Health: From David Tennant to Tommy Douglas' Legacy

[dewline]

So David Tennant went on record in defense of the English National Health Service.

(Noting autopope's corrective reminder that the component nations of the UK each have their own NHS with thanks.)

That report got me thinking. Again.

I have had days where I felt that Canada ought to federalise health care. The policies of the various provinces and territories vary, and then there's the Crown-Indigenous treaty arrangements. I wonder how dangerous that territorial division is to Canadians and our Indigenous relations alike sometimes.

Comments

[autopope]

Reminder that there is no UK National Health Service.

There is an English National Health Service. Also a Scottish NHS, a Welsh NHS, and a Northern Irish NHS.

Healthcare provision is a fully devolved responsibility exercised by the countries' respective governments, and it differs significantly between England (under Tory control, being set up for privatization) and the rest (e.g. Scotland, fully nationalized, with the last public-private partnership hospitals bought back into public ownership by the Scottish government in the past five years).

[dewline]

I will correct the original entry accordingly, then, with thanks for this reminder!

[sabotabby]

Good for him.

I'm not an expert in these things by any means but I do lean towards things like healthcare becoming federal. The main pitfall I see is that it's easy for a bad actor to just completely dismantle it in one go. Like, imagine Stephen Harper having responsibility for health care. Or the inevitability that Doug Ford will be Prime Minister.

[dewline]

Harper having control of such a thing would indeed have been a nightmare on skis!

And as for the thought that Doug Ford as Canadian PM is an "inevitability"...to Hell with that thought. I would very much prefer to avert all such outcomes. Same goes for Maxime Bernier. Those two would be enthusiastically competing to replace Harper in our history records as "worst PM ever", along with Jason Kenney, Scott Moe, Brad Wall, and a few other would-be nightmares we can both name.

[cmcmck]

The NHS is by no means perfect and this pandemic has pointed that out painfully. There is almost a tendency to worship the NHS in this rather godless state of ours and what has been proven is that new ways of thinking need to be applied in future.

We run our health service way too 'hot' and that has created real problems during all this.

In truth, the NHS is more regional than national and quality can vary as a result- but the basic idea of free healthcare for all at the point of need is utterly valid.

[jsburbidge]

The chances of healthcare becoming federalized are those of a snowball in hell. Not Dante's hell, a traditional fire-and-brimstone one.

The Constitution's separation of powers places healthcare firmly in the hands of the provinces (one of the Privy Council's "watertight compartments"). Changing that would be considerably more contentious than the creation of the UI head in the 1930s to allow the federal government to create unemployment insurance (since renamed euphemistically to Employment Insurance).

What we have - essentially, standards enforced by the federal government having the power of the purse strings - is what we will have for the foreseeable future.

About "(Un)Employment Insurance"

[dewline]

I still resent the Hell out of that particular "rebranding" during the Chrétien years. Whether you call it "neo-liberal" or "neo-conservative", either way...it stinks of trying to condition the expectations of citizens to settle for less than we actually need.