B3V 1C1

I have read the article on the state of Canada’s Health care system as put forward by Janice MacKinnon in her report in the Halifax Herald and Mail Star. I couldn’t agree more that it is in a financial crisis. However, I believe it was the various levels of government mismanagement of funds that put it in the miserable financial shape that it is in. Janice MacKinnon stated she was a baby boomer and should be old enough to know that when Canada’s Health Care was born it was paid for by what was known as a Health tax with revenues going solely to the running of hospitals which included everything from salaries, equipment and administrative costs. This tax was applied to non-essential items consumers bought. I believe the percentage of the Health tax started around 5% and increased to 7%. During the early years of this new system, reports declared this way of raising cash for health care was doing very well and was in the black. Governments looked at the revenue this tax was creating and what was known as a Health tax quickly became a sales tax and was placed into general revenues. The money that was once used for health care started to pay for other programs that politician’s thought would make them more popular with the people while putting health care in the background. Money was also clawed back by a sneaky tactic of “de-insuring” many preventative procedures such as the removal of warts and moles that may cause future concern to the people inflicted by them.

You do not need expensive studies and reports to see what happened to our health care system.

Now that health care has once again come to the forefront, governments are scrambling to find new and innovative ways to pay for it. The statement that Janice made about younger people not bearing the burden of taking care of the older people seems to playing on people’s sympathy to accept the fact we should pay premiums or to join Medical Co-ops as Doctor Cathy Felderhorf suggested here in Nova Scotia. Her suggestion for this was to make people believe they will get better treatment and have more control over services. What a joke! Are we to pay premiums on top of the health tax we already pay as well as user fees along with joining a Medical Co-op? Many people are also paying for private medical health insurance through company or government plans. Where is it all going to end? Is it the intention of whoever is in charge of suggesting all of these changes to take everything a person has in exchange for the belief in a better system than what we had? As I have stated in many other letters I have responded to on this subject, I will refuse to pay anything over and above what I am already paying for in the name of health care. If these changes are going to come to reality than give me back what I have paid in health tax, sales tax, GST, BST or whatever you want to call it for the last forty years. Pardon the pun but I am sick of it all.

Gary MacLeod

477-1012 (H)

476-1743 (Cell)