National Post · Monday, Feb. 28, 2011
Re: Good News About Family Doctors, Feb. 24.
It is a little-known fact that the shortage of doctors is a direct result of deliberate government policy. Nearly two decades ago the provincial health ministers commissioned two economists, Morris Barer and Greg Stoddart, to provide a report on health care economics. In B.C., we had the Seaton Commission. It was as if a doctor represented a calculable cost and by limiting the number of doctors the overall cost of health care could be constrained.
The result was a decision to limit access to training positions funded by provincial governments. Positions in medical schools were limited, even cut. Medical school graduates found that there was an insufficient number of training positions in Canadian hospitals available for them to pursue their chosen focus in medicine. Some were forced to go to outside Canada.
Meanwhile, trainees from overseas were accepted as residents, providing they paid their way, when a Canadian graduate would have been unable to secure that position. The high quality of medical care in Canada is maintained by the doctors, nurses and others in hospitals in spite of the contrary efforts of government and owes nothing to the rather cynical politicians. Look it up, I was there.
Paul Bratty (retired neurologist),
Gibsons, B.C.
Re: Good News About Family Doctors, Feb. 24.
It is a little-known fact that the shortage of doctors is a direct result of deliberate government policy. Nearly two decades ago the provincial health ministers commissioned two economists, Morris Barer and Greg Stoddart, to provide a report on health care economics. In B.C., we had the Seaton Commission. It was as if a doctor represented a calculable cost and by limiting the number of doctors the overall cost of health care could be constrained.
The result was a decision to limit access to training positions funded by provincial governments. Positions in medical schools were limited, even cut. Medical school graduates found that there was an insufficient number of training positions in Canadian hospitals available for them to pursue their chosen focus in medicine. Some were forced to go to outside Canada.
Meanwhile, trainees from overseas were accepted as residents, providing they paid their way, when a Canadian graduate would have been unable to secure that position. The high quality of medical care in Canada is maintained by the doctors, nurses and others in hospitals in spite of the contrary efforts of government and owes nothing to the rather cynical politicians. Look it up, I was there.
Paul Bratty (retired neurologist),
Gibsons, B.C.
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