From: gld@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Gary L Dare)
Subject: Re: Canadian healthcare system
Followup-To: talk.politics.medicine
Reply-To: gld@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Gary L Dare)
Organization: Deep Space Nine (DS9)
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1993 23:48:56 GMT

G. L. Bartlett <U56149@uicvm.uic.edu> writes:
>
>You an others may be interested in the views of a Canadian physician
>that were published last Fall.  Ian R. Munro, "How not to improve 
>health care", Reader's Digest v.141, Sept., 1992, pp 40-53.

Actually, this writer is a Brit who spent a couple of years in Toronto
before moving to Dallas.  He is an administrator, not a practicioner.
By grossly exaggerating if not outright fabricating the influence of
the government (which only serves as a vehicle for routing health
insurance dollars) and ignoring the CMA-oriented doctors monopoly
(like the AMA-oriented one in the United States), the scenarioes
described do not resemble what anybody living/had lived in Canada sees
and knows.  Doctors make all the decisions -- "societal decisions",
indeed!!! -- as if there were actually bureaucrats second-guessing
doctors like in HMO's or now even health insurance firms (NYT, 1/24);
in fact, it seems to me that Dr. Munro has taken beefs he has had with
the U.K.'s National Health System (socialized medicine), and clumsily
jury-rigged factoids to fit his arguments.  I don't know where all of
that comes from since the difference is how we PAY for health care ...

E.g. -- abuse of emergency rooms.  You know why it happens down here
in the U.S.  Since everyone has health insurance in Canada, why should
they have to do it?

Many facts and quotations are old if not out of context.  I don't know
if Reader's Digest even dared to print it in their Canadian editions
(Anybody up north see it?  Like in a doctor's waiting room? (-;) or
anywhere else outside of the U.S., and if they did what debunking had
been carried out in the Canadian press.  The tone of the article also
assumes that things like misdiagnosis cannot happen down here.  The
article falls flat on its face at one point when it condemned the
wealthy and/or influential of being able to get better and quicker
access through pull ... boy, some socialism!!!  (-; And if you have
deductibles, is that "moving away from 'national health care'" -- when
it's just insurance?  (In Spring '92, a private insurance consortium
waged a PR campaign against the Quebec government's mumblings about
privatizing some parts of their provincial health insurance plan).

Also, if America is where Canada was 35 years ago, as per one quote
...  well, our health insurance switchover wasn't even thought about
'til the late 60's, one of the points made even by Dr.  Munro in the
article (do the math! (-;).  Even 20 years ago, we all paid cash in
Canada and the U.S., and even Americans knew then that we Canadians
had to travel to L.A. and New York for extreme cases for the same
reasons as people from Montana and Vermont ...  seems geography has
been removed from American school curriculums in the interim. (-;

Speaking of anecdotal evidence, with all the Canadian celebrities that
receive American exposure I do not know of a single one who has become
a spokesman against our "system" (nb. I do not advocate it for the US, 
I'm just trying to clarify reality -- there are some major cultural
differences in values and behaviour Canada/France/Germany vs. USA):
Jason Priestley (90210), Neil Young, Joni Mitchell (married to an
American and living in L.A.), Michael J. Fox, Peter Jennings ... it's
a massive list and you'd think that there'd be *someone* with a valid
beef centered particularly around the way we do insurance up north ...
the Canadian population in California alone is estimated at 1 Million.
(I'm sure that includes children of Canadians and their spouses; it is
a number oft-repeated up north, and still amazes me)

gld
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Je me souviens ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Gary L. Dare
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