Health care: It's not about profit … it's about people
The following was submitted by New Brunswick Health Coalition co-chairs Debbie Lacelle and Roger Doiron
The New Brunswick Health Coalition is composed of more than 20 community and labour organizations representing over 180,000 people. We have come together to ensure the basic principles of the Canada Health Act are respected. We have been in existence over 10 years, and we have deep concerns with the new Health Plan introduced by Health Minister Murphy.
Our mandate is to keep public health care public and to ensure governments respect the Canada Health act and the five core principles. The new Health Plan has raised serious concerns in the decision-making process, structural changes to Health Authorities, and the open invitation to privatization of public health-care delivery.
In the normal process of developing policy and government strategy there are opportunities for the general public, professionals, and legislators to engage in a discussion or debate.
The introduction of the Health Plan has been anything but democratic.
The period prior to the release of the plan saw several "announcements" by the Health Minister.
One was about privatizing under-utilized health-care facilities. Another was the Health Care Summit – an invitation only event with speakers and private sector participants with a vested interest in making a profit in the health care industry. The April interview in the Telegraph Journal quoted Minister Murphy at length and at no time did he mention that the Health Plan is a product of talking with New Brunswickers.
Our Coalition asked for a one-year moratorium on any changes so a more inclusive discussion could have time to happen. We were refused. Our coalition includes over 180,000 New Brunswickers, and there was no opportunity for discussion.
The way in which the new health plan was introduced into the Legislature also gives rise to concern about the democratic process. A healthy process would have been to introduce the Bill, send it to committee for discussion, consultation and amendment, then back to the Legislature for final reading.
Instead Minister Murphy began to implement changes on first reading with his restructuring of the Health Authorities, eliminating the community elected members and creating politically appointed chairpersons or CEO's in their place.
This is why we, all 180,000 plus, are so concerned.
The reduction of eight Regional Health Authorities to two will take out the decision power of the local health authorities and will create another layer of decision-making that will only burden the system. This is further amplified by the professional backgrounds of the two new Presidents who come from the private sector and have no experience at all with our public health system.
There is a problem when a government nominates the members to the boards of the Regional Health Authority.
The nomination of all board members by the government means that there will be no public input in any shape or form by citizens. Citizens were able to get elected to these RHA and become the spokespersons for citizens. Now all board members will be nominated and there is a very high possibility that they will be close to the party in power and not be representative of the community.
One example is the nomination of Aldea Landry as president of the RHA-A. Ms. Landry's company organized the Provincial Health Summit in Saint John last Fall with a focus on private-sector health-care delivery, and she is a former minister in the Frank McKenna era of the Liberal Party.
Another example is John Laidlaw as president of the RHA-B who is a lawyer and whose expertise is in corporate and commercial law, not in public health.
The creation of a Health Council is not a bad thing in itself. Part of the council's mandate is to look at how the health system is performing, make recommendations and consult the public. On the other hand there is a real problem when the president and CEO are both from the private sector.
Public sector administration is very different from private sector. The private sector measure of profit as success does not apply to public sector where quality of service and accessibility measure success.
We can't understand how the two key persons have no experience in our health system and absolutely no experience whatsoever in consulting with the public.
As well, the creation of the public company for non-clinical services and programs, (support infrastructure such as material management, finance-payroll, laundry, etc) headed by someone from the private sector will result in the loss of jobs in most hospitals and creates the potential of more private sector involvement with a for-profit perspective.
Finally, the major concern of privatization is a clear and present danger. In the April 5 interview Minister Murphy was asked why not let the private sector open clinics and provide services, to which he responded, "Tell them to go ahead." He later further added, "This is about competition for the publicly-funded health care dollar."
In the interview he clearly outlined a methodology for earning a profit when treating your illness.
The private sector does not have a magic pill to fix what is ailing our health-care system. For example, one major area of concern is lack of trained professionals to do the work. Constant cutbacks by governments to the civil service through attrition has created massive strains and workloads for those professionals remaining. Just look at the caseload of clinical pathologists and the recent problems in Miramichi to understand the impact of past government decisions. The private sector does not have a secret supply of these trained professionals. No one does.
However, we do know is privatizing health-care services will drive up costs to you the "customer" instead of providing access to you the "patient". As Minister Murphy is quoted saying, "Your Medicare card is like the VISA."
This is why we, all 180,000 plus, are so concerned.
Health Minister Murphy appears determined to put profits before New Brunswickers.
We believe in the five fundamental principles of the Canada Health Act which are:
Public administration – our governments administer the system
Universality – everyone is covered without regard to their ability to pay
Accessibility – services are provided under uniform terms and conditions
Portability – citizens are covered in each province
Comprehensiveness – insured services provided by hospitals, physicians and dental surgeons
We believe that our public health system should ensure public accountability.
The key to our success, to improving our health care delivery, lay in the very process by which we reach our decisions.
We recommend health Minister Murphy shelve the Health Plan and start fresh with a white paper on our present health-care delivery situation. Health care is not about profit … it is about people.
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