Queen's Park

Ontarians are shocked to learn that a privileged few have jumped the queue for H1N1 flu shots, yet quicker service for those who know the right people is as ingrained in the health care system as x-rays and scalpels.

This is not to suggest queue-jumping is the norm, but there is plenty of evidence of it and enough to be a concern.

Those who benefit include relatives and friends of some, but not all, doctors and others connected to health care and personalities in the news media, some of whom spend most of their working days deploring such unfairness.

The current outcry has grown because some professional athletes, senior police officers and members of boards that run hospitals — none of whom is in particular danger of contracting the illness — have been given the flu shots ahead of those more vulnerable.

Health Minister Deb Matthews said angrily that people who are rich and famous should not have priority over those more in need.

Those who have jumped line-ups include Globe and Mail columnist Margaret Wente, who wrote in the chatty way columnists describe their own lives that she needed a hip replacement to correct pain, for which she deserves sympathy, but the first surgeon she consulted told her the waiting list was a year long.

She then turned to "a well-placed acquaintance," who contacted another surgeon, who squeezed in an appointment for her within two days.

The columnist acknowledged she "felt uncomfortable, pulling strings," but she quickly overcame such scruples and asked for favours. A surgeon eventually told her she would have to wait six months for the surgery, but she cried and he took pity, doing it in half that time.

Christie Blatchford, now a columnist with The Globe and Mail, but at the time writing for the National Post, wrote that her mother, 83 and suffering from serious lung ailments, could not get permission to stay in the nursing home she had chosen.

The home had five empty beds, but a community care access centre, which allocated beds, decided its criteria prevented her staying there and offered her a bed in a far-flung suburb.

Blatchford wrote about this, accusing the system of mismanaging beds, and a few days later wrote that health ministry staff had read her column, worked quickly to find a solution and decided that her mother could stay in the home she wanted.

The health minister of the day later phoned to ask if her mother was comfortable, which does not happen every day in hospitals.

CBC television anchor and reporter Wendy Mesley described in a documentary her treatment for breast cancer. Asked whether being a celebrity helped her get treatment, she had replied, "If you're a journalist, you can always open doors. So I may have had my surgery a week earlier, I'm sure."

There have been many indications that Ontarians who know the right people to call have obtained quicker treatment in the health system.

A doctor wrote to a Toronto paper after the flu queue-jumping and said the public must be naive if it believes people with influence do not get precedence in queues.

He asked, "How long do you think hospital board members wait to see a specialist or get a non-urgent MRI — not nearly as long as Joe the Plumber."

A former dean of the University of Toronto medical school said not long ago that he commonly received calls from high-profile individuals, including academic colleagues and senior staff of the ministry of health, asking for help to obtain faster care.

Some ironically were people who publicly opposed private delivery of health services on the ground it would create unequal access.

A prominent surgeon said doctors often allow people to jump the queue because they know them, and not to make money.

It still means that some people who have friends in the right places are treated ahead of others who are just as needy and have been waiting longer. This is what a public health care system is supposed to cure.