Maybe it’s just happenstance that a private MRI clinic is located less than 10 miles south of the Manitoba border in North Dakota. Maybe it’s a coincidence that all the grateful testimonials listed on the clinic’s website were submitted by patients from Winnipeg. Or maybe, just maybe, the clinic is specifically situated to serve Manitobans.

Manitoba Health Minister Kelvin Goertzen recently raised the possibility of allowing private MRI clinics to operate in Manitoba.

“We want to do the analysis,” said Minister Goertzen. “We want to see if it works in the Manitoba context — what would work in Manitoba?”

The Opposition immediately made it clear it isn’t interested in looking at anything of the kind.

“Clearly the [Progressive] Conservatives are willing to consider a two-tier, American-style health-care system and bring that here to Manitoba,” said NDP health critic Matt Wiebe.

Happily, we don’t have to rely on speculation from politicians to imagine what such a system might look like because Saskatchewan is already trying it.

Saskatchewan allows private MRI clinics, but there’s a catch: for every private MRI performed, the clinic must perform a free MRI for a patient on the public waitlist.

Saskatchewanians can get private MRIs without leaving the province; other Saskatchewanians are getting MRIs at no cost to themselves or the taxpayer; and, as a side benefit, these private MRI clinics are creating jobs and paying taxes in Saskatchewan.

It will be interesting to see how Saskatchewan’s experiment turns out over time, but it seems Manitoba would do well to consider its neighbour’s healthcare policies generally.

The Canadian Institute for Health Information tracks wait times on several procedures. While it doesn’t track MRIs, the CIHI does provide some clear comparisons.

First the good news for Manitoba: it provides hip fracture repairs within standard timeframes 92 per cent of the time while Saskatchewan hits the mark 80 per cent of the time. The two provinces are tied on radiation therapies that are virtually always provided quickly.

On other procedures, Manitoba lags behind Saskatchewan. Saskatchewan performs 100 per cent of its hip replacements on time while Manitoba only meets that standard 69 per cent of the time. Saskatchewan performs 99 per cent of its knee replacements on time; Manitoba is at 64 per cent. Saskatchewan performs 96 per cent of its cataract surgeries on time; Manitoba is at 41 per cent.

Here’s the kicker: Saskatchewan is spending less than Manitoba on healthcare. The CIHI reports that Saskatchewan spends $6,686 per person on healthcare while Manitoba spends $6,927 per person.

Clearly, this is some of the evidence Minister Goertzen will be looking at. Manitoba is running a deficit of nearly a billion dollars so it’s simply not going to work to fix every healthcare problem with money. Yet, we rightly strive to provide better and faster care for those who need it. It’s Minister Goertzen’s responsibility to provide the best possible care with every dollar in the health budget, so, of course, he needs to consider innovations such as private MRI clinics.

But we need to be clear-eyed about those considerations because the reality is that private MRIs are already available to any Manitoban willing make a short drive south of the border.

Here’s an important question for those who oppose private MRIs: why entrench the status quo? Manitobans will continue to leave the province for private MRIs; private clinics in North Dakota won’t be required to provide free services for the Manitoba’s public system; and, the jobs and taxes generated by these clinics stay in the states.

Given the costs of opportunities lost, it’s worth at least looking at a new idea.