Healthcare in Saskatchewan is Under Attack
The Saskatchewan government, led by premier Scott Moe and his Sask Party, is planning on privatizing surgical procedures due to the backlog that piled up in the fall while the forth wave of Covid hit the province. Though the premier, who recently took a call from a leader of a group opposing Covid health measures, would blame the public-nature of our healthcare system for the backlog, it is truly the fault of him, his health minister, and their party for ignoring the advice of health professionals and avoiding taking action in the summer for the inevitable fall wave of Covid, resulting in the almost-collapse of our healthcare system.
The Sask Party, which has been moving further and further to the far-right in recent years, is effectively taking a system that they are responsible for, allowing it to break down, and then attempting to replace it with a different system that is much worse for users but more profitable to their corporate allies, in what is a classic move by conservative politicians. Exploiting a pandemic for personal gain is par for the course for grifters like this. After all, this is the party of former premier Brad Wall, who after privatizing many aspects of the province, weakening labour and environmental regulations, and racking up the debt of the province, left politics to join various corporate boards. No one should expect anything less from the Sask Party.
The for-profit model in today's capitalism requires consistent growth and the maximization of returns to shareholders, which almost always results in cost cutting in every area possible, like we have seen in nursing homes and almost every other corporatized sector. This cost-cutting includes using low-paid, overworked, and under-skilled workers outside of unions. I am not sure how lowering the quality of healthcare delivery is going to result in better outcomes for patients.
Healthcare is a natural monopoly, meaning there is little to no competition, and hence no incentive for innovation. Privatizing surgeries that are still paid for by public funds is not going to suddenly create a burgeoning healthcare industry outside the public model. Americans pay almost double we do per capita for their private healthcare and yet have worse overall outcomes, from a lower life expectancy to higher infant mortality rates. Who in their right mind looks at the American healthcare system and thinks "ya, that's what we should do?”
It is also insane to think that it would be cheaper for Saskatchewan taxpayers to pay for an ad hoc private surgery system to temporarily set up shop here. No company is going to make that kind of investment without the ability for a huge payout. Once established though, it is going to be extremely lucrative and quite easy to make a large amount of money because healthcare isn't something people want, it's something people need. This feature of capitalism is exactly why Tommy Douglas introduced medicare to Canada and Saskatchewan in the 1960s.
Allowing healthcare to regress back to a for-profit model is going to have a tremendous cost on both taxpayers and the most vulnerable people of this province, all so that donors of the Sask Party can benefit from this government's own incompetence and negligence. This cannot be allowed to go forward.