On July 12, 1966, the Medical Care Insurance Act was passed by the federal House of Commons after a ferocious public debate that pitted the vast majority of Canadians against a powerful alliance of business, insurance companies, and doctors. More than thirty years later, the same battle is being fought all over again. Only now, the forces opposed to medicare are more ideologically unified, more richly endowed, and tied to transnational corporations whose power exceeds that of entire countries. In Profit Is Not the Cure, Maude Barlow traces the history of medicare in Canada. She compares it with both public and private systems in other parts of the world. And she contrasts it with the brutally divisive system that exists in the UnitedStates, where forty-four million people have no medical insurance, and millions more get minimal care through profit-driven health maintenance organizations. From the point of view of most patients, the United States health-care model...
