Health care

Cholesterol drugs don’t help the healthy

Aug 12, 2010
By
I have said this before and this recent research begs me to say this again: Someday we will look back on society’s zeal for checking and chemically altering our blood cholesterol in the same way we now regard blood letting and purging: A medical barbarity that good science cannot support…. View Article

The U.K. having problems with its P3s

Jul 27, 2010
By
Britain, which led the charge for public private partnerships under both Conservative and Labour governments over the past decades, is now seeing problems with the projects. This month the new coalition government cancelled the controversial Building Schools for the Future program.  Michael Gove, the Conservative Secretary of State for Education said the P3 school program… View Article

Good news from the BC government – with a couple of caveats

Jul 10, 2010
By
The BC government’s announcement July 9th that it had signed a deal on generic drugs with the province’s drug stores is good news.  As discussed in an earlier blog, British Columbians have been paying far more than consumers in other jurisdictions for generic drugs.  Alberta, Quebec and Ontario had already taken steps to correct this… View Article

When $300,000 isn’t enough

Dec 21, 2009
By
I heard today that the Fraser Health Authority is giving its CEO Nigel Murray a $30,000 bonus on top of his $300,000 annual salary.  Put that up against the cuts the Authority is making to services for addicted youth and seniors, among others.   Remember that hospital housekeeping workers, who are the first line of defense… View Article

Healthy eating put out of reach for the poor

Dec 16, 2009
By
Remember the Premier’s “Great Golden Goal” (G3?) about healthy eating? True, we don’t  hear so much about it these days. But it was a laudable goal. Eating a healthy diet is important if we are to improve the overall health of the population, and thereby help to slow rising health care costs. And it’s particularly… View Article

Technology and the future of public health care

Dec 2, 2009
By
A couple years ago I put out a report for the CCPA that crunched the numbers on health care sustainability (BC version here). The main finding was that public health care was basically sustainable in that it could handle projected increases in population, aging and inflation as long as GDP continued to grow at a… View Article

Something missing from the H1N1 fight

Oct 2, 2009
By
When the government announced its plans for dealing with H1N1 in schools on August 24th there was something missing. The government’s “pandemic response framework”, announced by the Ministers of Education and Healthy Living and sport deals with issues like transporting the sick, communications, roles of emergency response teams, school instruction and post-pandemic recovery plans. What… View Article

Poltergeists and P3s: They’re back

Sep 24, 2009
By
In February, with the spectacular collapse of the $3 billion Port Mann Bridge public private partnership, many people thought P3s in British Columbia were a dead item.  They’re back. With the Fort St. John Hospital project the government’s privatization agency, Partnerships BC (PBC), has found a way to drastically reduce private investment in P3s while… View Article