ABSTRACT
The planning function of public health was an early casualty of the development of capitalist relations in health care. Huge corporations are the driving force of health care in the United States. They act in their own best interests by squeezing maximum profits out of illness and injury and by devoting massive resources to influencing government to allow the private sector to continue to maximize profits. The American Public Health Association (APHA) is the largest professional public health association in the United States, with about 50,000 members in affiliates nationwide. In the summer of 1989 the APHA Executive Board distributed a Sense of Congress resolution outlining the organization’s thirteen principles for a national health program. The chapter focuses on the Canadian health care system upon which US proposals are based. In terms of access to health care, Ontario is reasonably representative of the situation throughout the provinces.
