Eroding medicare isn’t the answer

The uproar south of the border over Obama’s “Affordable Care Act” is enough to make anyone think that Obamacare is to blame for the entire U.S. health-care mess. It’s not, of course.

All the same, Obama’s beleaguered health-care reform (albeit better than nothing) fails to take on the profit-mongering hospital chains, Big Pharma greed or the high cost of private insurers that dog the American health industry. In other words, Obamacare lacks the fundamental changes desperately needed to establish a single-payer universal health-care system similar to what Canada has and most Americans want.

Medicine-for-profit is big business on this side of the border, too. For those who can afford it, feebased, for-profit clinics will sell you upscale care and a place at the front of the line. Private clinic owners claim that preferential treatment for the well-heeled saves money and reduces wait times for the public system. Yet, studies confirm that the opposite is true, pointing out that these unregulated private, for-profit medi-companies, in general, jack up costs, extend wait times for the rest of us and drain the public system of resources.

Medicare may not be perfect, but nonetheless, Canadians take pride in the nation’s socialized healthcare program because it covers everybody and is free at the point of delivery. Who can blame them? Canadians won’t be deceived by corporate-friendly politicians deliberately underfunding public hospitals and community care programming in hopes of privatizing the system.

There are better ways to improve medicare; for example, by supporting non-profit hospitals, implementing universal coverage of pharmaceutical drugs, dental care and by plugging up the holes in Canada’s Health Act. Eroding public medicare to make investors rich is not the answer, or in the interests of Canadians.

Dave Volume

Crowsnest Pass