When Politics Comes Before Patients

<p><em style=color: rgba(51 51 51 1)>How Successive Governments Have Weakened the Foundation of All Canadian's Social and Economic Security</em></p><p><br></p><p><span style=color: rgba(51 51 51 1)>At some point you will find yourself lying in a hospital bed. There is a good chance that your bed will be a firm rubber pad held secure between two rails and parked along a corridor in a busy emergency department. Moans of Nurse! will echo from the beds ahead of you in line. Those pleas will fall largely on deaf ears. Your hospital is underfunded and understaffed. Welcome to the current reality of Medicare in the 21st century.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style=color: rgba(51 51 51 1)>Using searing analogies and first-hand accounts Dr. Whatley makes the argument that the current Medicare system is unsustainable and unless critical choices and changes are made soon the publicly funded single-payer system in Canada will implode.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style=color: rgba(51 51 51 1)>Successive governments regardless of political stripe know all too well that Canada's system of health care is one of the defining characteristics of being a Canadian and any changes deemed harmful will have them thrown out of power. Thus decades of cuts around the margins centralized control federal/provincial infighting and government oversight has left doctors and hospitals with little input on how your health dollars are allocated and spent. Citizens are being left to languish in pain for months sometimes years because the current cost and delivery system is programmed for the benefit of governments staying in power. That was not what was intended. Medicare should be about delivering high-quality and timely healthcare value for Canadians.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style=color: rgba(51 51 51 1)>This is not an easy fix. Treatment starts with a serious look at the disease and Dr. Whatley pulls no punches. But what sounds like a radical new approach is neither new nor radical. He is not arguing for the end of Medicare per se but is making the case to let medical professionals - those providing the services - become equal partners in its design implementation and delivery.</span></p><p><br></p><p>Praise for When Politics Comes Before Patients</p><p><br></p><p>In Canada socialized medicine has been exalted to the status of a sacrament and to criticize it either in theory or in practice is tantamount to heresy. Dr. Whatley dares to do both and with such clarity of argument and abundance of evidence that no reasonable or fair-minded person could fail to be convinced. What Dr. Whatley has demonstrated in this beautifully written and engaging volume is that socialized medicine fails to meet the most fundamental moral obligation of health care: to place the patient's interests above all else.</p><p><br></p><p>Dr. Harley Price University of Toronto</p><p><br></p><p>Whatley... insists that our focus should be on the patients the people the system is supposed to serve but whose interests are too easily sacrificed in the name of some pretty but ineffectual or even destructive bureaucratic theory. I have been thinking about the health care system for thirty years yet I found Whatley's book packed with new insights and courageous thinking. A cure for what ails us.</p><p><br></p><p>Brian Lee Crowley Managing Director the Macdonald-Laurier Institute</p><p><br></p><p>When you are getting a diagnosis from your doctor you want the truth. If you want a truthful diagnosis of our health care system you must read this book. With precision wisdom and verve Dr. Shawn Whatley has fearlessly dissected the rot that plagues Canadian socialized medicine. Can you handle the truth?</p><p><br></p><p>Bruce Pardy Professor of Law Queen's University</p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p><br></p>