Renfrew Nipissing Pembroke NDP
Media Release for December 30.
The Conservatives are planning to destroy our medical care system, and the Liberals will do nothing to prevent it, according to Sue McSheffrey, NDP candidate in January’s federal election.
“The Conservative government in Alberta just gave a private consultant a million and a half dollars in order to find out how that Conservative government can introduce private, for-profit health care in that province. Stephen Harper has remained conspicuously silent about this initiative - a clear signal that he agrees with his political sponsor, Alberta Conservative premier Ralph Klein, and will allow this attack to be carried out,” McSheffrey stated.
The introduction of profit-making hospitals and clinics will lead inevitably to American-ized health care, said McSheffrey, a physiotherapist who is also the Renfrew head of the Ontario Health Coalition. “American health care is a complete disaster. It means high insurance rates, ruinous hospital bills, and severe restrictions in the amount and type of health services people can get.”
The NDP policy, McSheffrey said, is clear - total opposition to privatization and profit-making enterprises in our health care system. “The NDP would cut off federal funding to any for-profit hospital, or to any province which attempted to destroy Medicare, as the Alberta Conservative government is threatening to do,” McSheffrey stated.
McSheffrey also blamed the Liberals for allowing the Alberta Conservative attack on health care to go unchallenged. “Paul Martin was asked directly if he would block for-profit hospitals. He refused to answer the question. Once more, when Martin is faced with a challenge, he collapses. The Liberals cannot stand up to the Conservative plan to erode our trusted public health care system,” McSheffrey said. She stated that only a large group of NDP MP’s in the next Parliament could put any backbone into the government to fight off Conservative attacks on Medicare.
“Last year, Paul Martin committed 41 billion dollars to the provinces in health care funding - all with absolutely no guarantees or safeguards that the money would go to strengthen and improve current health services,” McSheffrey said. “This sends a clear message to the Alberta Conservatives and the British Columbia Liberals that they are free to continue their efforts to undermine Medicare.”
“Canadians want the current Medicare system protected, not undermined,” McSheffrey said. “Canadians don’t want to take out expensive private health insurance policies. They don’ want to receive hospital bills totaling thousands or tens of thousands of dollars. They don’t want to discover that they can’t receive any treatment that a private insurance company finds too expensive. But that’s what happens under the American system which the Conservatives want to introduce, and that the Liberals will do nothing to prevent. If you don’t want to see your personal finances chewed up or even destroyed by having to pay for privatized health care, then you have no alternative. You must vote NDP,” McSheffrey said.
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