Head of Canadian Medical Association wants to smash state healthcare for U.S. "profit" models

[villager]

<snip>

Clearly, in Day's view, there is a lot of money to be made by wrecking Canada's single-payer public health care system. Day estimates $40 billion a year in additional health care spending in Canada.

Why open a private surgical facility? To quote Larry Teuber, founding partner of Black Hills Surgery Center addressing the American Neurological Surgeons Annual Meeting in 2000, "Profit, profit, profit."

Slashed taxes

But wait a minute. Day also claims -- on the same California web site -- that Canada's current level of health care spending is unsustainable: "Health care is approaching 50 per cent of all spending in the provinces," he writes.

This claim is misleading because tax cuts have reduced government revenue and so inevitably public health care spending is rising as a percentage of provincial budgets, but not rising as a percentage of the economy and therefore is sustainable.

So why would someone concerned about rising health care costs give the impression to an American audience that driving up Canada's health care spending to U.S. levels -- Canada's health care spending as a percentage of GDP is 55 percent that of the US -- is a good thing? And why would he deny to the Canadian public that he is advocating the adoption of a U.S.-style system? After all, he stated, "No doctor in Canada I know wants a U.S. system."

<snip>

http://thetyee.ca/Views/2007/07/19/BrianDay/