Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Dan Levin writes that Christy Clark and her B.C. Libs have turned British Columbia into a haven for capital to run wild without any social responsibility or public benefit: Like many places, British Columbia set up a system of tax incentives to lure
Continue readingTag: pharmacare
Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Gillian White highlights Peter Temin’s work on poverty and inequality – including the standard which a person trapped in poverty needs to meet in order to have any meaningful hope of escaping: Temin then divides workers into groups that can trace their family
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Andre Picard talks to the Current about the need to start demanding more from our universal health care system, rather than being persuaded to put up with less. And Canadian Doctors for Medicare offers its support to the Ontario NDP’s pharmacare plan,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Katie Allen reports on the growing gap between the privileged few and the working class in the UK. And Frank Elgar highlights how we all pay the price of inequality, even as our governments can’t be bothered to rein it in: For decades,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Wanda Wyporska writes that growing inequality is primarily the result of political choices: If it seems ridiculous that 1,000 people work harder or offer more value than 40 per cent of the population, that’s because it is. This level of inequality isn’t natural
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – François Côté-Vaillancourt suggests a greater focus on redistributing wealth and income to ensure a secure standard of living, rather than seeking primarily to put people to work: (I)nstead of fighting job losses, I would suggest that maybe the most important thing we could
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – François Côté-Vaillancourt suggests a greater focus on redistributing wealth and income to ensure a secure standard of living, rather than seeking primarily to put people to work: (I)nstead of fighting job losses, I would suggest that maybe the most important thing we could
Continue readingMichal Rozworski: Ours to own, not theirs to profit
It seems the public sector is under attack from all directions these days. Despite historically low public financing costs, despite proven efficiency and innovation, the public sector gets a bad rap in the public eye—something all manner of politicians from hardened right-wingers to cosmpolitan neoliberals take advantage of, letting markets
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Gary Bloch writes about the costs of poverty (and the small-minded attitude toward public supports which allows it to remain): We also see the effects of poverty at home: the discomfort of living next to people who are struggling to survive, with
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Stephen Hawking discusses the urgent need to address inequality and environmental destruction as people are both more fearful for their futures, and more aware of what’s being taken away from them: (T)he lives of the richest people in the most prosperous parts of
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on how a recent spate of announcements signals that contrary to their campaign commitments in both theme and detail, there’s been little difference between the Trudeau Liberals and the Harper Conservatives in substance. For further reading…– The point is one being made by plenty of other observers as well
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading.- Dennis Howlett discusses the public costs of allowing tax avoidance – as Canada could afford a national pharmacare program (and much more) merely by ensuring that the rich pay what they owe:Eliminating tax haven…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading.
– Dennis Howlett discusses the public costs of allowing tax avoidance – as Canada could afford a national pharmacare program (and much more) merely by ensuring that the rich pay what they owe:
Eliminating tax haven use could save Canada almost $8 billion a year. That’s enough to cover universal public prescription coverage almost eight times over.
Time after time, budget after budget, poll after poll, those in charge make it sound as if we’re too poor as a country to afford the programs that would really improve Canadians’ lives. The fact that revenues are lost to poor policy on tax havens and loopholes is often conveniently ignored.
…
At this stage of the game, the federal finance minister doesn’t need to raise taxes to pay for pharmacare. Bill Morneau just has to make sure that Canadian multinationals and wealthy individuals pay the tax rate we already have. That isn’t happening right now.It’s simple. Canadians can continue to support a tax system that lets the richest avoid paying $8 billion in taxes annually — or we can tell them that the party’s over. Instead of ignoring what is happening in the Cayman Islands, Panama and other tax havens, we can urge our politicians to invest the taxes owing on those billions into services that benefit individuals, families, communities and the country as a whole.
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There is solid data supporting raising taxes in some areas. But that’s an argument for another day. The issue at hand right now is that we do have enough money for pharmacare — likely enough for public dental care as well. Through a series of misguided and outdated decisions driven by the tax dodge lobby, we are needlessly and destructively giving up that revenue.It’s time to fix those old mistakes and use the tax system to help this country live up to its potential.
– Meanwhile, Owen Jones discusses a European Commission ruling finding that Apple can’t validly avoid paying tax through a special arrangement with Ireland. And the Star rightly slams the Fraser Institute for presenting a misleading picture of where public revenue comes from and what it can accomplish.
– The CP reports on the Libs’ plans to facilitate the use of temporary foreign workers for liquid natural gas projects in British Columbia – meaning that the last supposed benefit for the province of engaging in a dangerous industry seems to be as illusory as all the others. And Jeremy Nuttall notes that Justin Trudeau seems set to open the door even wider to entrench the use of exploitable foreign labour by multinational corporations.
– Finally, Catherine Cullen reports on the effects of privatized health care insurance which are being presented in an effort to defend Canada’s medicare system from would-be profiteers:
Continue readingJohn Frank, a Canadian physician who is now chairman of public health research and policy at the University of Edinburgh, argues in his report that more private health care “would be expected to adversely affect Canadian society as a whole.”
He cites research that suggests public resources, including highly trained nurses and doctors, would be siphoned off by the private system.
More Canadians would face financial hardship or even — in extreme cases — “medical bankruptcy” from paying for private care, he writes.
Frank even suggests there could be deadly consequences. He says complications from privately funded surgeries often need to be dealt with in the public system because private facilities are generally less equipped to handle complex cases.
“If such complications, arising from privately funded care, are not promptly referred to an appropriately equipped and staffed care facility, the patient is likely to experience death or long-term disability, potentially leading to reduced earnings and financial hardship.”
Overall, “in my expert opinion,” Frank writes, the change would reduce fairness and efficiency and “society as a whole would be worse off.”
Alberta Politics: We need a referendum on electoral reform? No! We need a national referendum on the TPP!
PHOTOS: Justin Trudeau, back in 2015 before he was prime minister, promising Canadians real change, including electoral reform, if we gave him the chance. We gave him the chance. Below: Opposition Conservative interim Leader Rona Ambrose (CBC Photo) an…
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Only A Start
A bane of the neoliberal agenda but salvation to countless Canadians, the vision of a national pharmacare program has made a baby step toward realization. The federal government has joined Canadian provinces and territories in a bulk-buying drug progra…
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: More On Pharmacare
The other day I wrote about an article in the Globe that called into question support for the notion of a national pharmacare program that would see drugs paid for by the government as a fitting and necessary complement to our universal healthcare. I examined the methodology and bias involved
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: The Case for Pharmacare. It’s Better and It’s a Big Money Saver.
Canada is the only developed country that provides universal health care that doesn’t also have universal pharmacare coverage. A new report claims that not only can Canada implement such a system, it could save Canadians billions. In Monday’s issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, researchers say the extra total
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Hockey millionaires and pharmacare tell you everything you need to know about who the Canadian Taxpayers Federation really works for
The Montreal Canadiens in 1912-13. Now the highest-taxed hockey players on the continent, they’re still the best and likely to stay that way. Below: Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions President Linda Silas; U.S. anti-public-health-care fruitloop and Canadian Taxpayers Federation ally Grover Norquist. For a while now it’s seemed as if
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Happy Thanksgiving! Would the Tories praising our health care system please stop trying to privatize it!
Edmonton’s Misericordia Hospital waaay back in the day. Below: The modern Mis, the one in Edmonton’s west end that after 45 years is falling apart. Alberta Health Minister Stephen Mandel. Happy Thanksgiving! With a case of a “potential contagious illness” in an unidentified Edmonton hospital last night, I guess we
Continue readingdaveberta.ca - Alberta politics: Alberta politics this week: Health Ministers, By-Elections and Troubled Waters Ahead
TweetBANFF – Stepping onto the national stage for the first time since he was appointed as Alberta’s Minister of Health, Stephen Mandel met with his provincial and federal counterparts this week in Banff for the annual Health Ministers meeting. Mr. Mandel co-chaired the meeting, a role his predecessor, Fred Horne, had planned to
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