The dead of summer used to mean rest. Stand-ins covered talk radio. Politicians attended Canada-Day celebrations, and everyone hit pause on life.

Summer meant nothing happened in medical politics; you might as well go to the cottage.

Not anymore. Now, summer means no one is looking, so why not push through something doctors will hate. At this rate, summer will become the new fall, and we will all need vacations in September.

In an effort to pretend I’m ignoring medical politics, here are my rambling from a Muskoka chair.

Who Knows Best?

Mark Twain said,

“I would rather listen to a soldier who has been to war talk about war than listen to a poet who has never been to the Moon talk about the moon.”

Someone also said, “The eye sees what the mind knows.” Doctors see and know problems in clinical care. We must give doctors voice. Government cannot know enough to know, let alone solve, all the problems.

This raises Hayek’s knowledge problem. Every system contains more knowledge than any single person can know. No one can ever know the thousands of decisions people make inside a system. Continue reading “Who Knows Best?”

Please, make it stop!

Once again, government has attacked doctors. This time, the federal government took a turn.

Finance Minister Morneau said doctors were using a “loophole” in the tax code, breaking the law against loopholes.

He suggested doctors were cheating and not paying their fair share.

He promised public consultation before addressing the overpaid doctors.

The provincial government gave doctors the ability to incorporate in lieu of fee increases, just over 10 years ago. Most other provinces have had the ability to incorporate for much longer.

Doctors could finally build a pension and create self-financed benefits just like other incorporated businesses and salaried workers.

But the federal government needs money. Continue reading “Overpaid and Under-Performing”

Can a broken relationship be mended? When one party has done something really wrong, and the other has lashed back, can they reconcile?

Doctors in Ontario have been heckled in the legislature, slandered in the media and ignored for multiple pieces of legislation. Unexpected rounds of unilateral cuts have caused festering wounds. It makes caring for sicker patients with longer wait times almost unbearable.

Some doctors are so sick of feeling abused, they only want to mock the other side. A few prefer mutually assured destruction.

But most doctors just want to care for patients. Doctors want to be left alone to care for patients without worrying about the next crisis.

Can doctors find a way to rebuild a new relationship with government? Continue reading “Can Doctors Rebuild a Working Relationship with Government?”