Category: Politics

After 14 years of government planning and activism, Ontario healthcare is a mess.

The ideal political healthcare platform should offer help. It should not take control.

We need public servants, not public leaders. The ideal healthcare platform would tell us what government promises it will never do.

We need to know that government will never tell doctors how to treat patients; that it will stay out of doctors’ and nurses’ way.

Let doctors and nurses figure out what patients need.

Creativity and innovation applied by thousands of doctors and nurses on the front lines of care would crush the performance of any plan devised by brilliant people at Queens Park. Continue reading “Thank God Doug Ford Doesn’t Have Another Plan for Healthcare”

One of the most popular skits from Monty Python and the Holy Grail is “I’m being repressed!”

It contains a powerful lesson on what’s wrong with healthcare and how to fix it.

The skit opens with King Arthur overtaking a young peasant man, Dennis, who Arthur mistakes for an old peasant woman.

Dennis is pulling a cart.

Dennis berates Arthur for exploiting the workers with “outdated imperialist dogma which perpetuates the economic and social differences in our society.”

A peasant woman calls out from the ditch at the side of the road, “Dennis! There’s some lovely filth down here…”

Both peasants then cross examine Arthur on his right to be King: Continue reading “Are Doctors Being Repressed?”

Once upon a time, might made right. One angry mob would holler at another angry mob until one backed down or got pounded.

Tribalism hurt everyone. Thankfully, those days passed, and tribes learned that debate works better.

Once upon a time, doctors learned to debate and wrestle with paradoxical facts. A contest of ideas drove progress.

We learned to disagree violently without violence. Unfortunately, those days have almost passed. Small groups of doctors have resurrected tribes as a way to drive change. Continue reading “Tribalism and Outrage”