He Will Fight To The Death

Our wonderful wacko King Ralph has picked another fight he can't win and he knows it. Just like he was going to fight to the death to oppose Same Sex Marriage....didn't happen. Fight to the death not to recognize Sexual Orientation in the Alberta Individual Rights Act.....didn't happen. Fight to the death opposing Federal Firearms Registry.....didn't happen. But he sure as heck spent lots of taxpayers money on expensive futile court cases. And he blustered and blathered and got lots of press. He talked tough and that was about as tough as it got. Talk

And now he will fight to the death for his Third Way.....yeah right.....As Sheila Copps says in her column today;

On the contrary, the bigger the fight Klein could pick with Ottawa, the better his chances of rolling to successive victories in a virtual one-party province. Fed-bashing works. The Parti Quebecois have known that for years. But their anti-Canada positions on just about everything pale in comparison with the untouchable Klein formula. Klein has regularly coasted to victory by picking phony fights with Ottawa Carbon tax? We will fight it to the death. Global warming? Another ruse by those damn Easterners to hurt the Alberta economy. Klein could give lessons to the separatists. But he has a history of picking fights he cannot win.

Hey Sheila agrees with me. Nice to see. Well what does Klein have that Ottawa and Quebec and Ontario doesn't? A War Chest. Cut payments to Alberta for violating the Canada Health Act and he just rolls on and does it anyways cause of a $14 Billion dollar surplus. What are they gonna do? Its been done before. Klein has done it. Refused to accept the CHA and paid the fines.

So does that mean he will win his fight? Nope cause he has alienated his rank and file, his backbenchers and his cabinet. This is his fight alone. And Rod Love is gone. So there are no breaks on the drunk with power. He will spend what he has to shadow boxing and then capituate as he has before. He is all bellow and bluster. Sigh just can't wait till the door slaps him on the ass as he leaves. And that sigh was from the Conservative party not from me.



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Public Health Care The Election Issue

If I Lie May My Nose Grow

Well King Ralph kind of said that about his intentions around Privatizing Health Care in Alberta, just in time for the Federal Election.

"I've got to be honest. You know, I can't tell a lie, because you (reporters) would be on my case. "So I'll explain exactly what we are doing (in terms of proposed health-care reforms)... the process that we are going through and I hope that people will understand that and I hope that the federal Liberals will not use it as political fodder." The comments were greeted with resignation within the federal Conservative party.” I’m disappointed, but I'm not surprised," said a senior Conservative organizer in Ontario.

Private health grist for election mill?

Klein expects issue to be raised on Eastern tour

James Baxter, The Edmonton Journal, Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Oh goodie we will finally find out what the Kings great but still secret plan is for Health Care reform. Cause ever since Bill 11 its been all about privatizing health care. So that’s six years that the volk in the Alberta Reich have waited for our glorious leader to let us know that the plan is. But the irony is that we will find out cause he intends to tell the ‘Eastern Bastards’ his plan. Sure, right, and I have a bridge in Southern Alberta for sale. He actually will tell them exactly what we know, that privatization is coming, soon, well actually after we get another study done, plus another conference, until we can fill a room with our experts who will say privatize or die trying, and well you get the picture. It ain’t happening, privatization is Alberta’s poison pill,agianst the Federal Government. Where it used to be oil, King Klein has made his Bunker Hill (pardon the pun), Health Care. He intends to privatize health care as he began back in 1995, though by no means as much as has been done in Quebec since that time. Even after Bill 11 the whole Klein Health Care agenda has been to see how far they can push privatization under the existing Canada Health Act. While tinkering here and there the whole Klein agenda has been about bluff and bluster. There have been lots of studies, conferences, studies, consultants, more conferences, focus groups, the Mazankowski Report, Report on Mazankowski, recommendations, recommendations shelved. And whenever a Health Care announcement like the Klein ‘Third Way’ is made, then it is studied to death, more focus groups, etc. And the plan is well so generalized you could read anything into it. And don’t be putting any wagers on it cause with a mere shift in the wind, a bit of a blast from editorial writers, a protest organized by Friends of Medicare, and finger to the wind the Klein Reich quickly goes about changing the offending comments, oh like personal medical accounts, and then sneaks it in the back door.

Such is the case with AON Consultants who got a rigged bid contract to look at privatizing Alberta Health Care, and low and behold if they had not presented the Klein Krew with a recommendation about personal medical accounts.

Should the Harper be worried? You betcha, so should Martin. Cause Health Care has become the single issue the NDP can claim the high ground on and actually make THE ELECTION ISSUE.

Harold Jansen, a political scientist at the University of Lethbridge, said Harper may not have much to fear from Klein's health-care plans this time around. He does not expect health care to be the hot-button issue it was in 2004. For the federal Liberals to attack Alberta, he said, they will also have to challenge moves toward privatization that Quebec and British Columbia have already made. "I think health care is more or less old news now. The difference is that the private health-care genie is now out of the bottle," he said, referring to the Supreme Court decision earlier this year that upheld a patient's right to pay for medical care to end suffering when waiting times are too long. "I think it would be hard (for Martin) to demonize Alberta."

And he would be wrong about it NOT being THE Election issue. It will be, because it is the Liberals Achilles heel, without it they cannot entice soft social democrats, red liberals, with the boogeyman of the Conservatives. And as the polls show its going to be another minority government, or at least could be if the NDP get enough votes. To do that they have to make the Privatization of Health Care the issue. It’s what differentiates them from the Liberals. They gave the Liberals the chance to challenge the Supreme Court ruling by amending the Canada Health Act. And the Liberals blew it, they called the bluff , read the polls and figured they could chance a Christmas election.

The NDP attack on the Liberals last election over this was muted by the demonizing of the Harper by the Liberals. They played their trump card about Harpers secret agenda for Health Care. Sorry can’t use that again, because as Jansen says the cat is out of the bag, privatization of health care is the political reality today in Canada and the Liberals are no more prepared to confront it than the Tories are.

If it was only Klein the Federal Liberals would confront the issue, using Alberta as their whipping boy. But they can’t because Quebec sets the Federal Agenda, and is on the road to privatization as well. Asymmetrical privatization of health care is the Liberals downfall, as it is the Harpers. Harper has Klein as his albatross, Martin has Quebec. It is here where the Liberals cut down by Adscam, cannot risk challenging their provincial cousins. Nor can they afford to give the BQ and PQ anymore ammunition to use against them. In this case any attack on Quebec’s privatization of medical services would leave them open to accusations of interference in Quebec’s affairs.

The NDP on the other hand have no qualms about imposing a federalist solution where it is warranted. They did this with the NEP in Alberta in the 1980’s and could use Health Care as the issue on which to impose a Federalist model that would offend both Quebec and Alberta, but not their supporters or soft left Liberals or even Red Tories.

To do that the NDP has to make the Canada Health Act the issue, amending it, strengthen it, attaching strings to Federal Funding, all in the name of ending the biggest loophole in the Act, that it fails to mention privatization.

By making the issue strengthening the Canada Health Act to end privatization they can appeal that it can be done asymmetrically as each province has violated the Act in uncommon ways. That is services that are privatized are sufficiently different in each province that a federal act ending privatization would impact differently in B.C. than in Quebec, or Alberta, or PEI.

The Liberals made NAFTA the issue in the 1988 election and stole the show from the NDP. Last election Martin made Health Care the eleventh hour issue to differentiate the Liberals from Harpers Conservatives. This time this issue for the Liberals, Tories and Bloc is Gomery and Adscam. It’s an issue that the NDP left to the other opposition parties to pick the flesh off the bones of the Liberals.

Instead they have made the Democratic Deficit the issue, as well as health care and the environment. In the upcoming election Health Care is issue number one for the NDP. It’s why they cannot support the current Liberal regime. Then to deal with Gomery it’s their ethics package. Even the issue of Aboriginal Self Government, can be covered with the Broadbent Ethics package. And unlike the Liberals the NDP could make the seque to Aboriginal Self Government, while the Liberals are the party of the Department of Indian Affairs.

Finally with the climate change conference happening during the first weeks of the Election, the environment, Jacks personal peccadillo takes centre stage.

The NDP could not ask for a better time or a better election to actually make real gains in seats. Its there’s to lose. And they won’t if they make Health Care, Ethics, and the Environment their issues. Leaving the infighting to the other three.

Killer Klein

KLEIN VOWS TO IMPROVE SENIORS' CARE
Too little too Late Ralph.

Ralph's dad Phillip Klein used to be a pro-wrestler known in the ring as Killer Klein, now his son gets to use the monicker............The Klein Government not only squashes and ignores criticism, now it kills those who oppose it.

Alberta senior who staged protest dies
Canadian Press

May 17, 2005

CAMROSE, Alta. - An 86-year-old diabetic woman who staged a hunger strike to protest staff shortages in long-term care homes around Alberta died Monday morning, CBC-TV reported.

Back in April, Marie Geddes went 96 hours without food - just water and ginger ale - in support of staff at the Bethany Long Term Care Centre. Fatigue forced her to abandon her action.

She was admitted to hospital three times after her hunger strike. Officials said Monday they didn't believe the hunger strike was responsible for her death, but it may have contributed to her failing health.

"We have a beautiful facility, but there's nobody to work," Geddes said at the time of her protest. "It's terrible. And (Premier Ralph) Klein says this is good care?"

CARE HOMES FAILING RESIDENTS: AUDITOR
Last updated May 10 2005 07:56 AM MDT

CBC News
The Canadian Union of Public Employees, which represents practical care attendants and some licensed practical nurses, says none of the findings in the report are a surprise, but that Dunn left some concerns out.

D'Arcy Lanovaz says there are cases where one staff person is left to care for 25 patients overnight, and calls the situation unacceptable.

"What hasn't been highlighted is working alone. A number of the staff in these long-term care facilities work alone on the night shift and that wasn't highlighted in here and I was a little disappointed not to see something on that issue," Lanovaz said.

LETTER TO THE EDITORS OF ALBERTA NEWSPAPERS
May 12, 2005
AUDITOR GENERAL’S CRITICAL REPORT WELCOME
The Report of the Auditor General on Senior’s Care and Programs is a
compelling and frightening read and should help push a neglectful Alberta
government into meaningful action.
Although the report focuses on four caregiver groups providing nursing and
personal care in long-term care facilities, allied health professions which are
represented by the Health Sciences Association of Alberta are also involved in the
care of seniors.
We have known for some time that understaffing of physical therapists,
occupational therapists, recreational therapists, nutritionists, pharmacists,
pharmacy technicians, respiratory therapists and other allied health professions
has had an effect on the quality of life of Alberta seniors who are in long-term
care settings.
Thanks to opposition parties who have kept the heat on the government and
thanks to public health care and seniors advocacy organizations and passionate
individuals, the Ministers of Health and Wellness and Seniors and Community
Supports have promptly moved to accept every one of Auditor General Fred
Dunn’s recommendations.
Basically, the recommendations are about accountability. Without proper
standards and means to evaluate compliance and make it happen, things go off the
rails. It’s not a train wreck yet, but senior’s care in Alberta has come perilously
close.
Sincerely,
Elisabeth Ballermann
HSAA President
HSAA represents more than 13,000 professional, technical, and support workers in Alberta’s health care system.

And if the failure to provide for seniors in long term care isn't callous enough Alberta also has the most regressive policies for residental requirements for out of province seniors who move here. Ironically you only have to reside in Alberta for six months to be considered an "Albertan", but if you are a senior moving here for long term care you have to wait a year. Talk about ageism. But of course you can pay for privatized care....if you can afford it. Perhaps the PC policy is one of those immigration schemes to only bring millionares into the province, you know the folks that the Alberta Government really serves.

Seniors care system under fire for resident policy
Alberta's residency requirement for out-of-province seniors trying to get into long-term care facilities here is causing undue hardships to families, critics of the system charge.Seniors have to be living in the province for a year to be eligible for placement in a publicly funded long-term care centre in Alberta. There are private facilities which accept seniors in the interim but they can cost up to $5,000 a month.

And true to form the PC's attack the messanger, not the problem.

OBERG QUESTIONS LONG-TERM CARE REPORT, KLEIN DEFENDS IT
Last updated May 12 2005
CBC News

EDMONTON – Premier Ralph Klein backed the auditor general's critical report on the province's long-term care facilities Wednesday, distancing himself from comments made by one of his cabinet ministers.

Infrastructure Minister Lyle Oberg, who is also a doctor, called auditor Fred Dunn an accountant who wasn't qualified to evaluate the care provided by the facilities.

"It's very difficult for an accountant to go in and make a comment on patient care anecdotally," Oberg said.

Dunn's report, released earlier this week, found that one-third of facilities in the province fail to meet the basic standards of care, and that problems included providing medication to residents and applying and recording physical and chemical restraints.

His team used medical professionals to help them evaluate the facilities.

Oberg said Dunn was right to comment on documentation and procedures, but that he shouldn't have ventured into medical territory.

"The only point that I'm making, as a medical professional, is that the level of documentation does not always equate to the level of patient care," Oberg said.

Klein, who has said his government will act on Dunn's report, said the work is beyond reproach.

"I have no problem with him examining the so-called hot spots or areas of concerns, because that's what makes government whole and that's what makes us better, is to abide by his recommendations," Klein said. "So I discount what the minister said."

Klein said he will discuss with Oberg the critical comments made about Dunn.

Liberal Leader Kevin Taft says Dunn had a qualified team reviewing the long-term care facilities.

"They did a good and credible job and Fred Dunn deserves marks for that," Taft, who in the past has implied Dunn is too tied to the Conservative government, said. "I think Oberg is looking pretty defensive when he puts up those kinds of comments."

Lyle Oberg the PC's right wing cannus deus, shows that social conservatives in the Party of Calgary, don't care about the impact of their policies as long as the neo-liberal agenda is allowed to roll on.........and over the rest of us.

Oberg of course may be speaking out in order to position himself for his run for Ralph's job.

And he defends this governments lack of planning or responsibility for social services because as a right wing social conservative and Mormon he believes that the Church not the State should provide social services.

You know like they used to with workhouses, poorhouses and orphanages/residential schools. Those authoritarian institutions that abuse their victims.

Of course like daycare, which the right wing opposes on principle; the principle that says a womans place is in the home, elder care is seen as being the responsibility of the family.

The Klein government has abandoned the children and seniors in this province, those who built this province, and those who will inherit it.

This is the real face of social conservatism. A government whose purpose is not to regulate business, not to provide for its citizens, not to do anything except make the province open for business. And let the community and the churches take care of the rest.

Talk about Dickensian logic. But its alive and well here in Alberta.

Even Social Credit, in its right wing hey day realised that the role of the State was to protect and serve it's citizens. Such is not the case of the neo-liberal state of the social conservatives who make up the Party of Calgary.

But Oberg and the right wing social conservatives have little support even from the usual Right Wing Ralph boosters:

WEALTHY ALBERTA NEGLECTS THE ELDERLY
By PAUL STANWAY -- For the Edmonton Sun

Old folks' homes were not on the agenda at last week's glitzy medicare meeting in Calgary, which is a pity considering the dismal review of long-term care released by Alberta's auditor general.

Almost one-third of the homes reviewed by Fred Dunn and his troops either failed to meet basic standards of care or had serious shortcomings. In North America's wealthiest jurisdiction, apparently we don't look after our elderly very well at all.

"We found numerous examples of facilities not meeting the basic standards," reported the AG, "which could result in reduced levels of care and increased risk to residents."

What he's talking about are seniors being hauled out of bed at 3 a.m., the use of physical or chemical restraints without documentation or proper medical authorization, improper administration of drugs, staff shortages, and a widespread failure to give seniors regular medical checkups.

In a province that spends $9 billion a year on public health care, and which just announced new, high-end medical facilities in Edmonton and Calgary costing hundreds of millions, only seven of the 25 facilities reviewed actually passed muster.

"On the basis of what he has written, there isn't much that's good in some of these places," admitted a very glum Iris Evans, Alberta's health minister. Like many baby boomers, Evans is facing the prospect of her own mother entering long-term care, and according to one staffer she was "steaming mad" when she read Dunn's report.

Good. Somebody needs to get steaming mad.

In this centennial year we're already knee-deep in homilies about how much the present generation owes those who turned Alberta from a remote outpost of an empire into a thriving and prosperous society. But what are those sentiments worth if, as Dunn's report indicates, we conspire to send the old-timers off to bed by 7 p.m., suitably medicated and ignored? Where's the respect and thanks in that?

Dunn, who is polite to a fault, placed the responsibility for the dismal state of long-term care where it belongs: with the government. "I hope you won't take this as too blunt, but it is the ministries that are supposed to ensure that (regional health authorities) execute their responsibilities."

Don't apologize, Fred. Perhaps the most shocking thing about the AG's report is that few in government seem particularly surprised or upset by that stinging rebuke. Seniors' groups, opposition politicians and even government MLAs have been complaining for years about the shortcomings of long-term care, and MLAs discovered during the 2004 provincial vote that it was an issue on the doorstep.

A pair of concerned Albertans recently did their own review of 100 long-term care facilities and found similar problems. An 86-year-old Camrose woman went on hunger strike to protest conditions at her nursing home. And we had the sad case of an elderly Edmontonian who died because no one checked the scalding temperature of her bath water.

Dunn discovered that some nursing homes spend as much as $10,000 per resident more than others, which seems decidedly fishy. Although it would not be surprising to find that, as in all walks of life, some people involved in long-term care are more concerned and efficient than others.

But it would be too easy to bash the operators and staff as the lone culprits here. In fact, the Alberta Long-Term Care Association, the nursing home lobby group, has been campaigning for more funding and improved regulation.

Last year being an election year, the association optimistically argued that the Klein government ought to boost long-term-care spending by $85 million, to bring staffing up to par and meet basic standards. They got $15 million - for Canada's wealthiest government, that's the equivalent of the finger.

Alberta's seniors deserve better, from nursing home operators and from their government. Yet in the Legislature yesterday, Ralph offered only a lacklustre defence of the system. "We're working on it," he said of the shortcomings identified by the AG. That seems to be the motto of this government as it dithers into a fourth mandate.

Liberal Leader Kevin Taft served on the old Hospital Visitors Committee for almost a decade and sees a good public monitoring system gone bad through politics and incompetence. "It's shameful." And that's putting it mildly.
Next Column: What happened to us?

Full Medicare Privatization

Unlike proposals from B.C. and Quebec to increase access to privatized health services as an alternative to medicare, King Ralphs proposed Third Way is full blown privatization of Medicare.

The aim, the paper says, is to "let individuals pay privately for faster access."

So why is the Federal Minister of Health dithering over this direct challenge to the Canada Health Act, because he is a Tory of course.

Alberta sent copies of its proposal to Mr. Harper and federal Health Minister Tony Clement yesterday morning

Mr. Clement told reporters in Ottawa that any changes to the health-care system must be done within the confines of the Canada Health Act, but refused to say whether he believes Alberta's proposal meets that test.

When asked whether patients should be allowed to pay to get treatment faster than the public system can offer, Mr. Clement said, "I think the Canada Health Act is clear on that question," but he did not elaborate.

Since the Alberta plan touted by King Ralph is Not American style health care it is modeled on Englands privatized National Health Service lets look at how successful that has been.NHS told: put money before medicine

Need I point out that the government does not have to insure that the rich can cue skip to get medical services, they already do. The point here is that Klein wants to offer those services in Alberta so the rich don't have to go to the Mayo clinic. Convinence and service, for those poor rich folks, of course the logic of this is that not having the rich waiting for hip or knee replacements will shorten the waiting period for those poor folks who can't afford to go south of the border for services. But wait a minute if the rich are already going south, they aren't onthose waiting lists anyways. Which sort of defeats Tony Clements soft shoe shuffle saying that he will consider the Klein plan in light of increasing access and decreasing wait times. Alberta's 'Third Way' could mean health-care showdown with Ottawa

Cy Frank, the Calgary doctor who spearheaded a pilot project that resulted in a dramatic drop in waiting times for hip and knee replacement, said nobody in the government had consulted him or his peers about allowing patients to pay for certain orthopedic services.

"We're not aware of any such plan, but I know they've been musing about that," said Dr. Frank, who is director of Alberta's new Bone and Joint Institute.

Launched last April, the pilot project has seen waiting times for hip and knee replacements slashed. Patients are on the operating table 11 weeks after the first referral to an orthopedic surgeon rather than the usual 19½ months.

But Colleen Flood, a health law expert at the University of Toronto, said research has shown that waiting times in the public system have actually increased in countries such as New Zealand, Ireland and Spain that have allowed doctors to work in both the public and private systems.

"Many countries that allow a private tier have a raft of complicated legislation to try to suppress its ability to flourish," she said.

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How Canadians Are Losing Medicare

Dr. Susan Rosenthal describes the rise of Canada’s public health system during labor’s rebellious postwar period and the corporate profiteering by which it is now being destroyed.

By Susan Rosenthal

March 17, 2023

Source: Consortium News


Ontario’s Bill 60 has delivered a potential death blow to public Medicare. If it becomes law, the provincial medical system will no longer operate as a public service but as a profit-taking business managed by the private sector.

While defenders of public Medicare blame Conservative Premier Doug Ford, British Columbia, Quebec and Saskatchewan are going down the same road.

If we hope to reverse this disaster, we need to know how Canadians won Medicare in the first place, and why they are losing it.

World War II saw a global upsurge of labor protest. Union membership more than doubled in Canada, and the number of strikes tripled. During the early 1940s, one-third of all workers in Canada were on strike. To calm the rise in worker rebellion, governments agreed to fund social programs like Medicare.

At the time, Canada had virtually no public medical system. Doctors charged whatever they pleased and bankruptcy from high medical bills was common.

The Canadian Labour Congress pushed for a comprehensive public medical system available to all. The corporate class pushed back, opposing any government control over medicine. Insurance companies feared losing business. Drug companies feared losing profits. And doctors were horrified at the thought of losing their elite status as independent entrepreneurs.

On July 1, 1962, Saskatchewan launched North America’s first government insurance plan to cover hospital care and doctor visits. That same day, 90 percent of Saskatchewan’s doctors went on strike. The doctors’ strike was deeply unpopular and collapsed after 23 days.

The 1964 federal Royal Commission on Health Services suggested a class compromise. For the working class, it recommended government-funded medical insurance. For the business class, it recommended the right to deliver medical services “free of government control or domination.”

Class Compromise


The Saskatchewan Legislative Building. (Stonedan, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)

The business class and the working class have opposite interests. For the working-class, medical care is a human right and a vital necessity. For the business class, healthy profits take priority. This class conflict shapes the quality and accessibility of public programs.

Workers in Canada were strong enough to win public funding for medical care, but not strong enough to kick out the profiteers and win the fully public system they wanted.

The federal Medical Care Act of 1966 was based on class compromise. It established government funding for hospital care and doctors’ visits, while excluding essential medical services such as dentistry, eye care, home care, long-term care and prescriptions. These exclusions enabled insurance companies to continue selling policies to cover such services. (The insurance industry is exempt from human-rights legislation and can legally deny coverage on the basis of a person’s age, past medical history and current state of health.)

Another class compromise was to maintain private-sector control over out-patient care. Doctors were allowed to remain independent contractors charging for each service they provide.

From the start, Canadian Medicare was designed as a two-tier system that gave the private sector room to grow. And grow it did.

Funding Cuts

When Medicare began, Ottawa agreed to pay half the cost of all medical services performed in hospital. This did not last.

In response to the 1970s’ global recession, governments boosted profits by cutting corporate taxes.

Canadian corporations contributed more than half of all tax revenue in the 1950s. Today, they contribute around 12 percent. To offset the loss of corporate revenue, governments cut spending on public programs.

“From the start, Canadian Medicare was designed as a two-tier system that gave the private sector room to grow. And grow it did.”

In 1977, the Trudeau Liberals reduced the federal share of medical funding from 50 percent to 20 percent, forcing the provinces to also reduce their spending. The federal share has varied since then, and currently stands at 22 percent. Less funding for public Medicare enabled private corporations to step in to fill the need.

The 1984 Canada Health Act reassured nervous Canadians that Medicare was safe. Behind the scenes, politicians continued to advance the privatization agenda.

The Drive to Privatize

Business and government view public-sector spending as a drain on the economy. While public facilities can deliver social services more effectively, this costs money. The same services delivered for profit in the private sector make money, and that is seen as a benefit for the economy.

In Caring for Profit (1998), Colleen Fuller documents how plans to open Medicare to the private sector date back to the 1990s’ push to integrate the world economy (“globalization”).

Corporations need a profitable home base on which to grow into global players. Governments provide that base by, among other measures, opening public services to the private sector.

A 1994 Report to the Ontario Ministry of Health advised expanding the domestic for-profit medical industry to help it compete in the global market. The federal government was on the same track. As a 1997 Report for Industry Canada stated, promoting Canadian companies as global health-keepers is the main objective driving the strategies and plans of the government for the medical devices, pharmaceutical and health-services sector.

The Canada Health Act compels government to pay for all medical services provided in hospital. It does not prevent those services from being removed from hospital and handed to the private sector.

Every medical service that can be removed from hospital has been removed or soon will be. The only services left in the public sector will be those too unprofitable to privatize.

Loblaw Companies Ltd. is Canada’s largest food and drug retailer, with more than 2,400 retail outlets across Canada, including its Shoppers Drug Mart subsidiary. Ninety percent of Canadians live within 10 km of one of those outlets, enabling Loblaw to position itself as a major private provider of medical services.

In 2006, Loblaw purchased MediSystem Pharmacy. In 2020, it launched the PC Health app that offers live chats with registered nurses and dietitians. In 2021, it purchased a top chain of physiotherapy clinics. New grocery and pharmacy locations will include clinic spaces and older locations are being retrofitted to offer medical services.

Hospitals themselves are being privatized through Public Private Partnerships (P3s). A P3 hospital is built with public funds and managed by a private corporation. There are more than 50 P3 hospitals across Canada, and the Canadian Council for Public-Private Partnership is pushing for more P3s in medicine, education, transportation and public utilities.

P3s are a prime investment for the private sector. Governments put up the money and take all the risk, while corporations take all the profit. It’s a familiar story: we pay and they profit.

Working Conditions

Doug Ford campaigning in Sudbury during the 2018 Ontario general election. (CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)

Whenever the private sector take over a public program, we see a consistent pattern of higher cost, lower quality service and deteriorating working conditions. A 2021 report comparing public and private sector workers in Ontario found,Workers in the government sector (federal, provincial, and local) earn 11 percent higher wages on average than their private-sector counterparts.
84 percent of government workers are covered by a registered pension plan, compared to just 25 percent of private-sector workers.
Government workers retire about 2.5 years earlier.
Private sector workers are more than four times more likely to lose their jobs.

Schedule 2 of Bill 60 allows government to reduce spending in the public sector by creating new categories of lesser-skilled, lower-waged medical workers to perform duties currently performed by registered doctors, nurses and medical technicians.

Poor quality working conditions result in poor quality service.

“Governments put up the money and take all the risk, while corporations take all the profit. It’s a familiar story: we pay and they profit.”

For-profit facilities invest the minimum in patient care so they can maximize dividends to shareholders. That is why the Covid death rate in Ontario’s for-profit nursing homes was four times higher than it was in public municipal nursing homes. Yet these same for-profit corporations, who are responsible for the deaths of 4,000 Ontario residents, were granted 30-year licenses and permission to add 18,000 more long-term-care beds.

Burden the Family

Social services distribute the cost of caring across society. Loss of public support for medical care, childcare, home care, disability support and long-term care shifts the burden of care onto unpaid family care-givers, who are mostly women.

Employers generally pay women less because of their family and care-giving responsibilities. When public care is not available, the person with the lowest wage typically stays home to provide it. The result is a vicious circle that traps women in lower-waged jobs and also in the unpaid work of domestic care-giving.

Globally, it would cost $11 trillion annually to provide the socially necessary care that women provide for free in the home. That’s more than triple the size of the world tech industry. The system saves a ton of money, while 42 percent of all women cannot get waged work because of care-giving responsibilities.

British Columbia Family Day 2016.

 (Province of British Columbia/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

The increasing loss of public programs is increasing the need for home-care and for women to be home to provide it. Restricting or eliminating access to abortion is one way to do this.

Women rely on abortion care so they can stay in waged work, support their families and leave violent partners. Loss of access to abortion is driving vulnerable women out of waged work and trapping them in the family.

Growing economic reliance on the family is also driving horrific attacks against trans people, gender rebels, drag artists, cross-dressers — any behavior that challenges traditional family and gender roles.

Damage Control, Not Health Care

It used to be that women could get secure, well-paid, union jobs in the medical industry. No longer. In the 1990s, Ontario adopted a cost-saving, “just-in-time” staffing system pioneered by the auto industry.

In Saskatchewan, hospital managers followed nurses around with stopwatches to track and time every movement, from turning around (one second) to checking supply rooms (three seconds).

“The loss of public programs is increasing the need for home-care and for women to be home to provide it. Restricting or eliminating access to abortion is one way to do this.”

Just-in-time staffing relies more on casual workers than on permanent full-time staff. The result is rising costs, more overtime, more stress-related leave and thousands of nurses leaving hospital work.

Just-in-time staffing crippled the ability of hospitals to respond to the 2003 SARS outbreak and the Covid pandemic. Nevertheless, it is still in use, while governments demand even more cost-cutting measures.

Treating staff as replaceable widgets is stirring systemic violence. So is making people wait too long for the care they need, when they get it at all. No wonder patients lash out in desperation.

Hospitals have become dangerous workplaces where staff suffer beatings, sexual assault and racist attacks every day. In British Columbia, incidents of physical violence directed against medical staff more than tripled between 2015 and 2022.

Medical workers are seven times more likely than manufacturing workers and 45 times more likely than construction workers to be injured from violence on the job. Instead of making work safe, managers post signs warning, “abuse towards staff will not be tolerated.”

When cost-cutting results in fatal medical errors, hospitals are never held responsible for creating conditions that raise the risk of such errors. Instead, individual medical workers are blamed and criminally prosecuted.

A system that violates the health of its workers and those they serve should not be called a “health-care” system. It is a system of damage-control. Employers are free to sicken, injure, and kill workers, and the medical system manages the resulting damage.

Backlog

In The Shock Doctrine, the Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2007), Naomi Klein explained how the business class exploit social crises for profit.

While populations are reeling and disoriented, their economies are pillaged in a capitalist feeding frenzy. Public wealth is handed to the private sector and private debt is transferred to the public sector. A few become fabulously wealthy, and the majority are impoverished. By the time the population recovers, the economy has been looted and the theft sanctioned by law.

When the Covid pandemic overwhelmed public hospitals, governments promised to “build back better.” They did not mean better for the majority; they meant better for the profiteers.

The Ontario government insists that the pandemic-related backlog of more than 200,000 surgeries can be cleared only by doing them in private medical clinics. To promote this transition, the province under-spent its budget on public Medicare and overspent its budget on private clinics.

The public medical system could easily clear the surgical backlog if it had enough staff. In 2022, 158 emergency rooms in Ontario had to close for lack of staff, and hospital operating rooms remain underused for the same reason.

On a per-capita basis, Ontario has the lowest hospital funding, the fewest hospital beds, and the fewest nurses in the country. Fifteen thousand registered nurses and registered practical nurses have left Ontario because of low wages and abysmal working conditions, including the outrageous demand to work while sick during the pandemic.

The province insists that moving hospital surgeries to private clinics will reduce patient wait times. It will do the opposite.

No one can work in two places at the same time. Pulling medical staff away from public hospitals to work in private clinics will decimate the public system. Any reduction in wait times in the private sector will be offset by even longer wait times in the public sector.

To maximize profits, private clinics will do simple surgeries such as cataracts and hip-and-knee replacements, leaving more difficult, complex surgeries in the public system. When clinic surgeries become complicated, patients will be off-loaded to the public system, along with the cost of treating their complications (assuming patients survive the transfer).

The loss of simple surgeries will devastate small and rural hospitals. Complex surgeries were moved to larger centers some time ago. Without income from simple surgeries, smaller hospitals will have to close, reducing access in already under-served areas.

Private surgical clinics will not produce more family doctors. Last year, more than 2 million Ontarians did not have a family physician, 24 percent more than two years ago. The shortage of family doctors across Canada is predicted to more than double over the next seven years. Overwhelmed with patients, some Ontario doctors are offering rapid access to a nurse practitioner, for $30 a month.

The province says patients will not have to pay out-of-pocket in private facilities, but they will.

The Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP) pays only a base rate. To meet shareholder demands for maximum profit, the province allows private clinics to “upsell” by charging patients a fee for premium or upgraded services. While politicians call this “patient choice,” those who cannot pay will have no choice. Those who can pay will be milked.

The push for maximum profit inevitably leads to fraudulent billing. As the Office of the Auditor General warned, the ministry has no oversight mechanism to prevent patients from being misinformed and being charged inappropriately for publicly funded surgeries.

Finally, the Canada Health Act does not compel government to pay for out-of-hospital care, so public funding will be reduced to the absolute minimum, returning us to pre-Medicare conditions.

Which Way Forward?

Downtown Ottawa, 2012. (Tullia, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)

How can we stop the profiteers, revitalize public programs and improve working conditions in the public sector?

The Ontario Health Coalition (OHC) is a prominent research and advocacy organization that opposes profit-taking in medicine, lobbies for public Medicare and is mobilizing public opposition to Bill 60.

In 2016, the OHC launched a referendum campaign at 1,000 polling stations in 40 communities across the province. Almost 94,000 people voted, with 99.6 percent demanding that government stop cutting hospital funding and services.

The OHC is launching another referendum campaign to send the government an even stronger message to reject privatization and invest in the public system. Why would this referendum be more effective than the previous one?

Politicians already know that the majority want fully funded public services. A 2022 poll revealed that 92 percent of Canadians oppose funding cuts to healthcare, education, and other social programs, and 88 percent favour a wealth tax to fund these programs.

Public mobilization campaigns are based on the assumption that politicians will respond if enough people pressure them to do so. When such campaigns fail, blame is directed at a presumably uncaring or apathetic public, as recently expressed by one OHC representative.

There may not be a great impact as a result of the referendum, but it will inform Canadians who think they’ve got public health care. That Canadians are just unaware, completely zombie-like in their perspective is a grave misunderstanding. After decades of setbacks and defeats, most people feel powerless to improve things at work or in society. Their lives are getting harder, and they see no way forward.

Politicians lie (the Ontario premier campaigned on a promise not to privatize Medicare). Unions have failed to deliver real on-the-job improvements. And past public campaigns have proved ineffective. Discouraged people need a real win, not more campaigns that raise their hopes and deliver defeat.

No Democracy

Democracy literally means rule of the people. If Canadians lived in a democracy, they would have a fully public medical system, because the majority want it. The fact that they do not have such a system proves they do not live in a democracy.

There is no democracy in the economy. The majority get no say over what is produced, how it is produced, and for whom. The result is toxic pollution, deforestation, species extinction and global warming.

There is no democracy in foreign policy. Canadians did not vote to send troops to Haiti to put down a popular rebellion (again). They did not vote for Canada to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia or build military bases around the world. And they certainly did not vote for World War III.

There is no democracy at work. Workers have no say over what they do or how they do it, even though they know best what needs to be done and how to do it well and safely.

There is no democracy when it comes to spending the social surplus. Canadians do not get to vote on whether to invest in war or in the environment, in police or social supports, or in private or public services.

In a democracy, the business class would be forced to share their profits, which have never been higher.

In 2022, the Shell oil company posted a record profit of $40 billion, more than double what it raked in the previous year. Chevron reported a similar record-breaking profit. You could make $53,000 every single day for over 2,000 years and still not have that much. Nevertheless, every year, Canada gives $4.8 billion in subsidies to the fossil-fuel industry.

Shell station in Canada. (Raysonho, CC0, Wikimedia Commons)

Capitalism is the enemy of democracy. Any form of collectivism (prioritizing public need) is considered a threat to private enterprise, because it is. Premier Doug Ford calls government-funded or socialized Medicare “communism” and privatized medicine “freedom” — freedom for the few to profit at the expense of the many,

Capitalist Dictatorship

Modern technology could enable everyone to vote on every issue that affects their lives and society. However, capitalism is based on depriving the majority of what they need, and who would vote for that? To maintain capitalist rule, people are not allowed to vote on anything that might disrupt the flow of profit.

The entire social system is structured to transfer wealth from the working class to the business class. Every human activity is treated as an opportunity for profit-taking.

“We live in an anti-democratic, authoritarian, capitalist dictatorship. The entire social system is structured to transfer wealth from the working class to the business class.”

The dismantling of Medicare can only be understood in this context. Capitalism is based on the conversion of common property into private property. From the 18th century enclosure of common lands, to the current privatization of public services, capitalists strive to transform what belongs to all into what belongs exclusively to them. Their wealth is built on deprivation and their power on subjugation. Their greatest fear is a working-class rebellion that could end their rule.

Class Power

The quality of public programs does not depend on what the majority want or who they vote for but on the balance of class forces, that is, on which class is using its power to make the other back down.

Decision-makers respond to majority demands only when their power is threatened. When workers exercise power on the job, when they make the bosses back down, politicians get scared and deliver pro-worker reforms in hopes of buying labor ‘peace.’

Canada’s first Royal Commission to study government-funded health insurance was launched in 1919, the year of the Winnipeg General Strike.

Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) was established in 1948 to calm a post-war workers’ rebellion. As a Conservative member of the British Parliament warned, “If you don’t give the people reform, they will give you revolution.”

Canada’s Medicare system was consolidated in the context of rising workers’ struggles that peaked in the Quebec General Strike of 1972.

Picket line during the 1972 Québec general strike.

 (Michel Giroux, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)

Since the mid 1970s, the working class have suffered decades of setbacks and defeats, losing much of what they won in the past, including solid union jobs, the 40-hour week, and robust public services.

The more workers retreat, the more the business class push their agenda, regardless of which political party is in office. The process of dismantling Medicare began in the 1970s and has continued under every form of government: Liberal, Conservative, and NDP (social democratic).

Experience shows that the problems created by capitalism cannot be solved by electing different politicians or parties to office. No matter who is in charge, a social system that is structured to exploit humanity and nature for profit cannot be made to do the opposite — promote the well-being of people and the planet.

Social systems are structured to achieve specific goals. The goal of capitalism is capital accumulation, which it does extremely well. The call to prioritize human need is a call to change the goal of society. This is no easy task. A different social goal requires a fundamentally different social system, one that only the international working-class can construct.

All Strikes are Political

All strikes are political battles over what matters more, human need or corporate greed.

Strikes are not merely means by which workers achieve gains in the workplace. Rather, they are moments in the process by which workers constitute themselves as a class — building solidarity, raising class consciousness, creating their own norms and institutions and discovering their own forms of class power. (Class Struggle Unionism, p.59)

When factory workers reject forced overtime, when education workers demand smaller classes, when nurses demand staff-to-patient ratios and when anyone demands higher wages, they are challenging the primacy of profit, the foundation of capitalism.

The outcome of these battles depends on which class uses their power to make the other back down.

The power of the capitalist class lies in their control over social institutions including the legal system, the courts, the police, and the media. However, the power of the working class is greater.

Workers are the vast majority, and nothing moves without their effort. Stopping work stops the flow of profit. When workers stand together, they can defeat the bosses and make governments change course. To keep workers down, the ruling class must block effective strikes.

Governments justify anti-strike legislation by insisting that strikes are not in the public interest. The opposite is true. Business-as-usual is not in the public interest. Successful strikes raise living standards, which is very much in the public interest.

Playing by the enemy’s rules is a sure way to lose a battle. To strike effectively, workers must be willing to violate restrictive labor laws and make them unenforceable.

After launching a solid, 17-day, illegal strike, Canadian postal workers won the legal right to strike in 1965.

That same year, Ontario hospital workers were denied the legal right to strike in order to hold down the wages of a predominately female, immigrant and under-paid workforce. (This same strategy is still used against public-sector workers.)

“Playing by the enemy’s rules is a sure way to lose a battle. To strike effectively, workers must be willing to violate restrictive labor laws and make them unenforceable.”

In 1981, 13,000 hospital workers across Ontario launched an illegal strike to protest wage cuts and degraded working conditions. They held out for nine days against hospital management, the provincial government, the courts, the police, and the media.

Initially, union officials for the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) opposed the strike. When workers struck anyway, union officials issued a statement of support, but failed to mobilize other CUPE locals to build the strike. Isolated, the strike crumbled in defeat.

Weak Unions

University of Toronto, 2015. (OFL Communications Department/Flickr, CC BY 2.0)

Why do union officials collapse strikes, as CUPE did recently with the education workers, instead of broadening them? Why did the Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL) surrender to wage-busting Bill 124 instead of mounting a mass public-sector strike to force the province to back down?

While union officials vigorously object to the loss of public services, they refuse to organize the class power of workers to make governments reverse course.

Union officials are committed to bargaining with the business class, not challenging their rule. To protect their relationship with the employer, union officials hold workers back, mounting ineffective strikes that typically end in defeat.

Unwilling to do what it takes to deliver real on-the-job improvements, union officials launch toothless public-mobilization campaigns. Instead of leading class rebellions, they pin their hopes on electing a labor-friendly government that will pass pro-labor laws, meaning, make capitalism work in their favor.

These are safe strategies for union officials. Lobbying campaigns make it appear that they are fighting for workers’ rights, without challenging the social order that violates those rights.

For workers, this has been a losing strategy. The social order must be challenged in order to win meaningful reforms.

Centering Work

Pandemic Physician: one of the doctors in Toronto who joined a protest at the conditions of homeless shelters during the Covid pandemic, April 15, 2022. (michael_swan/Flickr/CC BY-ND 2.0)

Public-pressure campaigns appeal to all social classes to exert moral pressure on authorities to do the right thing. Such mobilizations can be powerful when linked with workplace battles. In the absence of workplace action, they can only threaten to vote for different politicians or parties. An electoral focus limits what can be achieved to what capitalism allows.

Public Medicare could be rebuilt if hospital workers won good contracts that a) pull money back into the public system and b) improve working conditions to attract and keep qualified staff. They cannot do this on their own, nor should they have to.

The labor movement is based on the principle that an injury to one is an injury to all. When any group of workers is attacked, all are at risk. When any group of workers win, it is easier for the next group to win. Workers have tremendous power when they stand together. Fighting separately is a recipe for defeat.

“Workers have tremendous power when they stand together. Fighting separately is a recipe for defeat.”

To build a fighting labor movement that can win real improvements, workers must be willing to challenge the existing order, including defying anti-worker laws. They must be willing to fight together, as a class. That means all-out support for every strike.

All-out support means public-sector workers striking together: medical, education, library, clerical, postal workers, all together. They all have the same employer – the government!

All-out support means public and private sector workers supporting each others’ strikes, not merely in words, but by swelling picket lines and mounting solidarity strikes. A strike that gains momentum day-after-day is the bosses’ worst nightmare. They will concede whatever they must to prevent a workers’ rebellion from growing beyond their control.

Who Can We Count On?

Covid exposed capitalist priorities for all to see. We saw corporations profit from the pandemic while doing nothing to protect their workers. We saw politicians accept millions of Covid deaths instead of legislating paid sick leave and making schools safe. In contrast, we saw ordinary working people risk their lives and those of their loved ones to serve the public.

Who can we count on to protect our public services? Corporations are not required to protect the public interest. Their only legal obligation is to deliver profits to shareholders.

Politicians will not protect the public when doing so means angering the business class and losing corporate donations.

The only people we can really count on are those who work in public services, because their job conditions directly affect the quality of our services.

Who would you rather manage a hospital? Executives and bureaucrats obsessed with the bottom line? Or medical and support staff who actually do the work? I will take my chance with workers in charge, any day.

It is useless to blame the loss of public Medicare on any particular politician or political party. All over the world, people are facing the same problem — a global capitalist system that values profit over human lives. The profiteers are taking everything away from us, and they will not stop until there is literally nothing left.

Last month, a million people marched in Madrid to protest the dismantling of their public medical system. Tens of thousands of nurses in the U.K. went on strike because they know that quality care cannot be delivered without quality working conditions. And in 2021, half of all strikes in the United States were strikes of medical staff.

Power on the job means power in society. A strong labor movement can win strong public programs. The loss of public programs signals a weak labor movement.

Class struggle won public services like Medicare, and class struggle is the only way to win them back. To succeed, workers must not allow the class enemy to dictate what is and is not acceptable. They must exercise their right to fight effectively, and not back down until they win.

THIRD WORLD U$A

Emergency rooms refused to treat pregnant women, leaving one to miscarry in a lobby restroom

Sacred Heart Emergency Center is pictured Friday, March 29, 2024, in Houston. At Sacred Heart Emergency Center in Houston, front desk staff refused to check-in one woman after her husband asked for help delivering her baby. She miscarried in a restroom toilet in the emergency room lobby while her husband called 911 for help. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

BY ASSOCIATED PRESS NATIONWIDE
APR. 19, 2024

WASHINGTON (AP) — One woman miscarried in the restroom lobby of a Texas emergency room as front desk staff refused to admit her. Another woman learned that her fetus had no heartbeat at a Florida hospital, the day after a security guard turned her away from the facility. And in North Carolina, a woman gave birth in a car after an emergency room couldn’t offer an ultrasound. The baby later died.

What You Need To Know

Complaints that pregnant women were turned away from U.S. emergency rooms spiked in 2022 after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, federal documents obtained by The Associated Press reveal

The cases raise alarms about the state of emergency pregnancy care in the U.S., especially in states that enacted strict abortion laws and sparked confusion around the treatment doctors can provide

Federal law requires emergency rooms to treat or stabilize patients who are in active labor and provide a medical transfer to another hospital if they don’t have the staff or resources to treat them. Medical facilities must comply with the law if they accept Medicare funding

The Supreme Court will hear arguments Wednesday that could weaken those protections. The Biden administration has sued Idaho over its abortion ban, even in medical emergencies, arguing it conflicts with the federal law

Complaints that pregnant women were turned away from U.S. emergency rooms spiked in 2022 after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, federal documents obtained by The Associated Press reveal.

The cases raise alarms about the state of emergency pregnancy care in the U.S., especially in states that enacted strict abortion laws and sparked confusion around the treatment doctors can provide.

“It is shocking, it’s absolutely shocking,” said Amelia Huntsberger, an OB/GYN in Oregon. “It is appalling that someone would show up to an emergency room and not receive care — this is inconceivable.”

It’s happened despite federal mandates that the women be treated.

Federal law requires emergency rooms to treat or stabilize patients who are in active labor and provide a medical transfer to another hospital if they don’t have the staff or resources to treat them. Medical facilities must comply with the law if they accept Medicare funding.

The Supreme Court will hear arguments Wednesday that could weaken those protections. The Biden administration has sued Idaho over its abortion ban, even in medical emergencies, arguing it conflicts with the federal law.

“No woman should be denied the care she needs,” Jennifer Klein, director of the White House Gender Policy Council, said in a statement. “All patients, including women who are experiencing pregnancy-related emergencies, should have access to emergency medical care required under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act.”
Pregnancy care after Roe

Pregnant patients have “become radioactive to emergency departments” in states with extreme abortion restrictions, said Sara Rosenbaum, a George Washington University health law and policy professor.

“They are so scared of a pregnant patient that the emergency medicine staff won’t even look. They just want these people gone,” Rosenbaum said.

Consider what happened to a woman who was nine months pregnant and having contractions when she arrived at the Falls Community Hospital in Marlin, Texas, in July 2022, a week after the Supreme Court’s ruling on abortion. The doctor on duty refused to see her.

“The physician came to the triage desk and told the patient that we did not have obstetric services or capabilities,” hospital staff told federal investigators during interviews, according to documents. “The nursing staff informed the physician that we could test her for the presence of amniotic fluid. However, the physician adamantly recommended the patient drive to a Waco hospital.”

Investigators with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services concluded Falls Community Hospital broke the law.

Reached by phone, an administrator at the hospital declined to comment on the incident.

The investigation was one of dozens the AP obtained from a Freedom of Information Act request filed in February 2023 that sought all pregnancy-related EMTALA complaints the previous year. One year after submitting the request, the federal government agreed to release only some complaints and investigative documents filed across just 19 states. The names of patients, doctors and medical staff were redacted from the documents.

Federal investigators looked into just over a dozen pregnancy-related complaints in those states during the months leading up to the U.S. Supreme Court’s pivotal ruling on abortion in 2022. But more than two dozen complaints about emergency pregnancy care were lodged in the months after the decision was unveiled. It is not known how many complaints were filed last year, as the records request only asked for 2022 complaints and the information is not publicly available otherwise.

The documents did not detail what happened to the patient turned away from the Falls Community Hospital.

‘She's bleeding a lot'

Other pregnancies ended in catastrophe, the documents show.

At Sacred Heart Emergency Center in Houston, front desk staff refused to check in one woman after her husband asked for help delivering her baby that September. She miscarried in a restroom toilet in the emergency room lobby while her husband called 911 for help.

“She is bleeding a lot and had a miscarriage,” the husband told first responders in his call, which was transcribed from Spanish in federal documents. “I’m here at the hospital, but they told us they can’t help us because we are not their client.”

Emergency crews, who arrived 20 minutes later and transferred the woman to a hospital, appeared confused over the staff’s refusal to help the woman, according to 911 call transcripts.

One first responder told federal investigators that when a Sacred Heart Emergency Center staffer was asked about the gestational age of the fetus, the staffer replied: “No, we can’t tell you, she is not our patient. That’s why you are here.”

A manager for Sacred Heart Emergency Center declined to comment. The facility is licensed in Texas as a freestanding emergency room, which means it is not physically connected to a hospital. State law requires those facilities to treat or stabilize patients, a spokeswoman for the Texas Health and Human Services agency said in an email to AP.

Sacred Heart Emergency’s website says that it no longer accepts Medicare, a change that was made sometime after the woman miscarried, according to publicly available archives of the center’s website.

Meanwhile, the staff at Person Memorial Hospital in Roxboro, North Carolina, told a pregnant woman, who was complaining of stomach pain, that they would not be able to provide her with an ultrasound. The staff failed to tell her how risky it could be for her to depart without being stabilized, according to federal investigators. While en route to another hospital 45 minutes away, the woman gave birth in a car to a baby who did not survive.

Person Memorial Hospital self-reported the incident. A spokeswoman said the hospital continues to “provide ongoing education for our staff and providers to ensure compliance.”

In Melbourne, Florida, a security guard at Holmes Regional Medical Center refused to let a pregnant woman into the triage area because she had brought a child with her. When the patient came back the next day, medical staff were unable to locate a fetal heartbeat. The center declined to comment on the case.
What's the penalty?

Emergency rooms are subject to hefty fines when they turn away patients, fail to stabilize them or transfer them to another hospital for treatment. Violations can also put hospitals’ Medicare funding at risk.

But it’s unclear what fines might be imposed on more than a dozen hospitals that the Biden administration says failed to properly treat pregnant patients in 2022.

It can take years for fines to be levied in these cases. The Health and Human Services agency, which enforces the law, declined to share if the hospitals have been referred to the agency’s Office of Inspector General for penalties.

For Huntsberger, the OB-GYN, EMTALA was one of the few ways she felt protected to treat pregnant patients in Idaho, despite the state’s abortion ban. She left Idaho last year to practice in Oregon because of the ban.

The threat of fines or loss of Medicare funding for violating EMTALA is a big deterrent that keeps hospitals from dumping patients, she said. Many couldn’t keep their doors open if they lost Medicare funding.

She has been waiting to see how HHS penalizes two hospitals in Missouri and Kansas that HHS announced last year it was investigating after a pregnant woman, who was in preterm labor at 17 weeks, was denied an abortion.

“A lot of these situations are not reported, but even the ones that are — like the cases out of the Midwest — they’re investigated but nothing really comes of it,” Huntsberger said. “People are just going to keep providing substandard care or not providing care. The only way that changes is things like this.”
Next up for EMTALA

President Joe Biden and top U.S. health official Xavier Becerra have both publicly vowed vigilance in enforcing the law.

Even as states have enacted strict abortion laws, the White House has argued that if hospitals receive Medicare funds, they must provide stabilizing care, including abortions.

In a statement to the AP, Becerra called it the “nation’s bedrock law protecting Americans’ right to life- and health-saving emergency medical care.”

“And doctors, not politicians, should determine what constitutes emergency care,” he added.

Idaho’s law does not allow abortions if a mother’s health is at risk. But the state’s attorney general has argued that its abortion ban is “consistent” with federal law, which calls for emergency rooms to protect an unborn child in medical emergencies.

“The Biden administration has no business rewriting federal law to override Idaho’s law and force doctors to perform abortions,” Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador said in a statement earlier this year.

Now, the Supreme Court will weigh in. The case could have implications in other states like Arizona, which is reinstating an 1864 law that bans all abortions, with an exception only if the mother’s life is at risk.

EMTALA was initially introduced decades ago because private hospitals would dump patients on county or state hospitals, often because they didn’t have insurance, said Alexa Kolbi-Molinas of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Some hospitals also refused to see pregnant women when they did not have an established relationship with physicians on staff. If the court nullifies or weakens those protections, it could result in more hospitals turning away patients without fear of penalty from the federal government, she said.

“The government knows there’s a problem and is investigating and is doing something about that,” Kolbi-Molinas said. “Without EMTALA, they wouldn’t be able to do that.”

Consultation Alberta Style

Ralph Klein promised consultation with the Volk of Alberta over his "discussion paper" on Third Way Health Care reform. When challenged by the Liberals to speak to Albertans at open forums they are sponsoring or in a televised debate, he balked and said the only discussion will be in the Legislature. Then he traveled to B.C. to discuss his ideas at a closed meeting where tickets sold for $100 per and $500 if you wanted to sit with Ralph.

The public is so worn down by years of Klein's threats on health reform, people hardly know where to turn. The democratic ethos is so eroded in this province with so few people prepared to contradict the premier, it's questionable whether a real debate is possible. An arrogant Klein said a few days ago he'll just make the legislature sit until he gets his way.Doctors' conditional support for Klein's third way a great letdown

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Klein, Alberta, healthcare, medicare, Third, Way, Premier,

Whew that was close

It seems all the worry about the Harpers asthma attack was for not.

Harper illness prompts false asthma report, raises issue of political privacy

He hasn't had asthma since he was a kid. Whew. Had me worried there.

But he did check into a local hospital emergency ward for antibiotics, he had a chest cold and didn't want it to turn into pneumonia. Just walked into the public hospital and waited in Emegency. Just like that.

Harper treated in Ottawa hospital

Damn good system we have here with socialized medicine. Just walked into the hospital and got service. No HMO's, no extra billing, no credit card, no getting kicked out cause you don't have any of those things.

Nope he just walked into the hospital. The PM designate of Canada. Just like any other Canadian.

For now.

New Conservative Gov't Issues Warning to Alberta
Friday, January 27, 2006 9:05 PM

A spokesman for the incoming Conservative Government says Alberta can go ahead with all the health reforms it likes.

But William Stairs says the province must stay within the rules of the Canada Health Act.

Stairs was responding Friday to suggestions by Alberta Premier Ralph Klein that some of the province's reforms might violate the federal legislation.

Stairs says Stephen Harper has made his position clear - "any changes should be made within the Canada Health Act."

Alberta reforms could violate health act: Klein
CBC Saskatchewan, Canada - 18 hours ago
Alberta Premier Ralph Klein says his government is ready to move forward with health-care changes that may violate the Canada Health Act. ...
Alberta health-care reforms must obey medicare rules, says Harper ... Canada.com
Alberta's Third Way on the horizon CBC Calgary
Calgary Sun - all 52 related »


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