amazing, having to apologizing for getting the best health care you can afford... and Atlas PUKED!!!
Posted on 01/12/2006 6:03:45 PM PST by UpHereEh
PORT HARDY, B.C. (CP) - NDP Leader Jack Layton, who's campaigning as the defender of public health care, had surgery at a private clinic in the 1990s, The Canadian Press has learned.
Layton had hernia surgery at the Shouldice Hospital, a private facility in the Toronto suburb of Thornhill, while he was serving as a Toronto city councillor. The NDP leader said he wasn't aware the clinic was private when he went for his surgery in the mid-1990s.
"It's just part of the system," Layton said in an interview. "The doctor says, 'Go there.' You pay with your (Ontario health) card. It never occurred to me (it was) anything other than medicare, which it is.
"I can tell you now if my doctor ever refers me anywhere, I'll ask him that question. It never occurred to me at the time, it wasn't a controversy at the time. It wasn't something on one's mind."
Layton stressed that the Shouldice facility is a not-for-profit facility that has been part of the Ontario medical system for decades.
It was originally set up for veterans returning from the Second World War and was grandfathered into the Ontario medical system, he said.
Layton pointed out he has been aiming at curtailing the growth of for-profit health-care facilities on the federal election campaign.
Earlier in the campaign, Layton criticized Conservative Leader Stephen Harper who said he would send a loved one to a private clinic if it would ease their pain.
Layton pointed to family illnesses, such as his wife Olivia Chow's cancer treatment and his own attack of appendicitis, as instances where he has had to make the choice to support the public system. He didn't mention his hernia operation.
Layton said he wasn't avoiding mention of the operation.
"This was no secret, believe me," he said. "Heck, (Toronto) Mayor (Mel) Lastman came to visit me there. Every family I knew, every middle-aged man that ever ran into a hernia, went to Shouldice. It's part of the system, still is."
While pitching his party as the champion of public health care, Layton has also slipped into a more muddied message on medicare at times.
Liberals accused him of flip-flopping earlier in the election when he declared private clinics are a way of life in Canada.
Federal Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh said Layton bailed on talks with the Liberal government, supposedly because they weren't prepared to go far enough to crack down on health care.
Suddenly Layton was no longer interested in cracking down, Dosanjh said, adding that Layton "went about inventing facts and manufacturing differences of principle."
Prime Minister Paul Martin has also visited a private medical clinic run by Medisys in Montreal.
The Shouldice Hospital came up in another election. In 2000, former Progressive Conservative Leader Joe Clark was forced to admit he had similar surgery at the same clinic in the 1980s.
Clark, whose surgery was also paid for by the public system, said he had to chose between a longer wait at a public hospital or a short wait at the clinic.
At the time, Clark also denied he took advantage of a second tier of health care.
The 89-bed Shouldice clinic is named for Dr. Edward Earle Shouldice, who tried to develop a quick method during the Second World War of carrying out hernia surgery to quickly get recruits who suffered from the problem ready for military training.
bigtime ping ;)
Thank you :D
I thought everyone in Canada was forced to have equal access to crappy health care and long waits?
This guy is a total hypocrite and we finally nailed him on it. Part of his platform is to cut off ALL federal funds to the provinces that incorporate private clinics into the public health-care system.
Some are more equal than others. It is always thus in a socialist/marxist system.
There are actually four levels of health care: 1) th fully socialized system, 2) workers compenstion, 3) private insurance for things socialized medicine doesn't cover or some of the private clinics mentioned in the article and 4) going to the U.S.
amazing, having to apologizing for getting the best health care you can afford... and Atlas PUKED!!!
Thanks for the ping UpHereEh!
Canada Ping!
Please FReepmail me to get on or off this Canada ping list.
Just like our great advocates of public education, Bill and Hillary Clinton, sent their daughter to an exclusive private school in Washington. Never heard a peep from the NEA.
"This guy is a total hypocrite and we finally nailed him on it. Part of his platform is to cut off ALL federal funds to the provinces that incorporate private clinics into the public health-care system."
You made a good point but missed another one. If this gets to the mainstream press Layton will lose seats and his votes will go Liberal.
This is nothing to celebrate. Canadian health care is a core NDP value. He voted non confidence on the issue of health care and now he has caught line jumping.
The election just got complicatederer.
Good for you. Thanks for posting this. I didn't see it in the Communist American Media.
Did you have to spend several months on a waiting list to get your hernia repaired?
If you did not, then you should have known it was not part of the Canadian socialized health care system.
Some pigs are more equal than others.
Jack Layton's speech on Healthcare at Winnipeg, MB
January 5, 2006
Here are some highlights folks:
- snip -
"Make no mistake about it. Public health care is threatened in Canada.There are those who see the sick as profit centres. And our aging population as an avenue for corporate growth.
The Conservatives promised to issue a guarantee – but have no plan to make the public health care system work better. The Liberals said the Conservative guarantee didn’t reflect Canadian values – and then issued their own a few days later.
Friends, we all deserve better. Parliament is supposed to represent ordinary Canadians – not well-connected insiders. Parliament is where average working people should have their interests and their priorities represented.
That’s what the NDP is all about. We put you and your family first. For a change for the better. Friends, New Democrats worked alongside ordinary Canadians to implement medicare – to build our public health care system. It was a real change for the better.
And it has served working families, seniors and all Canadians well. At outstanding clinics and facilities like this one, people can get medical care because they need it – not just because they can afford it.
But our health care system faces some real challenges today – there’s no doubt about that. The Supreme Court has ruled that if the public health care system cannot meet its obligations to provide care in a timely fashion, then private insurance cannot be prohibited. That was as clear a signal as it’s possible to get.
Public health care has to be defended. And the problems in our public health care system have to be addressed – or we will lose it. We need to start by protecting the system from those who would dismantle it.
In the wake of that Supreme Court ruling, Premier Jean Charest in Quebec and Premier Ralph Klein in Alberta have made it clear that they will introduce for-profit, private insurance schemes as soon as this federal election is over.
In the next Parliament, we’ll introduce legislation to stop them. We’ll amend federal-provincial transfer legislation to ban the use of federal funds to subsidize any for-profit, private insurance system for medically necessary services under medicare.
Once we’ve pushed back the privatizers, we have to make public medicare better. The people of Canada support public non-profit health care, but in return our health system has to support them – it has to be there when they need it."
- snip -
The Shouldice Clinic is no secret to anyone.
This is a red herring ...the libs are trying to win over the NDP vote with this ploy, but I think it will backfire.
The NDP voters in Toronto will see through it.
Naw, could never happen. But as it is now it seems the USA is the pressure relief valve for the Canadian medical system.
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