Canadian Doctors: Our health-care system is sick

Its interesting to see this article in the Canadian Press Overhauling health-care system tops agenda at annual meeting of Canada's doctors.

Is this finally a tacit admission, or at least a veiled one, that single-payer doesn't work? Hardly, since the current head of the Canadian Medical Association won't let go of the idea, but he is advocating a need for private care being made available.

"The pitch for change at the conference is to start with a presentation from Dr. Robert Ouellet, the current president of the CMA, who has said there's a critical need to make Canada's health-care system patient-centred. He will present details from his fact-finding trip to Europe in January, where he met with health groups in England, Denmark, Belgium, Netherlands and France.

His thoughts on the issue are already clear. Ouellet has been saying since his return that "a health-care revolution has passed us by," that it's possible to make wait lists disappear while maintaining universal coverage and "that competition should be welcomed, not feared."

In other words, Ouellet believes there could be a role for private health-care delivery within the public system.

Ok... an admission that the wait lists exist... and that we can eliminate them while "maintaining universal coverage"... oh I get it... make the system work while maintaining an iron fisted control on the population... Well Sir, if that were possible it would have worked that way in the first place. But providing quality care in a timely fashion has never been what the system was all about has it?

It gets better...

"He has also said the Canadian system could be restructured to focus on patients if hospitals and other health-care institutions received funding based on the patients they treat, instead of an annual, lump-sum budget. This "activity-based funding" would be an incentive to provide more efficient care, he has said."

Soooo... providing quality care to patients was never what the system was about? So much for your "right" to healthcare. Last I checked Dr. Ouellet, the Hippocratic oath you took was "to do no harm"... then based on your statements about the system you support so vehemently, yet needs to be changed while maintaining the very mechanism that breaks it in the first place, is nothing more than an absolute violation of that oath... and harming tens of thousands a year.

The Incoming replacement for Dr. Ouellet, a Dr. Anne Doig stated the following... "'A short-term achievable goal would be to accelerate the process of getting electronic medical records into physicians' offices," she said. "That's one I think ought to be a priority and ought to be achievable.'"

I see... consolidate everyone's records into the hands of the government, so that "patient-centered" care can then rationed yet again based on a review of the records. So more efficient use of the medical system for younger "more able-bodied" and the same bureaucratic "weeding" of the elderly who generally need greater care. Sounds to me that this looks like the beginnings of what Ezekial Emanual advocated here.. a "Life Years" approach. Pain pill the crap out of the elderly until they're dead.

How did Ezekiel Emanuel put it?... oh yes...

"“When implemented, the complete lives system produces a priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most substantial chance, whereas the …youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated…The complete lives system justifies preference to younger people because of priority to the worst off rather than instrumental value.”"

Is it a leap to say that centralized medical records are a prelude to this "Life Years" murder program? Not if the government was involved it isn't, and especially if they're printing the money used to pay the bills.

In Canada, its apparent that the derisive mantra against privatization is to say that "you want an American System here..."

"Doig, who has had a full-time family practice in Saskatoon for 30 years, acknowledges that when physicians have talked about changing the health-care system in the past, they've been accused of wanting an American-style structure. She insists that's not the case.

"It's not about choosing between an American system or a Canadian system," said Doig. "The whole thing is about looking at what other people do.""

I think Dr. Doig, you have a point there... If you compare what is happening in Europe, Great Britain, and in your own country, then compare it to the US... where do these people go when they need quality care and they need it now! They come here to America, I don't ever hear stories about the opposite. What I do hear is about people who go to Europe for some esoteric treatment after they've exhausted all possibilities here.. only to return from Europe knowing they're going to die anyway. The most advanced care is here in the US, and that is due to the privatized system that is absent of Government oppression. That is until now with the Socialists in power here.

You have your model Dr. Doig, its here in the US. Replicate it before the US replicates yours, and then your patients will truly have no where to go.