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Ralph Klein has gone and it is time to retire Ralph's World. Thanks to all of you who have supported this venture by contributing material and through your comments. It has been fun.

Should we get another blog underway? Let me know your thoughts by e-mailing me at johnnyslow@gmail.com.

John Slow
January 1, 2007

Thursday, November 17, 2005

Klein's Loch Ness Monster - Immoral as well as Ugly 

As we see more than just the ugly head of the mostly hidden monster undermining health care in Alberta, it becomes clear that it’s not only ugly, it is also immoral.

Immoral, you say, isn’t that a bit strong?

Well think about it. The moral foundations of Canada’s Health Care system were laid well before there was this Canada Health Act. Klein is chipping away at the legal protection of health care like a teen age kid trying to break down his parent’s resistance to letting him do something stupid with the family car.

But the issue is not merely legal, it is fundamentally moral. The two moral principles followed by Tommy Douglas and his fellow leaders were:
  1. No family should be driven into deprivation and crippled from debt by the long illness and death of a loved one.

  2. No person, within society should be prevented from access to medical treatment due to lack of funds or fear of indebtedness.


The only way those two moral values could become real in society was to draw on the social conscience of society and have medical services paid for from a single source, the state itself. On the basis of these moral and social values health care in Canada was elevated to the level of priority and value that it deserves. Klein’s third way monster is getting ready to launch a public sales campaign, propagandizing that we, the citizens of Alberta are not “entitled” to the health resources we are already paying the government to provide.

This monster in its ugly little head believes that, by buying the services of an insurance broker (A.K.A. AON Consulting), it will be able to sell us the idea that our families and loved ones will be better cared for by the Benevolent and Protective Order of the Market Place. Just this summer, didn’t we find out how well it works when long term care facilities are sold to private operators in the market place? Seniors lying for hours unattended? Vulnerable elderly being charged extra for a a bath or medicine that health care once paid for?

So how does selling health care to private insurers do anything for those whose resources and money are exhausted by long term illness? Or those who simply can’t pay for preventive or rehabilitation treatment? Private insurers never have and never will insure any one for anything for which they will not make money. The privatization monster will leave those who can’t pay to go without treatment and some to die in poverty.

And that, is IMMORAL.

Submitted by Sandy.

Previous comments from Sandy on this issue can be seen here.
Posted by: John Slow / 8:09 a.m. link

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