The most frequently accessed information on the site this year indicates a growing interest in the big picture view of Canadian health care. To help us understand this bigger picture we must keep looking at the answers to some important questions. Why is our current health care system unsustainable? Why do politicians and health care bureaucrats decide what type and [...]
My body starts convulsing; my blood pressure continues to drop. I’m exhausted and weak. This is it I think to myself. I’m not going to make it. There’s a call for help and a doctor rushes into the room. Her voice booms orders as she takes control of the situation, “OK guys, ABCs,” she says [...]
One of Saskatchewan’s former premiers, Roy Romanow, recently spoke out about the federal government’s plans regarding future health care funding for Canadian provinces. With limits being set on the federal dollars available for health care, provinces will be forced to explore and expand alternatives to government delivery of medical services. Romanow’s staunch defence of a universal, government-run health [...]
One of the dangers of socialized medicine is that population health and minimizing public health care costs always trump what’s best for individual patients. As part of its harm reduction program the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority is now handing out crack pipe kits to drug addicts in Vancouver. This is in addition to funding and operating a supervised [...]
An editorial on Parking-centred health care recently appeared in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. Dr. Rajendra Kale, a neurologist in Ottawa, shares his views about the unfairness of patients having to pay for parking while at the hospital. He believes that parking fees are a barrier to health care and can interfere with the quality [...]
Last week the Canadian Medical Association released its Voices into Action report summarizing the feedback it received at its public town halls on Medicare. The same three questions provided a framework for discussion at each of the six town halls. The first question asked about broadening the Canada Health Act, the second about good value [...]
The Canadian Medical Association partnered with L’actualité magazine to host a town hall discussing the future of Medicare on June 2, 2011, in La Prairie, Quebec. Panelists included the heads of the Quebec Medical Association, the Quebec Federation of Senior Citizens (FADOQ), the Council for the Protection of Patients, and the Priority Cancer Coalition. Some [...]
Last week I attended the Vancouver town hall on rebuilding Medicare. It’s one of five public events, make that six with the recent addition of Québec City, being hosted by the Canadian Medical Association and Maclean’s magazine. Many people, including some doctors and nurses, are calling for an expansion of Medicare to provide coverage for [...]
The heads of the Canadian Medical Association, the Alberta Medical Association, the Canadian Nurses Association and a former president of the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees all served as panelists at the Edmonton town hall on rebuilding Medicare held on March 29, 2011. Although it didn’t turn out to be as interesting as other recent events involving Alberta doctors, [...]
The Canadian Medical Association and Maclean’s magazine held a town hall in Toronto on March 1, 2011, to discuss rebuilding Medicare. The remaining ones will be held in Edmonton, Vancouver, and lastly, Ottawa also home to the first SOS Medicare conference in 1979. It’s hard to believe that more than three decades have passed and we are still looking for ways [...]