The Cons Go After Our Medicare System

They promised they wouldn't go after medicare. But that was then and this is now.

The Conservative government is putting the provinces on notice that Ottawa plans to shrink the rate of growth in health transfers.

As Finance Minister Jim Flaherty prepares to meet his provincial and territorial counterparts Monday in Victoria, signals continue to pile up that Ottawa will not keep increasing transfers by 6 per cent a year beyond the 2015-16 fiscal year.

And what does Stephen Harper have to say about this?

“We have committed to the 6 per cent for a few more years. Over the long term I think all governments recognize – federal government, provincial governments – that the cost of the health care system cannot continue to rise more quickly than our revenue. And that's a problem and that's a challenge we will all be dealing with in the next few years to come as we discuss the future of our health care system,” he said.

But then he would. 

For as I have warned so many times over the last few years, the main reason Stephen Harper went into politics was to destroy our medicare system.

That's why he is refusing to raise taxes on the rich, and is spending billions on things we don't need like shiny new prisons and fancy new jets. So he can watch the provinces slash medicare to the bone, or hand it over to private companies that will squeeze blood out of a stone. 

Our beautiful medicare system doesn't need to be dismantled. If you don't believe that then please read this from those who know and love it.

The assertion that Medicare is “unsustainable” has been repeated so many times that in some circles it has become accepted as indisputable fact. Critics of Medicare assert that the cost of our public health care system is growing at an alarming pace...

While this argument is sufficiently compelling to have won it widespread repetition in newspaper reports and public commentary, it is not substantiated by the available evidence. In fact, it flies directly in the face of most reliable data on health care. As the flurry of media coverage and public debate accelerates around this cavalcade of inaccurate platitudes, it is hard not to be reminded of what H.L. Mencken warned many years ago, “There is always an easy solution to every human problem – neat, plausible, and wrong.”

Oh boy. I feel sorry for all the old people who voted for the Cons in such huge numbers, for they will be the first to suffer.

Forced to wait for a hospital bed, or beg for a sandwich, or hope for euthanasia to spare them and their families from financial ruin.

Now more than ever, organize, unite, take to the streets to stop them. Prepare to sweep these filthy lying Cons from power.

Before these ideological fanatics destroy our beautiful medicare system.

Before they destroy us all...