us for details.

Colleen Fuller

Colleen Fuller is a health policy researcher and writer. After working in the trade union movement for 14 years in communications and research, she left to focus on the impact of privatization on universal access to health services. Since then, she has written extensively about Canada’s health care system, including issues affecting access to safe and effective prescription drugs and medical devices. Her published work includes Caring for Profit: How Corporations are Taking Over Canada’s Health Care System (1998), The Bottom Line: The Truth Behind Private Health Insurance in Canada (with Diana Gibson, 2006), and The Push to Prescribe: Women & Canadian Drug Policy (co-author, 2010).

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Diana Gibson

Diana Gibson has worked nationally and internationally on economic and public policy issues ranging from health care to energy and trade policy. She has over 25 years of experience in social policy research and has been on faculty with Capilano College and was research director of Parkland Institute. She has authored and co-authored many publications on inequality, tax reform, and energy issues at the provincial, territorial and national levels. She is the executive director of the Community Social Planning Council of Greater Victoria, a co-founder and former CEO of The Firelight Group Research Cooperative, a director of PolicyLink Research and Consulting, a co-founding director of the Canadians For Tax Fairness as well as a research associate of the Canadian Centre For Policy Alternatives, and a distinguished research fellow with Parkland Institute.

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