Saskatchewan must be proud for creating hospital insurance and Medicare when neither was considered feasible(2), however, in the last twenty years our health care system has become a gambling casino(3), and today researchers are being paid taxpayers' money to artificially support this decadent health care system.

My son James is presently writing a university's paper on the economic status of Canada and I raised the prospect that our economic downturn in the last twenty years may have relationships with the corresponding erosion of our health care system and to our calcified efforts to protect this system at any cost, that is by a dictatorial bureaucracy and now by biased researches. I told James "think about this paradox, the United States' health care costs are about twice as much as Canada's, yet the United States is enjoying one of the best economic performance in the world; we claim to have the best health care system in the world, yet our economic performance has deteriorated with respect to the United States in the last twenty years(4)." Also, I told James "could it be that the presence of our social shock absorbers(5) is influencing our individual freedoms and our sense of social and economic entrepreneurship?"

In September 1999, the Utilization and Research Commission of Saskatchewan released a biased study supporting the betterment of health care in rural Saskatchewan(6)(7). Yesterday, we had a laughable international study by Dr. David Cassidy stating that within a no-fault insurance system injured people recover twice as fast from whiplash(8). Today, we have a urban study by the Saskatoon District Health claiming that Saskatoon residents are among the healthiest in the nation(9), a study which contradicts the 1998 figures of Statistics Canada(10).

Maybe, it is time that we ask our researchers and governments to put aside their microscopic insights(11) and provide a statistical correlation between our economic decadence and the erosion of our health care system.

Endnotes

Quote by Donella Meadows "challenging a paradigm is not a part-time job. It is not sufficient to make your point once and then blame the world for not getting it. The world has a vested interest in, a commitment to, not getting it. The point has to be made patiently and repeatedly, day after day after day" ftp://sysdyn.mit.edu/ftp/sdep/Roadmaps/RM1/D-4143-1.pdf http://iisd1.iisd.ca/pcdf/meadows/default.htm

General reference:Articles by Mario deSantis published by North Central Internet News

1. Honourable Janice MacKinnon and the NDP Government: Spin-doctoring the Truth, by Mario deSantis, February 21, 2000

2. Paper: Invitation by the Regina Health Board to comment on the Atkinson Report, by Mario deSantis, May 8, 1992 http://www3.sk.sympatico.ca/desam/paper-Atkinson-may08-92.htm

3. Pat Atkinson: raising the finger and turning healthcare to a gambling casino, by Mario deSantis, February 3, 2000

4. CANADA'S STANDARD OF LIVING: WHY DO WE LAG BEHIND THE U.S.?, by Marc Levesque (416) 982-2557 and Ruth Getter (416) 982-2556 of the Toronto Dominion Bank, May 26, 1999 http://www.tdbank.ca/tdeconomics/market_analysis/current/ml0526.htm

5. Dr. Cassidy's study on no-fault insurance: supporting another shock absorber, by Mario deSantis, April 20, 2000

6. Assessing the Impact of the 1993 Acute Care Funding Cuts to Rural Saskatchewan Hospitals, by Health Services Utilization and Research Commission (HSURC), Summary Report No. 13, September 1999, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

7. Fragmented Research comes to the help of Saskatchewan Reform, by Mario deSantis, September 28, 1999

8. Whiplash study attacked by Oregon professor: methods, data of SGI-funded report criticized, by Gerry Klein, The StarPhoenix, April 28, 2000, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

9. Saskatoon residents among healthiest in nation, by Darren Bernhardt, The StarPhoenix, May 5, 2000, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

10. Saskatchewan Healthcare: Using Researches to Blatantly Lie to the Public, by Mario deSantis, November 27, 1999

11. A Museum Mentality Is Cheating Our Economy: Healthcare, SHIN and the Synchrotron, by Mario deSantis and reviewed by James deSantis, November 8, 1999