Medicare commissions being used as platforms to promote private health care

What Does the Future Hold for Medicare Medicare commissions being used as platforms to promote private health care

By Gil McGowan, AFL Staff

The future of Medicare is currently being studied by three commissions: two at the federal level and one at the provincial level.

These commissions were supposedly established to find ways to protect Canada’s public health system – but at least two of them are being used as platforms to promote changes that many Medicare supporters fear will kill the system, not cure it.

The most high-profile of the three commissions is the Commission of the Future of Medicare chaired by Saskatchewan’s former NDP premier, Roy Romanow.

Romanow just recently started the process of soliciting input from the public – and early indications are that he remains committed to finding solutions that don’t threaten the foundations of Medicare.

However, the same cannot be said for the Senate’s commission on health care, chaired by Sen. Michael Kirby, and the Alberta government’s Advisory Council on Health, chaired by Mulroney-era cabinet minister Don Mazankowski.

While Romanow has promised to keep an open mind and not jump to conclusions until he has reviewed all the relevant research and heard from ordinary Canadians, Kirby seems to have made up his mind before his commission’s public hearing process has finished.

In an interim report released in September, the Senate Commission argued that Canadians should consider things like user fees and the introduction of a second tier of for-profit medicine for people who can afford it.

The impression that Kirby and the other Senate commissioners have already decided to support some kind of privatization was reinforced in October when they held hearing in Alberta and B.C.

Inside the hearing rooms, the senators listened as a majority of presenters spoke against privatizing Medicare – but outside the hearings Kirby told reporters that user fees and "Bill 11" style partnerships with the private-sector were both inevitable and desirable.

At the provincial level, Don Mazankowski has done an even poorer job of listening to the public.

Mazankowski’s commission was established by Premier Klein last February in the aftermath of huge public protests against the Alberta government’s controversial private health care law, Bill 11.

Unfortunately, like the government that appointed him, Mazankowski shows no signs of listening to the majority of Albertans who oppose moves towards Americanized health care.

In the months since his committee’s creation, Mazankowski has held no public hearings and he has given no indication of who might be influencing his decisions.

Despite the lack of public input, Mazankowski’s commission will be releasing a final report at the end of November – a report which Premier Klein has promised to use as a blueprint for re-making health care in Alberta.

At press time, Labour News had yet to receive a copy of the final report – but based on reports leaked to the Edmonton Journal, it is expected that Mazankowski will join Kirby and the Senate Commission in calling for things like user fees and more private sector delivery of health services.

The Mazankowski report is also likely to recommend de-listing numerous services currently covered by Medicare and introducing so-called Medical Saving Accounts that would put a cap on the amount individuals could spend on health care in a given year.

Aside from sharing an apparent unwillingness to listen to the public, Kirby and Mazankowski have at least one other thing in common: they are both using their commissions as high-profile platforms to promote private health care.

Both commissions have gone to great – and sometimes questionable – lengths to show that Medicare costs are "spiraling out of control" and that the system as currently constituted is unsustainable. At the same time, both commissions are deliberately attempting to leave the impression that some kind of private, for-profit system is the only alternative.

Given the problems that exist in Canada’s health system, there is no doubt that a full and frank debate is needed on the future of Medicare. But the Kirby and Mazankowski commissions are not advancing that cause.

By carefully highlighting information that casts public health care in a negative light and ignoring all the research about the pitfalls of privatized medicine, Kirby and Mazankowski have shown their true colors. They are not, as they would like the public to believe, impartial referees looking for the best answers to complex problems. Instead they have revealed themselves to be partisan advocates of right-wing solutions – who are willing to use their positions to tip the debate in favour towards privatization.

Let’s hope that the public – and the media – wake up to what’s going on and recognize the Kirby and Mazankowki reports for what they are – the preferred choices of a small group of free-market ideologues – and not the work of a truly impartial tribunal.