Feds abdicating health care leadership — coalition

Without public opposition, Harper will give control to provinces, opening gates to health care priviatization.

by Ish Theilheimer and Samantha Bayard

OTTAWA, December 4, 2012 (SGNews) — It may be National Medicare Week and the 50th anniversary of the introduction of medicare in Canada, but advocates say the Harper government will proceed with a radical privatization plan in the 2014 health care accord unless there is a public outcry. Dozens of activists are on Parliament Hill this week lobbying government and opposition Mps to make this point.

In the House, NDP health critic Libby Davies said "Since coming to power the Conservatives have done nothing to strengthen the health accords. We have witnessed growing privatization, no national drug plan, no help for home care and longer wait times."

Health care advocates were backed in their advocacy by the results of a Nanos Research survey conducted on behalf of the Canadian Health Coalition showing that an overwhelming majority of Canadians think that the federal government should be taking a leadership role in securing our health care system and ensuring all Canadians have access to it.

Instead, the Coalition's coordinator Michael McBane says Canadians are seeing "Total abdication of leadership. They are dropping the ball in terms of their responsibilities, they have Federal legislation to uphold and they are pretending everything is provincial."

McBane says the government is paving the way for health care privatization. "For one thing they are not enforcing the Canada Health Act, in terms of extra billing, cue jumping, that's an example of letting privatization emerge. It creates barriers to access."

Michael McBane says the government is paving the way for health care privatization in this interview on YouTube.

McBane see Stephen Harper's centralized control as behind the drive. "When you meet Conservatives individually, when you get down to the practicalities: do you think seniors should be cared for when they get older, yes; do you think we should have drug insurance, yes. So on the day-to-day practicalities, they are not far apart but there is this central control in this government where the Prime Minister writes everybody's lines and they claim it's provincial.

"So what we really need is for the public to pushback really strongly – they respond to public pressure."

Linda Silas, President of the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions was on the Hill lobbying too. "We need federal leadership on health care," she told SGNews. "The Accord expires in 2014 and we need the federal government to join with the provinces and territories to work out how and by when Canadians will see substantive and meaningful improvements in quality and access to health care. Without the federal government working with provinces and territories to improve quality of care and access across the continuum, we will see gaps continue to grow in access to primary health care, pharmacare, long-term care, home care, and in quality and access to acute care.

Silas said that lobbying individual MPs "Allows us to better refine and target research, education, outreach and alliance-building to protect, strengthen and expand medicare."
 

© Copyright 2012 Ish Theilheimer and Samantha Bayard, All rights Reserved. Written For: StraightGoods.ca