OTTAWA - The First Ministers have failed to defend medicare from privatization. While the new federal funding for health care is needed and welcome, other equally important measures have been ignored by the First Ministers during their meeting in Ottawa.

"To not address privatization," says Robert Chernomas, an economist and board member with the Council of Canadians, "can only be seen as irresponsible or a tacit endorsement of private delivery. Either way, the First Ministers have let Canadians down."

Studies have shown that for-profit hospitals result in both higher mortality rates and greater payments for care than not-for-profit hospitals, yet there are no strategies in their 10-year plan to ensure that the privatization of health care in Canada is stopped.

While a long-promised national pharmacare program is needed and would save hundreds of millions of dollars every year, the First Ministers meekly established a task force that in two years time will "develop, assess and cost options for catastrophic pharmaceutical coverage."

The corporate abuse of drug patenting practices, which add billions of dollars in costs to our health care system, wasn't even discussed.

A recent Ipsos-Reid poll found that 64% of Canadians believe that the health care system should exclude for-profit corporations, and instead rely solely on not-for-profit health care providers.

Sadly, their voices were not represented by the First Ministers in the development of this plan.

"Canadians deserve better than a one-step forward, two-steps back approach," says Maude Barlow, Chairperson of the Council of Canadians.

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