O Canada

catseye at telus.net catseye at telus.net
Thu Nov 30 05:05:31 PST 2000


At 12:05 AM 11/30/2000 -0500, you wrote:
>Marco Anglesio wrote:
>
>> While it's certainly a good thing that free and universal health care is a
>> sacred cow of the canadian electorate,
>
>But isn't the health care system being slowly gutted by budget cutbacks?
>My mother complains regularly now about the long waits in getting tests
>and other medical service. One way to wean the electorate off universal
>health care would be to cut its budget to the point where it meets basic
>expectations less and less frequently. And once Canadians start
>complaining loudly about the system, US pols and the health insurance
>industry would be more than eager to point to it as a failed model,
>eliminating what little pressure that system now exerts as a nearby
>alternative model.
>
>Uday
------

Yes. That particularly works for the wealthy 'consumer'. Most Canadians actually see that the root cause of these waits is the Liberal cutbacks to public healthcare and recognize that they opened the door for a two-tier health care system (one for the rich, one for the rest of us). Just before the election, the Liberals restored spending levels - at least to 1995 standards - blatantly to increase their election chances. Obviously this vote-buying worked.

Those who watched the all-party debates felt that the social democratic party (the NDP), which introduced public healthcare here, was the only party that actually understood how to best preserve the public system. Unfortunately, people treated the NDP like the American Greens - a wasted vote. Even the party that most clearly supported a two-tier system (the Canadian Alliance) tried to deny it publicly but ultimately weren't believed. The Liberals got elected simply because they were the lesser of two evils.

Instead of being undermined by clear policy ala the Alliance, we are allowing our public healthcare system to die of benign neglect. This is a very baffling place for activists - trying to translate a lack of budgetary increases as an immediate threat to healthcare. Canadians are clearly petrified by the American system - we all know of people who didn't have coverage and ended up selling their property and souls to pay their medical bills (or drug costs for that matter). All of our friends, whenever they travel to the States, carry Blue Cross, even if they aren't spending more than a couple of hours there. When we bused to the WTO protests in Seattle from Vancouver, nearly everyone in the bus was covered for the day. Many nurses and doctors who have left Canada for the States for the big bucks have returned because they became sick of the realty that health was bought and sold to the highest bidder. But translating this into action is another matter.

Oh yeah, because the Liberals saved so much money on healthcare, I got a tax cut -- all of $12/month. Guess I better start saving it for that future heart surgery.

Cathy



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