Canadian nurses speak out against CMA support of private system
Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario - Open letter to the Ontario Medical Association
TORONTO, Aug. 17 /CNW/ -
Dr. Gregory Flynn
President
Ontario Medical Association
Jonathan Guss
Chief Executive Officer
Ontario Medical Association
August 17, 2005
Dear physician colleagues,
Ontario nurses have been following the deliberations at the 138th annual meeting of the Canadian Medical Association with much concern. While we were heartened to hear that delegates showed strong support for access to medical care based on need, not ability to pay, we were dismayed that CMA members failed to reject a parallel, investor-driven, for-profit system. The CMA squandered an opportunity to show Canadians that it is committed to continue to put in the time and effort to rebuild and reform our universal, publicly funded and delivered health-care system. That would have shown as much common sense as courageous leadership, and the Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario would have saluted it. Instead, we are saddened that two-thirds of the delegates rejected a motion calling on doctors to denounce a parallel health-care system as a way to deal with long waiting lists.
As registered nurses working alongside you on the front line of health-care delivery, we are well aware that our system has problems. Evidence and experience from other jurisdictions shows, however, that those problems will only deepen and grow if we increase the role of investor-driven, for-profit health insurance and health delivery in our system. Investor-driven insurance and businesses are already siphoning physicians, nurses, resources and support away from the public system, privileging those who can afford to pay for private health care.
There is little doubt there are those who will benefit by linking profits with illness and suffering. But the most vulnerable people in our community, those who have the least resources and are most likely to need health care, have the most to lose if we allow our single-tier, publicly funded system to be slowly but surely starved of resources and respect. We know that private insurers will “skim” the more profitable cases and burden the public system with chronic and catastrophic care. And anyone who is less than healthy and/or less than wealthy is at risk to receive compromised access to health-care services in a for-profit insurance market. The Canadian Medical Association’s own poll recently showed that 58 per cent of physicians felt that most of their patients will either not qualify or be unable to afford private insurance.
Organizations like the CMA are careful to shun American-style health care, and have turned instead to countries such as Sweden, Britain and Germany for guidance. But this advice ignores the realities of an increasingly integrated North American economy, as well as our formal commitments under NAFTA which may open the door to U.S. corporations if we expand for-profit health care in Canada.
At the same time, the CMA fails to learn from those very jurisdictions it cites. For example, British doctors, representing the National Health Service Consultants’ Association, sent an open letter to the incoming CMA president urging Canadian doctors to “learn from our country’s mistakes and reject private care and other market-style policies.” The letter warns that instead of “saving” public health care, privatization has undermined the National Health Service, raising costs and undermining quality.
Nurses are not interested in protecting the “status quo;” they are unified in their interest to protect the public by strengthening and expanding medicare for all Canadians. As extensive evidence from the Romanow Commission has shown us, the best solution is to “build on our values” by making the public system even more responsive, efficient and accountable to Canadians. Now is the time to accelerate the positive reforms that are taking root with support from a series of Health Accords. These reforms will strengthen public hospitals, community health, access to pharmaceutical drugs, and healthy living. That reform must pick up momentum — boosted by Canada and Ontario’s solid financial performance — but it must serve the needs of all Ontarians, not just those with deep pockets and good health.
Nurses call on their physician colleagues to avoid the mistakes of the past, such as the Saskatchewan MD strike of 1962 that tried to stop the implementation of Saskatchewan’s Medical Care Act — the precursor to medicare. It is unfortunate that four decades later, delegates at this annual meeting have decided not to take a strong stand against for-profit health care, ignoring the will of the vast majority of Canadians. While a parallel, investor-driven system might financially benefit some individual doctors, strengthening the for-profit motive in health care will fray our social fabric and jeopardize quality health care.
As the CMA conference wraps up today, we ask the Ontario Medical Association to show some leadership by taking a strong stand against that which would weaken our health-care system — private health insurance, two-tier, cheque-book medicine — and a strong stand for what will improve it: accelerated health-care reform that improves the quality and access of our health care while strengthening Canadians’ confidence in it.
Respectfully,
(signed)
Joan Lesmond, RN, BScN, MSN
President
(signed)
Doris Grinspun, RN, MSN, PhD (cand), O.Ont.
Executive Director
Cc:
Dr. Ruth Collins-Nakai, President of the Canadian Medical Association
Hon. Dalton McGuinty, Premier of Ontario
Rt. Hon. Paul Martin, Prime Minister of Canada
Hon. George Smitherman, Ontario Minister of Health and Long-Term Care
Hon. Ujjal Dosanjh, Minister of Health
Dr. Deborah Tamlyn, President of the Canadian Nurses Association
For further information: please contact: Sine MacKinnon, Director of Communications, Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario, Phone: (416) 599-1925, 1-800-268-7199 ext. 209, Cell: (416) 829-6657, smackinnon@rnao.org
http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/August2005/17/c0949.html