Canadian Healthcare In Danger

THE THREAT TO OUR HEALTHCARE SYSTEM IS REAL

A lot of American insurance companies, many international drug companies, a few Canadian doctors and some deeply offensive Canadian politicians want to privatize our health care system. The one we have isn’t perfect, and it does need more funds, as our population ages, but it’s better than the alternative.

Those who have to wait a few months for hip replacements and other non-emergency health services and procedures have my greatest sympathy. However, that situation could easily be remedied by an adequate investment in the single-payer system we have in this country.

At the moment, Canada spends about 10% of its gross domestic product on healthcare. The Americans, whose system some Canadians would like to copy, spend about 15% of their GDP on healthcare and yet more than 45 million Americans are without health insurance of any kind. Millions more have insurance that doesn’t cover many of the procedures and treatments covered by our single-payer system. (72% of Americans say they’d like to have the Canadian system in their country).

Inexplicably, Our Supreme Court has endorsed the idea that private clinics for the rich, should be allowed. Paul Martin advocated the abolition of the “notwithstanding clause” in our Constitution, which would allow the courts to make law in this country- at least in defiance of the federal government. That’s an undemocratic and immoral position and completely contrary to Canadian traditions and values. That elitist Court has already begun to destroy our public health system.

Stephen Harper would allow private clinics, at which the rich could pay a fee of say- $2500.00- so that they would never have to wait for anything. The multi-payer insurance system in the United States is something Harper and his band of ”reform/conservatives” would adopt in Canada either in whole, or in some modified form.

There’s another irony in the U.S. of A. when it comes to health care, which can be found at the American Veterans’ Administration. The Veterans healthcare system follows the Canadian model. It’s a universal system, funded and operated by the government and covers all veterans. According to a recent article in the New York Times, the U.S. Veterans’ socialized healthcare system is more efficient and better organized than the private system because, like the Canadian one, it’s operated as an integrated, universal, single-payer entity.

Our public health system is facing problems…not because it’s a bad system, but rather because some politicians and others are willing to allow it to be sacrificed on the altar of greed, by not funding it properly. Privatizing our healthcare system will make the system more bureaucratic, not less. It will make healthcare more expensive, not less. And it will put good care out of the reach of many middle and lower-income Canadians.

Our Canadian system needs reform, improvement, more money and more help for those who depend on good healthcare and the drug prescriptions they require for survival. But it’s an excellent system that Canadians have now and a majority of Americans would love to have.

Here’s a quote from a recent letter to the editor from an American in California: “I make a decent income, but between my adjustable-rate mortgage and the $16,000 a year I must pay for health insurance, I am never that far away from bankruptcy and homelessness. Yet somehow I think my situation is still better than that of many Americans- Bill Godnick, Fair Oaks Calif.

Write, or phone your local MP/MPP and let them know that they have a duty and a responsibility to preserve and improve one of our most important essential services. Canadian apathy could well result in the disappearance of one of this country’s proudest accomplishments.