Consumer issue Number One: health care

And it's our duty to guard it closely

By: Ish Theilheimer

KILLALOE: Two weeks ago, Straight Goods broke a national news story. Former health minister Diane Marleau talked to our reporter Colleen Fuller about the battle within the Liberal caucus to save medicare.
  We hoped when the story ran that it would lead to a more thorough examination of how publicly funded health care has been brokered away, behind closed doors, over the past ten years or so. Federal governments offloaded health care expenses so they could cut taxes - mostly for the wealthy - as they did in this year's budget.
 

If we believed the spin doctors, we'd be better off if we could only shell out for medical care and be excluded from vital coverage like Americans

  The provinces wanted the same thing. They say they want more control, but it has become clear that they want the control so they can cut. They've done such a good job controlling that we now have no prospects of finding a doctor, much less a health clinic, in Killaloe when our current doctor retires. When the doctor goes, the pharmacy goes. When the pharmacy goes, half the seniors in town move out and the rest of the businesses close. Good work and great business planning, exalted leaders!
  Meanwhile, the private health care crowd has had the propaganda machine up and running on full blast for several years. No matter what the public actually thinks, we keep hearing we'd be better off if we could only shell out cash for medical care and be excluded from vital coverage like many Americans are with private insurers. No one ever says it, but look what the spin doctors put out. They publish polls saying Canadians would like to be able to pay privately for more health services. They raise the alarm of patients and health care professionals fleeing to the US.
  As Penny Kome reported on Thursday, this isn't what Canadians really want. A December poll of 600 Albertans showed that 69% oppose spending public dollars on services delivered by for-profit health care companies, and 80% of respondents either agreed or strongly agreed with the argument that the best way to reduce waiting lists would be to open more beds and hire more staff in existing public hospitals.
 

Medicare has its problems, like everything else. But it's a flat-out bargain.

  But still our leaders march us toward the American system. And any Canadian who's lived there can tell you how much that will cost you as a consumer.
  It's ironic that on Oscar week, Jean Chretien seemed to be trying for awards in two different roles. He began the week as the Defender of Medicare. He ended it in bed with Ralph Klein. Whatever kind of relations they had, I don't think we were protected.
  In the House of Commons last week, NDP leader Alexa McDonough grilled the government about a secret deal between Ottawa and Alberta over public health care first brought to light by Colleen Fuller through the same research that produced her Diane Marleau story for Straight Goods.
  McDonough used documents uncovered by Fuller that appear to show that just after Marleau was axed, an agreement was reached on Article 11 - enabling private health care in Alberta - and that Ottawa-Alberta "relations are much better now that the minister has changed."
  There's still time - though not much - to stop this train. We know that if we can't stop it, we'll all pay more - lots more - for health care, just like in the USA. And a whole lot of us will not be able to afford it.
  That's why Straight Goods obsesses about health care. Medicare has its problems, like everything else. But it's a flat-out bargain, and most Canadians know this. Health care is still the number one consumer issue in Killaloe and everywhere else in Canada and, as a consumer watchdog publication, it's our duty to guard it closely.

- Ish Theilheimer
- March 27, 2000

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