Refugees’ fight for healthcare
Refugees access healthcare benefits is no longer a simple thing.
The UN wants Canada to take in over ten thousand refugees over the next two years.
If this happens some doctors say Canada’s role as a humanitarian county needs to change.
With all the recent health care insurance cuts to refugees doctors are confused about who is insured and who is not.
“We’ve been educating our colleagues on who actually does have insurance,” said Dr. Meb Rashid, co-founder of Canadian Doctors for Refugee Care, “If nothing else a lot of physicians have no idea who’s covered, who’s not covered.”
Canadian Doctors for Refugee Care have been fighting to make sure that refugees are being treated fairly in Canada.
Rashid feels that many Canadians are not aware of how refugees are affected.
“Many people would be quite shocked if they understood the depths to which the government aims to cut health insurance,” he said.
With cuts to dental, vision and medication the benefits that refugees can get are dependent on what the government decides in the Interim Federal Health Program (IFHP). The Government of Canada website states it that IFHP “provides limited, temporary, taxpayer-funded health-care coverage for specific groups of people in Canada who do not have provincial, territorial, or private health-care coverage.”
Some of the cuts were restored when the government was brought to court in 2014, but paralegal at the Rexdale Community Legal Clinic, Amanda Bitton, says that the government does not really understand what Canadians want.
“I think Canadians and the Canadian government are two different things,” she says, “I think Canadians are compassionate and desire to make change as much as they ever have. I think the Canadian government unfortunately is making us a much less welcoming place for refugees and newcomers.”
“Being a refugee is hard enough right, you’re coming to a new country, you don’t speak the language. It’s a very scary process, and then on top of that you know a lot of these individuals are suffering from health issues and every time they go to the doctors they get charged all kinds of fees and they’re more stressed out.”
Radish and Bitton both agreed that the cuts that were restored to refugees under the court order, on November 5th, 2014 are essential to women and children.
Although the courts have forced the government to restore certain insurance benefits to refugees, Canada’s role of as a humanitarian country seems to be changing.
“Canada’s no longer seen as a haven for people fleeing persecution,” said Rashid.
Executive director of the Mennonite Collection of Refugee Support, Eunice Valenzuela said, “I think they are trying to move more to a economical mode.”
The government has said they made these cuts to battle false refugee claims, but Bitten said she thinks we need to put more trust in people.
“I think that we have to give people the benefit of the doubt,” said Bitton.
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