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Get ready for
both McCain and Obama to play the "health care" card this election
season. Obama, especially, will tout any number of widders and
urchins who were denied health care in our already socialized
almost-to-the-hilt health care system. And, per usual, there will
be any number of media paeans to the glory of the Canadian and Cuban
health care system.
Here's another side of the story you will not be hearing about on
NBC. It's about Claude Castonguay, the "the father of Quebec
medicare." or the Canuck equivalent of our Edward Kennedy.
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Back
in the 1960s, Castonguay chaired a Canadian government committee
studying health reform and recommended that his home province of Quebec
— then the largest and most affluent in the country — adopt
government-administered health care, covering all citizens through tax
levies.
The government followed his advice, leading to his modern-day moniker:
"the father of Quebec medicare." Even this title seems modest;
Castonguay's work triggered a domino effect across the country, until
eventually his ideas were implemented from coast to coast.
Four decades later, as the chairman of a government committee reviewing
Quebec health care this year, Castonguay concluded that the system is
in "crisis."
"We thought we could resolve the system's problems by rationing
services or injecting massive amounts of new money into it," says
Castonguay. But now he prescribes a radical overhaul: "We are proposing
to give a greater role to the private sector so that people can
exercise freedom of choice."
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