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No Strikes in Canada Over Health Care
Public Health Comments is a newsletter providing news and comment on health matters read by many key health planners and politicians in the US. The newspaper is published by Public Health Information Services, Detroit, MI. The excerpts are taken from the Nov. 12, 1990 issue. Quotes from a speech by Richard L. Trumpka, President, United Mineworkers of America “Last year, 78 % of all workers walking a picket line (in the US) were there, at least in part, because their bosses tried to cut their health care and shift costs ... While there will be more strikes, more battles over health care expenses, what we are up against is an issue that will not be solved strike-by-strike or contract-by-contract... We know that there are no strikes in Canada over health care because it has a system that does not hinge on the capriciousness of individual employers to provide coverage.” Comments by Community Action follow: Faced with declining occupancy rates and therefore declining revenues, many hospitals have resorted to a questionable strategy to increase admissions: offering various inducements to physicians to join their medical staffs and thereby generate admissions to the hospital providing the inducements. The inducements have taken many forms: free trips to Hawaii, the payment of physicians' malpractice premiums, discounted and even free rent of office space, the outright purchase of the physicians' practices, all in return for a commitment for exclusive admissions. A national survey of 1,754 hospital executives, conducted by the accounting firm Deloitte and Touche, reports that 43 % of them believe that the hospitals they manage will be bankrupt in 1995 and 71 % recommended that a cost per case should be imposed by third-party payors in order to more equitably distribute medical care services. In response to the question of what services they would cut if faced with imminent bankruptcy, they listed emergency room services, obstetrics, neighbourhood health centers, psychiatric services and substance abuse clinics, in that order. From Community Action for Mar.4/91, Vol.6, No.12, p.5 (CX5070)
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