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Originally Posted by feelgood
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... It means us Albertans are gonna get a choice between public or private health care. Eventually, other provinces are going to follow suit,
Well, voice your complaint on Jan 23, the day we have our Federal Elections. If you don't vote, don't bother saying that the health care system sucks. Either that, or you can move to Alberta when private health care is becoming a reality....
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The way I see it, this vaunted healthcare tradition that Canadians are so proud of is really just a recent thing. I was born before the advent of the medicare system. My parents did ok. But we certainly are better off with the security that the insurance buys us.
I recall my mom saying that she got NO maternity leave. After I was born, she was back to work the next day. Granted, since she was a nurse at Kingston General, all that meant was that they gave her the staff rotations to schedule from her bed.
According to the literature, Medicare was pioneered by Tommy Douglas' (*) gov't in Saskatchewan in 1961, and finally adopted nationally by Canada in 1968 (one year after the Centennial!)
So we have only had it for a little over one generation and yet it has become so inextricably linked with our identity. Imagine the hew and cry if Hockey Night In Canada was threatened... (oh ya, it was gone all last year... )
As comfortable as we are in our protected existance, I see it as a temporary situation, which sadly is being eroded through the movement to private healthcare again. It's analogous to the phase that we as a society went through when public utilities were brought under government control for the good of all, back at the turn of the 19th century, only to be de-regulated 100 years later. Now we are back at profit centre power supply, and we are all paying more.
(*) Tommy was the father of actress Shirley Douglas, and is Kiefer Sutherland's grandfather: see a description of the history of public health care here is a decent link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicare_%28Canada%29