Posted: Thursday, 23 September 2010

President Ken Georgetti, CLC wrote to Angel Gurria, Secretary-General of the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) in protest of the recent policy recommendations that the OECD has made regarding the Canadian Health Care System. The OECD recommended more fees for patients, and more privatization of service delivery. Many Canadians strongly support our public health care system which provides universal access to physician and hospital services at no cost to patients within a predominantly publicly delivered system.

September 20, 2010

Angel Gurria
Secretary-General
OECD
2, rue André Pascal
75775 Paris Cedex 16
France

Dear Secretary-General Gurria:

I write on behalf of the Canadian Labour Congress to register my very strong protest regarding the OECD policy recommendations regarding public health care in Canada as contained in the Economic Survey of Canada released yesterday, and as highlighted in numerous Canadian media interviews by OECD economist Peter Jarrett.

The great majority of Canadians strongly support our public health care system which provides universal access to physician and hospital services at no cost to patients within a predominantly publicly delivered system. There are currently some pressures from a right-wing minority to impose user fees or deductibles on Medicare services, and to increase the role of private for profit providers of Medicare services.

Rather than fairly weigh the Canadian evidence, and rather than respect the very politically charged nature of the policy debate in Canada, the OECD weighed in loudly on the side of more fees for patients, and more privatization of service delivery. This will discredit the work of the OECD in the eyes of many Canadians, including health policy experts.

With respect to the issue of charging user fees or imposing deductibles for access to Medicare funded services, the Romanow Royal Commission found that fees would deter access by low-income patients, eventually driving up system costs. The OECD report itself notes (p.137) that the Canadian system is the best in the OECD in terms of providing equitable access to physician and hospital services. The report also notes (Fig. 3.6) that Medicare costs have not grown as a share of GDP since the early 1990s and are well in line with the costs of other national public health care systems. It is in the private not the publicly insured part of our system that cost pressures have been greatest.

The OECD report similarly endorses more private delivery of hospital services without any serious consideration of the Canadian and international evidence that this would drain staff and other resources from the public system and lead to queue jumping by the affluent at the expense of those in greatest need. Again, the research of the Romanow Commission is largely ignored.

Canadians know and understand that private insurance and private delivery are the hallmarks of the US health care system, which is the most expensive in the OECD and provides the least equitable access to services.

I note that the OECD report calls for the inclusion of pharmaceutical drugs and home care into the public part of the health care system in order to enhance equality of access to services and to contain costs. Yet, perversely, the authors seem to think that privatization in the public system will lower costs and not damage equal access.

In conclusion, I strongly urge you to direct the Economics Department of the OECD, which takes responsibility for Economic Surveys, to remove their right-wing ideological blinkers and conduct their work in a much more balanced way.

Yours truly,

Kenneth V. Georgetti
President

cc: John Evans, General Secretary, TUAC
CLC Executive Council
Andrew Jackson, CLC
Lucien Royer, CLC