To this list, I’d add defunding of procedures not medically necessary, like abortion. My opponents argue abortion is so very private–then let it be truly so and stop using my money to fund it.
Perfect for timid politicians, incidentally; they don’t have to make any comment on abortion itself, simply have to withdraw the money. Perfect for libertarians, in particular those who don’t care about abortion–it reduces state expenditures. Most of all, perfect for women’s groups who support abortion as a woman’s private, personal choice. A win-win!
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Our government adds insult to injury in the way they treat us. First they make abortion legal. Then they make *us* pay for it!! And every time an MP proposes a study to find out whether or not abortion is truly “medically necessary”, it gets shot down.
If abortion is a matter of “choice”, then by definition, it is not a “medical necessity”. You can’t have it both ways all you people who hold “choice” up as your holy grail. Stop dipping into my pocket to pay for your choices!
True – there are some abortions that a hospital would deem as therapeutic and therefore socially-fundable, but these do not even make a dent in the total number of indiscriminate abortions performed per year. And think about it. I don’t know the true cost of the procedure, but if the over 100 000 abortions in Canada last year alone cost a mere $100 of taxpayer money each, that’s a $10 million dollar saving that we could have diverted towards truly medically necessary treatments. Just last year.
I wonder how many dollars the abortion mills will take away from cancer patients in 2008?…..
I agree with you Andrea, but there is one caveat to that line of thinking. It relates to the current noise about genetic testing and Palin’s son trig.
If there is a system that will not pay for the choice of abortion, it could also refuse to pay for the choice of giving birth to a child with disabilities that could have been detected and terminated.
That sounds pretty far-fetched and ridiculous (and contrary to civil and constitutional laws for that matter) but the reality is that the Ontario Ministry of Health is developing clinical priority-setting strategies based on “the values of the majority of the public”.
If an infant with disabilities is denied appropriate medical care in an unethical manner, sure the laws exist, but they are unattainable. The cost of these lives hardly pays for just the prep time of a lawyer and the financial risk to the family of losing a lawsuit is substantial. Proving causation for a fragile child is almost impossible.
The health care system is focused on directing funds to secure votes, in my opinion.