With Vultures Circling, It's Time to Care about Medicare

[Oscar]

DOBBIN: With Vultures Circling, It's Time to Care about Medicare

[ http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2015/06/12/Ca ... ign=120615 ]

Enfeebled by careless cuts and twisted treaties, our public system is under threat.

By Murray Dobbin, TheTyee.ca June 12, 2015

EXCERPT:

Medicare isn't dead yet, you say. But for Canadians looking to retire in 25 to 40 years, given the trends it well could be. Medicare is under attack on so many fronts, and it will take incredible determination on the part of those who will need it to ensure it's there when they retire. Yet younger generations -- who face the greatest threat of losing public health care -- don't seem to think about it that much. They should -- and before the fall election.

Like vultures circling

The number of vultures circling the most lucrative public service plum in the firmaments is truly scary. They are driven by the fact that there is almost nowhere else to invest the hundreds of billions of idle cash sloshing around in corporate coffers. The obscenely profitable private system in the U.S. is a powerful motivator.

The big five vultures anticipating the joys of feeding off Medicare's carcass include a B.C. medical privateer's legal challenge, a major trade deal, the public-private partnerships fleecing health budgets of hundreds of millions of dollars in excess costs in virtually every province, a new domestic services treaty, and lastly, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's new, imposed health "accord" that will decrease federal contributions to the provinces by $36 billion over 10 years.

Dr. Brian Day's challenge, based on the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, is perhaps the most frightening, because if he wins it will effectively constitutionalize the right of health care corporations to compete with Medicare. Researcher Colleen Fuller's CCPA study, "The Legal Assault on Universal Health Care," [ http://cupe.ca/court-challenge-threaten ... ans-report ] details how "Day wants the B.C. Supreme Court to legalize extra-billing, user fees and private insurance, creating an American-style health care system here in Canada." In the U.S., in 2004, "health care regulation cost up to $340 billion out of a total health expenditure of $1.7 trillion. In spite of such high expenditures, fraud costs the U.S. health system $75 billion annually."

The flurry of corporate rights agreements being pursued by the Harper government are also a threat to the viability of Medicare. The Canada-EU deal, the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, (CETA) will immediately add at least $2 billion to drug costs in this country. The international Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) [ https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140 ... ttip.shtml ] now being negotiated in secret threatens to apply the deregulatory imperative of investment agreements explicitly to services, including health care. As Public Services International has pointed out, TiSA "would restrict governments' ability to regulate, purchase and provide services. This would essentially change the regulation of many public services from serving the public interest to serving the profit interests of private, foreign corporations."

But by far the most dangerous threat to Medicare is our prime minister, who loathes Medicare more than any other aspect of Canadian governance and democracy. Harper actually quit politics in the late 1990s to become the head of the viciously right-wing National Citizens Coalition -- an organization founded in the early 1970s explicitly to fight Medicare.

Until 2014, Medicare in Canada received federal funding through a 10-year, legally binding accord negotiated by the provinces and the federal government, providing them with a six per cent increase every year. But what is in place now is a 10-year funding formula imposed on the provinces with virtually no consultation. Its increase per year is just three per cent, which means a loss of $36 billion over the 10 years. It is classic Harper -- make a structural change whose bite is worse and worse as years go by. The underfunding systematically pushes provinces to cut and privatize.

Harper has abandoned all federal oversight or guardianship. There are no strings attached to the money. And the equalization aspect of the former accord is also gone, meaning increasingly unequal health care across the country and an erosion of the principle of universality. Lastly, the current funding formula not only brings the funding contribution of Ottawa to a record low 19 per cent, but it is not legally binding. If Harper wins the election, he could unilaterally chop billions from Medicare any time he chooses.

Some 40 per cent of Canadians can't be bothered to vote in federal elections, mistaking ill-informed cynicism for sophistication along the lines of "they're all the same." I wonder if they'll remember that refrain 30 years from now when they have to remortgage their house to pay their medical bills.