Will Harper's Strikes against Medicare Matter This Election?
[ http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2015/04/16/Ha ... -Medicare/ ]
They should, but the endless clamour of anti-tax blather may drown the issue out.
By Tom Sandborn, 16 Apr 2015, TheTyee.ca
When Canadian medicare first began, the federal government covered 50 per cent of health costs. [ http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/hea ... e17729509/ ] Over the years, the federal contribution has gradually decreased to about 20 per cent, and some experts predict it will fall to 12 per cent within 25 years under the new funding formula.
Advocates point to a 2013 Parliamentary Budget Officer report, which documented a huge financial gap in provincial healthcare funding created by federal cuts. [ http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canad ... -pbo-warns ]
Meanwhile, the Harper government, acting on its long-term agenda of tax and service cuts, has brought the ratio between GDP and taxes to its lowest level in 70 years. [ http://www.progressive-economics.ca/201 ... overnment/ ] The Canadian economy is more lightly taxed now than it has been in over half a century.
Other ways that the Harper government has attacked Canadian health care, according to Jenn Kuhl, who speaks for the BC Health Coalition, include drastic cuts to health care coverage for refugees, [ http://www.doctorsforrefugeecare.ca/the-issue.html ] a failure to produce a comprehensive pharmacare system that would reduce drug costs, [ http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editoria ... orial.html ] and the neglect of a national strategy to deal with predictably increasing healthcare needs as the baby boomers age and decline. [ http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commenta ... ategy.html ]
The federal government has also announced it will no longer fund the Health Council of Canada, a research and evaluation body that has provided important data on how the national health care system is working. [ http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/ryan-meili ... 07144.html ]
The solutions for ailing Canadian health care often touted by pro-business think thanks -- two-tiered medicine in the form of for-profit clinics, and increased use of private, for-profit health insurance -- would more likely divert doctors from the public system to the for-profit system, resulting in the cherry-picking of easy cases and patients for admission to corporate clinics. It would also, arguably, erode public support for public funding and delivery of health care services.
- - - SNIP - - -
Canadians who care about protecting publicly funded health service delivery need to focus on insisting that a full and informed debate about the future of medicare be part of the lead up to the federal election.
Several factors may work to crowd healthcare issues off the campaign agenda. By fall, Canada may be even more deeply involved in Harper's military adventures in Syria and Iraq than we are now. Debate about this ill-advised crusade may well dominate election debates, and that would be a good thing.
Less productively, the chorus of right-wing propaganda that insists the only important issues are lowering taxes and shrinking government will continue to resound in the mainstream media, and voters may be so distracted by that clamour that health care will fail to get the attention it deserves.
Let's hope we succeed in electing a government that wants to protect and extend the progress on health care that we have made in this country since the passage of the Canada Health Act in 1984.
READ MORE:
HEALTH:
[ http://thetyee.ca/Topic/Health/ ]
POLITICS:
{ http://thetyee.ca/Topic/Politics/ ]
ELECTION 2015:
[ http://thetyee.ca/Topic/Election2015/ ]
Will Harper's Strikes against Medicare Matter This Election?
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Will Harper's Strikes against Medicare Matter This Election?
by Oscar » Fri Jun 12, 2015 2:58 pm
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Re: Will Harper's Strikes against Medicare Matter This Elect
by Oscar » Fri Jun 12, 2015 3:22 pm
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.
[ 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.
- Oscar
- Site Admin
- Posts: 9110
- Joined: Wed May 03, 2006 3:23 pm
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