As we move into 2014, Canada’s medicare plan is undergoing some very difficult challenges. That’s right, our most valued national program for non-profit health care is under threat.
One of those challenges is the renewal of the Canadian Health Accord, an agreement between the 13 provinces and territories and the Federal government. The accord, which expires in March, is valuable in enforcing the Canada Health Act and creating national standards. It is also the vehicle that could bring improvements across the country. The Harper Conservative government in Ottawa has told the provinces that Ottawa will not renew the Health Accord. Ottawa established a new federal health funding formula, and Canada’s premiers say this will gut nearly $36 billion in funding to provinces over the 10-year deal and will erode public health services for all Canadians. They point out that federal government’s share of health costs will drop to less than 20 per cent, compared to 50 per cent years ago. We are told, and many of us believe, that our medicare is unaffordable. Canadian Doctors for Medicare say this is a myth and that “public health care expenditures are not growing rapidly.”
Another challenge to our non-profit public health care comes from a constitutional challenge to medicare that goes to trial in 2014. Dr. Brian Day, owner of Vancouver’s for-profit Cambie Surgery Centre and the leading proponent of privatized health care, has launched this challenge. The clinics are seeking to have the courts strike down our provincial health-care legislation, the Medicare Protection Act. This is a direct attack on the single most important feature of the medicare model, which is that health care be provided according to a patient’s need, not her or his ability to pay. Clearly they hope to break medicare via the courts and establish a U.S.-style system of health care in Canada. Parties in the case are calling it the most significant constitutional challenge in Canadian history.
Find out more and help spread the word.
The challenges facing the fate of non-profit health care in Canada are wake-up calls for all of us. Because these issues could erase the foundation of Canadian medicare as we know it, we need Ottawa to enter into a national plan for the future of our health care, and we need to reject private, for-profit clinics. Stand up for medicare!
Elsie Dean, Member Voices of Burnaby Seniors.
