From the outside, The Canadian Medical Association looks like a monarchy. It presides over the major ceremonies at provincial and territorial associations. But the CMA has grown tired and a bit embarrassed by old formalities.

After 152 years, the CMA has almost transformed into a New Thing.

Reform started some time ago with reorganization and throwing out robes and royal parades.

Committees followed.

Then motions. And board members.

The CMA almost succeeded in throwing out general council.

By every indication, the CMA wants to throw out the medical profession too.

Crisis at OMA Council

On May 5th at OMA spring council in Ottawa, Dr. Gigi Osler, CMA President, gave her annual address.

At first, no one came up to ask questions. Almost three hundred people sat in silence: a rare event in medical politics. Continue reading “The Secret of CMA Credibility & How to Win It Back”

We learn to fly by looking up, not down. Cheetahs cannot teach us about flight. Only birds can.

We can know everything about ground travel and remain clueless about flight.

If we want to defy gravity, we must study those who defy gravity. We must copy them; adopt their mannerisms; mirror their environment.

We cannot achieve prosperity by studying the destitute. We might learn what not to do, but that is not enough. Experts on poverty cannot teach prosperity.

Poverty as Disease

Medical doctors who study poverty examine it like a disease. Every disease has a cause. Find the cause; cure the disease.

Understanding disease process leads to treatment aimed at cure. This approach has produced tremendous success for medicine.

Health promoters still criticize doctors for emphasizing diagnosis and treatment. Patients can be disease-free but unhealthy. Doctors now promote health, too, but it required a change in focus.

Anti-poverty activists seem to think that expertise about poverty will fix poverty. They start in the wrong spot. They see poverty as an abnormal state arising from some noxious cause or disordered process.

Wealth, in a middle class sense, is common in North America. But it is not normal. Continue reading “Social Determinants of Wealth”

Big things happen every few decades. We landed on the moon in 1969. The Berlin Wall fell in 1989. The Ford government tabled Bill 74 in 2019.

At least that is how everyone talks about Premier Ford’s new bill. Former Deputy Minister of Health, Dr. Bob Bell, said that The People’s Health Care Act is the biggest change to healthcare in 50 years.

Minister of Health, Christine Elliott, announced Bill 74 on Tuesday. It had already been leaked, condemned, defended and modified. So it did not spark the same surprise had we known nothing.

The NDP’s Andrea Horwath said the leaked legislation guaranteed private healthcare. The end was not near: it was here. But Bill 74 does not mention privatization.

Bill 74

The People’s Health Care Act (Bill 74) dissolves the Local Health Integration Networks (LHINs). Most clinicians cheered.

The LHINs are full of eager, well-intentioned people, who inflict programs and metrics on clinicians to justify the LHINs’ existence. I feel bad for the LHIN people. But anytime they launched a new LHIN directive, I felt worse for us.

Here are five things you need to know about the bill: Continue reading “Bill 74 – The Biggest Change to Healthcare in 50 Years! Seriously?”