Shame on universal-health-care

Here's a health-care thread from the St. Catharines Standard, starting with John Hartig, who wrote in "Preserve universal health-care", (St. Catharines Standard, Jul.2, 2005):

“Universal health care is being killed by the greed of our doctors.
Three huge changes have occurred in the past year -- changes that should be scary for anybody in society who is getting older:
- Six per cent increase in salary for doctors per year over the next four years
- Removal of their salary cap
- The proposed opening of a privately run cancer clinic in Toronto
A family physician used to earn close to $200,000 per annum with the cap -- which was not bad, for a part-time job, considering that many doctors stopped work on Wednesday afternoons and Fridays once their earnable limit was reached. The doctor shortage was therefore artificially created by the doctors themselves.
The billion dollars so recently injected into the system (which was meant to reduce waiting lists) will instead be siphoned into doctor salaries and administrative costs and not into the eventual care of patients. Nothing will change. Once the four-year deal runs out, we'll face more demands from doctors. The pattern we are facing so helplessly at the gas pumps we will also face at the counters of our health-care facilities -- which will mean additional service charges in the system: Anything from a $10 clinic visit to a $30 blood test.
A privately run cancer clinic in Toronto proposes to charge an initial $2,500 registration fee and $12,000 per year after that for care. Canadians would have to mortgage their houses and empty life- long savings accounts. Insurance companies would love these new circumstances so they can make more money out of "extra coverage" -- giving us an unjust society.
Universal health care should be a right equally available for everybody in a civilized society but the concept is shrewdly being dismantled by professionals in power. Shame on you, doctors!”

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R. Bobak wrote in “Blame everyone for health-system woes” (published in the St. Catharines Standard, July 14, 2005):

“Further to John Hartig’s July 2, 2005 letter, shamelessly blaming doctors for all of Canada’s health care woes, why stop there? How about those greedy, profligate politicians who over-tax and then bribe us with our money to stay in power? Or those greedy, P3-hatin’ unionized activists whose main concern is to protect their cozy no-choice monopoly? How about all those greedy nurses, and paramedics, and lab technicians and pharmacists and hospital administrators? Don’t forget to blame the sick, too; without them, we wouldn’t even need those lazy, pesky doctors.

It truly is an unjust society when you won’t share the blame, which could be traced back to Canada’s patron saint, Tommy Douglas. The Father of today’s Fatal Perpetual Waiting List would himself be sick to witness the sad depths to which the rabid supporters of socialized health care have sunk in their dogmatic, self-righteous fervor. Today’s politicized health care system is but an unrecognizable Frankensteinian devolution of T.C.’s founding vision.

It's so helpful to begin the long overdue "civilized" health system debate by bashing our doctors. Frankly, are Canadians politically retarded?"

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Joan Crook wrote in “Ask your doctor what a MD’s life is like”, (St. Catharines Standard, Jul.13, 2005):

"I read John Hartig's July 2 letter in The Standard (Preserve universal health care). You need to wake up, Mr. Hartig; I wouldn't be surprised if your own general practitioner read you the facts of life about being a doctor.
Although $200,000 per year might sound great to you, you need to know that most doctors need to have some form of staff to assist them in their practice.
As for them "having a part-time job" well, maybe you need to see what they do when not in their office.
I know my own doctor is as close to being a workaholic as one can be.
Yes, his office is closed on Wednesday afternoon -- he is often still there seeing to phone calls that have come in and to the remaining patients who are often still waiting in his waiting room.
I have been in hospital for surgery and this same doctor has come in even on Sunday to see how I was, and when I asked him if he ever takes time off he said yes, but the patients come first.
As for the doctors creating the so- called shortage of doctors, well you must have not read about the limit that a former provincial government put on new medical students in the province.
I have a daughter who had tried at that time to get into medical school. She already had a bachelor of nursing degree and had worked in the surgical ICU for a number of years.
When she was not accepted she went to the University of Buffalo to take her master's degree in nurse anaesthesiology, and she is still employed there as a nurse anesthetist."
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These are the kinds of great assets that are lost by government intervention. Yet, the lefties 'blame the doctors'! For the love of... it's enough to make one sick.
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