Health

AS the Christian Science
Moniter noted with
bemusement on March
23, the debate about
health care in Canada is
“,.the public debate
which hasn’t hap-
pened.”

The Monitor was referring
to the visceral railing against
Ralph Klein’s emasculated
Health Care Protection Act.
The sopkistication of health
care heckling in general has
Not fisen much above the
mob’s hackles. The crowd
shrieks “Gimme” at the
provincial leadership, which in
turn demands the same from
the federal government.

From Halifax to
Vancouver, mobs convene to
shake fists at government or at

rival interests: indefatigable
First Nations in fatigues, or
plain felons such as those who’
- use force to stop the distribu-
“tion of newspapers — ail line
up to clamour for boory for
their clans.
Canada is overrun by
primeval hordes.
Discourse about health
_ Gare is just‘one casualty of a
‘fe lity gripped by grotesque
tronics and lacking in rea-
son or any deep passion for
goodness. Ralph Klein’s Bill ~

-have helped underw

aie al

comment

11, the object of the spleen,
has come to naught.

Private clinics in Alberta,
not unlike those in B.C. and
Saskarchewan, will perform
minor procedures with
overnight stays. But these hap-
less hybrids, funded by
medicare and controlled by
regional health avthorities, will
now have to contend with so
many retrograde provisions as
to render them at least as inet:
ficient as the public system.

They are certainly of litde
threat to the public-sector
unions, a number of which
¢ the
campaign launched in Alberta

- by Friends of Medicare.

Unionized public sector
employees garner on average
25% more in wages than their
unionized counterparts in the

rivate sector. This exacer-

ates staff shortages in hospi-
tals because there aren’t the
funds to hire sufficient person-

nel. Labour demands are also
the reason why, according to
RC.’s former chief coroner

William Merthur, “amoung
29 QECD member states.
Canada now ranks consistently
ahead of only Mexico, Poland
and Turkey in terms of tech-
nology available.”

According to McArthur,
for every million Canadians
there are eight CT scanners
against 80 in Japan, 27 in the
U.S. and 17 in Portugal. Alla
mere trifling when you consid-
er the countervailing values
for which the Kiefer
Sutherland-endorsed system
stands. (The U.S.-based actor,
also the grandchild of Tommy
Douglas, putative founder of
Canadian medicare, recently
attended a large rally in
Alberta to protest Premier
Nein's paltry privatization
putsch.)

These include a plan to
extort from cancer patients a
medicare-indemnifying waiver,
where the patient acknow!l-
edges the danger of being
forced to wait indefinitely for
cancer treatment. These very
values prohibit Canadians
from purchasing private health
care in Canada. Their tax dol-
lars, however, are seized to -
purchase private cancer treat-
ment on their behalf in the
US.

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The only other nations to
hoid such values dear are
Cuba and North Korea, so
how possibiy can we go
wrong? More important than
the cost effectiveness of the
for-profit hospital, a result
confirmed broadly by four
dozen or so academic studies,
is that they are shaped by the .
consumer.

Profit, however, is as much
a part of a public hospizal as it
is a private one, notes
researcher John R. Graham,
only the incentives in the for-
mer come in the shape of
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