Indeed, I was a participant in the "Saskatchewan civil war" when the (or
I should say, some) doctors went on strike against the introduction of
comprehensive, compulsory medical insurance in, I think it was, 1961.
My family's doctors supported the insurance scheme and opposed the
strike. Some of the doctors and their supporters even threatened
violence in opposing public insurance but cooler heads prevailed, some
compromises were made, and the doctors went back to work -- as one
doctor I know put it, "before people realized that they got better
despite us, not because of us." (Indeed, the death rate fell in
Saskatchewan during the doctors' strike.) A year or so later, polls of
doctors opinions found a majority in favour of 'socialized (sic)
medicine' as is still overwhelmingly true today.
That is not to say that there is no disastisfaction with the
Canadian system. Almost all of the problems can be traced back to the
first half of the 1990s when neoliberal governments at both national and
provincial levels cut funding drastically for the healthcare system to
reduce government deficits and cut taxes as deficits ballooned in the
deep recession of the early 1990s. Medical schools drastically reduced
the intake of medical students and hospital beds were closed and nurses
and aides, etc. were sacked. Immediately, waiting lists appeared and
the problems with the system became more pronounced. I was commissioned
to make a study of the impact on medical staff in Manitoba and what we
found was that many of the sacked workers left their profession and went
into other pursuits or left the province. Ten years later when the NDP
formed the government and tried to address the problems by hiring more
staff and opening more beds they faced a shortage of available,
qualified staff. Indeed, they were forced to reopen nursing schools
previously closed in the move to have all nurses university (4 year)
trained rather than hospital/nursing school (2 year) trained.
However, when you look at the increase in the cost of medicare over
the past couple of decades, it is almost entirely accounted for by the
rise in cost of drugs, a rise accelerated in Canada by our government's
capitulation to the US to adopt the much more stringent pharmaceutical
protection laws. This cost escalation has continued apace in recent
years.
Interestly enough, the US government spends about the same as Canada
(%of GDP) on medical care but private expenditure in the US is about
double. If Canada raised its percentage expenditure even half way to
reduce this discrepancy and reduced the current privatisation of a
number of branches of health care, waiting lists could be largely
eliminated in relatively short order if we accelerate the training of
the required medical personnel.
As to Cuba, the couple of times we have needed minor medical
attention in Cuba when visiting there, we received it free of charge
though we had to pay quite minimal amounts for medication.
Paul P
Jim Devine wrote:
haven't seen the movie yet.
On 6/30/07, Julio Huato <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
raghu wrote:
> Anyone care to offer a rebuttal?
My rebuttal is: They are really desperate trying to defend their
Frankenstein. They are defensive about their scam. That is
incriminating enough. No doubt, if Moore hadn't gone to Cuba, the
criticism against the documentary and him would be significantly less
intense. More power to Moore for having done it that way.
Other countries dedicate a smaller percentage of their resources to
medical care than the US does and get better care. Something is sorely
wrong. If we value "American ingenuity" so much, we can take something
like the French system or US Medicare and improve it, giving more
coverage than those systems already do.
One thing: though the Canadian system is better than the US one,
didn't the doctors go on strike to oppose the Canadian one?
--
Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your
own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.
--
Paul Phillips Professor Emertus, Economics University of Manitoba Home
and Office: 3806 - 36A st., Vernon BC, Canada. ViT 6E9 tel: 1 (250)
558-0830 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
