Dr. Jacques Chaoulli, the Quebec physician whose complaint led the Supreme Court to strike down Quebec’s ban on private health insurance, celebrated his victory by going to Washington to be feted by conservative U.S. think-tanks. He personally invited U.S. health care corporations to come to Canada.
Health, health care system, pharmacare
Testifying before a U.S. Senate committee looking into the Vioxx-induced heart attacks of an estimated 100,000 or more Americans (and probably as many as 10,000 Canadians), Dr. David Graham said that such “a terrible tragedy” could have been prevented. It wasn’t. Why not? Because the agency assigned to ensure the safety of pharmaceutical drugs—the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)—is focused almost entirely on assessing the alleged benefits of a drug instead of its potential harm.
Rose Shaffer worked for nearly 30 years as a nurse in various hospitals in Chicago, where she was covered by health insurance. Then she took a job as director of nursing with a home care agency. Seven months into her new job, she suffered a heart attack and was rushed to a suburban hospital, where she was successfully treated and discharged three days later.
Curing the addiction to profits: A supply-side approach to phasing out tobacco offers a fresh approach to one of the world’s most challenging health problems.
The authors explore the shortcomings of tobacco control strategies that focus exclusively on trying to reduce the demand for cigarettes. Although this approach has reduced smoking rates, it has not sufficiently slowed the repeated cycle of addiction and death which continues to claim one in five Canadian lives.
(Ottawa) – Because the public health goal of reducing tobacco use directly conflicts with the tobacco industry’s profit motive, the way to overcome the health, social and economic problems caused by “big tobacco” is to take the business of supplying cigarettes out of their hands and put it into the hands of public organizations with a clear public health mandate. This is the main recommendation of a new study published by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and prepared by Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada.
Anatole France, the famous French historian, in 1894 noted the irony that “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.” Yesterday the Supreme Court of Canada offered us a similar bit of wisdom, ruling that all Canadians, rich and poor alike, have an equal right to use their own money to access health care in a timely manner.
Guess who does the cooking and cleaning in BC hospitals and nursing homes?If you answered “mostly women,” you would be right. It’s not exactly news that service jobs in Canada are usually done by women. In the Lower Mainland, many of the cleaners and food service workers in our health facilities are immigrant women from Asia and other countries of the south. Most have children at home and are also supporting family members overseas.
A year ago, health care facilities in BC were behind picket lines. At issue was a new collective agreement, unilaterally imposed by the BC government, that cut wages and increased work hours for the lowest paid workers in health care.
Most of the striking workers were from the Hospital Employees’ Union, or HEU. The vast majority are women, and many are from visible minority of immigrant backgrounds. HEU workers include licensed practical nurses, care aides, lab technicians, clerical and support occupations, and tradespeople.
A companion piece to this paper, The Pains of Privatization: How Contracting Out Hurts Health Support Workers, Their Families and Health Care by Jane Stinson, Nancy Pollak and Marcy Cohen, looks at the impact of contracting out on BC health care workers.