Canadians warned they will pay for Supreme Court's medicare decision

[CHIMO]

TORONTO (CP) - Canadians will "pay, and pay, and pay" for an uninformed and irresponsible Supreme Court of Canada ruling that cleared the way for private health insurance in Quebec, a major academic conference heard Friday.

The ruling ignored research on the impact of private insurance in a public health-care system, Morris Barer of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research told the conference. Barer was one of several leading researchers who said the decision will undermine universal medicare, forcing people to pay for quality care.

He compared claims about the wonders of private health insurance are like zombies - impossible to kill even though disproven by research. He called the four judges who wrote the majority decision "servants of the zombie masters."

In an interview, Romanow said he hopes politicians will respond vigorously to defend medicare, but so far there has been little more than silence.

http://www.macleans.ca/topstories/politics/news/shownews.jsp?content=n091643A

It's called "dithering around".

Matt for PM.

http://www.thecorporation.com/

[BayCityProgressive]

1. hm

silence? Sounds like the canadian Liberal party is almost as shitty as our "democratic" party.

[CHIMO]

2. Yep

liberal in name only.

Or they think that libertarian and liberal are interchangeable.

[V. Kid]

6. Quite correct..

...so while they're liberal on social issues they're right-wing on economic ones. Their main vision "is how will we win the next election?" Not balancing management competence with some sort of a positive vision for the country. So for the most part they don't really care if they ignore what's constantly rated as the most important issue to the Canadian public, health care, and they probably couldn't care less either so long as they aren't under electoral threat.

Besides, while they constantly say that they won't allow "two-tier" health care to expand, it's a completely nonsensical claim and the record shows that they have nothing to back it up with. The fact is that "two-tier" health care is in the country right now, and expanding as we speak.

Now regarding the court decision, it essentially said that people have the right to timely health care, including but not limited to private health care paid for by an insurance company or an individual's own finances. This is because of the neglect that various goverments, on financing the system (thus keeping the waiting lists down). Now we could keep a publicly funded health care system, that allows all people access, should the federal government help not only replace the funds that they cut out of it in the last 10 years, but keep up with inflationary demands. And of course there's going to have to be provincial acquiescence (which will be difficult with goverments like the Klein one holding things up) and various reforms to improve efficiency, nonetheless the feds are going to have to take a far more active role and come up with a far more over-reaching vision to take care of this issue. Whether or not this government even has the ability to come up with a vision though, is in doubt.

[CHIMO]

7. Wish That

The decision was so. The lower court had extensive research to show that two tier or whatever was not an effective solution.

The court assumed that other systems were working fine without any backup.

They made a comparative decision on other systems without any basis.

The fact that corporations are not permitted to sell health care insurance in Quebec does not prove that people can afford that insurance.

In the end it is up to the provincial governments to implement the system. The simple solution would be for the feds to go back to the previous funding arrangement and tell the premiers if you don't comply you don't get the money.

And to counteract the provincial control, have a plebiscite on the issue that the administration of health care will have more input from the feds unless the provincial government wishes to back out without any funds following the decision.

It would be hard now with a-symmetrical type of federalism.

[V. Kid]

8. Well the reason the Supreme Court made the decision they did...

...was based upon guy who, along with one of his doctors, brought the case up to the supreme court. He was referring to his desire to get a hip replacement in a timely fashion, and use private insurance to pay for it. He, his doctor, and lawyer, argued that the Charter of rights superseded the Canada Health Act on this issue. The majority on the Court agreed. There's no point in getting angry at the court because of ideological reasons, it would've been unconstitutional in the majority view on the court, to prevent him from getting the hip replacement paid for with private insurance (thus private money, thus circumventing the CHA). They claimed that it was within his rights to do this, this is largely because of charter provisions based upon the ability to enjoy one is allowed to enjoy their life without undue pain or discomfort inflicted from the government. Since the government didn't fulfill their part of the barging in providing timely health care service, it was determined by the majority view on the court, that they were inflicting undue pain on the man, and therefore had to allow him to use private insurance to get timely care if he so desired.

The entire decision of the court has nothing to do with whether the judges thought private health care was intrinsically bad or good, it had to do with charter rights and the reach of the courts. The reason this is so interesting is that on the right people are complaining that the Judges are being "activists" by intervening on social issues such marriage, that they determined the “traditional defenition” of which was unconstitutional by disallowing same sex marriage. On the left people are going to hold your position that the court is being equally "activist" by intervening in an economic decision and taking a policy position. The dissenting opinion on the court didn't dissent because they thought private health care was intrinsically bad, they dissented because they thought it was inappropriate for the court to interject into a matter that they thought was purely political and thus in the sphere of the parliament to decide. And thus they disagreed that the charter allowed the man to contrivine the Canada health act, the dissenting opinion felt that the man's right to timely health care was not at issue, they felt that respecting the supremacy of parliament was more important that it would be inappropriate to intervene in this case. And that therefore the issue of health care was under the umbrella of various goverments to decide how much, and how they’d fund it.

[CHIMO]

9. Romanow fears `end of medicare'

In a hard-hitting speech in Toronto yesterday, the former Saskatchewan premier, who headed a royal commission into the future of health care, accused the four-judge majority in the Chaoulli case — which many see as opening the door to two-tier health care — of meddling in social policy decisions better left to elected politicians.

"The net legal effect of the Chaoulli decision is that, in grappling with medicare, the court has ventured beyond constitutional and legal principles and into complex social policy, an area that has traditionally been in the domain of elected lawmakers," said Romanow, who was speaking at a legal forum on the implications of the June ruling, organized by the University of Toronto's faculty of law.

Despite all the talk by Romanow and his political counterparts in the early 1980s of it being a "people's Charter," the court has used it to protect tobacco companies and deny treatment to autistic children, Hutchinson said.

"It's turned out to be a very strange group of people who have benefited by the Charter," he added. "There's nothing new about the Chaoulli decision. Nothing new. This is a case where all the conservative chickens have come home to roost."

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1126907414361&call_pageid=968332188774&col=968350116467&DPL=IvsNDS%2f7ChAX&tacodalogin=yes

(Free registration required)

The issue involves quite a few things such as the Canadian Charter of Rights, the Quebec Charter, the means that governments use to implement the CHA and more.

The discussion could go on, and on, and on, but not being on top of all the topics I will leave the details to others.

The point about corporations is that it appears that corporate rights will have an equal footing with individual and common rights in the charter.

[V. Kid]

10. Yes, I agree with you and Romanow that this...

...could be quite bad for Canadian social programmes. And perhaps, other than adequately funding them, which an intelligent lawyer will probably always be able to claim that they still prevent people from enjoying "life, liberty and security of person", the best approach would be a constitutional amendment to protect the right to establish social programmes without having to worry about the court contravening them. Although that approach would be undesirable as various politicians, especially Quebec ones (and to a lesser extent Alberta ones), probably wouldn't be able to keep the discussions as limited as they should be due to their desire to grab more power for themselves.

In any case, an interesting thing to note is that the court voted 4-3 in favour of this case. That was when the court had two vacancies on it, now the court is back up to its full compliment of 9 judges. From what I understand the new judges have been described as left-liberals and/or social-democrats, so perhaps a more favourable decision that respects the supremacy of parliament would be reached in a future decision. Although considering the precedent that was reached, it's hard to say.

[bonito]

3. Taking the public health care

Away from the public... and into the hands of private $ corporations. You folks been eating mad cows or something. I thought you were smarter than us down here in the states.

[BayCityProgressive]

4. I think now that the red scare

is gone and the capitalist countries don't need to worry about subversives because the only communist countries left are China, Vietnam, Laos, north Korea, and Cuba...we will see more and more privatization and moving to the right. That sems to be the trend ever since the fall of the Soviet Union. In my view the capitalist ocuntries only moved left to stop revolution in their own countries. Hence the New Deal. Anyone care to guess what would have happened in the US if no reforms had been passed for the poor?? Now that the left wing parties in other ocuntries are moving right, it is only natural that the Liberals would do the same.

[CHIMO]

5. Well

Looks like our supreme court doesn't care about facts or know their limitations and went on a Robert's type of escapade.

Seems like corporations don't require any proof in legal judgments around here.

[V. Kid]

11. It has nothing to do with the people...

...if you refer to my post, "Well the reason the Supreme Court made the decision they did", it will explain the issue to you.