Honduran doctors and medical students who practice in public hospitals have been on strike against a dozen Cuban doctors practicing medicine in Honduras the past few months. The reason why is the Cuban doctors licensing and professional requirement are less than those of the Honduran medical establishment. The other side of this story is predictable. Low-income Hondurans who lack health care warmly welcome the Cuban doctors. I got my info from two sources: a Honduran journalist and a U.S. activist.
Economist Dean Baker makes a case to standardize licensing and professional requirements for physicians. The American Medical Association opposes that. Such a policy would cut the earnings of U.S. doctors shielded from global competition. Meanwhile, some 800,000 U.S. doctors earn double and more versus their European counterparts. If the licensing and professional barriers to foreign doctors practicing stateside ended, U.S. health care would become more affordable for those with low and middle incomes. (The United States Since 1980 by Dean Baker (Cambridge University Press, 2007. Pages 31-32.). Seth Sandronsky To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Sicko: Heavily Doctored? From: Paul Phillips <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Sat, 30 Jun 2007 14:48:21 -0700 User-agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.4 (Windows/20070604) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Indeed, I was a participant in the "Saskatchewan civil war" when the (or I should say, some) doctors went on strike against the introduction of comprehensive, compulsory medical insurance in, I think it was, 1961. My family's doctors supported the insurance scheme and opposed the strike. Some of the doctors and their supporters even threatened violence in opposing public insurance but cooler heads prevailed, some compromises were made, and the doctors went back to work -- as one doctor I know put it, "before people realized that they got better despite us, not because of us." (Indeed, the death rate fell in Saskatchewan during the doctors' strike.) A year or so later, polls of doctors opinions found a majority in favour of 'socialized (sic) medicine' as is still overwhelmingly true today. That is not to say that there is no disastisfaction with the Canadian system. Almost all of the problems can be traced back to the first half of the 1990s when neoliberal governments at both national and provincial levels cut funding drastically for the healthcare system to reduce government deficits and cut taxes as deficits ballooned in the deep recession of the early 1990s. Medical schools drastically reduced the intake of medical students and hospital beds were closed and nurses and aides, etc. were sacked. Immediately, waiting lists appeared and the problems with the system became more pronounced. I was commissioned to make a study of the impact on medical staff in Manitoba and what we found was that many of the sacked workers left their profession and went into other pursuits or left the province. Ten years later when the NDP formed the government and tried to address the problems by hiring more staff and opening more beds they faced a shortage of available, qualified staff. Indeed, they were forced to reopen nursing schools previously closed in the move to have all nurses university (4 year) trained rather than hospital/nursing school (2 year) trained. However, when you look at the increase in the cost of medicare over the past couple of decades, it is almost entirely accounted for by the rise in cost of drugs, a rise accelerated in Canada by our government's capitulation to the US to adopt the much more stringent pharmaceutical protection laws. This cost escalation has continued apace in recent years. Interestly enough, the US government spends about the same as Canada (%of GDP) on medical care but private expenditure in the US is about double. If Canada raised its percentage expenditure even half way to reduce this discrepancy and reduced the current privatisation of a number of branches of health care, waiting lists could be largely eliminated in relatively short order if we accelerate the training of the required medical personnel. As to Cuba, the couple of times we have needed minor medical attention in Cuba when visiting there, we received it free of charge though we had to pay quite minimal amounts for medication. Paul P Jim Devine wrote: haven't seen the movie yet. On 6/30/07, Julio Huato <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: raghu wrote:
Anyone care to offer a rebuttal?
My rebuttal is: They are really desperate trying to defend their Frankenstein. They are defensive about their scam. That is incriminating enough. No doubt, if Moore hadn't gone to Cuba, the criticism against the documentary and him would be significantly less intense. More power to Moore for having done it that way. Other countries dedicate a smaller percentage of their resources to medical care than the US does and get better care. Something is sorely wrong. If we value "American ingenuity" so much, we can take something like the French system or US Medicare and improve it, giving more coverage than those systems already do. One thing: though the Canadian system is better than the US one, didn't the doctors go on strike to oppose the Canadian one? -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. -- Paul Phillips Professor Emertus, Economics University of Manitoba Home and Office: 3806 - 36A st., Vernon BC, Canada. ViT 6E9 tel: 1 (250) 558-0830 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________________________________ Need a break? Find your escape route with Live Search Maps. http://maps.live.com/default.aspx?ss=Restaurants~Hotels~Amusement%20Park&cp=33.832922~-117.915659&style=r&lvl=13&tilt=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=1118863&encType=1&FORM=MGAC01
