Sunday, August 16, 2009

Canadian Healthcare System 'Imploding' Top Doc

Story here.

ht: NNW

"We all agree that the system is imploding, we all agree that things are more precarious than perhaps Canadians realize," Doig told The Canadian Press.

"We know that there must be change," she said. "We're all running flat out, we're all just trying to stay ahead of the immediate day-to-day demands."

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, the 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.

The delivery of funding is also recommended, by Ouellet, to be "treatment-based", as opposed to the current, problem-causing budget-based model.

After all, when a hospital has a fixed annual budget, one thing is for sure: RATIONING.

Plus, does anyone believe that the bureaucrats and unions aren't taking more out of the overall budget than they need, away from patient care? If anything ought to get a fixed annual budget, it's the bureaucracy! And the unions, how dare they hold patients hostage for more money to line their own pockets? If these unionists are only in it for the money, as opposed to being in it for the right reasons, this isn't a good thing! Too many greedy unionists trying to take more and more money away from patients all the time. It's selfish and mean-spirited. It's bad enough that unions played the bulk of the role in the decline of the Big Three. It's downright inhuman and immoral for there to be strike-obsessed unions in this sector.

(Note to angry unionist healthcare workers: Believe me, you have it far, far, far better than I do, and I'll not listen to any angry retorts. I personally needn't take any lessons from y'all.)

For years now, we've been told that we must accept the current communist system of healthcare delivery which we know doesn't work and only gets worse, no matter how many more billions and billions we shovel into it.

It's time to admit that we need a balanced system that serves everyone and serves everyone well.

It's time to open our minds and discard our imposed socialist indoctrination nonsense.