Time for a different payout health system

Time for a different payout health system !

(while this is about Canada's so called Public health care system...truth is it is merely publically funded...a half-truth...docotrs are self employed and bill the governement...making for a system that feeds off of problems...bad business....compared to good business, where you buy a good GM product...seems like these types of businesses should be socialized...and controlled to remove the profit in disease...same with criminal legal lawyers...)

On the one hand the Health Minister George Smitherman just reached a deal 6.9 billion dollar deal with the Doctors Union, by increasing the fee payout to doctors,(2 - 2.5%) and removing caps. Giving more money to the same people is a move that will not add one more doctor to the estimated 1 million people without a family doctor in Ontario alone. By removing the income caps this will result in the limited number of doctors having to do more work. However on the other hand Smitherman plans to inject $10 million to add 141 doctors by the year 2006 in a province that is short thousands of doctors. In a province where thousands of foreign doctors do not have intern positions to qualify for a license in this province. I don 't consider this "priority based" decision making, don't you think ?

While I do not argue that doctors deserve a fair income, but by not focusing on the doctor shortage, and maintaining the current fee- per- visit system the current staff of provincial doctors will be forced to work harder to cover the overloaded demands and eventually hospitals will have to bear an increase in the number and severity of patients, whose conditions are projected to worsen due to a lack of timely intervention caused by the shortage of family doctors.

The lesson that we must learn is that if ever we are to increase the number of doctors in this province ( and this country) is that the health system must guarantee doctors an income, because in the current system of a measly fee per visit more doctors will have a negative impact on the income of most doctors, and a doctor shortage is a benefit to the income of doctors; basic supply and demand economics.

Italy, a country ranked in the top two in the world,(Canada is ranked 30th - Wyatt & Watson Report 2000) has the highest doctor per capita ratio and pays its doctors based on a salaried structure, based on the number of patients. A salary system rewards good doctoring, rewards effective and efficient treatments, rewards preventative health care and should result in reduced workloads and the desire for more doctors. Remember under the current payout system based on visits and volume, good health and good doctoring is penalized under the current fee per visit system. Time to change the payout system and treat doctors like professionals.

Caesar J. B. Squitti

THE LIGHT: The Rainbow of Truth !