Not-For-Profit Delivery
Nurses are committed to public health care, and so is the Canadian
public. Medicare faces many challenges, but there is also the opportunity
to make advancements to bring more services under medicare’s
umbrella. But to do that, the creeping privatization of Canada’s
health-care system must be stopped.
P3s
P3s, or public-private partnerships, are cropping up across
the country, and pose a serious hazard to a financially sustainable
not-for-profit health care system. Private lenders who supply the
money to build hospitals. However, we know P3s are more expensive
and less accountable governments can borrow money less expensively
than the private sector.
The costs of privatization
An article in the June 8, 2004 edition of the Canadian
Medical Association Journal concluded that for-profit health
hospitals charge significantly more than not-for-profit hospitals
– 19 per cent more. Thus, there is no tradeoff between cost
and quality. The principal investigator, Dr. P.J. Devereaux, called
for-profits the cigarettes of health care, because they are bad
for health and are costly.
Privatization is dangerous direction for medicare. Any amount of
privatization, no matter how small, is detrimental to the care millions
of Canadians rely on. Worse, small amounts of privatization open
the door for even more services to be removed from the public sphere.
As more people begin to depend on private care, their commitment
to public care will decrease; and medicare will receive less funding
and political support.
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Adapted from Nurses Warn About Privatization.
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