Savage Review of Alberta Health Care

Enlightened Savage wanted some debate on these points.

1. Not enough experienced and trained medical professionals, incl. family doctors
2. Misuse/overuse of the system for non-essential services
3. Lack of care for the poor
4. Limited access to non-trauma Urgent Care Centres
5. Organizational instability/Governance issues
6. Acute care beds being taken up by people well enough to leave but who have nowhere else to go (lack of long-term beds)
7. Lack of personal responsibility for maintaining health/education regarding healthy & preventative living
8. Over-medicalization of seniors
9. Lack of home care support for seniors/disabled
10. Lack of a team approach
11. Front line staff bogged down by distant/out-of-touch/large bureaucracy
12. Rising costs created by increased use of technology
13. Lack of public education about which health care provider is appropriate in a given situation

So here goes:

1. Not enough medical professionals.
Pretty bogus, this. With a snap of the fingers plus six months an army of health professionals can be brought to the fore. Thousands of immigrant medical professionals are here and virtually every one of them can be a GP or a Nurse. Also, hundreds and hundreds of Alternative practitioners are trained up to near GP standards.

The system restricts practitioners because it is its only way of restricting costs. Stupid and gut-less politicians caused this to happen. (One can't really blame the medico monopoly).

2. Misuse of system.
Nonsense. People are not insane. There are simply no suitable choices available and no suitable system of health care. It's a monopoly! ... What would you expect?

3. Lack of care.
Just a prioritization issue. The suppliers of health care have different priorities than the consumers of health care, and the suppliers hold monopoly power. Again, what would you expect?

4. Trauma and Urgent Care.
We need concentrated specialization in emergency care. We also need access to a full gamut of non-emergency care services. They are separate issues. I can see the government running emergency care centers. There is no reason, none at all, for the government to run non-emerg facilities.

5. Governance.
Screw'em. Allocate health care dollars to the consumer of health care instead of the suppliers of health care. The medicos will very quickly and efficiently optimize their delivery systems according to consumer demand.

6. People, if given the option, will always choose the most appropriate "bed." It is a supply-of-bed failure within the monopoly medico system. The system is not responsive to health care consumer demand (but is instead responsive to the toys demanded by the suppliers of health care).

7. Personal responsibility. Why should any health care consumer be practically responsible for something over which they have absolutely no control. Give people free houses or free cars and they would simply burn through them one after the other. Everyone will demand the biggest and best right from the git-go.

My pay check is never enough, of course, but I manage to responsibly allocate it and prioritize it. Same thing would happen with a health-care-pay-check that I could spend or save for future contingency.

8. Over-medicalization of everybody! This is an efficiency issue. There is no restraint mechanism other than bottle-necking entry into the monopoly system. The suppliers of health care must excessively treat to cover-their-ass from pie-in-the-sky, unrestricted consumer demand.

Consumer demand can be restricted if appropriate, demand-driven health care is available.

9. Lack of home care.
This is simply inappropriate resource allocation. Perhaps our aging population would re-prioritize health care dollars toward this issue if they had the power. The suppliers of health care don't care to prioritize their dollars toward this end.

10. Team. Screw that. If I have consumer heath care dollars to spend then the health providing professionals will fall all over themselves with services trying to pry those dollars from my hand ... just like the malls at x-mas.

11. Front line staff are constrained by the mega-monopoly. No mega-monopoly works well. If we had one political party and one religion we wouldn't see any change there, either, and front-line staff would simply decry the system.

12. Technology costs.
Again, no mode of cost-benefit testing as there is only health care supplier control and no consumer of health care counter.

13. Make suppliers of health care flog their wares like everyone else. Truth is attained by competing opinion for a constrained dollar. We buy cars, clothes, toasters according to we miserly allocate our dollars in the face of infinite supplier encouragements.

Thar you go. Change things for the better. Fund the consumer not the supplier.
Kill the medico monopoly.