Lindsay McCreith speaks out about his brain tumor

Healthcare Reform, Michael Moore and a three-point strategy.

Michael Moore's answer to the problems facing US healthcare policy makers? Rip the system apart, give the federal government control, create a single-payer system that takes for-profit insurance companies out of the equation and regulate pharmaceutical companies "like utilities since they're just as important as electricity and water."

He's got friends. Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Barack Obama have all proposed radical overhauls of the health-care industry, with the goal of covering more Americans and lowering costs. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has also laid out a plan for remaking California's health system, in the wake of a similar move by Massachusetts.

The proposal from Obama (D-Ill.) came on May 29 in a speech at the University of Iowa, where he outlined a $50 billion-a-year universal health-care plan for all Americans that would increase taxes on the wealthy and require virtually all employers to offer insurance to workers or face tax penalties.

(source: www.michaelmore.com)

Michael Moore, Lindsay McCreith and the Wall Street Journal

June 28, 2007
Health Care in Canada: What a Great Model

A view of Michael Moore's new propaganda film from a Canadian perspective. From today's Wall Street Journal

TORONTO--"I haven't seen 'Sicko,' " says Avril Allen about the new Michael Moore documentary, which advocates socialized medicine for the United States. The film, which has been widely viewed on the Internet, and which will officially open in the U.S. and Canada on Friday, has been getting rave reviews. But Ms. Allen, a lawyer, has no plans to watch it. She's just too busy preparing to file suit against Ontario's provincial government about its health-care system next month.

Her client, Lindsay McCreith, would have had to wait for four months just to get an MRI, and then months more to see a neurologist for his malignant brain tumor. Instead, frustrated and ill, the retired auto-body shop owner traveled to Buffalo, N.Y., for a lifesaving surgery. Now he's suing for the right to opt out of Canada's government-run health care, which he considers dangerous.

Ms. Allen figures the lawsuit has a fighting chance: In 2005, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that "access to wait lists is not access to health care," striking down key Quebec laws that prohibited private medicine and private health insurance.

Elsewhere, the AFL-CIO aligns itself with Michael Moore and socialism. (Yes, yes. We know it's considered bad manners and politically crude to refer to socialism in these debates. But what else do you call eliminating the private sector from health care? Universal coverage? That may describe the end, but it certainly doesn't describe the system.)

Lawsuit Aimed at Stopping Junk-Food Marketing to Children

Kellogg Company Makes Historic Commitment, Adopting Nutrition Standards For Marketing Foods To Children

Advocacy Groups and Parents Applaud Efforts, Drop Plans to Sue

WASHINGTON: Kellogg Company will adopt nutrition standards for the foods it advertises to young children, and the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), the Campaign for Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC), and two Massachusetts parents will not proceed with a lawsuit against the company.

Foods advertised on media including TV, radio, print, and third-party Web sites that have an audience of 50 percent or more children under age 12 will have to meet Kellogg's new nutrition standards, which require that one serving of the food has: (for more information click on the title of this posting)

Can we improve peer review ?

We have blatantly taken this blog topic from the pages of The Scientist. It seems a good idea to have this discussion.

How should NIH improve peer review? [And we add] How should Canadian research groups improve peer review?

The original post (below) came from Ivan Oransk

Today (June 08, 2007) the NIH announced that it was establishing two working groups to examine its peer review process. That process has been under increased scrutiny recently, as study sections have needed to read more and more grant applications with every cycle. And with NIH funding flat, it's no longer good enough to be in the top 30% or so to get funded; in some study sections, it's close to 10%. So many scientists may find the examination welcome.

In 2005, in the pages of The Scientist, David Kaplan proposed a number of ways to improve peer review at the NIH. What do you think of his suggestions, which include decreasing the length of the research plan to between two and four pages so that 20 to 30 reviews for each application could be solicited, and doing away with committee meetings? Where do you suggest the new committees look for improvements? Give The Scientist your ideas by commenting on The Scientist blog or provide your comments using the tools below.

Coordination among levels of governments is almost non-existent.

There has not been an era in history when the importance of public health has been more critical than it is today. Hugh Tilson and Bobbie Berkowitz lay out the challenges.

Here's Challenge 1: the public health infrastructure, basically rests with governments at the national, state, provincial and local levels. Why is it not surprising that coordination among these levels is almost non-existent and certainly insufficient for a collaborative plan to emerge easily in the event of an incident of "national significance"? In neither country has the national government been able to take the lead in driving solutions to public health initiatives.

Lindsay McCreith

From the National Review of Medicine.

Asked whether a similar privatization push could happen in Ontario as a result of the recently-filed lawsuit by cancer patient Lindsay McCreith — which cites the 2005 Chaoulli decision as precedent (see "Chaoulli copycat cases crop up across country," Jan 15, 2007, Vol 4, No 1) — Mr. Michael McBane, the national co-ordinator of the Canadian Health Coalition says, "The Ontario government is not the Quebec government — the Ontario government believes in medicare. The Quebec government does not seem to."

Will Google Enable Your Health Record?

We understand that Canada Health Infoway is "talking" to Google. We will follow this. For starters here's a primer from Google's own blog. . . posted 11/30/2006 12:59:00 PM

Posted by Adam Bosworth, Vice President

At Google, we often get questions about what we're doing in the area of health. I have been interested in the issues of health care and health information for a while. It is now one of my main focuses here, and I've decided to start posting about it. I've been motivated in this field in part by my personal experiences helping to care for my mother, who recently died from cancer after a four-year battle. While the quality of the medical care my mother received was extraordinary, I saw firsthand how challenged the health care system was in supporting caregivers and communicating between different medical organizations. The system didn't fail completely, but struggled with these phases:

• What was wrong -- it took her doctors nine months to correctly identify an illness which had classic symptoms
• Who should treat her -- there was no easy way to figure out who were the best local physicians and caregivers, which ones were covered by her insurance, and how we could get them to agree to treat her
• Once she was treated, she had a chronic illness, and needed ongoing care and coordinated nursing and monitoring, particularly once her illness recurred

Once she had a correct diagnosis and we'd found the right doctor, her treatment was excellent. But before and after treatment, most people with serious illnesses have to live through these other phases and suffer similar problems. She was trying to get help from her caregivers in the family and it was incredibly challenging to get the right information and help her make the right decisions. Often the health care system isn't well set up to address these issues. I believe our industry can help resolve some of these problems and ameliorate others.

In the end, one key part of the solution to these problems . . . for more click here:

Health care information matters

1,200 Nursing Grads Will Go Unemployed

About 15 per cent of graduates from Canadian nursing schools in 2007 will be unable to find work, according to the Canadian Nurses Association which also called for more full-time jobs to be created.

Taking Ontario's health monopoly to court

Ontario's health care monopoly almost killed Lindsay McCreith. After suffering a seizure in January, 2006, the 66-year-old Newmarket resident was told he had a brain tumour. But he would have to wait four-and-a-half months to obtain an MRI to rule out the possibility that it was cancerous. Unwilling to risk the progression of what might be cancer, Mr. McCreith obtained an MRI in Buffalo, which revealed the tumour was malignant. Even with this diagnosis in hand, the Ontario system still refused to provide timely treatment, so Mr. McCreith had surgery in Buffalo to remove the cancerous brain tumour in March, 2006.

Andy Barrie spoke with Lindsay McCreith. The retired Newmarket man was told he would have to wait for more than four months for an MRI.Listen. (Runs 6:59)