If all members of this health insurance policy are to be treated equally, why is there a growing popular movement to punish non-vaccinated people in Canada?

BY STEVEN KASZAB

Universal Health Care means that all individuals and communities receive the health services they need without suffering financial hardship. It includes the full spectrum of essential, quality health services, from health promotion to prevention, treatment, rehabilitation, and palliative care across the life course.

The delivery of these services require adequate and competent healthcare workers with optimal skills mix at facility, outreach and community level, and who are equitably distributed, adequately supported and enjoy decent work. UHC strategies enable everyone to access the services that address the most significant causes of disease and death and ensure that the quality of those services is good enough to improve the health of the people who receive them.

Protecting people from the financial consequences of paying for health services out of their own pockets reduces the risk that people will be pushed into poverty because unexpected illness requires them to use up their life savings, sell assets, or borrow, destroying their futures and often those of their children.

In Canada we have a Health System which requires all participants to pay directly into a collective Health Insurance Plan, and like all insurance plans all participants are supposed to be treated equally.

Is that what is happening in Canada today? Pre-pandemic many illnesses, and the medication required to assist these patients were delisted due to costs to the system. The public was often required to pay for these medications and sometimes the procedures required. Now we are experiencing a wave of unimaginable illness due to COVID-19, with many hospitals full of patients, understaffed hospitals with no time to adjust to the increasing demands of the population.

Question: If all members of this health insurance policy are to be treated equally, why is there a growing popular movement to punish non-vaccinated people in Canada? Quebec may fine individuals for not getting vaccinated, and public employees as well as employees working for corporations are being forced to comply with rigorous safety and health mandates.

All members of these health insurance policies are to be treated equally, except if you are unvaccinated? The reason for this public persecution seems to be simply because some individuals will not get vaccinated, but can and do carry out other safety protocols. The demand upon the health system is the reason for this treatment of the unvaccinated. Does the health system penalize those who are addicted, overweight, homeless, mentally challenged, those who use the system a lot?

Our healthcare system is broken. The desperate situation in Canada is due to the mis-management of various governments and their agencies, all of which lacked insight and foresight about what could happen. No one listened, no one wanted to spend the revenue on being prepared, training a new generation of medical staff, building new modern medical facilities, modernizing Provincial Health Agencies, and establishing manufacturing and research facilities into virology, dementia and other common medical threats.

Our healthcare system, and the healthcare insurance that props it up are damaged, and in need of a huge infusion of revenue, staff and original thought, new and better safety and health policies.