Public Service Alliance of Canada BC

The Globe & Mail, Aug 16 2006

The Canadian Medical Association has recently recommended that private competition be introduced into medicare by allowing physicians to bill patients (or private insurance plans) for services that are covered by medicare, and allowing medicare to purchase covered services from for-profit private facilities.

Those who champion privatization claim these modifications of Canada’s publicly funded health-care system would save money, help eliminate waiting times and possibly even improve the quality of care.

Policy-makers need only look to the United States for the evidence such claims have no merit. The U.S. experience shows that private, for-profit medical insurance and investor-owned medical facilities are a bad deal for the public, and that a health-care system that encourages physicians to behave like private entrepreneurs leads to extravagant costs.

Those who would deny this obvious evidence are either blinded by unshakable faith in market ideology or are biased by their interests in businesses that profit from the privatization of health care.

Read more at globeandmail.com.

May is Child Care Month. The Child Care – Let’s Make It Happen! and Code Blue 2007 tour will be visiting a half-dozen BC communities between May 11-25. Events are being co-organized with local groups in Victoria, Duncan, Vernon, Castlegar, Prince Rupert and Richmond. This tour has come together very quickly, and details are still being finalized in locations such as Prince Rupert.

|inline

Are you active in advancing public health care or medicare issues? The PSAC  B.C. Region would like to sponsor a member active in these areas to attend the following conference:

• S.O.S Medicare 2: Looking Forward
• May 3-4, 2007 in Regina at the Queensbury Convention Centre

This is a two day national conference sponsored in part by the Canadian Health Coalition and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. The conference is open to the general public and will have representation from a wide spectrum of sectors including community, health care, labour, and anti-poverty.

|inline

“Medicare Works”, a national campaign tour designed to defend and strengthen the public health care system, was officially launched on October 18 by the Canadian Health Coalition (CHC) and the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions. The campaign features 32 town hall meetings taking place across the country between late October and early December.

At the meetings, health analysts will expose the commercial interests behind the latest attacks on Medicare and Canadians will have an opportunity to discuss better ways to strengthen the system.A week of action is being held from November 13 to 18 when Canadians will be encouraged to pressure their politicians. “The public system is under renewed attack, with the federal government not enforcing the Canada Health Act and some provinces aggressively pushing for-profit, two-tier health services,” says CHC chair Kathleen Connors.

PSAC member are encouraged to attend the town hall meeting being held in their area and to participate in the week-long lobby of politicians. Call or meet with your MP and show your support for public health care.

|inline

Public health care is Canadians’ proudest achievement. We embrace it as a social right in Canada, one that speaks to our best values of fairness, pragmatism, inclusion and hope.There is no other social program or national initiative that we identify with so passionately, but it is being weakened by private forces and complicit governments.

We are standing up to defend, expand and improve public health care and we invite all Canadians to join us.

|inline

VDLC Friends and Affiliates,

The Save St. Paul’s Coalition needs our help.

The Coalition is trying to set up a meeting with the Health Minister for the end of March and need your signatures on their petition to help make that happen. The letter they have sent the Minister is attached.

Please visit their website, at www.stpauls.wera.bc.ca and if you haven’t already signed their petition, please do.

The Vancouver and District Labour Council is already on record as supporting the work to save St.Paul’s and Mt. St. Joseph’s Hospitals from being closed or moved by the Campbell Liberals and supports the Save St.Paul’s Coalition, in their fight to do the same.

In solidarity, The Vancouver and District Labour Council

Canada’s 130,000 Registered Nurses today challenged Stephen Harper and the other political party leaders to explain clearly how they would protect our public medicare system from the private for-profit medical entrepreneurs who are poised to destroy it.They issued the challenge as a new Ipsos-Reid poll (pdf) showed that Canadians strongly support our not-for-profit medicare system and fear more private health care will draw health care professionals away from our public system and lead to a for-profit American health care system.

Read more at bcnu.org.