Look for Campbell to approve Mazankowski’s health report

 

When Canada’s premiers meet in Vancouver on Thursday and Friday of this week, Don Mazankowski’s recent report on the reform of Alberta’s health is sure to be on the agenda.

You might remember Mazankowski from the Conservative Mulroney government when it was tossed out in 1993.   Mazankowski left politics to join numerous corporate boards, including Gulf Canada.

In the Alberta context, the report’s recommendations are expected – –  including an expanded role for private health care delivery.  What is not in this report speaks volumes.

Mazankowski proposes an “expert panel” to study health care services to decide what should be covered and what should not.  Not a bad idea on the surface, since most would agree that our health care can no longer afford to be everything to everyone.

What he doesn’t say is who should sit on that panel.  It matters.  An expert panel made up of businessmen, like Mazankowski, would come up with a different list of services to be delisted than a panel made up of doctors.  I would trust health care professionals but not corporate leaders to make that difficult choice.

Mazankowski has been accused of a conflict of interest, since he is a member of the board of Great-West Lifeco Inc., which owns an insurance company.  But, you see, it’s only a conflict of interest if you consider the general public as being the beneficiaries of a public health care system.  If you consider that businessmen, like Mazankowski, are to be the beneficiaries of health care then there is no conflict of interest at all.

Another recommendation of the report is blending private and public health care in one system, to encourage more “choice, competition and accountability.”  But Mazankowski doesn’t suggest just how such a blended system would work.

And when I hear “choice, competition and accountability” as desirable qualities in any public service, I know the speaker means “privatization, inefficiency, and corporate profits.”

An efficient, effective health care system is what we already have.  “Universal, publically funded, provides better health care as measured by any outcomes – – lower infant mortality, greater life expectancy, for example,” says Anil Naidoo of the Council of Canadians. “The cost of Canada’s health care is one-half that of the U.S. and all are covered,” he continued.

In the U.S., 15 per cent have no coverage at all.  Health care consumers, otherwise known as patients, primarily want treatment that’s available when they need it.  They want effective health care that’s delivered in a timely fashion at a reasonable cost.

We don’t have health care delivered in a timely fashion.  You don’t have to look further than the federal government for the reason why.  Health care has been damaged through underfunding.

But it can be mended.  What Mazankowski’s report doesn’t say is that as soon as the door to health care if opened to privatization, it’s subject to Chapter 11 of the North American Free Trade Agreement.  That would allow the U.S. to purchase our health care services and make it more profits driven.

As a member of the Mulroney government that wrote NAFTA, Mazankowski knows this well.  His failure to mention this opening to U.S. competition is a deceptive omission.

The Mazankowski report is a convenient diversion for Campbell’s B.C. Liberal government.  While the spotlight is on Alberta, Campbell is quietly encouraging the diversion of public health resources for private use.  For example, CT machines at Vancouver’s St. Paul’s Hospital are being run after hours for anyone who can afford $1,000.

Why aren’t publicly funded hospital diagnostic machines being run 24 hours a day to reduce the backlog of patients waiting for their use?

“It’s a monopoly system basically. There’s no competition,” complains Jim Neilson about public health care.  Neilson is the former B.C. Health Minister for the Socred government.   Translation: not enough money is flowing into my privately owned MRI clinic in Richmond.  With Campbell’s government filled with ex-Socreds, I’m sure that Neilson’s words ring true in many right wing heads.

Premier Campbell has made it clear that he is prepared to cut deeply and hastily into public service.  Look for him to be nodding in agreement at the Mazankowski report and filling in his own solutions where it is silent.

Canadian newspapers have responsibility to tell Palestinians’ story

“The best newspapers are founded on good editorial pages where citizens engage in a lively give and take of ideas relevant to their lives and communities. That process can not, indeed must not, be centralized and corporatized,” says Paul Schliesmann, editorial writer for the Kingston Whig-Standard.

The focus of Schliesmann’s worry is the new owner of Canada’s largest newspaper chain, Izzy Asper of  CanWest Global.  Asper seems to think that the purpose of his newspapers is to serve as his mouthpiece.

Asper has decreed that his papers must carry editorials generated by his editorial staff from the centre of Canada, Winnipeg.   The pressure goes beyond carrying the gospel of Asper.

Editors and reporters feel that they have to carry the corporate line.  They censor themselves by not expressing contradictory views, says NewsWatch Canada.

An example of this kind of editorial pressure occurred when a TV columnist for one of Asper’s papers, the Montreal Gazette, decided to review a video documentary about Palestinian journalists in Israel.  Israel was painted as the aggressor. The Gazette refused to run the article.  Under pressure, the review was finally written.

Murdoch Davis, spokesman for CanWest Global admits that his papers are unapologetically pro-Israel.  Don’t get me wrong, the story of the Jews must be told.

It’s a story of the underdog who succeeds against incredible odds.  I still remember watching the movie Exodus in 1960.  Paul Newman plays a  Israeli resistance fighter who helps bring 600 Jews from Cyprus to the  newly-partitioned Palestine.  The movie is set in the year 1948,  right before the United Nations voted to make Palestine a Jewish homeland.

But we haven’t heard much about the heroic struggle of Arab Palestinians for a homeland.  We haven’t seen movies about the failure of the world to recognize UN resolutions for a Palestine. We need to hear more voices like Lebanese journalist Reem Haddad who writes:

“Ali Helou, 25, looked over his shoulder as he led his nine-month pregnant young wife, Amineh, over the hills of Lebanon.  Unbeknown to him, it was the last time that he would see his home.”

The year was 1948 and Jews were shelling Arab villages in preparation of the state of Israel.  Arabs were running for their lives.  On May 14, 1948, the state of Israel was declared.  Immediately, the U.S. recognized the newly created country, but the world ignored the fact that land and homes had been taken from the Palestinians.

“Ali’s wife gave birth under an olive tree, only kilometres from the Lebanese border.  They were part of 800,000 Palestinians who packed into refugee camps.  Eight months later, Ali’s baby contracted typhoid and died,” Haddad writes.

The proposed Palestinian homeland is shrinking.  In 1947, the United Nations proposed that Palestine be divided up with 53 per cent for the Jews and 47 per cent for the Arab state.  By 1949, Israel controlled 78 per cent and Palestinians who were driven from their homes and land would never get it back.

In the year 2000, Israel’s solution for a Palestinian home land reduced the Arab state further by breaking the West Bank into 29 pieces.  The Palestinians would have face the humiliation of passing through armed Jewish checkpoints to visit friends and family in other parts of their country.

Thousands of Palestinians now languish in refugee camps without clean drinking water.  They peer out of their tin huts at the luxurious Jewish homes in the Gaza Strip – – in territory taken by the Jews in the 1967 invasion.  If they are lucky, they will be able to work for those Jews as servants or grounds keepers.  Most won’t be so lucky.

But I won’t hold my breath waiting for the movie in which Brad Pit plays the freedom fighting engineer, Yasir Arafat.   The image of the Nobel Peace prizewinner Arafat doesn’t fit nicely into the world view of an Arab terrorist.

Only by hearing both sides of Middle East conflict can we understand earth shaking events like those of September 11.   Without that understanding, we can only clutch our heads in horror and shout to the skies “why do they hate us so much?”

Maybe Hollywood won’t, but Canada’s newspapers can and must tell the stories of the Arab Palestinians.