Meet The New Incoming President of The Canadian Medical Association

Meet Dr. Jeffrey Turnbull, chief of staff at The Ottawa Hospital. I think I like him already.   I don’t think Stevie “I think the Feds should scrap the federal health act Spiteful, nor the rancid Dr. Jabba the Roy,  will, though. That’s already an upside. You see, unlike  the doctor’s predecessors, he is for keeping our universal health care.   While he believes strongly that there should be debates and discussions about our universal health care system, Americanizing shouldn’t play a part in it.

“I think we should have a national debate,” the 59-year-old Ottawa doctor said. But instead of that discussion jumping straight into whether Canada should move away from a universal public health system to one that is more privately funded and delivered, Turnbull suggests taking a hard look at the existing system and trying to fix it first.

 ”I wouldn’t want to go toward two-tier health-care, I don’t think Canadians want that either,” he said. “It’s too early to abandon our existing system without very, very definitive efforts to make it better and I think we can make it better. I’m optimistic that we can make the system what we want it to be, within the structure that we already have. If that fails, if we’ve made every effort, well, we’ll have that conversation then.”

I remember when Dr Bob Evans was on Anne Lagace Dowson’s show not long after Charest launched his unpopular budget.  She had mentioned that many, including Raymond Bachand, Quebec finance minister, wanted to start up the debate of private vs public delivery of health care and how Bob Evans said that he was stirring up the wrong debate.  Evans was correct.  No question we need to have a discussion, but on how to fix our existing system. What are the needs for the majority of the population, for instance and go from there.

One thing I would like to see is more home care programs.  Recently, I heard on the news that, in Montreal, better book your spot now for a nursing home or long term care facility. How depressing! More to the point, how stupid!   Instead of plugging up nursing homes and long term care facilities, why not implement better home care programs for seniors, the chronically ill, the severely disabled and others who may be clients of these facilities? Just an example I hope Dr Turnbull would plant to include in health care discussions.

Another thing is why the hell are  provincial governments sinking money into the private for profit health care, more often than not at the expense of the public?  In Quebec, our private system has been proven to be even more expensive to the government than the public.

The Gazette‘s Janet Bagnall also dispelled the myths that our health care system isn’t sustainable.

-¦Since 1975, it has remained stable at between four per cent and five per cent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product. That figure comes from an authoritative source, one of the world’s leading health economists, Dr. Robert G. Evans of the Universityof British Columbia, speaking in June to members of Parliament and government advisers.

-¦ Medicare spending eats up roughly the same proportion of provincial revenues as it did 20 years ago, Evans told the MPs. “The problem isn’t uncontrolled public healthcare spending,” Evans said, according to a statement. “It’s uncontrolled private health spending combined with a drop in provincial revenues created by large tax cuts over the years.”

-¦Publicly funded costs might look like they have increased, but that’s because federal and provincial governments went on a massive tax-cutting mission between 1997 and 2004, resulting in the loss of $170.8 billion from public-sector revenues, according to Evans. With the public revenue pie smaller -$35 billion a year smaller at the provincial level -of course the share consumed by public health care spending looked like it was bigger.

This shouldn’t surprise anyone.   Like in the US where much of Congress is in the pockets of the insurance companies (why Obamacare doesn’t include a public option), one must really think of where the motivations of doctors and governments at both the federal and provincial levels when they put out that “Universal health care is unsustainable!”  propoganda  really are at. Certainly not patient care, that’s for sure.

 The good doctor will have an uphill climb as long as Stevie Spiteful is in power. No doubt that if Stevie and his flunkies were to receive any data from  the good doctor,  supporting universal health care, they would find their way to the paper shredder.   But, take heart folks, at least he’s not a civil servant Stevie Spiteful can fire, ‘relocate’, or demote.  Again, he will be a refreshing change from his three predecessors on the Private for profit brigade.

Will the CMA be any more productive under Dr Turnbull? The cynic in me says probably not; he probably does have to contend with members who are for Americanizing health care here in Canada. Many of whom, I’m sure are already lobbying the Harpercons, as well as provincial governments.   All I’ve heard and read on the news in recent years is doctors demanding more money; not necessarily for health care, but for themselves.  But, for this year, it’s nice to see an idealist and a doctor who seems to genuinely care more about healing the sick than adding that second imported sports car in the driveway and another country club membership, or, in the case of some, chase down every conbot celebrity all over Canada and the US just to have their picture taken with them, right Dr.  Jabba the Roy? 

Among Dr. Turnbull’s professional activities, besides being chief of staff at the Ottawa Hospital, he also provides care for the homeless at the Inner City Project and he often goes abroad to the third world to provide health care, although he has promised the CMA he won’t be travelling overseas during the year he will be serving as president.