Silnicki and Giles spoke in support of Bill 144 at Province House in Halifax today.
CBC reports on the Nova Scotia provincial government’s Insured Health Services Act (Bill 144). The article explains, “The act is designed to protect a single tier, publicly funded health-care system. Section 38 of the act prevents patients from billing the public health-care system for medical services performed by a doctor who has opted out of the public MSI plan. Adrienne Silnicki, of the Council of Canadians, (says) ‘We see this as a visionary piece of legislation… What we’re not going to do is use public money to use private services to jump the queue.'”
Silnicki commented this evening, “It’s the most progressive bill on health care in Canada for the past 30 years. We were thrilled to be able to support it while also raising our concerns about the legislation not protecting health care from trade agreements, highlighting that the Canada Health Act principles and criteria need to be moved into the Act (currently they are only in the preamble), and calling for a patient hotline to report illegal charges.”
At the committee hearing today, Council of Canadians organizer Angela Giles made the point that public health care needs to be protected from the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) and other free trade agreements.
The CBC article notes, “Bill 144 is currently before the Nova Scotia legislature.”
