Northern exposure

Medicine | High court decision reveals folly of Canadian health care | Mark Bergin

All George Zeliotis wanted was a new hip. But in convincing Canada's Supreme Court to open the door for private health care earlier this month, the Quebec man found amazing leverage in his ailing, arthritic one.

The Canadian high court struck down a provincial ban that prohibited Quebec residents from circumventing the country's dysfunctional public health-care system—three of seven judges believing the ban violated the nation's constitution and one judge finding it illegal under the Quebec Charter. The surprising decision will set precedent over similar bans—and lawsuits challenging them—in other provinces.

And the lawsuits will come.

Under Canada's system of government-run universal health care, patients wait an average of four months for surgery and various other treatments—a number that would stretch much longer were it not that so many Canadians flock south to the United States to secure private care. Waits for specialized procedures often draw out for more than a year—a prospect Mr. Zeliotis refused to accept when he first sought hip-replacement surgery in 1997.