Keep It Public. Keep It Fair.

Financial and corporate sector lobbyists are working hard to commercialize our public system and turn Canada’s comprehensive, universal public system into a U.S.-style two-tier system for their own profit.

The Canadian Medical Association is advocating private insurance and more for-profit delivery. Provinces like BC and Quebec are pushing private insurance and for-profit surgical centres and hospitals. And in Ottawa, the Harper government is not enforcing the Canada Health Act to stop two-tier care.It’s a perfect storm.

But of course it’s not natural phenomena, it’s a political agenda. Some governments seem to have forgotten how to do their job, protecting and enhancing public health care. So, it’s time people pressured their federal politicians.

“Medicare Works” is the name of a new national education and action campaign to both defend and strengthen our public health care system{/styleboxop}. Town hall meetings were held in over 30 communities in the fall of 2006 and a week of action was held from Nov. 13 to 18 to make sure politicians get the message.

The Town Halls brought thousands of Canadians together with doctors, health policy analysts and social movement leaders to share the latest critical information and map out the best local strategies for keeping privatization at bay.

The best prescriptions have already been written by authorities like Dr. Brian Postl, the federal advisor on wait times, who said recently that strengthening the public system was the best way to reduce wait times for all patients. Indeed, better management of wait lists is sound policy next to the political posturing behind “wait times guarantees”. Let’s strengthen public hospitals and build more innovative public clinics to deliver quality services publicly so no one is left behind.

For this is what two-tier health care does – it leaves people behind. Private insurance costs more money and excludes more people. In the US, the average annual cost for a US family of 4 is over US$11,000. Private insurance premiums have almost doubled since 2000, rising by 87%. In the same period, wages rose only 2% after inflation. Half of personal bankruptcies are due to medical bills.

And private, for-profit services siphons scarce health care professionals out of the public system, reducing access for most of us. It’s a lose-lose. There is no evidence that increasing private, for-profit services reduces wait times in the public system.

We should stop the brain drain and boost our health human resources by recruiting and retaining more health care professionals and by keeping support services publicly delivered for quality’s – and hygiene’s – sake. Doctors should be banned from working both systems – this leads to longer wait times in the public system.

So, what’s driving health care costs? It’s not public spending – that’s roughly the same today what it was in the early 1990s. But tax cuts are reducing government revenue, and this makes health care spending claim more of provincial budgets. At the same time, the costs of brand-name pharmaceuticals are skyrocketing. Prescription drug costs in Canada rose 62.3% between 1994 and 2004 – crowding out other areas of health care budgets. We need to extend Medicare to include drugs to save money and increase access.

Reducing wait times through public innovation, boosting our health human resources, keeping two-tier health care at bay and extending Medicare – these are the kinds of solutions we need to ensure our quality public system stays strong for all Canadians.

Need another reason to keep health care public? It’s good for the economy. This lesson is being learned the hard way in the United States, which now spends about 16% of its GDP on health care each year, far more than any other wealthy nation and 50% more than Canada spends. Corporations like Ford, GM and Toyota are now publicly citing Canada’s public health care system as a major reason for new investments in plant production{/styleboxop}. In fact, this competitive advantage will only grow as the irrational US system costs increase and leaves growing millions with little or no insurance.

It’s this kind of critical information that will help people advocate innovation and improvement within the public system. This is the message of “Medicare Works” that all Canadians can take to their politicians.

Let’s refuse to let any government dismantle this country's most cherished social program.>

Let’s make our voices heard.

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