Tuesday, October 15, 2024
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Health care is a student issue

How our political climate is slashing services on all fronts

Hayley Gray, Staff Contributor

 

You are a strapping young student, your pharmaceutical bill is not through the roof, you are not in need of home care or visiting doctors on a weekly basis. So why should you care about health care? Sure, it’s an issue, but it’s not your issue—which is why it doesn’t often carve out a voice for itself on campus.

However, healthcare politics are not just about how you afford your medical bills. They are about federalism, socialism, liberty, and perhaps most important to you: jobs.

We have a huge aging population; those pesky baby boomers come up so often when we talk about money. However, this can also mean more individuals working in the healthcare field. Well, hopefully.

Under the Harper government, the employment rate has remained steady. They’re proud to say so, too: just look at the new Conservative Party ads, where they describe themselves as “working to create new jobs (and) working to save jobs”. However, what they are not saying is what kinds of jobs are being created. According to an article in United Press International, healthcare employment has gone down while work in manufacturing, transportation and warehousing have gone up.

Now let’s think about this: what do these jobs look like? Are they paid well? Do they offer safe work? And how secure are they? According to Human Resources and Skills Development Canada’s 2007 statistics, manufacturing has the highest rates of work-related injuries of any sector, with transportation and storage not far behind. When you contrast healthcare with manufacturing, transportation and warehousing, it is not hard to see that safe, secure jobs are getting cut.

Maybe you don’t think your field is applicable to healthcare. You’re probably wrong. All of our degrees and areas of expertise lend themselves to jobs in healthcare. Computer science geek? Health informatics is a booming field. Sociology student? Try a masters of social work, it can land you right in a healthcare environment. Philosophy? Medical and bioethics is the biggest boom your concentration has had in decades. Studying an art form? Add the word ‘therapy’ to it and you’ve stumbled into the healthcare scene. Healthcare is one of the most universally applicable job sectors and hopefully will continue to be, so long as the Canada Health Transfer and other health funding programs don’t get slashed by our conservative government.

So here we have it. Baby boomers are going to put an increasing strain on our healthcare system. The federal government has promised a six per cent annual increase in funding for health care until 2014, but as hospitals’ and provinces’ finances become more tight, and patient numbers rise, that won’t be enough to save our provinces from having to cut jobs.

What this means for the average student is that there is one more field where they are unable to find a job. Unable to pay off your loan, or find public-sector work. But hey, maybe you can work for minimum wage on a casual basis as a non-unionized employee at the new Convention Centre. If you do manage to land a job in healthcare, you’re going to find yourself overworked and constantly understaffed. No matter where you are in this system, you don’t win. Have I riled you up yet?

With more and more students graduating with massive debts and without work in their field, healthcare becomes an issue that affects us all. The discussion about healthcare is not so different than that of tuition fees: both are the output of a system that is devaluing education and meaningful work.

One great thing that came out of the riots in London was solidarity. Students who had never thought twice about public sector workers striking were beginning to work collectively with them. If we want the student voice to be relevant, we need to work on more than tuition. We need to work in solidarity with others misused by the same system of shortsighted neoliberal values that made the O’Neill report relevant. Let’s bring more to the table. Most of us will only spend a few years within a post-secondary institution, but we will be dealing with our social and political climates for the rest of our lives.

Hayley Gray sits on the executive of the Nova Scotia Health Coalition.

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