What I'd Like In Health Care

Is a plan. Lately, we've had all of our various talking heads running about talking about pouring more and more money into our nation's health care system, and all of the premiers talking about how they have to retain individual control over the process of "delivering" the services.

From my standpoint, everyone is talking about money, but I see very few people talking about what our public health system is about. What are the objectives? What is the plan? Where do we want to go?

There is an enormous amount of emotionally loaded material being thrown around, and very little of it has anything to do with any common understanding of what the issues are, or what the objectives mean. I go absolutely numb every time I hear Ralph Klein babble about "sustainability" - what the hell does that mean anyhow? Does that mean that he doesn't want to spend the money, or does it mean something else? How does moving to a private, clinic-based delivery for day to day services improve that picture?

Money's fine, and the system certainly needs it. In the bigger picture, we need to stand back for a moment or two and determine what it is we want our health care system to be, and then describe it in reasonable terms. Nothing is going to happen overnight - nor should it. I believe that we can make an effective, and "sustainable" health care system that handles everybody equitably. We won't get there if we aren't speaking a common language, and understanding what each other are saying.

Ralph and crew seem hell-bent on one particular model of health care - what bothers me is that I have no clear idea what that model is, nor am I a particularly convinced that the real problems are being addressed by the direction being proposed. I imagine that similar problems exist in other provinces as well.

Let's create a dialogue on the subject - a common frame of reference is needed, and currently is sadly lacking.