New NYC Booklet on Medicare

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Medicare's Birth in Saskatchewan: 50th Anniversary of a People's Victory

The two articles re-published in this pamphlet were written to address the 50th anniversary of North America's first public healthcare system for all citizens initiated in Saskatchewan on July 1, 1962.

We were researching the prolific resources and books available on the subject in preparation for a forthcoming book on the fight for medicare in Saskatchewan and wanted to raise the profile of the anniversary as the actual anniversary approached.

This pamphlet is intended as a short and quick resource for labour and health care activists as we celebrate 50 years of medicare.

- Lorne Brown, Doug Taylor

Purchase HERE.

Coming soon!

Next Year Country Books

Introduction

The two articles re-published in this pamphlet were written to address the 50^th anniversary of North America’s first public healthcare system for all citizens initiated in Saskatchewan on July 1, 1962.

We were researching the prolific resources and books available on the subject in preparation for a forthcoming book on the fight for medicare in Saskatchewan and wanted to raise the profile of the anniversary as the actual anniversary approached.

This pamphlet is intended as a short and quick resource for labour and health care activists as we celebrate 50 years of medicare.

Fighting back against health inequity and its origins

By Ted Schrecker

CHNET-Works!

17 July 2012

Despite rising inequality of market incomes and solemn assertions by governments that compensatory social policies are unaffordable, there are Canadian voices calling for change, within and outside the health research and policy community.

One of the most important of these is the Canadian Women’s Health Network (CWHN), which has just launched a new, user-friendly web site. CWHN has been going since 1993, functioning as a clearinghouse and information broker on a variety of women’s health issues ranging from depression to domestic violence. “Health is a human right that, because of poverty, politics and dwindling resources for health and social services, eludes many women” is part of its mission statement; recent links on its website connect users with a feature article and archived webinar on women and alcohol and a Conference Board of Canada report on the generally mid-pack performance of Canadian health care among OECD countries. CWHN is now seeking alternative sources of funding since support from our national government will end in 2013, as part of a larger pattern of funding cuts to women’s health research and advocacy. Gotta pay for those fighter jets and new prison cells somehow.

Unsung health heroes

By Del Hancock

Letter to the Editor:
Regina Leader Post
July 16, 2012 
Also read HERE.

During the recent celebration of the 50th anniversary of medicare in Saskatchewan, we paid homage to Tommy Douglas for his great contribution to health care in Canada.

There are also the unsung heroes of the fight for medicare who warrant the Order of Canada or at least recognition for their devotion to duty. During the absence of doctors in their protest against the health-care changes, communities relied on the help of nurses. They didn't worry about lawsuits and I doubt "standing orders" even existed. Common sense was more prevalent.

We, personally, were recipients of outstanding help from a nurse in Fillmore. Her name happens to be Eileen Nurse. She is past 90 now and living in retirement in Regina. There are probably thousands of people who would agree that she went far beyond the call of duty to help people. There must be other communities who remember people like Eileen, who during that time were called upon to help with the sick.

Let's honour those people and name others who were on the "front lines" in time of crisis.

Del Hancock, Fillmore

Labour activists fight against privatization and contracting out of healthcare workers

NUPGE News
May 31, 2012

"These workers should not be tossed aside in a drive to reduce costs and increase profits.” - Darryl Walker, BCGEU President.


Over 100 activists from all sectors of the labour movement rallied in Kelowna on May 25 in support of the 130 workers from Spring Valley Care Centre who have all been given lay off notices.

The rally, which took place outside the office of Kelowna-Mission Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) Steve Thomson, also raised awareness.

“The passage of Bill 29 in 2002, allowed care facilities to contract out care and support services to reduce wages. This is one more example of how B.C. Liberal policies have failed seniors and their families,” says Darryl Walker, B.C. Government and Service Employees' Union (BCGEU/NUPGE) President. “At the same time it continues to drive down the wages of health care workers, most of whom are women. These workers should not be tossed aside in a drive to reduce costs and increase profits.”

BC Federation of Labour President Jim Sinclair called on Premier Christy Clark to intervene and protect the jobs of the Spring Valley care home workers and the quality of care for seniors throughout the province.

"Our seniors and their families deserve better from this government," said Sinclair. "Bill 29 has done nothing but line the pockets of facility owners at the expense of seniors and the people who serve them."

How Well is Public Health Care Protected from Canada-EU Free Trade?

Canadian Labour Congress
Tuesday, 10 April 2012

Background

Canada and the European Union (EU) are close to concluding a Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA). Recently, Canada’s first offers to the European Union on Services and Investment were leaked to the public by the Quebec Network on Continental Integration (RQIC).1 Canada’s financial services offers were released on February 9, 2012. That same day, la Fédération Interprofessionelle de la santé du Québec (FIQ) released their analysis of Canada’s offers and raised worrisome implications for health and social services.2

When the government was pressed in Question Period the next day by NDP Members of Parliament Libby Davis and Anne Minh-Thu Quach, Conservative MP Gerard Keddy replied that:

... a free trade agreement with the European Union would exclude public services such as public health, public education and social services. Canada’s trade obligations do not require us to privatize any part of our health care system. End of story.

The government argues that health care services are protected in Canada’s trade agreements primarily because of its Annex II Social Services Reservation. When the federal government says that Canada’s public health care system is not on the table, this is what it is referring to. This Annex II Social Services Reservation appears in Canada’s CETA initial offer, and it states the following:

Canada reserves the right to adopt or maintain any measure with respect to the provision of public law enforcement and correctional services, and the following services to the extent that they are social services established or maintained for a public purpose: income security or insurance, social security or insurance, social welfare, public education, public training, health, and child care.3

This reservation allows governments to adopt future measures that would otherwise contravene Canada’s trade and investment agreements.

Download the full backgrounder

Medicare's 50th Anniversary Calendar

This post is connected to Medicare's 50th Anniversary Google Calendar and will display events as they are entered. You can bookmark this page or simply click on the left sidebar calendar to visit this events post.

If you have a relevant event you would like too see added, email me at redougie@gmail.com.

"Medicare's 50th Anniversary" now a blog book

NYC
March 22, 2012

Don't want to spend time scrolling down this blog or searching for something? Check out the blog book below to see if assists you.

You can also download the book or embed it.

Open publication - Free publishing - More ccf

Engels and the WHO Report

By Susan Rosenthal 
Chapter 2 of SICK and SICKER 
Mon, Sep 1, 2008

With the headline, “Inequalities are Killing People on a Grand Scale,” the World Health Organization released its 2008 report, Closing the Gap in a Generation: Health Equity through Action on the Social Determinants of Health.

The WHO Report confirmed health inequities between nations as well as “health gradients” within them. It confirmed that the poor are worse off than those less deprived, the less deprived are worse off than those with average incomes, and so on up the social hierarchy. It confirmed that this health gradient exists in all nations, including the richest. It also confirmed that health equality cannot be achieved by medical systems alone.

“Water-borne diseases are not caused by a lack of antibiotics but by dirty water, and by the political, social, and economic forces that fail to make clean water available to all; heart disease is caused not by a lack of coronary care units but by the lives people lead, which are shaped by the environments in which they live; obesity is not caused by moral failure on tahe part of individuals but by the excess availability of high-fat and high-sugar foods.”

Not one of these findings is new.

CUPE Saskatchewan organizes 50th anniversary coalition

Coalition Meeting - ALL WELCOME!

CUPE Saskatchewan
March 13, 2012

CUPE is inviting fellow unions, employee associations, non-profits and progressive community groups to discuss Medicare as it celebrates its 50th Birthday this year.

When:
Tuesday, March 20 (10 am - 4 pm)

Where:
Regina Inn, REGINA

RSVP by calling 757.1009 or cupesask@sasktel.net

Let's talk about how we can work together in a coalition to engage people throughout Saskatchewan - the birthplace of Medicare - in this vital conversation.

Click to enlarge

The Lessons of Chile

By Susan Rosenthal
(Chapter 9 of SICK and SICKER)
March 11, 2012

As a new generation takes up the fight for a humane world, it is essential to review the lessons of the past.

The last great upsurge in struggle, during the 1960s and early 1970s, achieved significant advances in health care. Americans won Medicaid and Medicare, and Canadians won a national medical system. There were other victories, like the trouncing of the US in Vietnam. And there were bloody defeats, like the military coup in Chile. Vietnam proved that even the mightiest power can be brought down. Chile also offers valuable lessons.

“The health sector in any society mirrors the rest of that society,” wrote Vicente Navarro in What Does Chile Mean: An Analysis of the Health Sector Before, During, and After Allende’s Administration. The following review of Navarro’s account highlights the experience of Chilean health workers who fought a revolutionary struggle to create a truly democratic health care system.

A Class-Divided Society

Navarro describes Chile as an underdeveloped nation. Yet it was still a capitalist country and in many ways not so different from the United States or Canada.

In 1970, Chile was an urban, industrial society. The top 10 percent of the population controlled 60 percent of the wealth, while the working-class majority (70 percent of the population) held only 12 percent of the wealth. Similar class disparities exist in the US and Canada, being much more extreme in the US where the top one percent controls more wealth than 95 percent of the remaining population.

In Chile, as in all capitalist countries, class divisions are reproduced in the medical system.

Read more HERE.

The Check-Off: A precursor of medicare in Canada?

Chryssa McAlister
Dalhousie University
Peter Twohig
Saint Mary’s University
CMAJ • December 6, 2005

The public system of health care insurance that exists in Canada today was implemented nationally in 1968
and was greatly influenced by the 1964 Royal Commission on Health Services, headed by Justice Emmett Hall.

When, in his final report, Justice Hall described the evolution of health care in Canada, he made brief reference to a health insurance system that existed in the Glace Bay colliery district of Cape Breton. Known as the “Check-Off,”this was a mandatory system whereby deductions were made from miners’ wages for a subscription to physician services, medications and hospital care. A reference to the Check-Off in minutes of the Nova Scotia Provincial Workmen’s Association suggests that it dates from about 1883, although at least one other historical reference places its origin even earlier, in the mid-19th century. It proved to be a durable system, surviving in Cape Breton mining towns until 1969, when it was replaced by provincial medical insurance administered by Maritime Medical Care.

One of us (C.M.) was first introduced to the Check-Off system by a Halifax-based surgeon, Dr. Allan MacDonald,who had done some general practice locums in Glace Bay in the 1960s. He suggested an interview with Dr. Joe Roach, a veteran of the system, who at 83 was still seeing 11 000 to12 000 patients a year and doing regular house calls. In researching the Check-Off system and preparing a CBC Radio
documentary, C.M. gained information through recorded personal interviews with participants in the system, including patients, physicians, hospital administrators, politicians and union organizers. In this article, we convey the essence of the interviews; the unedited conversations can be accessed through the Dalhousie University Medical Humanities Webpage (www.library.dal.ca/kellogg/subjects/medhumanities/cbcheckoff/intro_cbcheckoff.htm).

The Check-Off system reflected the paternalistic philosophy of the times.The coal company built and owned the houses in the town, the power plant, the water facility and the grocery stores. The employer deducted from each miner’s weekly pay the costs associated with daily life, including rent, water, sanitation, supplies, coal, company store bills and check-weighman  (The check-weighman would verify the weight of each miner’s load of coal to determine how much money he would make. Miners were paid according to the amount of coal they extracted each day.) The Check-Off evolved to include union dues, relief associations, and physician and hospital services.

Read more HERE. (pdf)

Our History and the Struggle for Medicare

By Michael Finley
Focus
Saskatoon Community Clinic
Winter 2011

“The Community Clinics began as part of the struggle for Medicare. We should not forget that struggle, and the opposition to public health insurance.” That, according to Dr. John Bury, is one of the lessons we should carry forward from the history of our Clinic. “We should remember that victories for social justice always require struggle,” he said.

Dr. Bury was speaking at a forum on the “History of the Community Clinics and Medicare” at the at the Westside Clinic on October 19 and the Downtown Clinic on October 20. It was the first of three Community Clinic 101 sessions planned by the Member Services Committee. The session featured reminisces of the early years of the Clinic from Betsy Bury, the first Member Relations Director and Health Ombudsman; Dr. Bury, who came to the clinic in 1963, just one year after it opened its doors; and Joan Bell, who was active in the early years of the Prince Albert Community Clinic.

The Battle for the NHS

By Alex Doherty, Colin Leys, Ed Lewis
New Left Project
February 29, 2012

Colin Leys is an honorary professor of politics at Goldsmiths College London, who has worked in the UK, Africa and Canada, and whose latest book is The Plot Against the NHS (with Stewart Player). He spoke to NLP co-editors Alex Doherty and Ed Lewis about the political struggle over the NHS and considers what those determined to save it can still do.

Given the unpopularity of the Health and Social Care Bill some commentators have suggested that this might become a poll tax moment for the government. Is this a realistic assessment of the damage the bill may do to the government and, if so, why do you think they are persisting with it?

The analogy with the Poll Tax is relevant but not exact. The poll tax was a very simple issue, and very plainly unjust. It also required citizens to do something – to pay the tax – and when enough of them felt angry enough, and when the anger was widespread enough, a significant minority decided to risk jail and refuse to pay, creating a serious crisis of legitimacy. In contrast, the Health Bill is hugely complex, its real meaning has been deliberately obscured, and it doesn’t require citizens to do anything. The poll tax was also introduced in Scotland first, aggravating Scottish resentment of all Thatcher’s policies, whereas the Health Bill only applies to England, where a social democratic culture is less strongly entrenched.

A further difference is that the poll tax was firmly identified with Thatcher personally, whereas Lansley, it is said, lacks strong support both in the parliamentary party and among the Conservative rank and file.

Canadian national healthcare’s big benefit

Workers don’t keep jobs they don’t want just for health insurance

By Bill Mann
MarketWatch
February 28, 2012

PORT TOWNSEND, Wash. — A major assault is underway by Republican candidates for the White House against President Barack Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which they persist in calling “Obamacare.” Contraception has become an unlikely issue in all this.

Before “Obamacare” passed, it was Canada’s single-payer national health care system that was often under attack — in the U.S., that is. Even though Canadians treasure their health-care system despite its flaws, Americans were told for years — actually, lied to — that Canadians were being denied urgent care and had to flee to the U.S. to get it.

They didn’t, and they don’t. As a Montreal friend assured me the other day, “If you need help, you’ll get right in. For some other things, you may have to wait a bit.”

Canada spends far less per capita on health care (a bit more than half as much) than the U.S. The fact that socialist Saskatchewan premier Tommy Douglas, the father of Canadian national health care — not Wayne Gretzky — was voted The Greatest Canadian Ever by his countrymen in a Canadian Broadcast Corp. poll a while back should tell you something.

Same fight, new foes

Fifty years after the birth of medicare, Canada’s health care system is again under threat

BY LORNE BROWN, DOUG TAYLOR

Briarpatch magazine

FEB 28, 2012 

Taylor and Brown

July 1, 2012, will mark the 50th anniversary of the birth of medicare in Saskatchewan, the forerunner of Canada’s national medicare system. It was not an easy delivery. In the summer of 1962, Saskatchewan was beset by a doctors’ strike intent on preserving physician privileges and opposing public health care.

Fifty years later, Canada’s medicare system is again under threat. Harper’s Conservatives have unveiled a plan to scale back health-care funding, destroying medicare as we know it. The ideology of neoliberalism has taken root over the past two decades, and austerity and privatization remain capital’s preferred strategy. But there was a different alignment of political players and social movements 50 years ago when medicare was first fought for.

Medicare at 50: A Public Forum in Saskatoon

Labour calls for Premiers to stand up for healthcare

FEDERATION OF LABOUR PRESIDENTS 
Monday, January 16, 2012

The Presidents of the Provincial and Territorial Federations of Labour are calling on Canada’s Premiers to reject an irresponsible Federal Conservative “plan” for healthcare. In an open letter from the labour leaders to the Premiers, attending a meeting of the Council of the Federation in Victoria today, the Premiers are asked to stand up and support Canada’s most important social program: universal healthcare.

“We believe, as many Canadians do, that the Harper Government’s December announcement is an abdication of its responsibility,” said Larry Hubich, President of the Saskatchewan Federation of Labour. “Our letter to the Premiers is a call for true leadership on healthcare - leadership that we are not getting from Ottawa.”

As the Federation Presidents outline in their letter, the Harper Government has proposed significant cuts to healthcare funding, beginning in 2017. The announced cuts come after the federal government made the decision to ignore the issue of establishing a new Health Accord, the latest of which is set to expire in 2014.

“In a style that has become typical of the Harper Government, the provinces are going to be handed a take-it-or-leave-it decision without any meaningful dialogue whatsoever. If Prime Minister Harper is not willing to play a leadership role in securing the future of the healthcare system, then the Premiers need to make a stand on behalf of Canadians, on behalf of the values upon which our nation and our healthcare system are founded.

Harper government attacks public health care

By James Clancy
NUPGE News
December 20, 2011

"Once again, the Harper government has shown that it prefers to dictate rather than negotiate," said James Clancy, NUPGE National President.

"Their unilateral decision to cutback billions of dollars in health transfer payments will have serious negative consequences in terms of the accessibility and quality of health care across the country."

The National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE) says the announcement by federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty on the Canada Health Transfer (CHT) further demonstrates the Harper government's disdain for democracy and a total lack of leadership on health care.

At a meeting of Finance Ministers from across the country, Flaherty announced that the federal government would extend the 6 per cent escalator clause, part of the 2004 Health Accord, for the CHT only until the 2016-17 fiscal year. After that, until at least 2024, annual increases in the CHT will be tied to nominal GDP growth.

Fighting to Build Health Care

Canadian Autoworker's Union
November 30, 2011

CAW activists from right across Nova Scotia took part in a public rally to strengthen and extend Canada's Medicare system.

Assistant to the President Deb Tveit and Director of Health Care Katha Fortier joined in the Halifax rally, along with activists from a number of other unions, coalition partners, and concerned citizens on November 25.

The rally was held at the city's Victoria Park, across the street from where Canada's health ministers were meeting for first discussions on what the 2014 Health Accord should look like. The Accord sets the amount of money that will be transferred to the provinces for health care, and the conditions under which they will receive funding.

Tveit said that the outcome of these ongoing discussions will affect the Canadian health care system for years. "Recent polling indicates that 94 per cent of all Canadians support public solutions to strengthen Medicare and this Accord represents our opportunity to push this issue with the Harper Conservatives to expand our current system to include national pharmacare and continuing care outside of hospitals."

Speakers included Maude Barlow, Chair of the Council of Canadians, and Sean Meagher, Executive Director of Canadian Doctors for Medicare. Both argued that Medicare is sustainable and that we should use this opportunity to expand public services and clamp down on privatization, indicating that a public system always results in better patient outcomes.