It would be comforting to think the recent report of the National Forum on Health would lead somewhere.
It would be comforting – but naive.
This is an election year. It is a document filled with wishful thinking about a highly political issue.
The chances of the Forum’s ideas being debated seriously and adopted are about as good as the likelihood that: Saskatchewan’s “new” Tories will be able to escape the corrupt stench of the legacy of Saskatchewan’s “old” Tories; or that Alberta’s Liberals will challenge Ralph Klein for the premier’s office: none.
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Still, it is useful to remember what the National Forum recommended, since it already is being distorted in the debate about why it is not practical.
The two dozen health-care specialists appointed by the federal Liberal government to study medicare concluded that:
- It is a sustainable and necessary system, as long as the corrosion of corporate medicine is kept at bay.
- The $72 billion spent yearly is more than enough but some of the $20 billion in private costs should be transferred to the public sector in coverage of home care and drugs, an increasing part of the medical system for an aging population.
- The national principles of medicare, articulated by the Liberals in 1983 and later reaffirmed by the Conservatives, should be preserved – universality, accessibility, portability and public funding among them.
- The federal Liberal assault on medicare through slashing of transfers to the provinces should end and more than $1 billion should be restored.
- Movement toward a publicly funded system for the poor and a faster pay-as-you-go system for the rich, with private first-class care for those who can afford to jump the queue, should be avoided.
The federal Liberals, living on the reputation of their ancestors, claim credit for national medicare. They have embraced the report. But they have no intention of expanding medicare, since that would involve spending more and standing up to the provinces – two actions out of step with the conservative, decentralizing ChrŽtien brand of Liberal. It will be an election prop for them, soon abandoned.
Reform, as is their style, did not pander to popular opinion. They trashed the report because it did not embrace their view of a capitalist medical system operating in competition with the public system.
The Bloc QuŽbecois predictably see a plot to centralize power in Ottawa at the expense of Quebec.
All of this renders the Forum recommendations political orphans.
This is a tragedy because Canada’s medicare system needs some Tender Loving Care right now if it is to survive the hypocrisy of the current age, when governments do not believe in governing and business ethics rule the roost.
This is a plea from a passionate believer in publicly funded medicine. Too often, in pre-medicare days in rural Quebec, I watched my parents struggle to save the family farm from doctors’ bill collectors.
These days, that lesson seems lost in a world of “can do” capitalism. Modern-day politicians will support medicare until their neglect forces it to wither away.
