[HALIFAX] — – Last week in Halifax, federal health care commissioner, Roy Romanow noted that AIMS’ work on health care was having a major influence on the country’s ongoing debate over the future of health care. He made the comments while welcoming AIMS President Brian Lee Crowley and the Director of Medical Informatics at Dalhousie University’s Medical School and AIMS Fellow in Health Care Policy, Dr. David Zitner, who were invited to testify before the federal inquiry. After their testimony, Commissioner Romanow requested that AIMS submit a special paper on the role of the private sector in the future of medicare.
– Also last week, Senator Michael Kirby’s influential Senate Committee studying health care reform issues issued a new report. It drew heavily on AIMS papers and commentary on health care, quoting extensively from both AIMS’ award-winning 1999 paper “Operating in the Dark” and its more recent “Public Health, State Secret”. Crowley and Zitner were both authors on each of these papers. In particular, the Kirby Report picked up on the themes of the poor quality information available to manage the health care system, as well as the diagnosis that the system’s ills flow chiefly from its nature as an unregulated monopoly without clearly defined goals or a focus on the needs of consumers.
– In addition to these direct contributions by the Institute to Canada’s intensive reflection on reform of our public health care system, AIMS president Brian Lee Crowley is also a member of the Alberta premier’s Advisory Council on Health, chaired by former Deputy Prime Minister, Hon. Don Mazankowski. The Mazankowski Report, tabled by the Council in January of this year, has clearly become the benchmark against which all other health care reform proposals are judged. Crowley was named to the Premier’s Advisory Council by Alberta Premier Ralph Klein in recognition of AIMS’ path breaking work on health care, particularly in “Operating in the Dark”. “Operating in the Dark” won the 2000 Fisher International Award for excellence in think tank publications, a competition open to over 100 think tanks from over 40 countries.
AIMS is honoured by this recognition of its efforts to promote reasoned and well-informed debate over how to reform Canada’s health care system. The Institute will continue to play a role in identifying policies that allow Canadians to preserve what they value in medicare, while putting it on a financially sustainable basis.
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For further information, contact:
Brian Lee Crowley at 902-499-1998
Dr. David Zitner at 902-494-3802