Ontario to ban two-tier healthcare - Globe and Mail

[Screaming Lord Byron]

Ontario is acting to protect need-based non-user fee Health Care. Good news.

http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20031127.w2ohealth11271/BNStory/Front/

[Warpy]

1. The quickest way to wreck national health

...is to allow the wealthy to opt out of it. Since they're the ones who really run things, they then feel perfectly free to underfund the care the other 95% depend on.

Of course, they'll keep trying to ram the sucker through, since they dread rubbing elbows with the rabble more than they dread poverty, itself.

Screw 'em. Hooray for Ontario!

[TexasMexican]

2. I dont think its good.

I'm not sure exactly how the health care system is in Canada, but I think if someone wants to they should have the option of going to a for profit health care facility.

To not allow it reeks of communism.

So what is next prohibiting people from travelling abroad for health care so they wont "opt out."

[Minstrel Boy]

4. "reeks of communism"?

A two-tier system tends to degrade the lower-tier, gradually starving it of public funding until all that remains is a hollowed-out shell. Income should not determine the quality of one's healthcare. To presume otherwise reeks of an inequality which - to the mind of this Soviet Canuckistani at least - good government should seek to redress.

Your "slippery slope" argument is fallacious. Rather than prevent travel, in certain circumstances our health system will actually pay for Canadians to receive treatment abroad.

[TexasMexican]

6. maybe so

limiting people's choices for healthcare is wrong.

I agree that everyone needs healthcare, but its wrong to keep people from making their own healthcare choices.

If someone wants to pay money to go to a private hospital to be operated on by a doctor of thier choice it should be up to them.

They shouldnt be forced to tie up the public facilities if they can pay thier own way.

[Beaker]

7. "limiting people's choices for healthcare is wrong..."

which is exactly why the current American system is so wrong.
Nothing limits people's choices more than poverty.

[glarius]

8. We DO have the doctors of our choice!....Many people who speak of HMOs

say they DON'T have a choice in doctors....You are way off base!

[ConcernedCanuk]

11. Consider this - the poorest person gets Healthcare in our country.

. . and the richest of the rich are free to get their Healthcare anywhere else in the world, and they CAN afford it.

So - they DO have a choice.

In the USA, the poor have no choice, other than NO Healthcare. (clinics aren't quite enough)

Many of our elder Canadians, who would prefer to live in the States especially because of the Southern States climate, retain their Canadian citizenship status by living here for 6 months of the year.

Why? -

So they can have access to our Healthcare system.

[burrowowl]

12. In France

which has very good health care for everyone. There are private hospitals that Saudis, Onassis and all those types can go to, so instead of a hospital room they can have suites.
In France, doctors still make house calls, you chose your own doctor, etc., etc. Long live univeral health care.
England's monied is trying to get HMOs and has done a bit of like the U$ and the bastards send patients to France and Germany (because of the EU) so privates can make a profit.
I'm a TexMex and you have some strange ideas.
The U$ spends more on health care per capita and ranks 37th in health.

[glarius]

5. Are you serious?

Universal health care is what all of the democracies in the world (except the U.S.A) have and this is the way it works...Do you call what you have down there with close to 50 million (and rising) not covered the answer?...."To not allow it reeks of commusnism"....puleeese!...give me a break! "So what is next, prohibiting people from travelling abroad for health care so they won't opt out."....Are you kidding?...What do you say about your government not allowing your citizens to travel to Cuba like we and all other countries can?.....Think a little, will you? ...:)

[Some Moran]

14. I do...

A two-tier system would ensure that many of our best doctors are only available to the rich.

[Lisa]

3. wow, Premier Dalton is coming out swinging ...

I meant to ask my folks back in Hamilton how the new leader is working out.

Kind of funny -- in the States, they had a smart, serious, earnest candidate who was promptly stereotyped as "wooden", and then had the election taken away from him.

In Canada, we get a "wooden" politician -- and he's swept into office. (Maybe it's because we're so into forestry we have a leaf as our national symbol.)

[glarius]

9. I've had a good feeling about McGuinty from the beginning...

I think he's going to reverse the changes Mike Harris made which were so destructive....

[iverglas]

15. well

All of us Cdns here are right about two-tier health care: just say no.

I had the, uh, good fortune to see it in operation in the UK about 10 years ago, when my mother and I were visiting and she took a header on the paving stones and we had to take her to the closest NHS hospital in working-class, immigrant Stoke Newington (north London). That will be the bottom tier. And I saw what happened when that tier -- i.e. those people, the ones waiting patiently (or raving insanely) in the emergency room waiting room with us -- were abandoned by the taxpayers (what we used to call "citizens"). The five-hour wait, the blood on the floor and the reception desk and the examining table, right down to the absence of ice to apply to a head injury during that five-hour wait.

At that very moment, my London friend's partner was languishing in a brand-new hospital in the West End, sleeping in her private room after an afternoon relaxing in the sun-filled inner atrium, having batteries of tests performed, choosing from the gourmet menu, seeing the best specialists that money could buy.

No, thankee.

But some of us are just a trifle deluded about Dalton, I'm afraid. Ah, time will tell.

Remember the "public private partnership" hospital deals inked by Eves on the eve of his destruction -- that McGuinty vowed to rip up?

http://www.opseu.org/news/Press2003/nov212003.htm

November 21, 2003

Royal Ottawa Hospital: public in name only

OTTAWA: Premier McGuinty’s announcement at the Royal Ottawa Hospital (ROH) today disappointed members of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union local at the hospital.

The announcement lacked details on how this new deal differs from the former Conservative government’s plans to privatize the hospital. McGuinty said the ROH would be a “public” hospital, but said some services would still be privatized.

... “We are extremely disappointed in this deal, which looks just like a private hospital by another name,” said Marlene Rivier, President of OPSEU Local 479. “Many of our services have already been contracted out and this must stop.”

“We have still not seen any plans. Bed cuts remain a concern. We still have no guarantees that commercial interests will not eclipse clinical needs. The hospital’s priority should be providing care, not investment opportunities,” Rivier said.

Time will tell ...

.

[glarius]

16. I guess I'm the eternal optimist but I feel he needs time to do what needs

to be done....I'm willing to give him a reasonable amount of time......:)

[Hieronymus]

10. More good news from Canada.

Canada :yourock:

[Don_G]

13. I Think It's A Good Idea

I wish our "Fearless Leaders" in the US would figure out a way to get everyone the same benefits and health care system that they themselves enjoy, including the options.

Or is that too socialist for the poor retired Freepers to accept?

[Hand]

17. It IS a good idea...

Once when I had to go in for a chest x-ray, I waited maybe twenty-odd minutes in line with people of all classes and races--didn't matter who you were, you waited like everyone else. It's actually a social binding factor, I think.

Matter of fact, when I was leaving, I saw our MP (member of parliament) waiting in line with everyone else--no special favors or whatnot. Well, of course, he was NDP...