Improving Saskatchewan Health Care

CUPE
Saskatchewan Division
September 27, 2011

Saskatchewan is moving towards more privatized delivery of health care. We're using for-profit surgical clinics; privatized long-term care and adding private diagnostics like CT scans.

By voting for a candidate who wants to strengthen Health Care rather than privatize it, you might be VOTING FOR YOURSELF.

Click to enlarge

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HANDOUTS -- Improving Health Care

The threat to health care from a ‘grey tsunami’ is a myth

By Kimberlyn McGrail
Troy Media
September 21, 2011

You’ve heard it before: the boomers are aging and jeopardizing our health care system by the sheer number of them swanning into their golden years. Sounds right – except it isn’t true.

Let’s check the evidence: the older you are, the more likely you are to use health care services. This is a fact, but it does not necessarily follow that the coming bulge of boomers will bankrupt the health care system. Study after study in Canada over the last 30 years shows that aging is an issue, but it exerts only a small and predictable pressure on health care spending (less than one per cent annually from 2010 to 2036).

More recent research shows that increases in utilization – how many and how often Canadians use health services – are twice as important as aging in increasing costs year by year. In other words, while population aging does increase costs, the kinds and amount of services provided to people in every age group are a far more important factor. How and why are these changes occurring?

U.S. Health Insurance Cost Rises Sharply, Study Finds

By REED ABELSON and NINA BERNSTEIN
New York Times
September 27, 2011

Major health insurance companies have been charging sharply higher premiums this year, outstripping any growth in workers’ wages and creating more uncertainty for the Obama administration and employers who are struggling to drive down an unrelenting rise in medical costs.

A study released on Tuesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a research group, showed that the average annual premium for family coverage through an employer reached $15,073 in 2011 — 9 percent higher than in the previous year. And even higher premiums could be on the way, particularly in New York, where some companies are asking for double-digit increases for about 1.3 million New Yorkers in individual or small-group plans, setting up a battle with state regulators.

The higher premiums are particularly unwelcome at a time when the economy is sputtering and unemployment is hovering at about 9 percent. Many businesses cite the cost of coverage as a factor in their decision not to hire, and health insurance has become increasingly unaffordable for more Americans. The cost of family coverage has about doubled since 2001, compared with a 34 percent gain in wages.

Read more HERE.

Practicing Revolutionary Medicine in Cuba and Venezuela

By Don Fitz
MRzine
September 22,2011

A review of Steve Brouwer's Revolutionary Doctors: How Venezuela and Cuba Are Changing the World's Conceptualization of Health Care. New York, Monthly Review Press, 2011. 245 pp. $18.95. Book excerpt HERE.

As Venezuela becomes the first country to reproduce the Cuban medical model on a massive scale, it is doing so in ways that are unique in both form and process. Steve Brouwer's Revolutionary Doctors is essential reading for anyone interested in the transformation of medical systems at a cost vastly less than in the US and other overdeveloped countries. Readers knowledgeable of developments in Cuba and Venezuela as well as those first learning about them can learn from Brouwer's insights into how medicine intertwines with national and international politics.

Revolutionary Doctors builds upon the growing body of information about medicine in Cuba. Some of the best recent writings include Linda Whiteford and Laurence Branch's Primary Health Care in Cuba (2008) and John Kirk and Michael Erisman's Cuban Medical Internationalism (2009). Together, the three works show how the Cuban model grew by responding to a series of contradictions.

Prelude to a Strike

Medicare: A People's Issue

As Saskatchewan entered 1962, the positions dividing the protagonists in the Medicare debate had hardened to the point where reconciliation seemed a dim hope. The government stood behind the Medical Care Act and its universal government funded insurance plan. The College of Physicians and Surgeons refused to cooperate or negotiate until the act was changed.

The doctors claimed that the Act would give the government a monopoly on the purchase of medical care which would intern interfere with their freedom to give the best possible service to their patients. The College proposed that patients should be covered by private insurance companies and that the poor would have their premiums paid by the province. In an attempt to reach a compromise, the two sides met in April. The meetings ended in failure.

The month of May brought a new phase in the debate with both sides launching media campaigns. The government lauded the benefits of the universal plan while the doctors warned of a mass exodus of the health care professionals. Petitions and counter-petitions were circulated. Groups such as the Keep Our Doctors Committee (K.O.D.), the Free Citizens Association (F.C.A.) and the Committee for Medical Care (C.M.C) formed and held rallies throughout Saskatchewan.

The Council of the College of Physicians and Surgeons met with the government in a last ditch attempt to ward off the strike at the end of May. Though the government offered to make substantial compromises, they refused to acquiesce to the doctors' demand of suspending the Act’s July 1 implementation date.

Attack on New Zealand health system

By Stuart Jeanne Bramhall 
People First
June 19, 2011

Wikileaks has revealed that the US is collaborating with Big Pharma to pressure New Zealand to abolish PHARMAC.

PHARMAC was established in 1993 to contain prescription costs. It is a world-renowned state agency and is currently exempt from World Trade Organization (WTO) anti-competition rules.

All this will change if our National-led government proceeds to negotiate a Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership with its US and Asian trading partners.

Parliament needs to address Canada’s drug problem

Canadian Health Coalition
September 2011

The Canadian Health Coalition is calling on the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health to conduct hearings into, and report on, the regulation and marketing of pharmaceuticals in Canada.

ELEVEN  QUESTIONS THAT REQUIRE ANSWERS AND ACTION

1. Why are adverse drug reactions among the leading cause of death in Canada?

2. Why has Health Canada prepared draft legislation to weaken drug safety regulation and speed up drug approvals without producing evidence that drug safety will not be adversely affected?

3. Why are Canadians paying 30% more for patented drugs than the OECD average?

4. Why is the government of Canada negotiating a trade agreement with the European Union (CETA) that would extend data exclusivity for brand-name drugs and further increase excessive prices annually by $2.8 billion, when the industry has failed to deliver on its promises to perform research and innovation in Canada?

5. Why does Health Canada allow direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs with cross-border US ads that are illegal in Canada, and 'made-in-Canada' reminder ads, including ads for drugs Health Canada has issued safety warnings about?

6. How are public drug insurance plans performing in terms of access, costs, and evidence-based formularies? How many Canadians are uninsured or underinsured?

7. Why does Health Canada permit the illegal promotion of off-label drugs to physicians? One consequence of this is doctors prescribing dangerous antipsychotics to young children with no clinical evidence of safety or efficacy.

8. Why is there no accountability for prescribing practices of health care professionals in most jurisdictions in Canada?

9. Why has Health Canada continued to maintain high levels of secrecy in drug regulation when both the U.S. and the European Union have instituted more open regulatory procedures?

10. Why does the majority of the budget of Canada’s drug regulator (Therapeutic Products Directorate) come from the industry it is supposed to regulate?

11. Why does the Marketed Health Products Directorate receive less than 1/3 of the resources as the Therapeutics Products Directorate and the Biologics and Genetic Therapies Directorate?

International Health Workers for People Over Profit

Visit their website HERE.

Tea Party campaign manager died for lack of private health insurance

Public Values
September 13, 2011

Ron Paul, true to his word, though revelation comes after debate.

Paul: Kent [literally] poured every ounce of his being into our fight for freedom. September 14, 2011: According to Ron Paul, churches, not governments or employers, should take care of the sick and dying, writes Wil Longbottom of the Daily Mail. After Paul's campaign manager died of complications from pneumonia, uninsured, we learn that Paul's last presidential nomination campaign did not provide its staff with medical coverage.

"Ron Paul's former campaign manager died from complications caused by pneumonia because he couldn't afford health insurance, it has emerged.

The details surrounding the 2008 death of Kent Snyder were revealed hours after the Tea Party candidate indicated he did not agree with free state health care for the poor.

Mr Snyder, 49, died on June 26, 2008, with hospital costs totalling $400,000 after he became ill with viral pneumonia.

The bill for his care was sent to his mother, who was unable to pay, and so a website was set up by friends to secure donations. Mr Paul's election campaign did not provide workers with medical insurance…"

For the complete article, please click here.

The Public Voice for Medical Care Insurance, Issue #2

Medicare: A People's Issue
Issue number one HERE.

As the struggle for medicare escalated to the doctor's strike in Saskatchewan, citizens supporting medicare started their own publication to counter the expensive ads and commercials launched by the KOD.

Initiated through the Saskatchewan Federation of Labour, "Public Voice" was issued four times in July of 1962.

Below is the second issue of the Public Voice.- NYC

Open publication - Free publishing - More ccf

Report makes the case for Phamacare

Canadian Health Coalition

Download the groundbreaking new report, The Economic Case for Universal Pharmacare.

The report lays out the formula for a Pharmacare program that not only offers coverage to all Canadians, but could save up to $10.7 billon in annual spending.

The study includes an in-depth analysis of significant cost-savings through various scenarios, and has garnered the endorsement of eminent doctors, economists and researchers. The only thing in the way is lack of political leadership.

Click here to download the report

Why the US health industry wants to raise the Medicare eligibility age: Profit

By Joan McCarter
Daily Kos
September 12, 2011

Last week the American Hospital Association's lobbying for a hike in the Medicare eligibility age made news. The primary motivation expressed then was to attempt to stave off deeper provider cuts that would hurt them in exchange for benefits cuts. That's a big part of it, but of course the larger issue is much more straightforward: profit.

The Health Leadership Council, a consortium of 47 health industry leaders including Aetna, Pfizer and the Cleveland Clinic, endorsed today to raise Medicare’s eligibility age from 65 to 67, phasing in the change by two months annually. Raising Medicare's eligibility age is one proposal in a four-part package of Medicare reforms up for vote, including creating a new exchange-like marketplace and increasing the cost-sharing for seniors who earn more than $150,000. You can read the full proposal HERE.

Britain: The Health and Social Care Bill and the Negation of Democracy

By Colin Leys
New Left Project
September 12, 2011

In voting for the third reading of Andrew Lansley’s Health and Social Care Bill last week MPs voted to replace the NHS as a public service with a system of competing businesses – foundation trusts, social enterprises and for-profit corporations. The government’s claim that the Bill does not mean privatisation is plainly specious: the truth of the matter is to be found in what Lansley’s health minister, Lord Howe, told a meeting of private health businessmen on the day the Bill was approved. He said it presented ‘huge opportunities’ for the private sector, and noted that commissioners of health care would be barred from favouring NHS providers.

 The truth is also to be found in the government’s leaked plans to hand over the management of NHS hospitals to private companies, and in the current and promised large-scale opening up of NHS work to ‘any qualified provider’.

Saskatchewan CCF Election Program, 1960

Saskatchewan CCF

Most notable in the 1960 election was the promise to introduce province-wide medicare. When the CCF won the election and proceeded to fullfill their promise, the doctors commenced their infamous strike in 1962.

Open publication - Free publishing - More ccf

Dying is no laughing matter

Nurses Say Letting Uninsured Patients Die Is No Laughing Matter Following Abhorrent Audience Cheers at CNN-Tea Party Debate

National Nurses United
September 13, 2011

The nation’s largest representative of registered nurses today expressed revulsion at the cheering by some audience members in the CNN-Tea Party Republican debate Monday night at the prospect of letting a sick person die just because they do not have health insurance.

Prompting the outburst was a question from CNN’s Wolf Blitzer to Rep. Ron Paul about whether medical care should be provided to a hypothetical, uninsured 30-year-old man who lapsed into a coma, to which Paul responded, “that’s what freedom is all about, taking your own risks.” When Blitzer then asked, “Are you saying that society should just let him die?” a number of audience members erupted into loud cheers of “Yeah!” and laughter.

Solutions Within Medicare

Nurses for Medicare

There are better solutions for a sustainable Canadian health system that reflects Canadian needs.

Improvements are needed in the health system to make it more sustainable, but these improvements need to be made within the public funding framework.

Health system reform requires greater accountability with respect to the health-care budget – in other words, stronger business cases to justify spending and greater emphasis on outcomes.

The World Health Organization's ranking of the world's health systems.

Source: WHO World Health Report 
- See also Spreadsheet Details (731kb)

The World Health Organization's ranking of the world's health systems was last produced in 2000, and the WHO no longer produces such a ranking table, because of the complexity of the task.

See also: Preventable Deaths By Country
See also: Healthy Life Expectancy By Country
See also: Health Performance Rank By Country
See also: Total Health Expenditure as % of GDP (2000-2005)
See also: Main Country Ranks Page

---

Rank       Country          
 
1         France
2         Italy
3         San Marino
4         Andorra
5         Malta
6         Singapore
7         Spain
8         Oman

The end of the NHS as we know it

The health bill is the final stage of a project that began 25 years ago to turn this vital public service over to the private sector

By Colin Leys
guardian.co.uk
Thursday 8 September 2011

What Wednesday's vote on the health and social care bill shows more clearly than anything is that many, if not most, of the political elite no longer care whether they are carrying out the wishes of the electorate, and barely pretend that we are any longer a democracy.

The prime minister promised before the 2010 election not to introduce any "top-down reorganisations" of the NHS; to say he, Andrew Lansley and Nick Clegg lack an electoral mandate for the bill is an understatement. It is also an understatement to say that they have not told the truth about the bill's intentions, and that they have reduced Department of Health statements, such as its latest so-called MythBuster document, to a level of brazen mendacity that demeans a once great office of state.

Pack the trunk of this health-care elephant

By Naomi Lakritz
Calgary Herald
August 24, 2011

Tory leadership candidate Gary Mar has been reading too much F. Scott Fitzgerald lately.

Fitzgerald's 1925 short story, Rich Boy, starts off: "Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me."

Mar thinks the rich are so different, that they should be able to buy their way back to health, while the rest of us unmonied members of the great unwashed queue up in the public system.

Now, this is nothing new. It's ideological baggage from the Ralph Klein years, which mercifully are past, and it just goes to show that Mar has not evolved in his thinking. Do we really want our next premier to be someone who checks into the legislature still carrying the same worn-out, frayed suitcases he had when he left?

Michel Moore's Sicko: Watch full documentary here

Sicko
By Michel Moore

After exploring the predominance of violence in American culture in Bowling for Columbine and taking a critical look at the September 11th attacks in Fahrenheit 9/11, activist filmmaker Michael Moore turns his attentions toward the topic of health care in the United States in this documentary that weighs the plight of the uninsured (and the insured who must deal with abuse from insurance companies) against the record-breaking profits of the pharmaceutical industry.

Watch the full documentary now

Tommy Douglas: Keeper of the Flame

National Film Board of Canada

This feature documentary traces the political career of T.C. (Tommy) Douglas, former premier of Saskatchewan and leader of the New Democratic Party, who was voted the Greatest Canadian in 2004 for his devotion to social causes, his charm and his powers of persuasion. Known as the "Father of Medicare," this one-time champion boxer and fiery preacher entered politics in the 1930s and never looked back.

Medicare: Facts, Myths, Problems & Promise

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
Edited by Bruce Campbell and Greg Marchildon

Purchase Book HERE.
Contents and Preface HERE (pdf).

Most health care professionals are committed to the principles of medicare, and so are most other Canadians. Yet everyone recognizes that the health care system has serious problems, and often does not provide the level of care the public expects. Getting a realistic picture of what is good and bad about the system, and how it can be fixed while staying true to the fundamental principles of publicly-funded health care is the focus of this book.

Editors Bruce Campbell and Greg Marchildon have gathered 34 contributors who offer a wide-ranging, authoritative portrait of medicare in Canada today. Experts from Canada and around the world provide unbiased data on costs, quality of care, wait times, and the overall health of the population. There are international comparisons which show how Canada's system ranks with the rest of the world. Front-line health care practitioners describe the key successes and failures of the Canadian system today. Policy makers discuss the potential impact of attacks on the system aimed at opening up health care to profit-oriented corporations, and point to alternatives for better care from inside the public system. Visionaries set out the potential of the system to move from a disease orientation to a focus on ensuring a healthy population of children and adults.

For anyone involved in health care - and for every citizen who cares about the future of this social program - this book offers a unique source of reliable, independent information and analysis from experts who share a basic commitment to the values of medicare. At a time when ideologues and advocates of privatization capture much of the attention of the media and politicians, this collection is an invaluable source of information and ideas.

BRUCE CAMPBELL is the executive director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, and the author and editor of several books on Canadian public policy issues.

GREG MARCHILDON  is a former director of the Romanow Commission, and former senior civil servant in Saskatchewan. He is now at the Graduate School of Public Policy, University of Regina.

Life Before Medicare

Ontario Coalition of Senior Citizen's Organizations
Cross-posted from Straight Goods
August 27, 2011

Purchase "Life Before Medicare" HERE.

Canadians should not forget that Medicare was born out of the misery of the Great Depression. Concern about the future of health care was the inspiration for this book about the days before it existed. An excerpt...

PREFACE

It was a soft June evening in 1993 when the coffee party was held at Owl House Lane, Toronto, the home of Jean Woodsworth. As president of One Voice, the Canadian Seniors Network, Jean was introducing some of its board members to the leaders of various Ontario seniors' organizations. To the coloratura of the birds, we discussed the burning question that Jean quietly posed: "What is the most important issue seniors face today, in the nineties?"

The consensus was, the erosion of Medicare.

The Canada Health Act was born out of the socialist government in Saskatchewan, and out of the misery of the Great Depression that stretched across Canada and lasted up to the Second World War. This great piece of legislation provides for an equitable system of health care for everyone, the rich and the poor. Its erosion could end the universality and public administration of health care for which seniors have fought so hard. Jean said that we needed to begin a re-education about Medicare's reason for being.

"If only all Canadians knew about the bad old days," Jean thought aloud.

Tommy Douglas and the Future of Single Payer in the USA

By Ralph Nader
Single Payer Action
June 7, 2011

To secure single payer here in the United States –We have to understand how Canada did it.

And to understand how Canada did it, we have to understand Tommy Douglas.

And not just that Canadians voted him The Greatest Canadian in a recent poll. Or that he’s the grandfather of the actor Kiefer Sutherland.

But we have to understand how Tommy Douglas built a political movement that toppled the two corporate parties in Saskatchewan in the mid-1940s. And what the lessons are for citizens in the USA.

US healthcare, babies and the national debt: The real cost

Healthcare-NOW!
September 7, 2011

By Jonathan D. Walker, M.D. for Frost Illustrated –

The term “infant mortality rate” is a measure of the number of babies that die under one year of age per 1,000 live births. It is a useful indicator of how effective a healthcare system is—the lower the number, the fewer babies die. Although there are a lot of people who feel the U.S. has the best healthcare system in the world, according to the Center for Disease Control, the United States actually ranks 29th in the world for infant mortality. And it gets worse. Infant mortality for African Americans is consistently more than twice that for white Americans—infant mortality among African Americans in 2007 was 13.3 deaths per 1,000 live births compared to a rate for non-Hispanic whites of 5.6.

There are a lot of reasons why this disparity exists—it happens to be a very complex issue. One big factor is simply the lack of access to appropriate healthcare. Healthy babies need healthy mothers, and the process starts well before a woman gets pregnant. But, that process can’t happen if you don’t have insurance and can’t afford to see a doctor. Every other developed country in the world has decided that people should be able to get the care they need when they need it, and without having to worry about going bankrupt. In America, the healthcare system has ended up protecting the interests of for-profit companies over the needs of individuals and, as a result, people are left without access to care. And, the problem is spreading—even people with insurance are finding that their copays and deductibles are becoming so expensive that they put off needed care because they can’t afford it.

Edgar Benson stood up for medicare

Influential Canadian

By Tori Stafford and Elliot Ferguson
The Whig-Standard
September 6, 2011

As a cabinet minister in the Liberal governments of the 1960s and 1970s, Edgar Benson was on the front lines of some of the defining moments of Canadian history.

The FLQ crisis, the flag debate, tax reform and the introduction of medicare – Benson was involved in them all.

Yet he was content not to draw attention to the work he did during the period when Canada embraced the social reforms many take for granted now.

"I don't think Kingstonians know how important this man was," said Arthur Milnes.

About Canada: Health Care

By Hugh Armstrong and Pat Armstrong

Fernwood Publishing
Paperback Price: $17.95 CAD
Publication Date: Apr 2008
Pages: 158

Health care is Canada’s best-loved social program—and for good reason. For more than 30 years, Canadians have enjoyed high quality health care based on need and not on ability to pay. But it is a complex system: changes proposed and those already underway can be difficult to understand and evaluate.

What do ‘public’ and ‘private’ mean as they apply to our current health care system and in proposed reforms? As the boomer generation ages, will the growing number of seniors bankrupt Medicare? What do we mean by wait times and are they increasing? Who pays for drugs and how can we ensure Canadians have equitable access to necessary drugs? Can technologies significantly improve care and reduce costs?

This book explains how the Canadian system works and assesses reforms underway.

Contents

• Why Care?
• How Did We Get Here?
• What Did We Get?
• What We Did Not Get
• Reforming Primary Care
• What are the Main Issues today?
• Public Strategies and Shared Solutions

Buy HERE!

Saskatchewan: $5 Health Plan

Time Magazine
Monday, January 06, 1947

In Saskatchewan last week taxpayers poured into municipal offices and queued up before wickets to fork over their $5. They were getting under the wire with payment of the new head tax levied by the CCF for the first Government-controlled hospitalization plan in North America. Maximum tax: $30 a family a year. Those who failed to pay faced a 10% surtax and a $25 fine. All told, the CCF collected about $2,000,000. That, plus the $1,000,000 coming from other Government revenue, was considerably short of the $4,500,000 a year the plan is expected to cost.

On a doctor's recommendation, paid-up members will be admitted to any Saskatchewan hospital ward for at least 21 days, and will get free meals, drugs, X rays and blood tests. The Government will pay the hospital $4.50 a day for ward patients, or the same amount toward the cost of a private room.

The hospitalization plan is the CCF's second major step toward socialized medicine. On Jan. 1, 1945, it instituted free hospital and medical care for some 25,000 old-age pensioners, the blind, orphans, those receiving mothers' allowance and all their dependents. Now Saskatchewan hopes to work out a Government plan to pay medical bills too.

The Struggle for State Health Insurance

Reconsidering the Role of Saskatchewan Farmers

BY HARLEY D. DICKINSON
Studies in Political Economy 41, Summer 1993

Open publication - Free publishing - More ccf

Lord Taylor reminisces on settling the Saskatchewan doctor's strike

Saskatchewan adventure: a personal record.

By Lord Taylor, B. Sc., M.D., Hon. LL.D.,F.R.C.P., F.R.C.G.P.
720 CMA JOURNAL/MARCH 16, 1974/VOL. 110

About Lord Stephen Taylor:

Lord Stephen Taylor of Harlow

Born in Marlow-on-Thames, England, Stephen Taylor (1910–1988) was a doctor, civil servant, politician and educator. In 1945, he entered politics as a Labour Member of Parliament, serving as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Deputy Prime Minister, as well as Lord President of the Council. As a policy adviser during the creation of the National Health Service, Taylor’s policy experience and political acumen brought him international recognition. 

Taylor knew about Saskatchewan and the health policy goals of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) through a visit he made in 1946 when the CCF launched the Hospital Services Plan. He played a crucial role as negotiator between the provincial government and the doctors during the 1962 strike. Both sides accepted Taylor because both saw him as an expert neutral figure who understood their positions. Taylor stated that he thought the government’s medicare plan was good, but that the enabling legislation had been badly written and rushed. He was able to resolve the strike by winning concessions from both sides, and on July 23, 1962 an agreement was signed. Taylor’s role in resolving the Saskatchewan doctors’ strike paved the way for Saskatchewan to demonstrate medicare’s effectiveness to the other provinces.

I have been asked to write an account of my part in the remarkable series of events which took place in Saskatchewan in 1962, and to comment on the effectiveness of the solution.

My story is part history, part sociology and part autobiography. It records what was in effect the final stages of an unusual industrial dispute. Professional people do not as a rule resort to the ultimate weapon of withdrawal of services, if only because they are as a rule "self-employed". But once a profession is converted, or in danger of being converted, into a public service, the situation is different. Earnings cease to be determined by professionally- devised scales of fees and the haggle of the market. Instead, the profession has to struggle for its share of the available public revenue. It also has to struggle to retain its professional autonomy in the performance of its work...

Open publication - Free publishing - More ccf

Sustainable health care begins with the social determinants of health

It's time to get it right

By Errol Black, Shauna MacKinnon

Manitoba Office, CCPA

June 2, 2011

Click here for report

On May 13, 2011 the Conference Board of Canada announced the formation of the Canadian Alliance for Sustainable Health Care (CASHC) to “provide Canadian business leaders and policy makers with insightful, forward-looking, quantitative analysis of the sustainability of the Canadian health-care system and all of its facets.”

A central purpose of the CASHC is to clarify the financial sustainability of the system with a focus on “current and future health-care spending, fiscal balances, and public and private investment and expenditures, current funding structures, and the challenges these present.” They also aim to look at “the relationship between health-related costs, workforce health and firm performance... [and] ways in which the health-care system can be improved, while addressing quality of care.”

Neat, Plausible, and Wrong: The Myth of Health Care Unsustainability

Canadian Doctors for Medicare
February, 2011

Open publication - Free publishing - More canada

PDF HERE.

All Things Being Equal

Trades Union Congress (UK)

As the UK government's controversial Health and Social Care Bill receives its third reading in the House of Commons, we're standing vigil to show Parliamentarians the level of concern around the country about the threats to our National Health Service.

Please join the vigil online by uploading a photograph of yourself to this site. We'll be combining the pictures into a powerful mosaic image, to use in lobbying Parliament. It only takes a minute from each of us, but will build into something much bigger.

http://www.goingtowork.org.uk/nhs-mosaic/

Music: "All Things Being Equal" by Le Emu Tavern