Off The Fence - Time to look south of the border for perspective on health

Susan Thompson
Express staff

It’s been interesting watching the U.S. lately, as President Obama works to bring in health care reforms. Universal health care is becoming a real possibility for our friends south of the border.

Canada comes up quite a lot in the current debate (as does Europe). Americans wonder whether our health care is better or worse, and whether they should adopt a “socialist” system like ours.

The problems in the U.S. system are well known. The main concern is the high cost of health insurance, which is so expensive a huge percentage of U.S. citizens don’t have any insurance at all. Getting sick or injured can lead to major debts.

The U.S. President has also said that an important part of health care reforms should be rules that prevent insurance companies from excluding people from getting health insurance due to a pre-existing condition, or “cherry-picking’ just the healthiest people.

Interesting, isn’t it, that even as the U.S. takes timid steps toward public health care, here in Alberta we’re taking steps in the opposite direction, toward a privatized system?

Don’t believe me? Just check out the list of what our government’s been up to lately and the trend becomes clear.

Private clinics are already in operation here, first of all.

Now our provincial government has started de-listing services, starting with chiropractic and sex-change operations. Many more may be on the chopping block shortly, and will need to be covered by (not exactly free) insurance such as Blue Cross.

There’s a hiring freeze in place, leaving hundreds of health care jobs sitting vacant. Overtime has been limited, leaving staff stressed and tired.

Surgeries are being delayed and even cancelled, leaving Albertans stuck waiting for care. Alberta Health Services told the Royal Alexandria Hospital to cut 15 per cent of elective surgeries to keep its budget the same, meaning that knee, hip and eye surgeries have been postponed just to save a buck. Surgeons report that cancer surgeries are also being delayed. That’s right, CANCER surgeries, which are clearly life and death.

The Grande Prairie hospital project has been put on hold for who knows how long, even as Beaverlodge faces the closure of its own hospital. Rural hospitals across the province are wondering if they’ll be next.

The new policies have been particularly rough on seniors. Even though health care premiums have been eliminated, seniors now have to pay more under a new pharmaceutical program. The costs of care in nursing homes have also been downloaded onto seniors and their families.

Part of the justification for all of this has been the recession.

But isn’t it even harder for people to get by in tough times when they have to pay more for health care, or just don’t get the care they need?

Some of these costs are just being delayed anyway, and in health care delays usually mean more costs while prevention and swift intervention means less because health issues have less time to get worse. Others are being downloaded onto you and me, which might save the government money but certainly not regular people.

That means the recent round of cuts really isn’t going to save money at all.

We all know how this is going to go, too. Wait times will keep growing. People will get frustrated with the quality of their care. Our health care system will get more and more broken, and our government will tell us because it’s broken, we need to privatize it more (U.S.-style) to fix it, conveniently ignoring that they caused many of the problems in the first place through their own policies.

Canada’s health care system may not be perfect, and I am all for fixing the parts of it that aren’t working correctly. But more cuts is the wrong prescription.

How will we ever recover economically if we’re not recovering physically?

Friends of Medicare just launched a massive billboard campaign saying our provincial government is going the “wrong way” on health care.

It seems the group may be right. The much-vaunted U.S. system has always been the first place that those who think we should dismantle our own universal health care system have pointed to, saying “See? Private is better.”

But Obama says that reform is necessary for the U.S. system in order to deal with its rising costs.

Recent polls have also shown strong support for a public health care option among Americans.

So if the U.S. health care system is in such bad shape, and more importantly, is so expensive, that Americans are seriously considering going public, why exactly are we cutting back on our public system here and moving towards a privatized system with the excuse that it saves money?

If ever there was a time to look south of the border for evidence in the health care debate in Alberta, and Canada as well, it’s now.

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