privitised health care

The direction canada is going towards healthcare is really scarry. As a canadian who grew up here I have taken universal health care for granted, but having friends from the states and around europe and living in Ireland I realize how lucky we really are and how important it is that we keep the system that we have now. The prospects of privitising this public service is very frightening and will create so many inequalities and further the spaces betweent the rich and the poor in this country. Today this women on the public health policy board was using a frightenign discource encouraging the privitisation of health care in canada. She was saying the regulated amount of money given to health care is problimatic since if the countries revenue is depelated then all other public services are cut. Her solution for this is for those who are using the health services shoudl be paying for the services. She repeated several times that she is concerned for all the youth who disporportionalty pay for health care and do not use it. The only solution to the problems that she was posing was privisation. The discourse she was using was to create a sence of individualism and othering of illness. Why should WE pay for THEM.

Also in the news the past few days is that Alberta has become debt free. First of all there are two reasons they were able to accomplish this, oil (and that resource will not last) and the cut back in public services. The premier, Klein who is a drunk capitalist bastard, is boasting about this acievment yet has left all those who are in need of health and other public services in great need. There is also talk that since Alberta is the only provence that is debt free and probably the only provence likely to be debt free from time to come, that they have more barginning power. They can say that they do not need things like the canadian health system. And that they can more outside the universal health care system and move into a private system.

A further story on privitised health care was this chief from an aborigial community (I believe in ontario but I can't be sure) who is also trying to use his aborigal status to say that there community also doens't have to be part of this canadian health care system and that he is trying to get privitised hospitals on the reserve. He believes that this will bring in money for his community since the hospital will be open to those living in the reserve and those from the outside. But he didn't answer any questions on payment. In reality the aboriginal communtiy cannot afford to be paying for private health care.

Canada has a few things going for it, the health care system deffinalty is one of them, but this discourse on the news the past few days is looking in a really negative direction.