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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (22536)	1/2/2004 7:38:17 AM
From: frankw1900	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793713

Seen it? I hadn't even heard of it. The sorry aspect of medical care in Canada is not its "socialized" nature itself, but the lack of flexibility and the the resulting high cost of running a hospital oriented health system. Much treatment of a routine or very specialized nature could be done at private clinics or in doctors' surgeries. There is no particular reason, except ideological, that newest high tech stuff could not be used by private operators who could be efficient and supply the public system with reasonably priced services. For years there has been a private clinic in Toronto which specializes only in hernia operations and can deliver superior results at lowest cost. It's the type of model which can be generalized to great advantage - the plant costs much less than a general hospital building, lower cost non-medical staff, etc. Quebec, where the movie is set, is probably the most extreme example of the diversion of medical purpose to support of union wages, sinecures and featherbedding. Public health is supposedly a provincial responsibility under the Canadian constitution but the Feds distorted the whole thing many years ago by pumping huge amounts of federal money into health with a corresponding requirement provinces conform to federal views on how it should be spent - on "universal" health care uniform across the country - with the result the system has become dominated by administrators and unions with wastefulness as its most obvious characteristic. All provinces, are in one way or another, usually very slowly, in process of reforming their hospital systems and adding a greater "private" component. The unions are taking hits and don't like it. I expect the reforms to pick up speed as folk figure out what works.