"Medicare has us covered" youth action: People hold red umbrellas outside the hotel where premiers are meeting.
healthcare
Upcoming premiers' conference puts spotlight on public health care
As the premiers' conference on health care gets underway, it's critical that the public interest is heard.
Related rabble.ca story:
Healthcare, education and pensions: Young and old need to join forces
On the eve of the second decade of the new century, a renewed alliance between young and old would help Canadians trying to make a better life for more citizens. Much of current public policy debate turns around attempts to foster irrational fears about what the future holds. A prime example is attempts to manipulate public opinion by evoking threats an aging population pose for our public healthcare system. The next generation will stagger around covering the debts incurred to look after the health (and income) needs of retirees; we are told this so often people start to believe it.
World AIDS Day -- Remember Africa
December 1st is World AIDS Day. Here in Canada, we have a choice about how actively to be involved in the issues of AIDS.
The rate of death from AIDS in Canada has declined dramatically. Our public education and health systems -- despite threats from cuts and privatization -- have still been able to carry out broad programs of AIDS education and treatment. Anti-retroviral drugs are freely available.
Thanks to the impressive work of AIDS activists, the stigma and mystery surrounding AIDS have largely disappeared. Although communities with high levels of poverty, homelessness and unemployment are still very vulnerable, the majority of our members do not live in daily fear of this life-threatening virus.
The AIDS crisis in Africa
Harper politicizes healthcare. It is bad for Canada, bad for the world
"I've been here for five hours," a patient shouted at the end of my shift and they were not alone. Working in an emergency room, I see the individuals behind the overcrowding statistics and the conditions to which patients and healthcare providers are subjected -- long waits, being short staffed, assessing and treating patients in the waiting room, admitting people to a hallway. I recently saw someone with a bleed in their brain who left the hospital because they couldn't stand having to sleep in the hallway. Last week a man died in an E.R. waiting room in Montreal, while Alberta, E.R.
Charest's budget attack on Medicare
In its budget last week, the Charest government mounted an attack on the principle of universal access to healthcare: it wants to charges citizens for visits to hospitals. At the time they file income tax, someone with cancer, going for weekly treatments in Quebec would be dinged $25 for each visit. Over a 30-week period they would run up charges of $750, plus the annual fee.
The Canada Health Act embodies an idea. Healthcare should be available to all those who are sick and in need, not just to those who can pay for it.
Mining community health assessment toolkit
Any community near a mine should have this 116 page community centred health assessment toolkit on hand. Created by Mining Watch Canada, the guide is extremely detailed. By encouraging communities to define and measure their own health throughout the mining process, the toolkit empowers communities. The toolkit goes tackles eight steps in the process, each with its own linked resources and suggested tools for the community.
The eight steps highlighted are:
Getting started: basic organizing of meetings, decision making, researching
The faulty premise for the Drummond Commission
Since the Ontario government's appointment of the Commission on Broader Public Sector Reform in the March 2011 budget, Ontarians have been told repeatedly that the province's deficit and debt must be reduced through public sector spending cuts. The premise for the creation of what is now known as the Drummond Commission is that eliminating the $16.3 billion provincial deficit by 2017 is paramount and Ontario's public debt is ballooning.
