Alberta, Agosto-Septiembre 2006
17
ALTERNATIVA Latinoamericana
ENGLISH SECTION
The election of
Dr. Brian Day as
president of the
Canadian Medical
Association must
become a catalyst for
a renewed campaign
to support the gains of
public medicare, says
the Ontario Health
Coalition.
"The choice of
the delegates is an
unfortunate one for the
majority of patients in
Canada," said Natalie
Mehra, director of the
Ontario Health
Coalition. "Brian Day
has spent years
advocating for the
dismantling of the public health system through
privatization and the de-listing of health services.
These are not innovative ideas. They are old ones
relentlessly pushed by the small but well-heeled
group who have personal business interests in
promoting privatization. We are deeply disappointed."
Mehra said that the pretense that two-tier
advocates are concerned about wait lists is
stunningly disingenuous. In fact, she said, the two-
tier proposal would quickly turn a doctor and health
professional shortage situation into a crisis as
physicians and health professionals would be
siphoned out of the public health system to serve
queue-jumpers in the private system.
"Two-tiering encourages wealthy people to
purchase unnecessary procedures while those in real
need languish on longer wait lists in the public
system. Two-tiering means that regional disparities in
access to care intensify as more health professionals
move into private businesses in larger cities where
they can make money.
While the greediest physicians-turned-
businesspeople make more money, patients suffer,"
she added. "No one with an accurate understanding of
the demand and supply of health resources and the
well-being of the majority of Canadians in mind could
advocate for destroying the gains and efficiency of the
public health system through this type of
privatization."
Mehra said that in response to Dr. Day's
election, the Coalition and others of like mind need to
reach out to physicians with the world-wide evidence
that for-profit health care costs more for less care.
"We will use this opportunity to remind people
that those who are pushing privatization almost
inevitably are those who stand to profit directly from
the higher costs of private health businesses. With
redoubled urgency, we will communicate a clear
message that the creation of a parallel system for
those who buy private health insurance or pay out-of-
pocket for procedures are actually advocating for
dismantling public health care -- not improving it. We
need to remind physicians and Canadians alike that
the values that underlie our public health system are
sound and critically important for our communities
and our economy."
She concluded that Dr. Day's election will no
doubt embolden those that want to profit from
privatization. "For advocates of public health care, it
will be a catalyst for us to re-dedicate ourselves to
the fight to protect the economic and social gains
made when Canadians adopted our public health
system."
Council of Canadians
The
Council of Canadians
waged a strong
campaign against the election of Dr. Brian Day. Here
are some of the facts they shared with delegates to
the convention:
Canada's health care system is under threat.
First, from private investors, many based in the
United States, who are clamouring to cash in on
Canadian health care.
Second, by for-profit providers and insurers
within Canada who are trying to dismantle public
health care for their own personal gain.
And third, from provincial governments actively
undermining the Canada Health Act by courting the
private sector into taking a greater role in health care
funding and delivery.
Instead of
renewing its support
for public health care,
the federal
Conservative
government is letting
the forces of
privatization dismantle
our most treasured
social program.
Unless ordinary
Canadians from every
part of the country rise
up to defend it, our
public health care
system will not survive
this onslaught from
the for-profit sector.
It's time to stand up
for public health care
and let our government
know that profit is not the cure!
Profit is more expensive
The U.S. government spends nearly twice as
much per person on health care as we do and still
over 40 million people have no health care whatsoever.
In contrast, Canada's universal single-payer system
covers everyone for much less money.
Health cost data from the Canadian Institute for
Health Information shows that our public health
system costs less than $180 per month per Canadian.
You would have to pay a private insurer three times
that in the U.S. to get comparable service.
Profit discriminates
Promoters of for-profit health care say it should
be okay for people to pay thousands of dollars at a
private clinic if they need a hip replacement, knee
surgery, or other treatment. But what about the people
who can't afford to pay?
What about seniors, single parents, or those
dealing with chronic disease? Letting the rich pay to
get faster health care in the private sector contravenes
the principles of the Canada Health Act by threatening
the equality of access to medical services. All
Canadians should have equal access to quality health
care.
Profit will not reduce wait times
For-profit "solutions" will not reduce wait times.
Yet they are continually proposed in British Columbia,
Quebec and Alberta, with Prime Minister Stephen
Harper supporting Quebec's plan to use private for-
profit clinics.
Allowing provinces to fund surgeries in private
for-profit clinics will take much-needed money away
from public hospitals and give it to private providers.
Studies have shown that adding for-profit health care
services actually lengthens waiting times in the public
system because doctors opt to perform services in the
private sector where they are paid more.
Profit puts lives at risk
"With for-profit care, you end up paying with your
money, and your life," concluded Dr. P.J. Devereaux in
a comparative study of death rates in the Canadian
and U.S. health care systems. The study, which was
published in the Canadian Medical Association
Journal, suggests that if we switch to for-profit
hospitals, over 2,000 more Canadians will die
needlessly each year.
The culprit is profit. When private health
providers have to pay huge salaries to senior
administrators and keep investors happy, they cut
costs by hiring less qualified doctors and fewer
nurses. The consequences are lethal.
Profit leads to Americanization
The North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA) is very clear -- the exemption for health
care, which has kept large U.S. health corporations
out of Canada, applies only to a fully public system.
Once we privatize even some health care
services, NAFTA will force Canada to give equal
treatment to U.S. companies competing for patients
with our public system. That means the argument that
Canada could copy models in Sweden, France or
Switzerland is a complete fallacy because unlike
Canada, these European countries aren't tied to the
U.S. by a free trade agreement.
(Staff , Rabble News)
Dr. Day's election a
disappointment
World (Random House, 2003) tells the story of
Partners in Health and its dynamic founder in page-
turning, inspirational prose. We find Farmer
expounding on the idiocy of post-modernism while
hiking in the Haitian backcountry to make house calls;
cajoling the conservative medical establishment into
action on AIDS treatment for the poor at glitzy
international conferences; holding forth on the virtues
of Cuba's selfless and dedicated doctors while he and
his biographer wait for a flight out of Havana; and
making the case for the application of the principles of
liberation theology to health care to any and all who
will listen.
Farmer's attraction to this intellectual tradition of
struggling to create "heaven on Earth" -- influential in
numerous Latin American social movements and
espoused by Hugo Chavez and Aristide among others
-- came from reading but also from listening to the
poor peasants of Haiti. He relates to Kidder that it
was, he thought, as if these people were saying to
him, "Everyone else hates us, but God loves the poor
more. And our cause is just." The most attractive
feature of liberation theology to Farmer was its
constant call to action, its incessant interrogation:
how are one's actions serving the poor?
Kidder reveals that Farmer also holds a number
of avowed atheists among his heroes, dangerously
leaving his books about Ernesto "Che" Guevara strewn
about his office in Cange even in the years of harsh
military repression. The Argentine-born Guevara, like
Farmer, was a medical doctor whose thirst for social
justice took him on travels far from home. Che, of
course, traded his medical kit for the guerrilla's rifle
and ammunition belt. Farmer's tactics differ. He won't
likely have his image used to sell t-shirts or appear on
the TV talk show circuit. But he seems just as
determined to spread his revolution -- the human right
to health care -- and he has already changed the
world for the better.
Derrick O'Keefe (The Tyee)
I
n
Pathologies of
Power you
critique market-
based medicine.
Why? And what
do you propose
as an alternative?
I critique
market-based
medicine not
because I haven't
seen its heights
but because I've
seen its depths.
Anywhere you have
extreme poverty
and no national
health insurance,
no promise of
health care
regardless of social
standing, that's where you see the sharp limitations of
market-based health care. The poorest parts of the
world are by and large the places in which one can
best view the worst of medicine and not because
doctors in these countries have different ideas about
what constitutes modern medicine. It's the system
and its limitations that are to blame.
An alternative? Well, I'm not a specialist in
health economics. But there's a simple approach that
is not simplistic, at least not in my view. Health care
as a right. What sort of right would that be? The right
to health care is usually classed as an "economic" or
"social" right. And Pathologies of Power is a book
about social and economic rights.
How is adequate medical care a basic
human right?
The thing about rights is that in the end you
can't prove what should be considered a right. Sure,
there are some things we agree on widely (everyone
deplores torture) but how long ago was it, in even the
liberal democracies, that not everyone was allowed to
vote? So I can't show you how, exactly, health care is
a basic human right. But what I can argue is that no
one should have to die of a disease that is treatable.
And I can also show you that people from all walks of
life agree that someone who is sick deserves, in
principle, compassion and care. In principle. Finally, I
can show you all the things that go wrong, not just for
the sick but for all of us, when health care is not
construed as a basic human right. But in the end it's
not really something you can prove.
Pathologies of Power
AIDS Summit's
Overlooked Hero