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Health care shouldn't require fundraising drives

Health care shouldn't require fundraising drives Open letter to the Yukon Hospital Foundation: I am responding to a flyer from the hospital corporation and foundation which arrived in the mail last week. I strongly object to fundraising campaigns for a

Open letter to the Yukon Hospital Foundation:

I am responding to a flyer from the hospital corporation and foundation which arrived in the mail last week. I strongly object to fundraising campaigns for a service which we as a society have decided we will pay for together, to serve each other.

Health care, including the equipment necessary to deliver it, is a commitment we have made to each other. We have decided collectively that health care should be financed from our pot of money called “taxes.”

By running fundraising campaigns, you are undermining our collective commitment to take care of each other. You are suggesting that taxes and government decision-making are not the way we should take care of each other. You are weakening our health-care system and the mechanism we have agreed as a society to pay for it.

Please stop this destructive approach to funding health care. I find it offensive to see corporations acknowledged for their donations on a wall in a public building - i.e. a building belonging to me and my neighbours. Corporations should pay their share of taxes as determined by our collective agent, the government.

The fact that our government does not get adequate royalties or taxes from the corporate sector is another issue. We should not have to see companies advertising when we go to have blood work done. Such advertising turns a public building into a billboard for corporations, and it turns patients into consumers, rather than citizens receiving a service as a member of our society.

Furthermore, the fact that the current premier’s photo appears twice in this publication is completely inappropriate. It is very important that our public institutions remain at arm’s length from the politicians. That is one of the principle reasons why the hospital is run as a Crown corporation.

While a newsletter informing us of activities and programs at our hospital is welcome, a publication which is counter to the essence of our health care like the last issue of “Our Pulse” is not welcome in my mailbox.

Spence Hill

Whitehorse