A Lesson From My Hospital Bed: For-Profit Health Care Is a Merciless Sham

I came out of it for the first time in near darkness, couldn't lift my arms, couldn't lift my legs, couldn't rise to a sitting position, and there was a breathing mask over my nose and mouth methodically forcing air down my throat. I quickly learned to inhale with its rhythm. I had no idea where or when I was. Suddenly there was a bright light in my eyes and then faces, faces, barely visible, hands touching and voices murmuring too low to comprehend. Someone fiddled with the IV in my left hand and I floated away again.

Republicans and Democrats Continue to Block Drug Reimportation – After Publicly Endorsing It

Amidst all the angst and acrimony of last year's trench-warfare presidential campaign, there was one area in which the two major-party candidates purported to agree. Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump favored allowing the importation of cheap drugs from Canada.

Drug reimportation would be a no-brainer policy move if actual human beings ran our government. Disgust with high prescription drug prices is nearly universal – 77 percent say drug prices are "unreasonable" – and 71 percent of respondents favor allowing the importation of cheaper drugs from Canada.

Private clinics are not the solution to health-care cuts

One in seven private health-care clinics in Ontario havefailed provincial safety inspections. Since 2011,Hepatitis C outbreaks at three colonoscopy clinics have caused at least 11 patients to become critically ill. And the second and third outbreaks could have been prevented if the first one had not been kept secret. People concerned with the state of health care in Ontario are left with many questions: how did we get into this situation? Who's to blame? And finally, how do we stop the off-loading of hospital services onto privately run clinics?

How Much "Free" Health Care Really Costs Canadians

"Don't touch my free health care," is a common refrain from defenders of the status quo whenever anyone broaches the topic of reforming Canada's health-care system.

While politicians and interest groups no doubt share a portion of the blame for perpetuating the myth of a $0 price tag for health care in Canada, their ability to carry public opinion with them stems from the murky manner in which health care is funded.

Individuals and families never see a bill for medical services, are not subject to any level of cost-sharing, and only pay a small so-called "premium" for health insurance (in provinces that impose them) that in no way represent the true cost.

Happy Thanksgiving! Would Tories praising public health care please stop trying to privatize it!

Happy Thanksgiving! With acase of a "potential contagious illness" in an unidentified Edmonton hospital last night, I guess we can be thankful we have a public health care system, even if it faces a serious funding crisis and is housed in crumbling facilities.

This, at any rate, is the party line from Conservative federal and provincial politicians as they keep to keep us from panicking about the emergence of, um, potential contagious illnesses like, you know, Ebola, in Canada.

This party line is summed upalmost perfectly in the words of a senior health region manager in British Columbia: "The spread that we’re seeing in Africa is probably caused by their health system characteristics. They don't have a well-funded public health care system like we do."

The Egregious Ethics of For-Profit Health Care in BC

One of the most important constitutional trials in Canadian history was set to begin on Sept. 8, 2014 before the B.C. Supreme Court. Brian Day, owner of the for-profit Cambie Surgical Centre says he is fighting for the freedom of patients who are victims of "medical enslavement," while making generous and unlawful profits well above what the government and his own profession have identified as fair.

These arguments were to be heard in a costly 24-week trial that pits our public health system against the two-tiered, free-market alternative he proposes that patients have a right to in a free society.

For-Profit Clinic Lawsuit May Transform Health Care

A court case scheduled to start in September in British Columbia could have severe consequences for public health care in Canada, warn those speaking on behalf of two interveners in the case.

"It's hard to overstate the importance of this court case," said Vanessa Brcic, a family doctor in Vancouver who is on the board of Canadian Doctors for Medicare, speaking at a late March public forum at the University of Victoria.

Goodbye to the U.K.’s National Health Service?

Britain may not have the world’s model medical service for long. NHS official Kailash Chand predicts the inexpensive and efficient nationalized system could be replaced by a largely privatized version involving worse “access, equity, health outcomes and cost” within five years.

The service is on the chopping block, ready to be sold in pieces to private corporations by Prime Minister David Cameron and MP and Secretary of State for Health Jeremy Hunt, both members of the Conservative Party.

Chand, who has 35 years of experience with the NHS as a doctor and a chair, writes at The Guardian, “For the entire length of 2013, the NHS came under relentless attack on grounds of ‘quality’ by politicians and the right-wing press, driving the privatization agenda.”

How private clinics lengthen wait times for all of us

Have you ever asked yourself or been asked, isn't a two-tiered health-care system a good thing if it shortens wait times? If the rich want to pay out-of-pocket for their health care and free up space in the wait line for public care, shouldn't we let them? It sounds logical, right? It isn't.

I'm going to try and explain how private clinics lengthen wait times for the 99 per cent of us and I'm going to do that by using the example of the grocery store.  

Medical association calls for renewed talks about private health care

A longtime Calgary surgeon’s decision to opt out of the public medical system should reinvigorate discussion about private care and how to deal with long wait lists, empty operating suites and specialists who can’t find work, says the head of the Alberta Medical Association.

“People are waiting too long. We need to talk more,” said Dr. Allan Garbutt, in a letter to the province’s doctors following news of Dr. Robert Hollinshead’s plans to leave the public system as of July 2014 and provide surgeries for a fee.

By closing the Health Council of Canada, Stephen Harper is abandoning national medicare

Health Ministers from across Canada were recently told by the Harper government that it will stop funding the Health Council of Canada and wants it “wound down” in order to save $6 million.

When the Harper government says it is time to wind down the Health Council of Canada, it is saying in effect, it is time to wind down national medicare. Let me explain.

The Health Council of Canada was formed in 2003, following the Romanow Commission on the Future of Health Care in Canada, to provide accountability, oversight, planning and national coordination for our health care system. Its achievements to date include lowering wait times and encouraging innovation in the public health care system to ensure access to a continuum of services, in and out of hospital.

Alberta Health Queue Jumping Inquiry Recommends Changes

EDMONTON - An inquiry has found that queue-jumping has occurred in Alberta's health-care system and an environment exists in which it could happen again.

Justice John Vertes says there was no basis to claims that queue-jumping was widespread and politicians were moving people to the front of the line. But there were instances where people got faster care.

Stop for-profit blood clinics, doctors urge

Introducing a paid-donor system for blood products could compromise Canada's blood supply and is not justified, a group of physicians says.

The chair of Canadian Doctors for Medicare said she was shocked by the news that a company in Ontario was planning to pay for plasma.

Renting seniors' beds is a formula for failure -- and it's time for Alberta to stop

Do you remember that promise by the Alberta government to build 3,000 seniors' beds? It turns out they only planned to rent them!

The problem with renting beds from private companies, of course, is the same as with any form of privatized medicare: it ends up costing a heck of a lot more than we were promised, and delivering much less.

It also turns out the Alberta government's bad bargain with private care operators means the fragile seniors who end up occupying the beds are subject to eviction!

‘We know everyone’s not equal’: Queue-jumping probe looks at patients who receive VIP treatment

There were private-clinic customers pushed to the front of the line for colon-cancer screening, nurses who hoarded pandemic-flu vaccine for their own family members and VIPs given, well, VIP treatment in hospital.

An ongoing Alberta public inquiry is offering an unprecedented glimpse at a side of health care usually kept under close wraps: Patients whose influence, fame or money earns them special treatment in an over-taxed system.

Why Albertans support more private health care options

The myths we Canadians cherish about our public health care system are going to be the death of us.

Consider that this week the Conference Board of Canada published the results of a survey of our attitudes towards the possibility of more private delivery of care. Only in Alberta were as many as half of residents in favour of more private options. Nationally, 60% were opposed.

Quebecers told EKOS Research they were the most opposed (65%) of any Canadians. At 64%, Atlantic Canadians were the next-most reluctant.

Why is Alberta studying seniors' care at the same time as it's privatizing it?

On Monday, Alberta Health Minister Fred Horne announced a year-long project to study seniors' residential centres and figure out the best way to fund and run them.

Sounds good, lots of Albertans must have concluded, before getting on with their business confident the administration of seniors' care under Premier Alison Redford is in good hands.

But if Horne and the provincial Health Department are really serious about assessing the financial sustainability of the 400 or so seniors' facilities, weighing various funding models and exploring what type of services and programs they ought to offer, why is Alberta Health Services plunging ahead and closing publicly run seniors' centres right and left, pushing the residents into private facilities?

Spaniards protest health care privatization plans

MADRID—Thousands of Spanish medical workers and residents angered by budget cuts and plans to partly privatize the cherished national health service marched through some of Madrid’s most famous squares on Sunday.

More than 5,000 people rallied in Puerta del Sol, according to police estimates, after marching from Neptuno and Cibeles squares. Organizers estimated attendance at 25,000 protesters, many dressed in white and blue hospital scrubs. The march, called “a white tide” by organizers, was the third such large-scale protest this year.

For Canada’s “Chronic Condition” no end in sight

Under the Conservatives, the federal government, as we know, is retreating from the field of health care oversight. While the funding is still doled out, it now comes with no strings attached. Such an approach is in contrast to previous governments who tried to get something in return.

The new Conservative approach is a good fit for party ideology, much in keeping with Stephen Harper’s preference for keeping his paws out of provincial jurisdiction. Politically it’s not bad either. One less thorny problem for the prime minister. Notice how, despite the concerns that the current system may be unsustainable, that health care is far from the top of the national discussion.
Jeffrey Simpson’s new book – “Chronic Condition; Why Canada’s Health-Care System Needs to be Dragged Into the 21st Century” – will hopefully help bring the debate to the forefront. The book is a perceptive and penetrating synopsis of the medicare story – where we’ve been, where we are and where we might be going.

Cabinet document shows Canada Health Act open to private clinics

OTTAWA — A government “interpretation manual” prepared for the Canada Health Act suggests the legislation has been badly misunderstood for three decades.

The existence of the manual was revealed in a new book, Chronic Condition, by the Globe and Mail’s Ottawa-based national affairs columnist, Jeffrey Simpson.

The manual, a copy of which was shown to the Citizen by a former government official, makes it clear that the legislation does not preclude private, for-profit clinics from operating under the umbrella of the public health care system.