Posted by
Laura L. Hollis, JD on Monday, August 17, 2009 10:50:52 PM
... admits that their system is "imploding." Here's an excerpt:
The incoming president of the Canadian Medical Association says this
country's health-care system is sick and doctors need to develop a plan
to cure it.
Dr. Anne Doig says patients are getting less than
optimal care and she adds that physicians from across the country - who
will gather in Saskatoon on Sunday for their annual meeting - recognize
that changes must be made.
"We all agree that the system is
imploding, we all agree that things are more precarious than perhaps
Canadians realize," Doing [sic] said in an interview with The Canadian Press.
"We
know that there must be change," she said. "We're all running flat out,
we're all just trying to stay ahead of the immediate day-to-day
demands."
Even better:
The pitch for change at the conference is to start with a
presentation from Dr. Robert Ouellet, the current president of the CMA,
who has said there's a critical need to make Canada's health-care
system patient-centred. He will present details from his fact-finding
trip to Europe in January, where he met with health groups in England,
Denmark, Belgium, Netherlands and France.
His thoughts on the
issue are already clear. Ouellet has been saying since his return that
"a health-care revolution has passed us by," that it's possible to make
wait lists disappear while maintaining universal coverage and "that
competition should be welcomed, not feared."
In other words, Ouellet believes there could be a role for private health-care delivery within the public system.
Read the whole thing here.