Who profits from PROFIT®?
Corporate CEOs and rich shareholders do!
For-profit health care is naturally attractive to corporations, which stand to gain big profits from the privatization of health care. The World Bank estimates that global health expenditures exceed $4 trillion every year. The most promising sources of future profits are lucrative programs like Canada’s, which are still being delivered on a not-for-profit basis.
Trade agreements, such as NAFTA and GATS, threaten to privatize much of Canada’s health care system by providing U.S. health consortiums and HMOs with “national treatment” rights to compete for health care services. NAFTA’s exemption for health care, which has largely kept large corporations out of Canada, applies only to a fully public system.
Privatization advocates like Dr. Brian Day argue that a new system could be based on public-private systems in Sweden, France, Switzerland or other European countries. But this is a complete fallacy. Private is private — no matter what country the idea is coming from – and in Canada, increased privatization would leave our public health care system vulnerable to American interests because of our trade relationship with the United States.
We are also facing threats to public health care from our own citizens. Court cases have been threatened or launched, with people arguing that long wait times are a threat to their rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
But while some people in Canada are trying to dismantle our public health care system, others in the U.S. are trying to emulate it. The high costs of health care services and insurance are becoming a touchy political topic in the U.S., and California and Vermont are among the states that have introduced or adopted some form of universal health insurance.
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