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Layton Outlines NDP Medicare Crackdown |
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Written by NDP
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Tuesday, 13 December 2005 |
NDP Leader Jack Layton gave an impassioned defence of Canada’s single-payer public health care system today, and spelled out some tough new measures to protect it.
Layton was speaking in Regina with Shirley Douglas, daughter of medicare founder Tommy Douglas, and Kathleen Connors, Chair of the Canadian Health Coalition and immediate past-president of the Canadian Federation of Nurses’ Unions.
“Make no mistake about it. Medicare is being sabotaged by people who claim to be protecting it. Paul Martin, Ralph Klein, Stephen Harper, Jean Charest and Gordon Campbell are all on the same wavelength,” Layton said. “They want to open Canada’s health system to the profiteers. They know that’s the last thing Canadians want.
“So instead of being honest about what they want to do, they’ve been sneaking up on their goals,” Layton said.
The NDP will defend public health care in the next parliament by:
- Refusing to permit the dismantling of Canada’s single-payer medicare system;
- Prohibiting the use of federal transfers, directly or indirectly, to subsidize a new, profit-making private insurance system covering medically-necessary services;
- Ensuring that no federal money be used to cover the salaries or costs of doctors and any other medical personnel involved in a new, separate, profit-making private insurance system; and
- Tough monitoring and enforcement of these rules.
“The NDP founded medicare. Working families and ordinary Canadians count on us to fight for the public medicare system they want,” Layton said. “I did. And we will.” |
