By Mark Taliano
According to the late U.S. president Woodrow Wilson’s Committee on Public Information, “one of the best means of controlling news is flooding news channels with ‘facts,’ or what amounts to official information.”
A recent citizens' rally for better hospital care in Niagara Falls, Ontario.
It seems to me that a variation of this type of propogation of ideas (propaganda) is taking place in Niagara to promote fatal health care decisions. If this were not the case, more people would be questioning the current private/public health care funding model which is likely a significant component leading to premature deaths and atrocious health care conditions in Niagara today.
Creating a limited agenda is also part of the propaganda game. Tax cuts are the current focus of some political parties, but the effects of these cuts, including horrible health care, are not seen to be linked, and are not as often mentioned. Right-wing oriented newspapers generally play this card well, to the detriment of life and death issues such as health care.
So the repetition of the benefits of tax cuts, coupled with an agenda limiting the discussion of life and death health care issues, is leading us down a primrose path to health care inequities and too many preventable deaths.
For-profit health care systems are expensive, not only in terms of societal stratification (‘I can afford to live healthier and longer than you’ mentality) but also in terms of dollars and cents, and the magnitude of these costs dwarf the promised tax cuts to average families. Dr. Robert Evans, a leading health care economist, noted that “from 1975 to 2009, Medicare represented from four to five percent of Canada’s G.D.P, while health care costs not covered by Medicare (prescription drugs, dental, home care etc.) are currently at twelve percent of G.D.P.” So private costs are soaring, not public costs. Likewise for Pharmacare. If we had a single purchaser system (medications purchased by the government), prescription medication prices would fall precipitously. Most families would save many times more if health care were a universal system than they would by any proposed tax cuts
Public health care is more universal and cost-effective, and if that is the measure, then we are heading down the wrong path with privatization. Americans will confirm this assessment. According to Dr. Arnold Relman, Professor emeritus at Harvard Medical School, two decades of research have revealed that “No health care system in the industrialized world is as heavily commercialized as ours, and none is as expensive, inefficient, and inequitable.” Further, he argues, “taken as a whole, the American Health Care system is failing badly.”
I would suggest that we applaud American efforts to make their system more universal, and disabuse ourselves of the myth that we can’t afford better health care, or that a privatized model is superior. We CAN afford a better system, and it is called Universal Health Care. Private partner models of health care delivery represent a compromise that we, as Canadians, really can’t afford.
Let’s hope that the health care positions held by the (Niagara south-based) Yellow Shirt Brigade and its followers become more mainstream, and more often repeated, before we make further health care mistakes in the not too distant future.
Mark Taliano is a Niagara resident and frequent contributor to Niagara At Large
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Niagara At Large 
You are right on with this article – sadly though when yellow shirts set up a rally and the organization of that rally is taken over by an NF councilor who decides for political reasons to exclude the one person who will likely make the decision about healthcare after the next election is self destructing. I am not a firm supporter of any politician at this time but I certainly think that Hudak’s support for changes in the NHS issues should have been secured at that rally. A missed opportunity and a really bad intentional mistake by some short sighted people.
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Unfortunately the efforts in the US to make their health care universal means everyone has to buy insurance – from – guess who, the insurance companies. It’s a win/win again for big business. Meanwhile Congressmen and Senators have Universal health care. They seem to like it and use it but it’s not good enough for the average citizen. They even have health facilities on their work premises. Go figure. It’s OK for us but demon “Socialism” if it’s for everyone. Politicians pockets are lined by the big business lobbyists. If money is to be made they will find a way.
The US system currently ranks in the 30’s somewhere between Costa Rica and Slovenia. There’s something to aim for! Obama caved in to the big interests and was too conciliatory. Kucinich, Franken and Nader urged single payer but God firbid
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Cont. – We all know that anything for profit has to pay its shareholders so quality suffers and you pay more. Altruism means nothing where the mighty dollar steps in. Who cares if you croak, I’ll be OK because I’ve got money. As the saying goes, “there but for the grace of God” , maybe those who deny health care to others less fortunate may, in this economic climate, join the have nots and lose their health insurance. Let’s see how they feel then. Canada is trying to pull the same thing as in the US – for profit health care. Please people, save ourselves and don’t let this happen or we will all suffer.
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Linda McKellar should be careful in her choice of words.
She makes a statement (“We all know that anything for profit has to pay its shareholders so quality suffers and you pay more.)
She is painting all profit making organizations with the same brush and this is absolute Hogwash.
She obviously does not understand the free enterprise system and perhaps wants to live in country were there is not one profit making organization. That would be interesting if you were to think seriously about it. I am not in favour of what is happening with our healthcare system but I will not be standing on a soapbox cursing all profit making enterprises that have built the structures we live in and provided us with many of the necessities of life and would not do so without a profit being attached to the process.
I guess she wants everyone to work for nothing. Strange:
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Thank you for the admonition Wm. but I DO try to chose my words carefully. So sorry if you think I’m stupid and do not understand free enterprise. If you reread my post before jumping to your conclusions, you will note my comments applied strictly to health care. Human health and lives are not marketable commodities.
A healthy mix of capitalism and socialism is required in any nation. What other profit making organizations did I refer to?
Thank you for you apology!
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Regulated capitalism is fine, but it doesn’t belong in certain public domains, especially health care. Every canadian should have equal access to excellent health care, and yes, we CAN afford it in Canada. We can not afford to enrich insurance companies and other private enterprises to the detriment of the unhealthy and poor.
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Instead of billions of dollars being poured into tarsands why not spend the taxpayers money on improving our sub-par (almost third world) healthcare.
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According to Dr. Relman, administration costs for private health insurance are from 15 to 25% of the premiums paid. Admin. costs for Medicare are about 3%. Taking the private route means massive bureaucracies.
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Massive bureaucracies, you say? There you go…that is why government is pushing for the private route.
We need more bureaucrats like more holes in the head. I have more faith in my dog than any politician/bureaucrat.
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The private route leads to massive bureaucracies… insurance forms etc.
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