Roy Romanow’s message to Barack Obama

A former (NDP!) premier of Saskatchewan, Canada’s first province with single-payer healthcare, speaks out, along with others in the medical and nursing fields:

US visitors, please spread this message. Grab the YouTube and put it on your blogs, or link to it in forums. The advice in it is very important, especially the part about “trying to cross a chasm in two steps”. Right now, that’s exactly what Obama is trying to do–and it’s exactly why his plan is in so much jeopardy. Learn from Tommy Douglas–do it all in one, and play hardball if you have to. The end result is worth it!

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4 Responses to Roy Romanow’s message to Barack Obama

  1. Manaat says:

    How long has Canada had universal health care?

  2. The entire country has had it since 1966, when Lester B. Pearson basically nationalized what Tommy Douglas began twenty years earlier in Saskatchewan. That’s why it’s so significant that a former Saskatchewan premier, from Tommy Douglas’s own party, be the one to deliver this message–the people of that province have the longest experience with single-payer healthcare. And they had it under our first elected socialist premier, to boot.

  3. Manaat says:

    So NDP is that old, eh?

  4. Well, it began in the west as the Co-Operative Commonwealth Federation, or CCF. Kind of an unwieldy name. It was founded in 1932. So yeah, it’s that old! But it has its roots in an older tradition:
    http://www.mta.ca/about_canada/study_guide/roots/development_protest.html
    Basically, Prairie socialism grew as the land was settled and developed; people out west didn’t like having no voice, and the established Liberal and Conservative parties weren’t paying them much attention either. It was need that led to the NDP’s founding. And it was fulfillment of needs that led to their political successes. As soon as they started acting like the others, though–that’s when they fell down. The Bob Rae government of Ontario, which was our first NDP provincial government here, did too much compromising with the very business types the people of Ontario had NOT voted for, and that led to their failure.
    Bob Rae is now a Liberal, surprise surprise.

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