British Columbia

Socreds seeking
to ‘Americanize
B.C. health care’

Continued from page 1

and $8.50 per day for a hospital bed.

The province reaped an estimated $35
million per year from those fees, and was
deducted that amount from their EPF
(Established Programs Financing) entitle-
ments.

Since there was no incentive to continue
the fees, Couvelier told the legislature while
introducing the 1987 budget: “Reluctantly,
we have announced our decision to end the
practice of charging user fees in our hospi-
tals before April 1, 1987.”

However, the Socreds hit the province’s
residents in the pocketbook anyway, by hik-
ing the already high Medical Services Plan
premiums by 10 per cent, raising the deduct-
ible limit on prescription drug cost reimbur-
sements, and slapping senior citizens with a
dispensing fee under the B.C. Pharmacare
plan.

Last year’s provincial budget raised med-
ical premiums by another 40 per cent. Only
B.C., Alberta and Ontario charge individu-
als for medical insurance.

When the Canada Health Act was intro-
duced in the twilight months of the Trudeau
Liberal government, then health minister
Monique Begin introduced the pending leg-
islation as a preserver of Canada’s universal
medicare system.

She warned a Toronto audience in
November, 1983, that user fees and extra
billing by doctors were eroding medicare.

Calling Canada’s system “humane,”

Begin contrasted it with Great Britain’s

- mixed public and private health schemes,

and totally privatized medical insurance in
the United States. :

The health minister said it would be not
be fair to penalize provinces charging user
fees with a total cutoff of fiscal transfers for
health, which was the only option then. The
Canada Health Act would ensure con-
tinued funding while deducting an amount
equivalent to the province’s revenue from
user fees, Begin reasoned.

Peter Cameron, spokesperson for the
Health Sciences Association — the union
representing B.C.’s hospital technicians —
said the Act has been effective. But he also
called it “the last stand for fees for service,”
meaning doctors are reimbursed through
provincial medical plans for their services,
which leaves intact an incentive to “over-
doctor” and make costly charges to medical
plans.

Cameron noted Couvelier’s recent state-
ments that, although the province is under
budget this year and is enjoying a surplus,
the medicare system remains a prime target
of provincial restraint.

“User fees have nothing to do with man-
aging health care efficiently. They do not
reduce unnecessary services, but redistrib-
ute them from the poor to wealthier users,”
he said.

The Meech Lake Accord is “one symp-
tom of the weakening of the commitment to
national standards of social services,”

fe

MEL COUVELIER ... wants to re-
introduce hospital user fees.

Cameron warned.

HEU’s Macdonald called the Socred
move to change the Act to allow user fees
“another attempt to prepare the ground for
the private sector to play a greater role in
health care.”

Macdonald said the Free Trade Agree-
ment has already facilitated privatization by
allowing private hospital management
firms to set up shop in Canada.

“No doubt those firms are contributing
to the Socred war chest,” he said.

B.C. Nurses Union spokesperson Jerry
Miller said the union “stands for a health
care system that guarantees universal
access, and user fees violate that important
principle.”

Swanson of End Legislated Poverty said
user fees only deter poor people from seek-
ing necessary medical care. She said user
fees in effect still exist with high medical
premiums, pharmaceutical plan deductions
and charges for visits to dentists, chiroprac-
tors and physiotherapists. And she noted

BILL MACDONALD .. .fees will lead to
privatization of medical care.

that many GAIN recipients still pay medi-
cal premiums.

Rush charged that the Socreds “want to
Americanize B.C.’s health care system by
introducing user fees on a large scale as a
first step towards privatizing many health
services.”

He noted that the provincial government

has held secret talks with U.S.-based private '

health companies.

“The Socreds, encouraged by British
Prime Minister (Margaret) Thatcher’s
attack on the British health plan, are out to
scuttle the public health system and turn it
into a model of the American system,”
Rush warned.

He said Canadians must stand together
to preserve universal health care.

Calling user fees “an attack on the poor,”
New Democratic provincial health critic
Lois Boone (Prince George North) said
recent Socred statements are an attempt to
“set the public up for the re-introduction of
user fees.”

Corporate mergers mean layoffs, price hikes

The spate of mergers and takeovers
now sweeping Canada will have harmful
effects for all but a tiny wealthy minority.

In the short space of a few days Mol-
son’s beer empire merged with (or was
taken over by) Carling O’Keefe Breweries
(owned by Elders [XL of Australia); Stone
Corporation of Chicago took over the

huge Consolidated Bathurst forestry con- .
glomerate at a cost of $2.6 billion; the -

CPR-owned Canadian Airlines Interna-
tional paid $248 million for Wardair; and
Imperial Oil (owned by the Exxon Corpo-
ration of New York) forked over $4.9 bil-
lion for Texaco Canada.

The numbers of mergers in Canada is
not only increasing, it’s escalating at an
alarming rate. According to a recent book,
Canada had 135 major acquisitions in the
past three years worth more than $100
billion. That’s not small potatoes. And
there’s more to come, according to
bankers in the U.S. and Canada.

What’s behind this urge to merge? Who
benefits? How is it going to affect you and
me?

When a corporate giant takes over its
competitors there’s only one real aim — to
raise prices to the consumer. When one or
a small handful of companies establish a
monopoly or near-monopoly, it’s done
with the same thing in mind.

Profits is the name of the game and the
public be damned, that’s what it’s all
about. We pay and they take. Rhys Eyton,
chairman of Canadian International Air-
lines, made the position of his CPR-owned
company clear when he said, following the
takeover of Wardair, that the airlines can-
not afford “foolish seat sales.”

The other is that mergers and takeovers
inevitably result in layoffs as the new
owners consolidate their operations.
Molson-Carling admits it will lay off at
least 1,400 workers. One of the breweries
being closed is in Vancouver.

Wardair said that 1,500 of its employees
would be “impacted” by the sale. Isn’t
“impacted” such a nice word to use? It
sounds so much better than “laid-off.”
Fletcher Challenge of New Zealand,
which took over B.C. Forest Products and
Crown Industries, is “consolidating” and
115 jobs will be lost.

And soit goes, on and on — profits for
a tiny minority on the one hand, loss of
livelihood and hope at the other. That’s

the price that employees pay, that’s their —

reward for working hard and making
profits for their company.

The harmful effects don’t end with
higher prices and layoffs, however. These
corporate giants are out to scuttle Cana-
da’s social programs (including medicare,
pensions and unemployment insurance).
And they are determined to destroy, the
trade union movement in Canada, just as
they have done in the U.S.

The once powerful trade union move-

ment there has been reduced to 17 per cent
of the work force, compared to 36 per cent
in Canada. The minimum wage is non-
existent in some states and as low as $1.50
in others. This is what our “good corpo-
rate citizens” have in store for Canada.

Our whole economy is being restruc-
tured, centralized more and more in the -
hands of a few wealthy and powerful cor-
porations and families, Canadian and for-
eign. The Canadian economy is being
integrated with that of the U.S. The patri-
otism of Canadian big business which is
going along with this integration is not for
Canada, it’s only for the dollar.

These mergers are directly connected
with deregulation and privatization. De-
regulation (the removal of all laws placing
restrictions on the way companies operate
and act) gives them a free hand to fleece
the public at will.

Privatization is just another means of
placing more companies on the dinner
plate of the corporate giants for them to
gobble up at bargain prices. The mergers
are integral to the integration of the Cana-
dian economy with that the U.S. They eat
us up. ,

These mergers are not unique to Can-

ada. The same thing is going on in Europe,
the U.S. and Japan. It’s all part of a dis-
tinct global trend in the western world
which is now divided into three major
trading blocs — Japan, Western Europe,
and fortress America.

The free trade deal was designed to
enable the U.S. multinationals to take over
Canadian industries and resources to
strengthen their own position in relation
to the other two blocs. That’s why Mulro-
ney placed our country on the U.S. auc-
tion block. More and more the world is
being dominated by a few international
giants that are holding the whole world to
ransom.

Can these mergers be stopped? Yes,
they could under our anti-combines legis-
lation and by the federal Bureau of Com-
petition Policy. But don’t hold your breath
waiting for it to happen. No government
of Canada has ever stopped a major
merger.

Why? Because the corporate giants who
are merging are the same ones who finance
the political parties in office and whose
media gets them elected. The government
won’t tell the corporations what to do; it’s
the other way around Corporate_Affairs '
Minister Harvie Andre has announced
that he will not even hold any public hear-
ings. So much for protecting the public
interest. :

But that doesn’t mean it’s hopeless.
Governments have bowed to public pres-
sure before. If Canadians raise enough hell
the government will have to think twice.
That’s about our only hope — a protest
movement so powerful that Mulroney
can’t afford to ignore it.

2 e Pacific Tribune, February 13, 1989