NUPGE urges CMA to stand firm behind public health care

James Clancy asks: Are Canada's doctors about to elect a private health lobbyist as their president?

Ottawa (20 August 2006) - The 340,000-member National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE) is urging the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) to maintain its support for public health care when it meets next week in Charlottetown to elect a new national president.

"I am writing to urge you to do everything you can to persuade CMA delegates (in Charlottetown) that solutions to health care wait times are attainable within the public system," NUPGE President James Clancy says in a letter to CMA President Dr. Ruth Collins-Nakai.

"We agree with the CMA that the top priority must be short wait times. And we share the CMA’s goal of ensuring that faster access to quality care is not determined by a person’s ability to pay. But we disagree with recent pronouncements of CMA leaders that these goals can be achieved by giving the for-profit sector a greater role in health care."

Stark choice

The issue of public vs. private medical care is dividing CMA members in the choice they are being asked to make for the next elected president of the 59,000-member national body, a decision that will be made by approximately 250 delegates at the Charlottetown meeting.

The candidate generating the most attention is Dr. Brian Day, a British Columbia physician who is an outspoken private health care lobbyist. He is currently the president of the Canadian Independent Medical Clinics Association (CIMCA), which supports private health care on demand, paid for by public funds.

Day is being challenged by Dr. Jack Burak, another B.C. doctor who strongly favours public medicare. Day defeated Burak in a vote held by members of the B.C. Medical Association and is annoyed that Burak has decided to challenge him again when the national convention vote is held on Tuesday.

In the not very clear world of CMA politics, it is considered B.C.'s turn to have a national president and Day feels, having defeated Burak at home, that he should not have to do it a second time at the national convention in order to take over the leadership of the national organization.

In terms of national health care policy, Day seems to have a similar sense of entitlement about using public money to pay for unlimited private health care services. However, he has offered to step down from CIMSA if he becomes CMA president.

Canadians are clear

Clancy says the CMA is going against the wishes of the vast majority of Canadians in the growing attention it seems to be paying to private health care alternatives.

"The consensus view of Canadians, confirmed over and over again in all the research studies, is that for-profit care will not deliver faster, better, cheaper or more comprehensive care," he said in his letter to Collins-Nakai.

"And, to make matters worse, we know that supporting for-profit care requires abandoning the values of caring for and about one another that led us to establish public Medicare in the first place. Thus, one thing about the search for solutions to long wait times is plain: the reforms we want and need must, and can, be done within the public system."

Clancy said two important points must be made in this regard:

1. A primary cause of long waiting times is a shortage of physicians and other health professionals. "An obvious part of the solution to reduce wait times is to recruit, train and retain more physicians and other health professionals to work in the public system," he argued.
2. A great deal can be done to reduce waiting times by focusing on innovation and the reorganization of the delivery of services within the public system. "Long wait times are not an inevitable result of our public health care system; they are, in large part, the result of a lack of health professionals and how the system is organized," Clandy added.

"Many Canadians will be following the CMA meeting with great interest and they will be asking themselves this question: Are Canada's doctors committed to reducing wait times by strengthening our single-tier public system, or do they favour an expanded for-profit alternative that puts more money in physicians' pockets and reserves the fastest and best service for the well-heeled?

"CMA delegates will have the opportunity to decide whether they stand alongside their patients in the effort to preserve and improve equitable public health care for all Canadians. At the end of the debate, we hope Canada’s doctors say they’ve considered the choices and have chosen their patients’ best interests and public Medicare over narrow self-interests.... Please give it your best effort. A nation will be watching." NUPGE