Maude Barlow - Profit Is Not the Cure: A Citizens Guide to Saving Medicare

Copyright 2002 by Maude Barlow

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National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Barlow, Maude
Profit is not the cure : a citizens guide to medicare / Maude Barlow.

eISBN: 978-1-55199-526-7

1. Medical care Canada. 2. Medical policy Canada. 3. Public health Canada. I. Title.
RA412.5.C3B37 2002 362.10971 C2002-903922-3

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Our proudest achievement in the well-being of Canadians has been in asserting that illness is burden enough in itself. Financial ruin must not compound it. That is why medicare has been called a sacred trust and we must not allow that trust to be betrayed.

J USTICE E MMETT H ALL

Health Canada needs to remember they are here to look after the health of the country, and industry will look after industry. This isnt about money. Its about whether a government decides to organize its resources for the benefit of all the people of this country and not just the privileged few.

S HIRLEY D OUGLAS

To the memory of Tommy Douglas,
the father of medicare

W e Canadians treasure our universal health care system. Polls consistently confirm that, no matter what turns the economy is taking or where the political winds are blowing, support for this core foundation of Canadian society never wavers. Yet we are currently experiencing the most sustained and deliberate assault on medicare in its nearly four decades of history. Unless ordinary Canadians from every part of the country rise up to defend it, our public health care system will not survive.

Throughout their deliberation, two major federal commissions, one led by former Saskatchewan premier Roy Romanow, and the other by Senator Michael Kirby, have been pressured by a powerful lobby to recommend a parallel private system to medicare. Ontario, Alberta, and British Columbia are in a race to establish private hospital services, delist currently covered services, and establish two-tier health care for their citizens. Federal Health Minister Anne McLellan, who refers to Canadians as consumers of health care, has declared that she is open to amending the Canada Health Act to allow for private hospitals and has signalled a new era of co-operation with the pro-privatization provinces in upcoming negotiations over the future of health care.

In fact, the Chrtien Liberals, having embraced all of the values of economic globalization, including nation-state competitiveness, privatization, and drastic funding cuts, and backed by the powerful right-wing newspaper chains and well-financed think-tanks, have signalled that they see medicare as a relic of another time. By enthusiastically espousing free trade agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) , the Free Trade Area of the Americas ( FTAA ), and the General Agreement on Trade in Services ( GATS ), the government has signalled the death of the Canada Health Act. The stakes are very high. These trade agreements have the potential to radically redefine our health care as a commercial service. Once any part of a service is privatized by any province, there is no turning the clock back. The fight to preserve medicare must include restricting the power of these institutions.

While governments plead that they can no longer afford to provide full coverage for Canadians, the truth is that money is not the issue just the excuse. Before the deep funding cuts, Canadas public system was delivering better overall health care, more equitably, and at a substantially lower cost than private systems, such as that in the United States. The real issue is one of values. Even after the cuts, our system is vastly superior.

This is not to say that there are not serious problems with Canadas health care system today. Deep cuts and restructuring have left service providers scrambling to make up the short-fall. Crowded emergency rooms, long waiting lists, and nursing shortages plague Canadians in need of care. Several recent polls show that our faith in the system and our satisfaction with the quality of health care has strongly diminished in the last decade. These polls give great satisfaction to those who, for ideological reasons, want to privatize heath care in Canada.

Right from medicares inception, there have been forces intent on undermining it. At first, it was a powerful medical establishment and private insurance companies who teamed up with right-wing governments to limit medicares scope and to wait for the right climate to destroy it altogether. Those forces are renewed in vigour today. An international private service industry, anxious to get its hands on the estimated CAD $4 to $5 trillion global health care sector, is seeking out and finding friendly governments including the Chrtien Liberals in Ottawa in order to profit from this lucrative sector.

The Canadian people must become mobilized in order to stop this assault on our most treasured social program before it is too late. Working with national groups such as the Canadian Health Coalition, the Council of Canadians, and the Canadian Union of Public Employees, as well as provincial and local public health coalitions, we must make our governments hear our clear message now.

Profit is not the cure for medicare. We can afford to maintain and even strengthen our health care system if we eliminate the current for-profit components that are causing some costs to spiral, such as patented drugs, fee-for-service, and overpaid administrators, and instead, turn to a primary care, community-based, fully public model run more equitably and more efficiently. Further, the right of Canadians is the right of every human being on the planet; Canada must recommit to its former position and work with other governments and the United Nations to see that universal, public health care is provided to the world.

This book grew out of a position paper I wrote for the Council of Canadians when we launched a national campaign to save medicare in January 2002 and was distributed widely at public town hall meetings we held across the country to coincide with the Romanow hearings. With two major commissions focusing the whole country on medicare, I felt it was essential that all Canadians, not just those who are experts on health care, should have an opportunity to put their opinions forward. In my travels, many Canadians have told me they feel helpless to save this program that they cherish. They are intimidated to argue the fine points of the economy or the history of medicare with people they see as authorities. My position is that every Canadian is an expert on medicare, and has a right to fight for its future.