Tuesday 29 March 2011

Who Wants Stephen Harper Negotiating the Future of Medicare?

The Canadian Medical Association Journal has an article this week deploring the "explosion" of private clinics in Canada, that ought to be required reading for center left politicians, particularly those in the NDP.

The article concludes: "The medicare blanket is shrinking...The government is letting us down.”

And things are going to get worse instead of better, if a Harper government is the one to negotiate new financial arrangements between the federal government and the provinces and territories, due to be thrashed out before 2014. Setting up a two-tier health system is almost certainly going to be on their agenda, in the name of "healthy competition" and "allowing freedom of choice."

Whether we want to let Stephen Harper and his friends to do this should be an key part of this electoral campaign.

The NDP, which is so justly proud of being the moving force behind our health care system, should bring this front and center. Doing so would make electoral points, as well as being the right thing to do.

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