Increased Private Care a Slippery Slope
Jul 31, 2007
Recently, the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) unveiled a “new vision” for an expanded and modernized Medicare program. A newly-released report entitled Medicare Plus: Toward a Sustainable Publicly Funded Health Care System in Canada purports to “outline key steps for fulfilling the ‘next generation’ of Medicare.”
What is being argued by the CMA is that Canadians should be allowed to use private medical insurance to pay for health services that are normally available under Medicare in cases where provincial governments cannot guarantee timely access to publicly-funded treatment.
But we all know that this is nothing more than back-door privatization. We start with some cases being siphoned off to private care, and over time the private system plays more and more of a role in health care delivery. Medical professionals end up leaving the public system to work in the (presumably) more financially lucrative private one, and we then effectively have a full two-tier health care system. The private system will be driven by nothing more than the profit motive, and the public system that remains – whatever is left of it – will pay the price.
In fact, the CMA report actually goes further than just advocating for basic overflow to private care. It also sees a day where the private sector is a widely accepted part of Canada’s health care system, and where students in Canadian medical schools are given exposure to both public and private clinics. They even acknowledge this move toward greater privatization – “We may expect to see a continued trend toward the delivery of diagnostic, medical and surgical procedures in specialized facilities that are privately owned and operated.”
Not only would there be a problem retaining doctors to work in the public system, but queue jumping would likely become rampant as those that can afford private care take advantage of it, leaving those less fortunate in their wake - reliant on a system that is being depleted of critical resources.
What this talk from the CMA seems to amount to is an abandonment of the core principles of Medicare. It would appear that they want to return to the days prior to publicly-administered health care, where doctors could charge whatever they wanted.
Instead of taking the disastrous step towards privatization, what needs to happen is for our Federal Government to fully implement the Romanow Report. This would address the majority of problems with the system, without adding all of the problems that are attendant with private delivery mechanisms. Prime Minister Harper has spoken out in favour of a fully public health care system. Let’s hope he has the courage to ensure that it stays that way.
Comments
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Time for a new blog, guys.
Lyndon Larouche - 2007-08-08 16:04
DITTO, keep the interest!
D - 2007-08-09 08:31
It's summer, folks. Lots of blogs are on hiatus. At least McGoo has a site like this. Try finding one on another union website in Manitoba - or in Canada for that matter.
kevin s - 2007-08-17 14:39