Group items tagged

The third way is to provide the evidence governments need to design effective policies. They sometimes — in fact frequently — ignore it, Hwang acknowledged ruefully. “The victories are small and few. We have to be determined and persistent.”

He is the fourth director of CRICH. Over its 17-year history it has grown from a handful of doctor-scientists into a multi-disciplinary team of physicians and researchers housed in the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute, a modern facility attached to St. Michael’s Hospital. “

We think preventing poverty and illness is a highly effective way to invest in health.”

After an intensive initiation in management, administration and strategic planning, he hopes to spend one day a week running the centre and split the rest of his time between his clinical work (he is a physician at Seaton House, Toronto’s largest homeless shelter for men and an internist at St. Michael’s) and his research. His colleagues don’t know how he’ll keep up that pace. He isn’t sure either. What he can say with certain

Low-income adults who do not have employer-sponsored dental coverage through a publicly funded program - and most don't - must pay for their own dental care. Because the cost is often prohibitive, too many adults avoid seeking treatment at dental offices. Instead, they turn to family doctors and emergency departments for antibiotics and painkillers, which cannot address the true cause of the problem. In 2012, in Ontario alone, there were almost 58,000 visits to Ontario hospital emergency rooms due to oral health problems. Why is access to dental care essential now?

A person's oral health will affect their overall health. Dental disease can cause pain and infection. Gum disease has been linked to respiratory infections, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, poor nutrition, and low birth weight babies. Poor oral health can also impact learning abilities, employability, school and work attendance and performance, self-esteem, and social relationships. It is estimated that 4.15 million working days are lost annually in Canada due to dental visits or dental sick days. Persons with visible dental problems may be less likely to find employment in jobs that require face-to-face contact with the public.

Why is there such a difference in coverage? In short, dental care and pharmacare were not included within the original scope of Canada's national system of health insurance (medicare), and despite repeated evidence of the need to correct this oversight, is still not covered today. Instead, we are left with a patchwork of private employer-based benefits coverage, limited publicly funded programs, and significant out-of-pocket payments for many. Publicly funded dental programs for children and youth do exist for low-income families, including the dependents of those on social assistance. Most provinces and territories have some access to drug coverage, mostly for seniors and social assistance recipients, and there is some support for situations where drug costs are extremely high.

Pharmaceutical coverage in Canada remains an unco-ordinated and incomplete patchwork of private and public plans - one that leaves many Canadians with no prescription drug coverage at all. This has many negative consequences including: Three million Canadians cannot afford to take their prescriptions as written. This leads to worse health outcomes and increased costs elsewhere in the health-care system.

One in six hospitalizations in Canada could be prevented through improved regulation and better guidelines. Medicines are commonly underused, overused, and misused in Canada. Two million Canadians incur more than $1,000 a year in out-of-pocket expenses for prescription drugs. The uncontrolled cost of medicines is also a growing burden on businesses and unions that finance private drug plans for approximately 60 per cent of Canadian workers. Canada pays more than any comparable health-care system for prescription drugs. We spend an estimated $1 billion on duplicate administration of multiple private drug plans. Depending on estimates, we also spend between $4 billion and $10 billion more on prescription drugs than comparable countries with national prescription drug coverage plans.

Affordable access to safe and appropriate prescription medicines is so critical to health that the World Health Organization has declared governments should be obligated to ensure such access for all. Unfortunately, Canada is the only developed country with a universal health care system that does not include universal coverage of prescription drugs. From its very outset, Canada's universal, public health insurance system - medicare - was supposed to include universal public coverage of prescription drugs. The reasoning was simple. It is essential to deliver on the core principles of "access," "appropriateness," "equity" and "efficiency." Building universal prescription drug coverage into Canada's universal health-care system, based on the above principles, is both achievable and financially sustainable.

A public body - with federal, provincial and territorial representation - would establish the national formulary for medicines to be covered. This body would negotiate drug pricing and supply contracts for brand-name and generic drugs. Importantly, it would use the combined purchasing power of the program to ensure all Canadians receive the best possible drug prices and thereby coverage of the widest possible range of treatments. To patients, the program would be a natural extension of medicare: when a provider prescribes a covered drug, the patient would have access without financial barriers.

To society, universal access to safe and appropriately prescribed drugs and access to dental care will improve population health and reduce demands elsewhere in the health system. The single-payer system will also result in substantially lower medicine costs for Canada. In short, Canada can no longer afford not to have a national pharmacare program and a national dental care program. Disclaimer: The Guelph and Wellington Task Force for Poverty Elimination is a non-partisan organization. However, the poverty task force does have ties with two Guelph federal party candidates. Andrew Seagram, the NDP candidate, is a current member of the task force and Lloyd Longfield, the Liberal candidate, is a past member.

Socialist Action participated in the NL Rising! rally on May 5 at the Confederation Building. The event was organized by the Newfoundland and Labrador Federation of Labour and was attended by public and private sector unions, social justice groups, women and youth rights groups, and all those affected by the cuts to services, axed jobs and unfair tax measures. There were about 2,500 in attendance and a Socialist Action member held an SA banner on the main stage with the help of a member of Anonymous.

Socialist Action also has participated in town halls to rally support against the austerity budget. "This is the most miserable budget I've ever seen, except for Greece, and Greece's was forced on them" is how one CUPE economist put it.

Socialist Action is also involved in starting a local NDP socialist caucus within the ranks of the provincial NDP modelled after the socialist caucus in the federal NDP. The finance minister has made some of her money thanks to temporary foreign workers working at her fast-food restaurants. She was previously the biggest cheerleader for the Muskrat Falls project when sitting on the board of directors for Nalcor, the provincial utility and energy company. Now she says she has to implement this budget because of the cost overruns on the dam project. It is a project lacking transparency and accountability, and making a lot of people from outside Newfoundland and Labrador wealthier, including foreign construction companies that have never done jobs like this in Canada, a Canadian engineering company that was involved in a bribery scandal with Libya when Moammar Gadhafi was still in power, and foreign banks, bond holders and credit rating agencies. Her goal seems to be to obey the credit rating agencies and please them.

Newfoundland and Labrador is in a more precarious position now than in 1933, when Newfoundland was bankrupt and Canada and Britain were worried about their own credit ratings. The British and Canadian governments appointed a Commission of Government which was controlled by two private bankers. This was the start of a 15-year political breach which eventually led to the Crown selling off Newfoundland and Labrador to the Canadian bourgeois wolves to pay off their war debt in 1949.

Socialist Action NL has unanswered questions about Don Dunphy, an injured worker who was seemingly killed for a tweet when an RNC officer on the then premier's security detail showed up at his home on an Easter Sunday. What is happening to the pensions of iron ore miners from Labrador who have provided raw material to Hamilton Steel Mills for years? We still have foreign multinational corporations willing to exploit our fishery resources. Those corporations and the provincial government are stomping on indigenous peoples' rights in Labrador.

Socialist Action is on the ground in Newfoundland and Labrador, active in the labour movement, social justice, international solidarity, feminist and environmental campaigns. We will continue to make the socialist caucus visible in the NDP provincial party, to be at the table at the N.L. independence debate, to actively support indigenous peoples' struggles, as well as in anti-war, anti-poverty and the human rights movements. Socialist Action NL is in solidarity with the Fourth International worldwide. Chris Gosse St. John's

And while estimates put the cost to Canadian tax coffers at $6-$7.8 billion per year, the effect on developing countries is far greater, said Haroon Akram-Lodhi an economist and professor of international development at Trent University. "The amount of capital flight from sub-Saharan Africa is absolutely huge and it's all going into these tax havens," said Akram-Lodhi, one of the signatories of the letter. "This is reducing the ability to fight poverty on a global scale." The letter, made public on the eve of this week's global anti-corruption summit in London, calls on world leaders to act against financial secrecy both in tax havens and at home. "To lift the veil of secrecy surrounding tax havens we need new global agreements on issues such as public country-by-country reporting, including for tax havens. Governments must also put their own houses in order by ensuring that all the territories, for which they are responsible, make publicly available information about the real 'beneficial' owners of company and trusts." On Monday, Transparency International Canada issued a parallel call for the Canadian government to make its own corporate registry more transparent.

There is a pressing need for the Government of Canada to take concrete steps to address the ability of some Canadians to shield themselves, and their financial activities, from Canadian authorities," said Peter Dent, president of Transparency International Canada. "That some can rig the system to hide their wealth, whether amassed legally or not, is not merely unjust. It also masks corruption and harms global development by siphoning off revenues that could be directed to education, health care and infrastructure," Dent said in a statement. While the growing movement to crack down on tax havens has been spearheaded by the richest countries through the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, the negative effects of depleted government revenues hit the poorest countries the hardest. Uganda, an East African country which has often been described as a "donor darling," remains stuck in a cycle of poverty largely due to its inability to provide state services, said Akram-Lodhi.

They don't collect enough tax (because) multinational corporations evade their fair share," he said. While the U.K. government collects 25 per cent of its GDP in tax revenue, Uganda is only able to get 11 per cent, according to World Bank statistics. Instead of having to wait longer for a new subway, low tax revenue has far graver consequences in the developing world, he said. "Tax avoidance in Canada doesn't lead to people going hungry. Tax avoidance in sub-Saharan Africa leads to people dying of hunger. It's that clear," said Akram-Lodhi. "It's criminality that ruins people's lives." Another signatory of the letter, Peter Dietsch, a professor of philosophy and economics at the Université de Montréal, said the Panama Papers have "opened a window of opportunity for action." Describing the underlying conflict over tax havens as being between people who have capital and those who don't, Dietsch said anti-tax haven forces are growing.

"There's now a growing coalition of individuals without capital who pay their taxes and small and medium enterprises who don't have resources to move their assets abroad." Canadian signatories A. Haroon Akram-Lodhi, professor of international development studies, Trent University. Peter Dietsch, professor of philosophy, Université de Montréal Hashmat Khan, professor of economics, Carleton University Kiari Liman-Tinguiri, president of IEDAS Inc., Ottawa Patricia E. Perkins, professor, faculty of Environmental Studies, York University Toby Sanger, senior economist, CUPE

Mr. Ryan has proposed cutting federal spending on Medicaid by $810 billion over 10 years. Mr. Obama’s expansion plan, by contrast, would cost an additional $642 billion over the same period

More than half of current Medicaid spending is on the elderly and the disabled. About half of Medicaid recipients are children; an additional 25 percent are elderly or disabled people.

States have generally not been allowed to cut Medicaid eligibility since the passage of the health care law in 2010, but many have slashed optional benefits and payments to doctors and hospitals instead. Even states that support the planned Medicaid expansion, like California and Massachusetts, have made such cuts

critics of the block grant plan say it would inevitably shrink the medical safety net for the poorest Americans. The Urban Institute, a nonpartisan research group, estimated that under a similar House budget proposal last year, 14 million to 27 million people could lose Medicaid coverage by 2021.

Risk factors linked to increased mental health problems in children include unstable home environments, harsh or inconsistent parenting, parental mental illness and inadequate access to health care, says the Ontario report.

those from higher income brackets may be able to get help more quickly because they can access private practitioners without wait lists and coverage from health insurance companies

A family straining to make ends meet may not have extra dollars for trips to recreation centres, registration for sports teams or other social activities - experiences that connect children with their peers and keep them from being isolated and alone and therefore susceptible to mental health problems.

a reduction in the use of a variety of health services of about 5%–25% could be achieved by a reduction in childhood agression of one standard deviation

the figures presented by Temcheff and colleagues must underrepresent the total possible impact of aggressive behaviour

The knowledge that there is a link between aggressive behaviour in childhood and health in later life is not entirely new — it has been reported in other longitudinal studies as far back as the 1990s

However, the study by Temcheff and colleagues is the first to attempt to quantify the consequences of this link in terms of the use of health services.

The biological hypothesis here is that childhood aggression is a response to a stressful environment, and that overexposure to stress during childhood patterns the stress response5 in a way that could interfere with normal physiologic processes and predispose people to lifestyles that include such risk factors as the misuse of drugs and alcohol as a means of providing short-term relief from stress.

The most influential environment for the development of aggressive behaviour in children is the home, where the quality of parent–child interaction plays a key role.6

There is good evidence that school-based programs can improve children’s behaviour,7 but the most important interventions to prevent and treat childhood behavioural problems are parenting programs.

While Canada's life expectancy improvements have been far greater than that of the United States for the dollars invested, it has done only half as well as Germany. Other countries that performed more efficiently than Canada also include Switzerland, Italy, Austria, New Zealand, Denmark and France.

Some provinces, like Quebec, have invested heavily in universal access to early childhood care while others provinces have done very little on this front. The same can be said for basic working conditions like job protected sick leave, which remains spotty across the country. Affordable housing has become scarce in most of Canada's urban centres.

Poverty rates in Canada, while lower than the US, have been on the rise -- and poverty is one of the leading determinants of poor health.

In our study, a country’s social investments contributed to significant increases in longevity.

social determinants

Poverty rates in Canada, while lower than the US, have been on the rise — and poverty is one of the leading determinants of poor health.

Jody Heymann is an expert advisor with EvidenceNetwork.ca and Dean of the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. Prior to this, Heymann held a Canada Research Chair in Global Health and Social Policy at McGill University. Douglas Barthold is a doctoral candidate in economics, and a doctoral fellow at McGill University’s Institute for Health and Social Policy.

The most obvious way to fix the problem would be to bring prescription drugs under Medicare. To do so would also make economic sense: in a recent Canadian Medical Association Journal study I coauthored, we found that implementing universal public drug coverage would save the private sector a whopping $8.2 billion annually. It seems counterintuitive to think that covering more people would cost us less. However, if we bargained more effectively and purchased medications in bulk, the prices we pay for those drugs we already buy publicly would go down. If access to health care in Canada is truly based on need, not ability to pay, there is no justifiable reason to exclude prescription medications from our public plans. As we head into election season, let's demand some big ideas from our politicians that will really improve the health of Canadians. A basic income and universal pharmacare would be a good start. If we did those two things, there would be a real, measurable impact on the health of our communities. After all, that's what government is for. Dr. Danielle Martin is a family physician and vice-president of medical affairs at Women's College Hospital in Toronto. A renowned advocate for Medicare, Martin will be speaking about "Creating a Healthy Canada: An Agenda for Today ... and Tomorrow" on Wednesday at City Hall.