Wanted: Credible Health Care Analysis

By David Gratzer, Medicine, University of Manitoba

Are you a burnt-out leftist with few employment opportunities? Perhaps you will consider working for us.

First, a few questions. Do you have nightmares about the fall of the Berlin Wall? Do you marvel at the tremendous efficiency of the post office? Do you worship Maude Barlow, though you consider her too moderate on free trade?

If you answered, “yes, yes, and yes,” you may just be the type of person we’re looking for.

We form a small group of self-described policy analysts who dominate the debate over Canada’s health care system. While our organization does not appear in any phone book, we are pleased to say that our members are frequently quoted in such prestigious places as the Globe and Mail and the CBC “National.” Prominent members of our organization have written bestsellers on medicare and have delivered keynote addresses at health economic conferences.

Our organization boasts a successful record. Because of our tactics, Canada has the most rigidly controlled health care system in the free world. Our members have prevented experimentation with user fees (even our Swedish colleagues can’t say this) and private health insurance (Canada’s restrictions on the private sector now rival those of Cuba and North Korea).

This exciting employment opportunity involves:

1) Public Relations

Our organization recognizes that medicare has many critics. With recent public opinion polls suggesting that Canadians are increasingly dissatisfied with the system, we must move quickly to discredit these people.

Since most critics are concerned doctors and nurses who worry about the quality of health care in this country, it is difficult to challenge their expertise. Thus, the successful applicant will call into radio phone-in shows and write letters to newspapers questioning their patriotism.

Further, the successful applicant will find various public forums where he or she can make vague character attacks against our opponents, such as accusing these people of “being in the back-pocket of insurance corporations,” “having vested interests,” or “being ideological.”

2) Policy Development

As the public cries out for health care reform, our organization recognizes the need to put forward progressive proposals. The successful applicant will be able to write/research position papers, articles, and briefs advocating the expansion of the federal government’s role in health care into exciting new areas: national day care, pharmacare, and home care.

The successful applicant will also carry out such exercises on provincial health care issues where he or she will promote the sorts of initiatives that made the Soviet Union successful for over seven decades. These include salaried physicians (to replace the present “profit-minded” fee-for-service arrangement) and stronger micro-management by provincial bureaucrats (in order to achieve greater efficiency through regulations).

3) Information Sharing

Our organization recognizes that with growing waiting lists and an exodus of talented physicians, Canadians may increasingly question the quality of our health care system. Further, as the percentage of elderly Canadians doubles to a quarter of the total population over the next four decades, people wonder about the sustainability of the system.

The successful applicant will help design informational pamphlets that equate even modest reforms of the system with an “Americanization” of medicare. In the past, such tactics have been used so effectively by our organization that Canadians now assume that the entire American system is private. (We have really outdone ourselves in this area given that, of every dollar spent on health services in the United States, the government pays a full 64¢. In Canada, it’s 75¢ on the dollar.)

Further, the successful applicant will participate in grassroots organizing aimed at reaching elderly Canadians and other important constituents. Through a network of union hacks and leftists (the Friends of Big Government), the successful applicant will use pamphlets, direct mailings, and other tools of mass communication to help convince people that any meaningful reform will destroy medicare.

No experience is required! While health care policy may seem like a challenging field—it combines elements of economics, politics, and medicine—our organization is able to articulate our views with practically no knowledge of anything but socialist thought. We demand only that you must share our fundamental belief that medicare is not a social program but a religion.

Interested? Send your resume to Medicare Cultists, c/o The Toronto Gazette, Toronto, ON.

info@fraserinstitute.ca You can contact us at the above email address for any comments or information requests. Please report any dead links or technical problems.

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Last Modified: Wednesday, October 20, 1999.