What's So Bad with This??? Canadian Response to Swin Flu

[Guest guest]

Folks,

Those of you who know me well know that the sport of ice hockey is one of my main passions. So every morning on my home page is CBC Sports News of Hockey. So I love seeing America and politics sometimes thru the lens of the Canadians because they are bit more inclussive and almost European at times... So here is a link to how the Federal Gov't of Canada response to an up and coming pandemic as opposed to us. And notice if you will that they are picking up 60% of the initial cost to.. Not sure I get that because in the end I would assume that they will be paying the freight for all the doses one way or another. But none the less, there are still some even in the great white north who are in private practice instead of employed like most docs up there... If this is an example of the horrors of supposedly evil Socialized Medicine, I say sign me up...

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/montreal/story/2009/08/06/swine-flu-vaccine.html?ref=rss

Perhaps instead of listening to the AMA who loves their specialist friends so much, we IMP'ers should put together a small fact finding mission to see how they do it and if we could adopt some version of their system to an American independent solo, IMP like model... Gordon, do you think any of the folks at Dartmouth would be willing to assist with something like this? I just love going north of the board myself and would be glad to be a part of something like this, video camera in hand perhaps performing interviews as well as collecting some hard data....

Something tells me that one of the real reasons the AMA is so violently opposed to anything remotely single payor is because almost all decent westernized single payor systems have switched the balance of power and pay from the specialists (if they ever had it in the first place) and with the primaries because we all know and the data has supported it for years that to control healthcare costs long term you need really good primary care with a focus on that ounce of prevention... I honestly wonder if a single payor model would actually greatly benefit primaries and our patients health in general because we would finally be at the front and center of the new system... And with only one set of billing standards and coding, no less formularies to deal with, one source for all submissions for pay, half the bullCHITT goes bye-bye and our billing and paperwork costs go way down... We really need to dig between the lines and not just

listen to the spoon fed media that doesn't know a darn thing about research and honest digging, truth telling journalism anymore.... But we as research scientists who understand statistics and experimental methods could actually dig thru their numbers, crunch some of our own to finally get to the bottom of this freakin' mess and conflicting facts and psydo facts....