Sunday June 26, 2005
Holier-than-thou hypocrisy
We in Canada are self-righteous hypocrites.
A small news item buried in the “World” section of the newspaper quotes an Associated Press news story: “Zimbabwe police extended their \’drive out trash\’ crackdown to vegetable gardens that city dwellers rely on for food…
“The crackdown on urban farming is the latest escalation in the month-long (campaign) that has seen police burn or destroy the shacks of the urban poor, arrest street traders and demolish their kiosks… Police say they have arrested more than 30,000 street vendors the government accuses of sabotaging the economy by selling black market goods.”
The “drive out trash” campaign – officially called “Operation Murambatsvina” – specifically targets Zimbabwe\’s poorest people. It describes the traditional practice of growing food crops on vacant lots in and around cities as causing “massive environmental damage.”
The UN estimates that the campaign has left at least 1.5 million homeless.
The former secretary of the Zimbabwe Roman Catholic Bishops\’ Conference, the Rev. Oscar Werner, who also serves as parish priest in one of the poorest areas of Harare, Zimbabwe\’s capital, has called the “drive out trash” campaign “insane and evil.”
Sauce for the goose…
And our reaction?
Condemnation. Censure. Of course.
In the affluent world, Zimbabwe\’s Prime Minister Robert Mugabe is portrayed as a megalomaniac, a tyrant, a dictator, or a madman. His government has been booted out of the Commonwealth of Nations.
About a third of Zimbabwe\’s population has fled – either to neighbouring nations like Zambia and Botswana, or to Europe. Productivity has plunged. So has food production.
The only national index consistently rising is crime.
So the condemnation by affluent nations is probably justified.
But then we turn a blind eye to our own practices of penalizing our poorest.
Take medicare. With the Supreme Court\’s recent ruling that Quebec\’s elite have a constitutional right to buy preferred medical treatment if they choose to – even though that decision technically applies only to Quebec, not to the whole of Canada – provincial governments are scrambling to find ways of handling private clinics.
Federal Conservative MP Werner Schmidt stated, in a recent column, “The decision will almost certainly lead to the expansion of private health clinics across the country.”
Jumping the queue
Schmidt indicates that there are already 57 private clinics in this province alone. “Yet restrictions on who they can serve means private clinics are not an option for country patients,” he continues.
In fact, we have had always had private clinics. Doctors are self-employed entrepreneurs. They own their clinics. They charge a fee for their services – just like a plumber or electrician.
The difference is that the government, not the individual, pays the fee. We all pay into the common pot; the government doles out payments as needed.
And so far – at least in theory – the wealthy cannot jump the queue by slipping a little extra under the table. They must take their turn with the rest of us.
But it is not now, and perhaps has never been, a single-tier system. Sports stars receive priority treatment. The military and the RCMP, on the grounds of national security, and the workers\’ compensation systems, on the grounds of getting people back to work and supporting the economy, all run separate programs.
According to the National Post, the military spent $1.3 million for MRIs alone last year.
Now the Supreme Court ruling seems to say that the affluent have a right to jump to the head of the line, if they\’re willing to pay the price.
The most controversial of private clinics set to open is the Copeman Healthcare Centre in Vancouver. It promises elegant waiting rooms with Internet access. Its doctors will see only a dozen patients a day, instead of the usual 30 to 40.
To qualify for this special care, patients will have to pay a $1,700 initiation fee and $2,300 a year. Medicare continues to cover the rest of the fees.
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Personally, I\’d love to have a doctor who could afford to spend up to an hour with me on each visit. When I need a CT scan, I\’d love to leapfrog the waitlist.
Simply because I can afford – at least in theory – to pay that doctor extra, to compensate for his reduced billing to the medical plan.
But the cost of that privilege is far more than $2,300 a year. Because about 1,000 other people will lose medical care entirely.
Paul Willcocks, syndicated freelance columnist, did the math.
“Look at … the effect on the doctor shortage in B.C.,” he wrote. “The clinic wants to hire 12 doctors from within the province. Right now those doctors are… providing care to about 15,000 British Columbians…
“But the clinic promises doctors will see one-quarter the number of patients. (So) 15,000 patients will lose their doctors… in order to improve the care for a small number paying a premium…”
Have you tried to find a doctor recently? I know two couples who spent months trying to get accepted as new patients. According to Dr. Michael Golbey, head of the B.C. Medical Association, some 200,000 people currently don\’t have a family doctor at all.
If my getting special service means that a thousand others have to do without, am I not doing the same as Robert Mugabe? Am I not also driving “the trash” away from what little they have, for the benefit of the better-off?
I do not begrudge the rich any luxuries they enjoy from having extra money. (I may envy them, but that\’s another matter.)
But I do object if the privileges they purchase further impoverish those already pushed to the edges of society.
Of course, we could solve our problem by importing a few hundred doctors from developing countries.
But that would shift the shortage of medical care onto even poorer people.
I agree with Oskar Werner. Here or in Zimbabwe, the “drive out trash” policy is “evil and insane.”
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Copyright © 2002 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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