Perhaps you are a relatively healthy person and therefore feel little need to concern yourself with the plight of patients and doctors featured in news headlines across the country. Like a majority of Canadians you tend to believe that when you have a serious injury or illness that our health care system will provide the best medical [...]

The government of Alberta is feeling the heat after halting bankruptcy proceedings against a private surgical facility in Calgary. The Health Resource Centre (HRC), owned by Networc Health Inc., performed about 1,000 orthopaedic surgeries for the government in 2009. Anticipating future increases in its government surgical contract, the HRC entered into a lease agreement with the [...]

It’s the voice of patients everywhere. Each day there are stories in the news about the problems with our public health care system. Patients are finally voicing their concerns and people are realizing that although no health care system is perfect ours can be better. The popular notion that our health care is “free” seems [...]

When you think about our universal health care system do you ever wonder about the fairness of waiting lists, otherwise known as queues? Our politicians claim queues provide Canadians with equal access to health care. Do they really? Remember the recent outcry when hockey players and their families jumped the queue for the H1N1 flu [...]

In the eleventh hour on Sunday, November 29th, 2009 Lyall’s waiting comes to an end. Less than three weeks after his appointment with the Oncologists he succumbs to esophageal cancer. No more pain and suffering, no more medications, nebulizer or oxygen. No more waiting on any lists for health care. Only a few days before, my [...]

In June 2009, we visit my in-laws on Vancouver Island in British Columbia. They are avid golfers who enjoy playing the game daily. So my husband and I don’t think much about it when his father Lyall is experiencing indigestion and has trouble swallowing his food. He tells us that his doctor is treating him [...]

Many Canadians think that our health care system, more affectionately known as Medicare, is a fair system. This is supported by the belief that a government-run health care system serves the “public good” by allotting medical care based on “need” rather than “ability to pay”. In theory, a health care system serving the collective “public good” sounds [...]