Date: Thu, 23 Aug 2007 17:52:21 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [KCUTS] Beware: Brian Day is out to destroy medicare
From: meadow@netidea.com
Bill Tieleman's 24 Hours Column
Tuesday August 21, 2007
Watch out for new CMA boss
By BILL TIELEMAN
The public has tasted private health care - and they like it.
- Dr. Brian Day, March 30, 2006
Charge! The Canadian Medical Association has declared war on our public
health-care system.
And tomorrow, Canada's doctors install as their commander-in-chief the
most radical
and outspoken health-care privatization advocate in the country.
Dr. Brian Day becomes president of the CMA weeks after the organization
representing
Canada's physicians said its members should be able to work simultaneously
in both
the public and private health-care sectors.
That position is so extreme even Conservative Prime Minister Stephen
Harper rejects
it. Last year in a letter to then-Alberta premier Ralph Klein, Harper
warned the
province to back off the same approach the CMA now favours. And rightly so.
"Dual practice creates conflict of interest for physicians as there would
be a
financial incentive for them to stream patients into the private portion
of their
practice," Harper wrote on March 31, 2006. "Furthermore, dual practice
legitimizes
queue-jumping as it provides an approved mechanism for patients to pay to
seek
treatment at the front of the line."
But don't expect Day, owner of the controversial private Cambie Surgery
Centre, to
worry - he has previously argued to "repeal the Canada Health Act" that
protects the
public system.
And Day has described Medicare, our public health system, as a "Berlin Wall"
blocking patients from treatment, and like "Aeroflot" - the former Soviet
Union
airline.
Fortunately, some doctors disagree.
"As CMA members and physicians, we need to ask our association why, if some
physician resources are being underutilized, isn't the CMA advocating for
solutions
that would increase patient care to all Canadians, on the basis of need,
within the
public system?" asks Dr. Danielle Martin, chair of Canadian Doctors for
Medicare.
And a British organization called the National Health System Consultants'
Association wrote to Day last week warning him not to make the same
mistakes that
England has.
"In closing, we must conclude that neither payment by results, the
increased use of
the private sector nor the 'patient choice' agenda have proved their
worth. On the
contrary, they have resulted in a destabilized and damaged public
service", Drs.
Jacky Davis and Peter Fisher concluded.
Ironically, Canada's doctors chose Day despite the fact that until
elected, he had
never attended a CMA convention or been involved with the B.C. Medical
Association.
Now the radical outsider is in charge and the CMA is pushing for the
public to get
much more than just a "taste" of health-care privatization. If successful,
it will
be a bitter one.
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