Doctors Won’t Fight The Nanny

Steve Paikin, host of TVO’s The Agenda, wrote a blog: Doctors no longer have all the power in Ontario’s Health Care.

He writes that the Ontario Medical Association used to stand and fight in the 80s and 90s. Earlier, he asked the OMA president, “What do the doctors have planned now?” I blogged about it here.

Paikin assumes most doctors do not vote Liberal. I suspect he’s wrong.

Physicians tend to support the party in power like most other voters. Doctors want stability and predictability. They like big government handouts.

Beyond the practicalities of clinical care, many doctors hold idealistic notions about society. They ask the state to legislate healthy behaviours. Diabetes experts lecture about menus, food choices in supermarkets and even neighbourhood design. They believe government should plan society to promote health. Many doctors call for levels of state control seen only in totalitarian regimes.

Physicians should re-examine their politics. If they support:

• Expanding government size and control
• Government ownership and control of services and production
• Increased wealth redistribution
• Increased handouts with little attention to warrant
• Complete insulation of society from risks associated with personal behaviour
• State help for bad business outcomes
• Penalizing professionals for hard work
• Unearned handouts

Then physicians should accept their cuts and be quiet. Wynne’s attack on doctors follows from her political philosophy.

On the other hand, if doctors support

• Responsible spending
• Individual choice (e.g., telephone, air travel, postage, education)
• Self-reliance for things most individuals can handle
• Government doing what only governments can do (e.g., military, courts and banking)
• Letting voters direct tax dollars (e.g., remove hospital block funding, school vouchers)
• No handouts without some effort except for those completely incapacitated
• Not insulating people from all the risks of their choices about debt, behaviour and lifestyle
• That professionals should control their workplaces and practices, not bureaucrats

Then physicians should fight.

They could start a human rights challenge of the CPSO ban on physician job action. They might challenge the legality of the ban on physician billing outside of Medicare. They should ‘raise hell’ as Paikin mentioned.

Do doctors refuse to fight because they support the nanny state and want more of it? Doctors won’t fight the party they love.