Better vigilance needed over health-care dollars

Universal health care represents a major advance in social and economic equality. Elected governments act as trustees of public health care. Health-care budgets are some of the largest sums of our tax dollars.

Are governments exercising sufficient fiduciary duty to ensure that this big trough of tax dollars is protected from predatory big feeders? This question seems to be the unrecognized elephant in the room in almost all health-care issues reported in the media.

We read that Island Health is spending $174 million and Coastal Health is spending $842 million on electronic healthrecord systems. This is more than $1 billion and that should suffice to build a single system with data compatibility and privacy controls for all of Canada.

We read of the dearth of replacement family physicians. Government fees for service create great economic incentive for physicians to specialize rather than remain in general practice.

Health administrators on high salaries, drug and medical equipment companies, disability, education plans and malpractice insurance payments to physicians are other feeders that line up at the trough.

Meanwhile, the sick wait months and sometimes years for diagnosis and treatment. Has public health care crossed the line from social justice to social injustice? Is it there to care for all, or feed the one per cent?