When Universal Health Care is undermined, none of us is safe! (part 2)

and certainly the fastest growing
in terms of cost. Suddenly,
however, Liepert, instead of
negotiating lower drug prices
through central purchasing, has
pushed all those costs onto a
narrow group – the 40% of the
seniors population with incomes
above $21,325. And he is doing
the same to the most vulnerable
of all citizens, those requiring
long-term care. Mid-game, he
has changed the rules, throwing
seniors’ retirement planning into a
cocked hat. Is he suggesting that
health care coverage stops once
one turns sixty-five? Or does he
plan to extend his reasoning to
health care more broadly?
Liepert seems to view public
services paid for by tax dollars as
some sort of charity doled out, at
government whim, to the needy.
Means testing is demeaning and
divisive – and coming to a local
pharmacy and a nursing home
near you.
Liepert does not seem to
understand that citizens pay taxes
based on income as part of a
social contract. Workers and
retirees, for example, pay taxes
to support public and postsecondary
education for other
people’s children; in turn, those
5
children will become workers who
then help sustain the retirees who
once supported them.
As a retired senior, I continue to
pay taxes on both my income and
my property, and those taxes
continue to support public
education and public health care –
and I am happy to do so. In fact,
I would be willing to pay higher
taxes, taxes equal to Liepert’s
proposed deductible, to see such
public services extended and
made truly universal – a drug plan
for all Albertans, long-term care
beds for those who need them --
because when we all protect each
other, all of us are protected.
When some of us are excluded
from the burden of taxation or
from the protection of universal
programs, whether we are
wealthy or poor, the social fabric
unravels and none of us is safe.
As citizens, young or old, rich or
poor, we are all in this together.
That is why the universality
principle is so important. When
those of middle income and the
wealthy no longer have a vested
interest in the system, the system
will collapse. But perhaps that is
what Minister Liepert hopes.