Reflections of a senior Canadian Journalist on the rocky birth of Canada's Health Care

[justinsb]

Don Newman is recently semi-retired and is one of the most senior and most respected (by all parties) political reporters in Canada.

I thought about posting this in the Canada section, since it's from us but it's about you so ...

Medicare birth pangs are never easy

I had a double sense of deja vu this week during the final hours of the health insurance debate in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The first came as the long vote was unfolding when commentators and politicians began raising the name of the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, a long-time — and frustrated — champion of health insurance for all Americans.

It caused me to flash back to an interview I had with Kennedy in 1974.

Sitting in his office on Capitol Hill, I began the interview by asking, "Senator, a lot of Canadians wonder how a great, big and powerful country like the United States does not have health insurance for all of its citizens?"

Without a pause, and with a twinkle in his eye, Kennedy replied: "Mr. Newman, a lot of Americans wonder that, too."

On that day in 1974, I admit I was being a bit self-righteous. In Canada, public health insurance had just come into effect in every province a few years earlier.

Federal NDP Leader Tommy Douglas on the campaign trail in 1965. He was re-elected that year. (Canadian Press)
Since then, of course, most Canadians have become quite self-righteous about our health insurance, particularly as we compare our lot to the situation in the U.S.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/03/25/f-vp-newman.html">Read the Rest at the CBC

[riverbendviewgal]

1. Thanks for sending this

It has made me more aware...

I will be paying attention now.

[IntravenousDemilo]

2. Well, now we CAN afford to be a little smug.

Especially those of us from Saskatchewan. I mean, it's been almost 50 years, almost my entire lifetime, since the right-wingers tried to scare everyone about "evil-socialist" Medicare, since the overpaid doctors went on strike rather than submit to it, since the shrieking lies about how "the state would appoint doctors" and there'd be no choice for patients.

Yet this is the kind of BS that they're spreading with a generous hand in the United States. The US has no excuse for being so backward. None.

[TreasonousBastard]

3. The end of the article is telling, where...

he wonders what will happen as they approach 2014 when the funding runs out and they fight over how to pay for it with their looming deficits.

(Take all the money away from all the billionaires and it's just a drop in the bucket of bills we're all piling up.)

[justinsb]

4. Well...

Peace would help

Find a way to peace in Iraq (which looks like it's about to blow up again), negotiate peace with the Taliban in Afghanistan and withdraw US troops from the M.E., Asia, Europe, South and Central America ...

Then call of the War on Drugs, legalize, tax and regulate the drug trade and close half the prisons in the US and ....

[TreasonousBastard]

5. That's us-- the author was wondering about whether the Canadian system will survive.

[justinsb]

6. Oh...we'll manage

We're out of Afghanistan in 2011 which will save some and, while we need to be more careful about how we develop them (Tar sands) the thaw in the North is making more and more resources available to us - oil, natural gas, minerals, diamonds, etc., which China is snapping up.

Budgets have been a bit insane lately, but we've no where near the problems the US does. It turns out that last years deficit was less than projected - economic growth was stronger than predicted.

I'm not overly worried about Canada's economy.

[BagongBansa]

7. reasonable limits

The main trouble in funding health care in all developed nations is that the benchmark for care of seniors is rising without limits. Even if the war in Afghanistan stops tomorrow and the economy recovers, introduction of new technologies and drugs will just keep absorbing more and more funds. In the end this can bankrupt any nation. What is needed is some philosophical discussion and soul searching about what we really want. Everyone wants their parents to live as long as possible, to their eighties, nineties, or more. And that can happen soon, if we want to devote all our funds for that. But at some point, you have to say, hey, if we do that, then that means no funds to improve the schools for our children and grandchildren. There will be no funds to develop a truly sustainable economy. Nothing for anything else in fact. We have to return to a position of balance. Does anyone remember the Japanese film "The Ballad of Narayama"? In that movie, the seniors at the age of 70 were brought to a mountainside and left to die. It was just too costly to support them after that age. Similar to the Eskimos leaving their aged out on ice floes. I'm not advocating the Narayama solution. I'm just saying we need to carefully consider our personal philosophies when talking about health care. We could get what we ask for!!