Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Health Care and Taxes

Ontario Health Care Coalition
August 31, 2011

Leading into the provincial election on October 6 we are working to make sure that Ontarians are aware that there is a choice to improve health care within our public health care system. To that end, OHC has produced an easy-to-read colourful newsprint tabloid that gives the real story on how much we all benefit from public services, and who is benefiting from tax cuts.

PDF HERE.

Open publication - Free publishing - More canada

Bad medicine from advisory panel at CMA annual meeting

By Dr. Danielle Martin 
Canadian Doctors for Medicare
Rabble.ca
August 31, 2011

Imagine you're feeling sick. You have an inexplicable pain in your stomach. So you go to your doctor, and she sends you for a test. The test for your stomach pain is inconclusive.

"I think I know what the problem is. And I probably have something I could give you for it," says your doctor. "How about you pay me an extra $50, and then we can discuss it further?"

Most of us would think that's unacceptable. We already pay taxes to finance our universal health care. We would want our doctors to run more tests, give us a diagnosis and write us a prescription.

Sadly, asking Canadians for more money is exactly the kind of solution many economists and policymakers are suggesting as a fix for Canada's health care system. At this year's annual meeting of the Canadian Medical Association an independent advisory panel, including Don Drummond, former federal Finance assistant deputy minister and chief economist at TD Bank, suggested we look at more funding options, like user fees, and private funding.

Medicare's pageviews by country

Canada                    964

United States           463

France                       85

Mexico                       33

Germany                   29

United Kingdom         25

India                          20

Russia                       17

Philippines                 12

Denmark                     9

The Saskatchewan Doctors Strike - CBC 1962

CBC Archives
Broadcast Date: July 1, 1962

July 1, 1962: Saskatchewan's Medical Care Act becomes law. However, taking advantage of the public health scheme proves difficult since most of Saskatchewan's MDs have responded by going on strike.

With Cold War tensions approaching their climax in October's Cuban Missile Crisis, this showdown between the CCF's socialist ideals and the individual rights the doctors say they are defending puts Saskatchewan on front pages throughout the Western world.

Click HERE to watch the CBC's coverage.

The UK's Health Industry Lobbying Tour

Keep Our NHS Public

Watch this short film about how the private health care industry has its tentacles in the heart of government.



The Health Industry Lobbying Tour from Mancha Productions on Vimeo.

Health Care: False Arguments, Class Arguments

By Colin Leys
From Whose Health Care
December 2005

Health care must remain a right of citizenship for two fundamental reasons: for the sake of democracy, and for the sake of good health care. We need equal access to health care for the same reason that we need equal access to schooling and university; real democracy cannot survive without a basic equality of life chances for every voter, and health care is crucial for that.

But health care, like education, also needs equal involvement of all citizens. So long as judges depend on the same health services as janitors, judges (and politicians and senior policy-makers) will see that they are adequately funded and well run. As soon as the powerful stop relying on it, it starts to be allowed to decline. The rich don’t use it and they don’t want to pay taxes for it.

U.S. Healthcare: Why it’s so expensive

By medicareblogger 
The Tuscon Citizen
Aug. 29, 2011

My primary care physician has three employees to handle phone calls, set appointments, and check in patients. Those are the front desk duties of the office staff, but there is much more:  Checking a person’s insurance coverage to determine the patient’s  co-pay;  Contacting insurance companies to get prior approval for tests and referrals;  Resubmitting documentation to insurance companies that won’t pay  a bill until they get one more piece of paper.  The list goes on and on.

I always figured the way the American health care system works, with dozens of insurance companies requiring different paperwork and paying different fees for services rendered, was inefficient.  But now there is a study that shows just how inefficient and expensive our convoluted system is.

A study published in the Health Affairs Journal says that American doctors pay out more than four times as much as Canadian doctors because American doctors must deal with dozens of insurance companies (and Medicare).

The 1960 Saskatchewan Election

Medicare: A People's Issue

Saskatchewan voters went to the polls in June of 1960. The main issue of the campaign was the pre-paid, universal, compulsory medical-care plan promised by the government. Premier Douglas asked the electorate for a strong mandate. Of the three opposition parties only the Socreds completely opposed Medicare. Criticism from the Liberals and Conservatives focused on the details and the timing of implementation.

The most vocal opposition came from the province’s doctors, represented by the College of Physicians and Surgeons. Douglas used the physicians' lack of political experience and division in their ranks to portray himself and the province as underdogs. The doctors’ campaign was badly handled.

Open publication - Free publishing - More ccf

Throughout 1961, the proposed medical care plan remained the top political issue in Saskatchewan. To fulfill its promise of consultation, the government created the Advisory Planning Commission on Medical Care, mandated “to study and report upon a medical care insurance program for the province and on the public need in other fields of health.”

The former President of the University of Saskatchewan, Dr. W.P. Thompson, was invited to act as chair. It was an onerous job, made especially difficult by the attitude of the medical members of the committee. 49 briefs of more than 1,200 pages were submitted by individuals and groups from across the province. In September of 1961 the Committee produced an Interim Report which recommended:

• Universal coverage for all residents.

• Comprehensive benefits based on residence, registration and payment of personal premiums with additional finances to be drawn from general government revenues.

• Utilization fees.

• Fee-for-service payment.

• The creation of a commission responsible to the government to administer the plan.

From Tommy to Jack: A (Hallucinatory) Dream of Universal Health Care

By Julie Devaney
The Huffington Post
August 26, 2011

Tommy Douglas appeared to me once in a drug and trauma-induced hallucination. It was 2002 and I was bearing the brunt of British Columbian Premier Gordon Campbell's vile cuts to healthcare. My immobile body on a stretcher was literally being stored in a closet in an over-crowded Vancouver emergency ward. Unfortunately, the drugs were all medically-administered and more disorienting than pleasurable. As the Archangel of Canadian health care, Tommy had come to fly me and my leaking, numb and closeted body away to the well-funded public facility of all of our dreams.

It didn't really surprise me that Tommy showed up. I'd always counted him among my closest comrades (and also, I was very ill and medicated). I cut my political teeth in Mike Harris' Ontario. As a teenager on the lawn of Queen's Park as hundreds of thousands of people shut down the city of Toronto, I got the impression that this is what always happened when health care and other social program cuts are unjustly meted out on a population -- we rise up, fight back. And Tommy knows a lot about fighting back.

P3s in Health Care

Public-Private ‘Partnerships’ (P3s)

Canadian Health Coalition

The Issue:

A Public-Private ‘Partnership’ (P3) is a business venture which is funded and operated through a partnership of government and private sector companies. Problem is, P3 schemes costs taxpayers: the public pays and private investors profit. That’s not a partnership! Furthermore, evidence shows that in P3 schemes, costs go up, quality goes down and there is little or no accountability.

Resources:

P3 hospitals – the wrong direction  New report from CUPE, April 2011
P3s = Private Profits, Public Pays  Canadian Health Coalition Factsheet, 2010
Health Care Privatization Research Archive  Canadian Health Coalition, 2010
Report: Eroding Public Medicare   Ontario Health Coalition, 2009
Expert tells Romanow: Public-Private Partnerships Are Not The Answer  Dr. Allyson Pollack, May 2002

Media:

Québec Auditor General pans PPPs, says cost estimates wrong  Montreal Gazelle, June 10, 2010
P3 bailouts expose health-care hypocrisy  The Globe and Mail, February 12, 2009
In this P3, taxpayers are the ones who paid  The Globe and Mail, February 5, 2009
Warning: The P3s are coming  Winnipeg Free Press, July 21, 2002