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I began to write articles for Ensign as a natural opportunity to express my disappointment with the demented mentality of our political, business and academic leadership. In fact, some of my first articles have been dealing with "THE NEED OF TRANSFORMATIONAL CHANGES IN SASKATCHEWAN." Today, I realize that this mentality is ubiquitous not only across Canada but everywhere.

I have been describing this demented mentality as "linear thinking" that is a mentality which ignores our natural iterative (feedback) learning processes. Our linear thinkers view the world as a linear chain of (cause-effect) events rather than as a complex dynamic feedback system..

Our health care system is dysfunctional because yesterday's solutions have become today's problems. It is as to say that we have met the enemy and he is us. But for think tank Tommy Douglas Research Institute, the enemy is not us, the enemy is the medical profession. I am referring to the health care paper "Revitalizing Medicare: Shared Problems, Public Solutions" written by Dr. Michael Rachlis, associate professor of health administration at the University of Toronto, Robert Evans and Morris Barer, both experts in health economics at the University of British Columbia, and Patrick Lewis, a health care consultant(1).

These Big Brains are all concerned about public medicare, and they continue to dump their research papers in the toilette as they clean up their acts(2). These researchers are the same Big Brains who blamed the doctors in the early 90s for the health care problems and who re-engineered health care by cutting hospital beds(3).

Today, ignoring that the doctors are essential components of the health care system, this ultimate research paper says that the medical profession is undermining the system, that the doctors are the medicare's enemies, and that the health system should save money by putting doctors on salary.

If this is not enough, these Big Brains produce their numbers to evidence that there is no doctor shortage. I am asking; how come we have so many foreign trained doctors while South Africa is complaining to Canada about the stealing of their own doctors?

I advise Dr. Michael Rachlis & Co. to refer to the book 'Business Dynamics' when writing the next paper. In the meantime, I provide a picture that shows figuratively the understanding of the linear thinking world view as opposed to the dynamic feedback world view.

References/endnotes

Relevant political and economics articles http://ensign.ftlcomm.com

Business Dynamics: Systems Thinking and Modeling for a Complex World, by John D. Sterman, 2000 http://www.mhhe.com/sterman Also refer to http://www.albany.edu/cpr/sds and to http://sysdyn.mit.edu/

1. Medicare 'crisis' a sham: report, Mark Kennedy, Ottawa Citizen, January 25, 2001

2. A Partial Diagnosis of Health Care Corruption: The Quality Circle of the Big Brains Includes Our Renown Health Economists, by Mario deSantis, March 9, 2000

3. Minister of Health Pat Atkinson: "Wellness Model" is outside the Canada Health Act, by Mario deSantis, March 7, 2000

Additional resources on Dr. Michael Rachlis

Dr. Rachlis' comments during the Premier's conference August 12, 2000

A synopsis of a 1995 paper by Dr. Rachlis.

Dr. Rachlis comments negatively on Ontario attempts to reform primary health care

Dr. Rachlis comments on the funding debate of medicare.

Canadian Medical Journal reports on medicine moving to the right and quotes extensively comments by Dr. Rachlis.

Consumer Involvement In Health Policy Development by Carol Kushner and Michael Rachlis. This is a summary of the full paper but certain gives you a clear indication of the attitudes and opinions of the writers.

In Edmonton Dr. Rachlis defends public medicare.