[van-announce] Leading Canada's public healthcare to the free-market guillotine

[Stefan Christoff]

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* Leading Canada's public healthcare to the free-market guillotine
rabble.ca by Stefan Christoff

http://rabble.ca/news/2011/12/leading-canadas-public-healthcare-free-market-guillotine

National discussion in Canada on the Conservative government's new healthcare 
financial ultimatum, a take-it-or-leave-it-style proposal, largely revolves 
around myths. First that financing alone is key to securing a sustainable 
public healthcare system and second that free-market economic winds will 
provide sustainable guidelines, via GDP, for viable future government 
healthcare financing.

A surprise delivery from Conservative Finance Minister Jim Flaherty to 
provincial finance ministers, over a fancy lunch-in at the Chateau Victoria 
Hotel this past Monday, the plan offers no space for negotiation toward 
collective national solutions for public healthcare.

Essentially, the Conservative proposal works to strip federal responsibility in 
crafting, via national negotiations, coherent and sustainable healthcare 
systems in Canada's provinces and territories. A clear move away from the 
flawed but important Canada Health Act and a political node to provincial 
governments already working to allocate federal healthcare financing toward 
enhancing the corporate, for-profit sector role in delivering healthcare, as 
already seen extensively in Alberta and Québec.

In reality, the Conservative plan will see six per cent healthcare funding 
increases until the 2016-17 fiscal year, with little regulation over provincial 
governments increasing experimentation with public-private partnerships. Beyond 
2016-17 the plan is to bind federal healthcare spending to GDP growth, a 
fundamentally dangerous move toward codifying Canada's public healthcare into 
capitalist economic terms.

Essentially, the Conservative deal stands as cash for healthcare in the near 
future and uncertainty for the long term. Cash solutions are never long-term 
solutions to collective challenges, fast money and free market thinking will 
not solve the deep problems facing public healthcare in Canada.

Beyond important calls for the Conservative government to negotiate viable 
terms to sustain public healthcare in Canada, with politicians from provincial 
and territorial governments, also note that zero official opportunity for the 
people of Canada to contribute ideas toward the future of public healthcare 
have been outlined.

In reality, a viable and democratic process in Canada, relating to public 
healthcare's future, would encourage neighbourhood assemblies and participatory 
political processes coast-to-coast, similar to the general assembly model 
celebrated by the Occupy movement.

* read full article at rabble.ca
http://rabble.ca/news/2011/12/leading-canadas-public-healthcare-free-market-guillotine

* illustration for article by Elisabeth Belliveau.
http://www.elisabethbelliveau.com/homepagehopfully.html

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Stefan Christoff / christoff at resist.ca
http://www.twitter.com/spirodon

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