How Harper killed medicare — and got away with it

The Harper government’s anti-democratic actions have been so numerous, it’s easy to lose track of them.

I almost forgot, for instance, about the way it clamped down on that little bird-watching group in southwestern Ontario, putting its charitable status under surveillance after the group raised concerns about government-approved chemicals damaging bee colonies.

Trade Deal Targets Medicare, New Leak Reveals

For the second time in a week, Medicare is complicating an already fraught debate over the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal.

A recent draft of the health care transparency section of TPP released by Wikileaks on Wednesday reveals the deal would make Medicare vulnerable to legal challenges from pharmaceutical companies and jeopardize future attempts by the insurer to negotiate lower drug prices.

In a modest victory for global health care advocates, however, the leaked draft does not contain previous language explicitly protecting prescription drug prices from being marked down by government insurers.

Will Harper's Strikes against Medicare Matter This Election?

Is Canadian medicare being terminally damaged by federal funding cuts? And if so, will the damage be a decisive issue in the next election? Healthcare advocates think it should.

"Whether it's our overflowing emergency wards, our short-staffed long term care homes, or hospitals that are forced to accommodate patients in the hallway, it's clear that our public health system simply cannot withstand any more cutbacks," the Hospital Employee Union's Bonnie Pearson told a crowd of labour and health policy advocates rallying outside Vancouver General Hospital last month.

Manning Conference III: The right's strategies for dominating cities and wrecking medicare

Preston Manning and his self-titled hothouse for conservative scheming March 7-9 in Ottawa didn't really help the credibility of Canadian conservatism by scheduling speakers from the fringiest fringes of their movement.

But then, why worry? After all, the mainstream media that attended the conference in large packs treated everything that went on -- seminars on how to sell a kidney and all -- with the utmost seriousness and respect.

Romney Picks the Man With the Plan to End Medicare

Late Friday, NBC News and the Huffington Post reported that Mitt Romney had chosen Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) as his vice presidential nominee. The two will hold a joint campaign appearance in Norfolk, Virginia on Saturday morning aboard the USS Wisconsin, before hitting the trail together in advance of the GOP convention in Tampa in late August. The appeal for Romney is obvious: Ryan is telegenic (he's 42) with an impeccable reputation among conservatives as not just a policy wonk but a once-in-a-generation visionary. (For what it's worth, he also catches catfish with his hands.) As New York's Jonathan Chait explained in a profile of Ryan in April, Ryan, more so than Romney himself, has become the face of the Republican party over the last two years.

Harper’s plan would kill medicare in Canada

The Harper government has set in motion a strategy that will lead to the unravelling of Canada’s national health system. All Harper has to do is nothing. By abdicating the essential federal responsibilities in health care, the system will fragment on its own into 14 separate pieces.

OTTAWA—There is a deficit of political leadership in health care, especially at the federal level. Prime Minister Stephen Harper stated in a year-end interview recently that he had no idea how to secure the future of health care in Canada. Instead, he said it is up to the provinces to find “solutions.”

Harper’s recent unilateral, non-negotiable decision on the future of federal health financing stunned provinces. It seems the federal government intends to limit its role to signing blank cheques with no strings attached and no accountability. If rumours on the Hill are true, once the current arrangement expires Harper may replace cash transfers entirely with tax credits.

The Harper government has set in motion a strategy that will lead to the unravelling of Canada’s national health system. All Harper has to do is nothing. By abdicating the essential federal responsibilities in health care, the system will fragment on its own into 14 separate pieces.

In order to understand the implications of abandoning federal responsibilities in health care, it is important to identify what they are, especially since the Harper government never misses an opportunity to say that health care is a provincial/territorial responsibility.

The federal role in health care is very clear and well described on Health Canada’s website.

The federal government is a funder, and transfers more than $40-billion a year to provinces and territories for health care. In addition to health-care cash transfers, the four most important federal duties in health care are: 1. guardian of the national standards in the Canada Health Act; 2. regulator of pharmaceuticals, medical devices and food; 3. Health-service provider to First Nations and Inuit communities; and 4. catalyst for innovation and best practices.

When Medicare Isn't Medicare

Let's say you have a Ford and decide to replace everything under the hood with Hyundai parts, including the engine and transmission. Could you still honestly market your car as a Ford?

That question gets at the heart of the controversy over who is being more forthright about GOP Rep. Paul Ryan's plan to "save" Medicare, Republicans or Democrats.

If you overhaul the Medicare system like you did your Ford and tell the public it's still Medicare, are you doing so honestly?

As I noted last week, PolitiFact, the St. Petersburg Time's fact checker, decided that the Democrats' claim that Ryan's plan would mean the end of Medicare was so blatantly untrue it merited designation as the 2011 "Lie of the Year." Republicans, whose erroneous claims about health care reform garnered "Lie of the Year" prizes in 2009 and 2010, cheered. Democrats, as you might imagine, jeered -- as did some journalists and pundits.

PolitiFact's Washington-based editor defended the choice by contending that Ryan's proposal to restructure Medicare by providing beneficiaries subsidies to buy private insurance would not "end" the program. It would still be Medicare, he reasoned.

What he's missing is that Ryan's proposal would change the program so fundamentally as to represent the equivalent of replacing the engine and transmission.

Why the Harper funding diktat endangers medicare

For medicare, the federal government’s new health financing ultimatum is a clear and deliberate step backward.

By scaling back cash contributions to provincial medicare plans, it will gradually and inevitably destroy Ottawa’s ability to enforce the Canada Health Act.

By tying these contributions to the vagaries of the overall economy, it will make it harder for provinces to forge long-term health-care strategies.

And by cutting back health spending during slump periods, it will remove money and jobs from health care precisely at those times when they are needed most.

Most provincial governments were furious when federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty formally unveiled his non-negotiable scheme Monday. Justly so.

The new plan from Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives threatens to undo key medicare gains that Canada has made in the past eight years.

To understand those gains, we have to understand what medicare is. It is a national public health insurance scheme administered and partly funded by the provinces.

Days of blindly topping up medicare over

When Canada’s health ministers meet this week, one issue will dominate discussions, at the table, in the corridors and in the media: The 2014 Health Accord.

The meeting in Halifax on Thursday and Friday will be the first formal opportunity for Ottawa, the provinces and territories to feel each other out on this crucial financial and political issue.

There will be a lot of posturing, but this must be a priority for the health ministers because the way we finance health care in Canada is going to change profoundly in the next few years. The transfers from Ottawa to the provinces and territories are just one piece of the puzzle, but an important one, especially politically.

Renegotiating the Canada Health Transfer – the mechanism Ottawa uses to transfer health-care dollars to the provinces – is a golden opportunity to send a message: The days of blindly shovelling money into health care are over.

Women Hurt Most By Debt Deal Cuts to Medicare, Social Security, Tuition

The debt ceiling agreement reached this week by the White House and Congress could deal a serious blow to women’s well-being according to leading women’s rights groups. The deal will potentially impose $1 trillion in cuts to programs that mostly serve and employ women — such as family planning clinics, food stamps, college tuition assistance and child care. The National Organization for Women (NOW), the largest feminist organization in the country, called on President Obama to "stand up to the conservatives and Tea Party activists" and resist balancing the federal budget on the backs of the most vulnerable people in this country — namely women, and especially women of color. We speak with NOW President Terry O’Neill about the debt deal and how few women were involved in the negotiations. We also look at new federal guidelines requiring insurance companies to cover birth control with no co-pay, with some religious exemptions.

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Source: Democracy Now! 

Tea Party To Push Paul Ryan Medicare Plan In Town Halls

WASHINGTON -- With Medicare at the top of lawmakers' fall agenda, Tea Party movement leaders hope to ignite support for Republican plans to transform the popular federal healthcare program for the elderly.

Thousands of Tea Party movement activists are expected to descend this month on town hall meetings across key battleground states as part of an intensifying campaign ahead of the 2012 presidential and congressional elections.

Their priority is a plan to slash Medicare costs proposed by House of Representatives Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, which could gain momentum now that a debt-limit deal between President Barack Obama and Congress has made potential Medicare cuts a centerpiece of the deficit debate.