A short respose to Shawgi Tell on Canadian medicare. 1st, there are difficulties, primarily with reduction in funding by the Federal government (though the provinces are not blameless here). 2nd, there was a great need for reform in the system since it discouraged _pre_ventative medicine in favour of crisis intervention medicine and it encouraged high cost institutional care rather than home care and other alternatives. 3rs, there is a real bias toward capital intensive hospital care in our system -- a bias that is expensive and, in medical terms, inefficient. The problem is that these probems can not be addressed easily at the federal level which can only dictate the level of funding. Furthermore, the real escalation of costs has been in the cost of drugs that have skyrocketed since Canada gave in to American pressure and extended the patent protection to international drug companies such that the cost of drugs now exceeds the cost of physician services in Canada. In order to dealwith this problem, we will probably have to cancel the Can-US free trade agreement. This may be a necessary precondition of providing affordable health care in Canada -- and probably the US as well. Nevertheless, Shawgi Tell's analysis is symplistic and does little to help us save medicare in Canada. On the line for health care, Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba
