Castanet

*removed*

The shortage of physicians is symptomatic of the failure of the Canada Health Act and 'leaders' who failed to prepare for the long-anticipated stress an aging population has placed on our health care providers.

The failure of socialized health care should come as a surprise to no one. If grocery stores were run by government on the same model, there would probably only be one place to shop, and we would all spend hours in line waiting to buy a ration of milk. Of course apologists would credit the government with providing a cure for our obesity epidemic.

The best and perhaps the only way to lessen future deaths and misery is to stage the return of a significant percentage of our health care industry to free market innovation and efficiency, with government involvement concentrated on the coverage of catastrophic illness.

One doctor's opinion:

Scrap the Canada Health Act - Federal legislation governing medicine is actually a barrier to receiving care

Dr. Harry Pollett:

I could go on and on about the difficulties caused by this rotten piece of legislation, but I think there is a better way to fund health care.

http://thechronicleherald.ca/opinion/14 ... health-act

^^ The doctor's opinion is part of a range of issues that can be dealt with, but aren't being dealt with because we have politicians, a lot of them with no management experience, trying to dictate top down, and more interested in cutting ribbons for photo ops than dealing with systemic issues.

Time and again we see opinions expressed that go after the symptoms and not the disease. Health care is a complex issue, and complex issues require grid management, nad bottom up solutions. We have a top down system that feeds into a semi-grid management by the provinces, who then revert to top down.

The solutions should be coming up from the bottom, from the dedicated and wonderful folks who staff our medical facilities. Do it through lean methodology. In other words, don't run it as a top down socialist centralized system, run it as a responsive modern business. Yes, you have to have someone at the top setting parameters like budgets, but let the professionals, with help from a few modern managers (light touch facilitating and coaching - not "bosses"), find solutions that work.

Roughly 20% of patients in hospitals can and should be dealt with in other settings (including at home) for better and more cost effective care. That would free up a lot of hospital resources to chew into the wait times etc.

http://reviewcanada.ca/magazine/2009/11/too-much-health-care/

I came across that article, and while it is a long read, it is well worth it.

hobbyguy wrote:http://reviewcanada.ca/magazine/2009/11/too-much-health-care/

I came across that article, and while it is a long read, it is well worth it.

Thanks HG. That's a thought-provoking article that makes perfect sense to me. As the author points out, politicians need the intestinal fortitude to make some decisions that need to be made and we in the public need to change some of our paradigms. I hope that many others on here read the article. It's not all that long and it's worth whatever time it takes you. Thanks again for posting it.

Dr. Wright makes valid points about the need for common sense and prioritization in health care. Unfortunately, those aren't things that government bureaucracies are good at.