Medicare: "One of the single greatest symbols of our uniqueness as Canadians"

Upon starting this course, I was pretty excited with the first reading to which we were assigned, Roy Romanow's "Canada's Medicare - At the Crossroads?" I felt this was a lovely way to kick off the semester, since the politics of healthcare provision are something that perhaps go under the radar during our four years in an applied science degree, but something that will become an inevitable issue for the dozens of us who will become dietitians or other healthcare professionals... and for the majority of us who will no doubt visit a doctor's office or a hospital within the next year.

I am in agreement with Romanow's perspective that a two-tiered system is not the answer to Canada's healthcare problems (e.g. wait times, etc.). Canada's Health Act states that our country's healthcare system is built on facilitating “reasonable access to health services without financial or other barriers”. Access is the key word here, ladies and gentlemen. Because we so strongly value equity, we are a country built around ensuring equal access to all citizens and residents. Healthcare is not a commodity: it isn't a luxury that only the rich should be able to attain.

Those in favour of Medicare are often labelled as "Socialists" by rightists, a label that inevitably brings Communism to mind for many of us. By charging the wealthy higher taxes to support such a system, we are apparently robbing some of their right to earn and keep limitless amounts of money. We are apparently defying the mantra of the American Revolution, “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. Our higher income taxes are, apparently, putting shackles on the search for extreme affluence, and any opposition to private care is stifling physicians’ economic “right” to charge a premium price for a basic human right. So, then I wonder how lower- and middle-class citizens have the liberty to pursue happiness if they cannot afford to pay for the basic care needed to support life. How are such individuals free to live their lives if they do not even have the means to maintain their health? I do not see how a two-tiered system promotes these values and I certainly know that it does not support equality. It’s a “Let them eat cake” sort of suggestion, really.

Also, I must add that the interesting bit about the private medical system is that those who encounter the greatest problems with access in the US are not usually the extremely poor, but the middle class. And perhaps you remember back to the presidential campaign in 2008, wherein the Republicans repeatedly told voters that they were sticking up for "middle-class Americans", the "Joe Six-packs" and "Joe Plumbers" of the country. So, I wonder, where does a right-wing federal healthcare system leave "Joe Six-pack" if he can’t pay for it?

Quite frankly, the notion of bringing in an increasingly private system scares me. As we know, private clinics are already cropping up in Canada, particularly Quebec, offering services such as blood tests and MRIs. However, many news stories make the notion of private care quite attractive. One flagrant example is the story of Shona Holmes, a Canadian who survived a benign brain tumour (that she publicly, and incorrectly, claimed was cancer) and who has publicly stated that she would have died from her condition had she not sought treatment in the States. Many medical professionals have argued that she exaggerated her case and that her condition was in fact not an emergency. If it were indeed an emergency, though, how can the Canadian government be blamed for a mistake that may have been attributable to a handful of physicians... a mistake that easily could have been made in the U.S.?

And anyway, how is it just that those without the financial means to pursue private care may be left by the wayside? Had Holmes herself not had the money, she would not have received treatment in the States either! And what about the ~ 47 million Americans without health insurance? What about the thousands who die because they cannot afford medical care? Or the many who go bankrupt paying for astronomical healthcare costs? Such stories as these far outnumber the rarity of cases such as Holmes's. How many people do you know complain that they receive healthcare for free?

As you’ve probably figured out, universal healthcare is something I feel very strongly about. The title of this blog, taken from the Romanow article, highlights my feelings about this issue: that Medicare is “one of the single greatest symbols of our uniqueness as Canadians” (p. 2). A two-tiered system is not equitable and, contrary to popular belief, it is not economically advantageous either, as Romanow explains. So, I say let’s preserve our country’s high quality of life in preserving universally provisioned healthcare: let us as Canadians maintain our own opportunities for what truly constitutes “the pursuit of happiness”.