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Trashing Tommy's Legacy

By MURIEL MacDONALD

A RESTORED, revitalized health care system is Canadians' No. 1 priority. Medicare is raised as the government flagship every pre-election only to be scuppered whether Grits or Tories win.

Prime Minister Paul Martin lowered the boom on Health Minister Pierre Pettigrew who told a Commons committee that the private, for profit sector was open to the provinces if publicly financed.

It already is, but the next day Mr. Pettigrew recanted. An angry Paul Martin, in Question Period, raised the ghost of his father and insisted that the five principles of the Canada Health Act - public and non-profit, comprehensive, universal, portable, accessible - are sacrosanct.

Why then has Mr. Martin appointed Alberta economist Paul Boothe to a senior position in Finance? Mr. Boothe is an author and lobbyist for more privatizing of health care. Mr. Martin has also hired in his own office a former lobbyist for private health care.

As well, the Earnscliffe Strategy Group, a.k.a the "Second Prime Minister's Office" represents and propagandizes for private health care interests.

This would have Tommy Douglas, the founder of medicare, turning in his grave. The solutions to the public's health problems faced by Tommy Douglas in the 1940s, and the outcomes, must be compared with Paul Martin's record.

When he was finance minister, Mr. Martin gutted health care and other social programs, boasting how government spending would be lower than at any time since 1951.

Now 10 years later, he is promising a 10-year plan. While we wait 10 years, privatizing interests can improve profits at taxpayers' expense. The tax breaks, uncollected loans, grants given big business and banks should be used to restore medicare.

When Tommy Douglas was elected premier of Saskatchewan in June 1944, Canada had a legacy of the Great Depression, a returning military, and a large national debt.

The Douglas CCF government "stabilized farm debts, introduced free treatment for tuberculosis, cancer, and mental illness, and free medical treatment for mothers on welfare, the old, and the blind. In mid-1945 there was a provincial government insurance corporation and, a year later, provincial automobile insurance," writes Walter Stewart in M.J. , The Life and Times of M.J. Coldwell, Stoddart Publishing Co. Ltd., 2000.

This did not bankrupt the province. "Saskatchewan rang up twelve budget surpluses in a row, beginning with the 1945-46 fiscal year," writes Mr. Stewart. North America's first public medical insurance program came into law July 1, 1962, introduced by Tommy Douglas. The doctors went on strike, refusing to work under a government-controlled program. Dentists, drug companies, political opponents, and the media opposed the "Bolshevik/Communist" plan.

Doctors were imported from Britain, the U.S., and parts of Canada. Lord Taylor, who helped introduce Britain's health care plan later, came to serve as mediator. The two sides signed an agreement and the doctors returned to work.

Tommy had guaranteed them an income, whether fee-for service or on salary.

In 1998, the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) enshrined Tommy Douglas in its Hall of Fame, the only non-physician to be so honoured. Contradictorily, two years earlier, the CMA and U.S. health corporations met to promote public-private partnering in Canada's health care.

Public-private partnerships (3P) for hospitals and other health services is part of Paul Martin's agenda if you decode Pierre Pettigrew's promise to "redefine public management, not public ownership."

We have already paid for hospitals with our taxes. Under 3P, the private, for-profit sector will levy a mortgage that will never be paid while maximizing their profits.

The Liberals' 10-year plan vaguely includes home care, support for those facing huge costs, and changing the way doctors deliver services.

No mention is made of repealing the Mulroney government's Bill C-22 (1987), limiting Canadian generic drug manufacturing; nor Bill C-91 (1993), giving brand name drug corporations 20-year prescription protection, or more when minor changes are made in the formula. Result? Generic drugs in Canada are "well above the median foreign prices today," was noted in the Romanow report. Prescription drug prices increase unhindered.

The provinces are responsible for health care under a pre-paid single-payer plan. Without the federal government's sharing 50/50 with the provinces, the five principles of the Canada Health Act are dead letters.

Now I couldn't bring my maiden aunt, living alone, from Montreal to Ottawa, as I once did when Quebec paid for palliative hospital care, and she was visited by relatives.

Just leaving problems to be faced 10 years down the road guarantees to kill the universality of the system, creating the same problems faced 60 years ago. Tommy Douglas wanted medicare developed in two stages, acute care and prevention. Prevention has yet to happen.

In 1982 he asked, "How to reorganize a health care system that is lamentably out of date? Let's not forget that the ultimate goal of medicare must be to keep people well rather than just patching them up when they get sick."

Roy Romanow's Commission report has suggestions how medicare can be modernized, as have the Canadian Health Coalition, and health policy analysts including Monique Begin, Michael Rachlis, Robert G. Evans, Morris L. Barer, Patrick Lewis. Governments ignore them.

Liberal governments are chameleons, turning whatever political colour they perceive the country is going. Tommy Douglas warned, "Unless we arouse our neighbours and our friends and our communities to protest - we are sounding the death knell of medicare in this country."

The Liberals stole the agenda of right-wing corporatism. Are you willing to let them kill your medicare rights?

Muriel MacDonald is a long-time activist on behalf of Canadian veterans and lives in Ottawa.

Here are contacts for you to consider

Email: pm@pm.gc.ca  

Mail:   House of Commons 

Ottawa, On.

Ph: 613-992-4211  

P.O. Box 726  

Halifax, NS. B3J 2T3

(902) 424-6600

Email: premier@gov.ns.ca  

Comment Line: 1-800-267-1993     

P.O. Box 488

Halifax, NS. B3J 2R8

Ph:  (902) 424-5818

Email: healmin@gov.ns.ca

www.seniorssafety.com

www.mobilize4medicare.ca   

Minister of Health Promotion Barry Barnett