From: gld@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Gary L Dare)
Subject: Re: health care industry woes
Reply-To: gld@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Gary L Dare)
Organization: The Bates Motel
Distribution: usa
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1992 19:04:12 GMT

starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu (Tim Starr) writes:
>gld@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Gary L Dare) writes:
>
>}In the same way that U. of Toronto and McGill wield their big purses 
>}and can act like Ivy League colleges 'cos they spend as they please, 
>}our hospitals control their own endowment and build their facilities.
>}If our "private" hospital, St. Boniface, is actually run by government
>}bureaucrats, I should tell my father so Cam can it raise during their
>}next board meeting ...
>
>PBS gets the same sort of endowment, yet few I know of would call it 
>private.  Few I know of would call UT private.  This the strangest 
>construction of the term I've ever encountered.

In terms of the way the hospitals operate (I am only familiar with
Mount Sinai Toronto and St. Boniface in Winnipeg) as well as our
universities, let's say that they are "de facto" private.  I know that
politics goes on behind the scenes at black-ties that I have attended
with my parents (St. Bee) or crashed with my intern/resident and/or
Toronto "society" friends* (Sinai) is between the board, doctors and
patrons (e.g., who can they get for a donation, and where they stick
this person's name).  I've never seen anyone from the government at
these functions in a business capacity (except maybe Liberal or Tory
MP's/MPP's/MLA's who are there as givers) nor in all the shoptalk that
I have had to endure (and seemed to have remembered, 'cos I'm here
(-;).  So those hospitals and universities get public money, but they
are autonomous.  Our PBS, the CBC and SRC (French), are also publicly-
funded but autonomous ... considering how often they have dropped the
drawers of the government-of-the-day federally or provincially, they'd
need that safeguard to survive ...  even there, the public funding is
for facilities and maintenance, 'cos the cash that CBC and SRC spent
autonomously ('til that public funding has been scaled back by the
Tories) has come from broadcasting the 8 weeks of NHL hockey playoffs,
which is a licence to print money up in Canada.

* I was briefly involved with a woman who was from "society" in the
Upper East Side (you know, like in the Woody Allen movies) and while
visiting that world on occasions, a charity fundraiser at the Met
Museum (her parents had to leave town, and we got their tickets) was
not unlike one that I attended in Toronto.  It was strange to sip red
wine next to a six-deep stack of mummies ... (-;

>Thanks for the reference on the waiting periods.  Now I merely have
>to reconcile it with anecdotal evidence from your fellow Canadians.

If you have any Fraser Institute reports, do check the dates because
in other Canadian media most of the number examples that Americans
have been misusing are from the late 70's/early 80's (forgivable if
that's the best data that you can get down here -- an American PoliSci
grad student in my building offered me US$20 for a bargain bin C$4.00
book on John Turner ("Reign of Error") because it's not available down
here) ... That date could actually be 1980, not 1990; after all, the
famous "six months" bypass queue figure has been cited for a while
before 1990 ...

I'd also be interested to find out if "pure" private hospitals are
restricted by law, or whether it's a matter of economies-of-scale
(Canada has 75% the population of California, but over a much larger
land area ... a Winnipeg-Toronto-New York City flight is very telling
as you look down; I thought Toronto was amazingly dense when I arrived
for the first time, but crossing Lake Ontario, the patchwork of houses
went up by an order of magnitude in density!).  Also, note that in the
US-Canada Free Trade Agreement, relaxation of investment restrictions
in both directions supposedly allows American hospital corporations to
work in Canada without violation of the Canada Health Act (all other
fundamental laws of each country are honoured by the FTA, after all).

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 using our system (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 particularly centered around the way we do things 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				Jesus Saves!
> gld@cunixd.cc.columbia.EDU 		Gretzky gets the rebound -
> gld@cunixc.BITNET			he shoots, he scores!
Newsgroups: talk.politics.medicine