Private health care will crush some under a load of debt

By Lethbridge Herald on April 15, 2023.

Editor:

I suspect not too many of your readers will have run across the following bit of news out of the States. The members of Trinity Moravian Church in Winston Salem, North Carolina purchased nearly $3.3 million of local residents’ medical debt for just $15,048.

 Then, they held a debt jubilee ceremony and burned up the debt, cancelling it all. This is the second year the congregation has done this. Last year they purchased and cancelled some $1.5 million worth of their neighbours’ medical bills. 

Now, putting to one side the theology behind what is an obviously laudable act of Christian charity, and disregarding the completely insane economic system which allows third parties to buy up debts at a ratio of some 200 to 1, let us turn for a moment to the premier and her public musings about who should pay for health care in this province.

 Danielle Smith is on record as recently as June 2021 asserting: “we can no longer afford universal social programs that are 100 per cent paid by taxpayers,” and that includes public health care.

“Once people get used to the concept of paying out of pocket for more things themselves then we can change the conversation on health care,”. . .  “But we could take it one step further. If we establish the principle of Health Spending Accounts, then we can also establish co-payments.” 

Which, with the inexorable logic of the true believer, leads us to a private healthcare system with it’s attendant winners and losers. 

The winners with their private wards, and personal attendants and little foil wrapped chocolates on their pillows – the losers buried under a crushing debt load. If they get health care at all.

Ms. Smith has been ducking and dodging and spinning, blowing smoke like a hot wind in fire season ever since those remarks surfaced. Doing everything up to denying she ever said it. Well: “By their acts shall ye know them.”

The Moravian Brethren acted and good on them. I’m just a little leery of waiting to see how Danielle Smith acts. I’ve heard how she speaks and that way lies the private hospital and the reliance on the charity of strangers.

Ken Sears

Lethbridge