Avoiding the bad old days

>> Seniors fight to preserve Medicare

by WAYNE HILTZ

When Jack Gottheil completed high school in the 1930s, his first job was one that he has never forgotten and wishes he could. Working for a bill collection agency in the midst of the Great Depression, it was quite common for him to go after people owing money to doctors or hospitals.
“We hounded people—generally poorer people—to pay their $1 or $2 bills who had to forego decent food, clothes and rent,” Gottheil recalls of the so-called “good ol’ days.” Yetta Kleinman, another Montrealer from those hard times, adds that with no unemployment insurance back then, workers temporarily laid off often could hardly pay for anything, never mind a doctor’s housecall.
It then took 30 more years before things turned around with the coming of the publicly funded Medicare system that was met with stiff resistance from the medical profession and insurance companies. “That changed receiving health services from a question of charity and begging to a basic right of citizenship,” Gottheil asserts.
Now, another 30 years later, things look very much like a return to those “good ol’ days.” “Unfortunately, we’re being hurt again, but it will never go back to the way it was before,” says a determined Kleinman.
Gottheil and Kleinman are two out of 20 active members of Project Genesis’s Social Action Group, who have spent much of the past few years fighting federal and provincial cutbacks to Medicare funding, medical user-fees and Quebec’s two-tier drug-insurance plan, which force people on welfare, low-income workers and many seniors to choose between food or badly needed medication.
These fighting seniors have kept quite busy with public protests, occupying cabinet ministers’ offices, lobbying MPs and MNAs, joining provincial and Canadian coalitions, writing letters to the editor, collecting “testimonial”’ from people affected by health-care cuts and presenting well-researched briefs to government commissions, as well as awarding “prizes” to those powerful individuals for “commercializing health and social services.”
“We’re probably more active than many youngsters these days,” says SAG member Paul Ladouceur. “We’ve played a positive role in frustrating government actions to increase drug costs and delaying ongoing privatization.” However, it looks like they’ll be even busier this year on the health-care front.
A commission studying solutions to Quebec’s deficit-ridden drug plan proposed last month to keep the mixed public/private plan, get rid of confusing annual premiums while raising deductibles, and nixing a fully public plan that community health coalitions and unions say would be more equitable and efficient. Public hearings will soon begin to examine all options with the government, saying that it will keep an open mind (critics highly doubt that) before introducing legislation this spring.
Besides pushing for a public drug scheme here, the SAG also plans to meet Roy Romanow, the former Saskatchewan NDP premier running a one-man federal commission into fixing Canada’s health-care system. Having already submitted their brief, they’re looking forward to expressing their views in no uncertain terms to restore federal funding to 1984 levels, expand programs to include homecare and medication, oppose any privatization and exclude health services from all international trade agreements.
As SAG member Stan Jachner concludes: “All these government cuts are more destructive of the future of this society than any terrorism.” :