What's wrong with privatizing health care? Plenty.
That's the blunt conclusion of Health Care, Limited, a new synthesis report on the state of Canada's health care system, prepared for the Council of Canadians by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
Its conclusion? "Medicare can either be preserved or privatized. It can't be both."
Health, health care system, pharmacare
OTTAWA--Ontario's health care system is under threat from creeping privatization and public spending cuts, according to a new study, Unsafe Practices, released today by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Costs are being shifted from the public purse to the individual household, and publicly delivered health care services are being reduced, restructured and rationed. Furthermore, hospitals and other institutions are being transformed by private-sector business strategies and management ideologies.
Public health care, the crown jewel of social programs, has worked extremely well for Canadians. Yet Ontario today is witnessing piecemail privatization in health care: the introduction of private-sector business strategies and management ideologies into the public health care system; reductions and stagnation in pubic spending in the sector; the restructuring and rationing of publicly delivered services; cost shifting from the public purse to the individual household.
Ottawa--Canada can afford to extend Medicare to cover pharmaceuticals, and should do so by introducing a national program to cover drug costs, says the author of a new CCPA study.
Dr. Joel Lexchin maintains that such a program--Pharmacare--is both urgently needed and affordable. He dismisses the excuse given by politicians that its costs would be prohibitive.
Canadian government concessions to the big multinational pharmaceutical companies, including an extension of their monopoly on new drugs to 20 years, have resulted in sharply escalating prices for drug prescriptions, the potential blocking of a national Pharmacare program, and Canadian complicity in denying life-saving drugs to developing countries.
Public debates over controversial biotechnologies often revolve around questions about who will control them and what values will guide their development. Because patent policies shape the social, economic and legal environment for technological innovation and application, those concerned with the ethics and social implications of biotechnology have a significant stake in intellectual property issues.
OTTAWA--Contrary to misleading government assurances, Canada's health care system is not fully protected from international trade agreements, namely, NAFTA and the WTO. But, if Canadian governments act soon, they can still strengthen Medicare before trade-deal threats make health care reforms too costly.
Those are the main conclusions of a major report to the Romanow Commission on the Future of Health Care prepared under the auspices of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.