Excerpt on health-care from Layton's speech

Ok, here's what Layton actually said today on the Liberal health-care proposal:

We looked for real enforcement and accountability that lets the federal government track its own health care agreements. We looked to end subsidies for doctors practising both in and out of medicare.
And most importantly, we proposed an end to federal subsidies for private, for-profit health care. We called for protection to ensure that funding from Canada’s Parliament wouldn’t in any way subsidize or support a private, for-profit health system.
In short, we sought real accountability for federal transfers and real consequences when public medicare is undermined.
Last week, late Thursday night, the government responded to our specific proposals.
We’ve analyzed them over the weekend.
What the government is proposing is unacceptable.

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To be fair, the government did go some distance on preventing doctors practising both in and out of medicare. But addressing one issue while failing to address the larger question of privatization isn’t enough.
There is no meaningful accountability. No real effort to monitor and track public medicare’s decline and private care’s rise. And today’s Liberal Party is unwilling to attach any conditions to prevent privatization to the funds it currently invests in health.
This isn’t good enough for people concerned about the erosion of public medicare. They know dollars are scarce – and they want those dollars going to care for their kids, their parents and themselves. Not spent on profit margins.
These people know the private hospitals we have today are the thin edge of the wedge to the two-tier, private system they don’t want and which the Supreme Court accelerated early this year.
They want Canada to protect public medicare that defines how we treat each other. A deeply held value that Canadians hold profoundly, which guides and defines us. Canadians deserve public medicare protected and after a careful consideration of Mr. Martin’s proposals, I am forced to conclude his government won’t.