When it comes to public health care, it seems that our politicians are much more interested in positioning themselves as more socialist than their rivals than they are in actually doing something to repair a badly damaged system. This constant bickering between Jack Layton and the Liberals about making sure that there is no private alternative to the public system really does nothing to improve the status quo. In fact, the idea that no one in Canada should profit by providing health care is ludicrous in the extreme, as everyone involved in health care is profiting in one way or another. Just ask one of the nurses’ unions.
Layton’s obsession with ensuring that no one is able to "jump the queue" in acquiring medical treatment though alternative private sources isn’t so much about preserving the integrity of our publicly funded system as it is about making sure that everyone experiences the same level of misery.
Ujjal Dosanj, our federal minister of health, in an effort to out-Layton Layton, is now touting the Canadian Public Health Protection Initiative, his newest harebrained scheme to "fix health care". The Initiative has three major principles, which Dosanj believes will take care of the problem.
First, the Initiative will ensure that any money Ottawa gives to the provinces for health care funding is actually used to fund health care. That’s tantamount to admitting the $41 billion they coughed up last year, ostensibly to fund better health care, had no strings attached and the provinces frittered it away on baubles.
Second, the Initiative will "discourage the phenomenon of doctors having dual practices in the public and private systems". Get it? They’re more interested in making sure that doctors don’t earn any extra bucks by treating patients after hours. Does this mean the Prime Minister will finally get his medical care from a public clinic, rather the private clinic he’s been using for years?
Last, the Initiative calls for the establishment of a "proper information base to track patterns and activities of the private sector…[in order to act on]…enforcement and compliance issues". This smacks of totalitarianism while it fails to address the problem of patients dying on waiting lists.
It’s clear that neither the Libs, nor the NDP, give a rat’s patootie about your aunt Mildred, who has been waiting for a hip replacement for 22 months. They’re much more interested in making sure that no one makes a thin dime through the private delivery of health care.
Somehow this illustrates what our ruling classes are concerned with when they aren’t busy attempting to purchase our votes with our own money. Jack Layton keeps talking about "Canadians wanting a health care system that’s 100% public." Frankly, I think if Layton were to ask some of those hapless Canadians now waiting for hip, shoulder, or cardiac surgery, they would likely tell him they don’t give a damn who provides the care, so long as it’s provided quickly.
Even the Supreme Court of Canada has taken the Canada Health act to task in proclaiming that waiting times under the current system are unreasonably long. Yet both Layton and the Libs pretend they didn’t hear about that ruling. In fact, they act as if that opinion had never been issued.
Let’s face it, if the public health care system met patients’ needs, why would anyone want to spend their own money for medical treatment when they could have it provided to them at no direct cost? Both Layton and the Libs are so far out in left field that their words and actions betray a total lack of understanding about the state of health care in Canada. Rather than worry about who makes how much in which system, they’d be much better off worrying about finding ways to get more doctors, nurses and diagnostic equipment into the system.