Layton raises spectre of ‘ credit card’ health care
The Conservatives and Liberals are both driving Canada toward a profitbased system of “ American-style medicine” that will soon have people using credit cards instead of health cards, federal NDP leader Jack Layton said Sunday.
“Neither Liberals nor Conservatives will stop the dramatic growth of private health care,” Layton said as he wrapped up a weekend of B. C. campaigning with a pre- breakfast speech at the Floata restaurant in Vancouver’s Chinatown.
“Both Liberals and Conservatives will make people pay more,” he said. “You’ll use your credit card instead of your health card to get service.”
When pressed by reporters after his speech, Layton softened his stance slightly, saying he is not necessarily against private clinics such as Vancouver’s Copeman Healthcare Centre, but rather that he wants to ensure public money is not used to support them.
“What happens with people in the privacy of their own relationship financially, that’s up to them,” Layton said.
“Our concern is that if you begin to take public health care dollars and put them into for-profit operations, you’re bleeding away money to stockholders and speculators and the people that buy and sell corporations.”
In an interview with The Vancouver
Sun, Layton attacked Conservative leader Stephen Harper’s plans for reducing waiting times.
“I have studied Mr. Harper’s plan and I don’t see any proposals there as to actually how he is going to reduce them,” Layton said.
“He’s simply said ‘they shall be reduced’ as though the Red Sea shall part because he has said so,” he added.
Last week, Harper announced a plan to fast-track the Liberal government’s plan for waitinglist benchmarks. He said that if elected, he would make provincial governments that couldn’t meet those benchmarks pay for patients to be transported to jurisdictions where the services are available.
Layton said he thinks this means Harper likely plans to funnel public money into private clinics.
“When you read between the lines it looks like what he is getting at is that public dollars could then be diverted to some of these private for-profit operations as a way of reducing wait times but he doesn’t quite want to come out and say it.”
Layton also said he believes B. C. voters are frustrated with the current government, and should consider the NDP as an alternative.
“ I think people in British Columbia ... are far enough away from Ottawa they can kind of look at what goes on in our federal government with a certain kind of distance and a healthy cynicism,” he said.
He said B. C. could be an important battleground for his party, but was unwilling to say how many seats he thinks the NDP can pick up in the Jan. 23 election.
Layton would also not say whether he is running to form the next government or just to build a stronger opposition.
“I’m running to get as many NDP members as possible,” he said. “If the people send a sufficient number of our members there, then we will play a certain kind of role,” he added. “I’m certainly prepared to play that kind of role, whatever it is.”
jfowlie@png.canwest.com