RE: Sinclair is Wrong -- It Wasn't Genocide — March 5, 2012

As a PhD in aboriginal history and culture in North America, I want to support Rodney Clifton and disagree with Judge Murray Sinclair and sociologist Chris Powell. I think it is wrong to equate the residential school experience with genocide.

According to the Concise Oxford Dictionary, genocide is the "deliberate extermination of a race or nation." What happened to aboriginal people in Canada was colonialism based on racism, a part of a worldwide phenomenon. It was not the deliberate murder of thousands of people.

The fact is that some aboriginal people benefited from their residential school experience. Not everyone was sexually assaulted. I have met aboriginal people who value their Christian heritage and do not resent that their ancestors chose to adopt new and different religious views. Their views should be documented and respected as well as the negative ones.

I do not intend to deny all the bad that happened. However, it is important to keep it in context. Sinclair and his commissioners should focus on the truth and reconciliation part of their mandate and not muddy the water by throwing around inflammatory rhetoric.

I hope that the new museum of human rights will be able to educate Canadians about all these experiences of Canadians of different backgrounds, so we can understand each other and respect our differences while ensuring that all our citizens are treated fairly and equally under the law and in our economy and society.- RUTH SWAN

RE: Canada Health Consumer Index 2010 — July 25, 2011

The race is on to select a new premier. Candidates will offer solutions to Alberta's ailing health-care system. Albertans should listen carefully. Previous promises, policies and practices served mostly to degrade health care from an admired Canadian benchmark to scraping the bottom in many key services. The Frontier Centre for Public Policy's report of December 2010 scored Alberta third from last among the provinces. Some good grades emerged, but Alberta received a greater number of poor grades.

Patient satisfaction, access to family and specialist doctors, prompt radiation therapy, cataract removal, infant mortality and in-hospital hip fractures received a poor score. Wait times remain excessive and bring unnecessary anxiety and cost to many.

Perhaps the organizational model is badly flawed? Monopolies rarely serve the public interest.

Alberta Health Services is such a monopoly. It is a serious conflict of interest to be both the funder as well as the provider of the service. Such models lack advocacy and are vulnerable to arbitrary decisions, political expediency and secrecy. The Senator Kirby report, of 2002, warned Canadians that regional health authorities should act only as service purchasers, not as providers.

The U.K recently issued a white paper calling for decentralization and increased local input. I believe Albertans know much was lost, economically, creatively, compassionately and in staff morale when local advocacy and operational control was scrapped. Let us ask for, and expect, tangible remedies from the candidates. - Ralph Coombs, Calgary

RE: Diversity in Healthcare — February 1, 2011

We will have a debate on social medicine when the system collapses. Social medicine appeals to the emotional side of human beings even though our rational sides understand that the system is unsustainable.  Social medicine will fail for the same reason all socialism fails: it offers no system for rationally allocating resources, and instead promotes overutilization of all resources, ending in bankruptcy.  - Comment in Winnipeg Free Press

RE: More Private Healthcare? — April 17, 2005

I'm very impressed by the work of your Centre. Keep up the good work. -E-mail from Angus Reid, Vancouver

RE: Shrink Waiting Lists the British Way — August 14, 2005
The Canadian Way is to simply eliminate the patients ... like Mr. Kelly in the recent BCTV story. Note that the spokesman for our Circus Maximus public health administration said nothing to BCTV about objective, measurable STANDARDS for public health in Canada, the standards which would have saved Mr. Kelly's life and other lives. Prime Minister Martin has NO commitment to such standards. Ask him. -E mail from B.C.

RE: Diversity in Healthcare — January 29, 2011

Yes, yes, yes. Get rid of the RHAs!!! I work for an RHA and was also an employee when it was Manitoba health. Let me tell you Ihave seen the waste quadruple with the RHAs. When I started at Manitoba health I had 1 boss now I have 5. Yes 5!!!  All making between $85,000 and $150,000 a year.They have only complicated the care process with their never ending "paper work and process".Their expense accounts are outrages, Lunches, travel, blackberry etc....why carpool when you can each take your own vehicle and charge $.40 a kilometer? Oh and why on earth would you do a conference call; that means you can't charge the $8.85 for your lunch! A lot of people are making alot of money but the care is deteriorating, I know cause I'm speaking out and in turn have been threatened with dismissal for insubordination. - Comment Winnipeg Free Press

RE: Interview with Dr. Mark Godley — January 20, 2006
Dr. Godley was fantastic! I think it was one of the best lunches I've been to. On a somewhat related note, some of the questions were around poaching of staff. My sister just graduated from Radiation Therapy. It's not MRI, but still somewhat related. She has to leave Manitoba to get a job because there are none here. Minister Sale keeps saying that they're understaffed and clinics like Dr. Godley's are making it worse by stealing staff. Yet all eight of the graduates from my sister's program have to leave Manitoba to find jobs. So our taxes are paying to train them, but because there's no jobs, they're leaving and going to work in other provinces while the government claims they're understaffed. Meanwhile, my sister says that cancer care is OVERSTAFFED for the equipment they have and they could run just as well, if not better, with half the staff... not because there's no demand, there's HUGE demand, but because there's a small, limited amount of equipment. - E-mail from Winnipeg

RE: Euro-Canada Consumer Health Index — January 25, 2008
Congratulations on your report. It is a major wake up call to Canadians. - Dr. Brian Day, President of the Canadian Medical Association

Canada at the bottom in 30 country health-care survey
The detailed comparison of healthcare in Europe and Canada ranks Canada 23rd for consumer sensitivity in healthcare. The Euro-Canada Health Consumer Index marks the first time that Canada is included in the comprehensive benchmarking exercise that analyzes consumer responsiveness among 29 national European healthcare systems

User Fees in Sweden
Very few Swedes seem to stay away from care or medication because of the patient fees. Here the safety net seems to work, even if there probably are some problematic individual cases outside the statistics. Patient behaviour regarding health-care visits is probably affected more, because they tend to go to the "cheaper" GP round the corner instead of using facilities with a higher fee. The high pressure on in-hospital acute care - a typical Swedish problem - reflects the lack of efficiency in primary care. To attack this shortcoming, you need either radically improved local care (my advice) or much higher fees on acute care (the bureaucratic attitude). User fees must always be put in a larger perspective, working together with other information and tools to provide a good platform for informed choice.

The Health Crisis of Our Time
Vice taxes and bans make even less sense in terms of reducing externalities. The premise itself is contrary to the intended purpose of public healthcare, which quite deliberately creates external costs by stipulating that no one ought to pay directly for their own care. With a mission statement like that, the argument that policy-makers ought to regulate risky behaviour because it may impose costs on others falls rather flat.

More Information, More Choices In Swedish Healthcare
The Greater Council of Stockholm already posts a great deal of health information electronically. If you have an urgent medical need, you can shop around to discover which facility is able to treat you the fastest. But until recently, the data on availability and waiting times has been hard to find and difficult to understand. Swedes are learning that widely available information on the health care market is a critical component that gives individuals the power to make active choices. If your neighbourhood clinic is unable to provide a service quickly, you can find out who will and arrange to get there.

Mark Godley rates political party platforms on healthcare.
You have Jack Layton from the New Democrats who has no interest in private healthcare for whatever reason, even though he recently received healthcare in the private sector. Then you have the Liberal Party, which only looks at providing healthcare within the public system. Under their rule, the private sector is flourishing, so I don’t believe that is a model of sustainability. Third, you have the Conservatives who clearly have an interest in getting the patient back to health and work, and off waiting lists. They seem willing to use the private sector, as well as out-of-country opportunities for patients. That is clearly the answer.

2004 Health Spending Comparison
Manitoba spends 7.6% more per capita on health care than Saskatchewan and 6.8% more than Alberta. Although Alberta’s population is younger on average, no demographic disparity explains the spread between health-care spending in Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

Canada v. Europe on Patient Rights: Canada Lags
Among other things, the index measures the extent to which different healthcare systems provide sufficient information to patients to enable them to make informed decisions about their own care. Result: Canada’s healthcare system is less transparent than most European models and patients in Canada are given far less information about their own situation and options than is the case in most European countries.

Ten Myths about Canadian Medicare
"Free" health care empowers the poor. With “free” healthcare, users are not powerful customers who must be satisfied. The system can provide shoddy service, but because it is free the individual is totally disempowered. The more educated, and connected middle class can use their networks to get better service than the poor. The inarticulate, the poor and the most vulnerable have much more limited ability to circumvent these systems.

Healthcare Problems We Share with the Yanks
If “first dollar” coverage promotes irresponsible and unnecessary consumption of healthcare, how much worse is the current Canadian system, which most consumers are wont to describe as “free,” and “zero price” stampedes the system? A combination of minimal co-payments, itemized reports of cost of care provided to consumers, and report cards with which consumers can evaluate the services, outcomes and options provided could all effect a radical change in how Canadians consume health care.