Medical tourism is considered a luxury in the West: you travel to a place with top-notch doctors who you can see more quickly than you would expect at home, undergo a series of more thorough tests than you normally would at home, and receive a more comprehensive evaluation than you would expect at home.
The developing world equivalent? Simply travel to Canada and apply for asylum. Until last Friday, anyone who filled out an application for refugee status received a free, comprehensive health care package to hold them over for the years it took for their application to be processed. In many cases, even if they were rejected, they were still covered. This included not only free doctor visits, but also free eye and dental care, free physical and psychotherapy, free mobility aids and free prescriptions. Canadian citizens do not have this luxury.
You can already see that the most annoying, flashy, and temple-rubbing-inducing word there is “free.” That’s why last fall the Carney administration announced its elegant solution to this optics problem: Add some minor costs to the program – essentially a nod to our problems – to remove the “free” label that has been so devastating to public opinion. It came into force on May 1st.
Canadians began to realize that they were paying for everything: it was published in these pages in the House of Commons, and then in February the parliamentary budget officer estimated that the program would soon top $1 billion a year.
The new changes, which are intended to distract from this part, mean that not all health services are completely free, but that some of the more offensive offers require the asylum seeker to cover 30 percent of the costs. This includes eye exams, new glasses, dental care, counseling, physical therapy and home care. There is also a $4 copay for prescriptions. Asylum seekers will continue to receive free emergency room visits, doctor visits, hospital stays, surgeries, vaccinations, obstetric care, scans, tests and X-rays.
That’s why we still offer medical tourism to developing countries, but at a cost of more than $0.
Unfortunately, the new prices were not reflected in the Parliamentary Budget Officer’s recent report assessing the rising costs of the program. However, this study showed that a clear pattern has emerged in recent years: the number of asylum seekers benefiting from this program increased sevenfold from 2016 to 2024, and their average cost per person tripled over the same period. How much the Carney changes will affect this is difficult to say. However, at our current pace, the cost of the program in 2029 is expected to be $1.5 billion.
There have also been cases of fraud: in March, for example, a therapist admitted to passing on the work of counseling asylum seekers to interns and billing them twice for the work. She was suspended and fined a paltry $4,700. This is just one case, but you really have to wonder how much of this is going on.
Consider where the rising claims are coming from: students from India claiming to be refugees when their study permits expire; Nigerians who identify as gay and bisexual (some of whom mysteriously have wives and children) claim they need to flee persecution; former gang members from Mexico and Latin America fleeing their past; European residents coming to Canada on the flimsy grounds that their own police cannot protect them.
What is the solution to these obscene healthcare costs (and other social services currently provided without question, such as education)? Ideally, it would result in many more people being denied entry. This means that there are no longer visitor visas for countries with high requirements – or at least intensive verification. If this is not possible, the program must be reset: unfortunately only for emergencies. We can either be generous to the few who are truly desperate and deserving, or we can be stingy to the masses.
Just as Turkey’s luxury medical resorts do not provide free care to Canadians, our healthcare system should not open its services to the world. We need barriers to entry on par with palace walls and a moat; A few modest fees provide about as much protection as a decorative, two-foot-tall fence.
National Post