Payment is Powerful
Canada is facing difficulties recruiting medical graduates to practice family medicine, and the range of services offered by the current supply of general practitioners (GPs) is shrinking. Poor working conditions, a consequence of existing remuneration systems, are contributing to the dwindling supply of comprehensive primary care services, and the current system of remuneration creates inefficiencies in the delivery of primary health care. This paper explores various ways to improve primary care practice and increase GPs’ practice revenue without resorting to additional public funding.
Resource Revenues – what to do with them once you have them
Now that it looks like Nova Scotia and Nefoundland and Labrador will win the latest federal-provincial debate about natural resource revenues, it is important to remember that an even more important question remains to be settled. What you do with the money once you've got it? Natural resource revenues are not reliable revenues nor are they akin to "normal" government revenues like sales or income taxes. As one time payments based on the fluctuating value of assets that are being permanently liquidated they should not be used to fund current demands that turn into long term commitments. Read this piece to see why and how one time windfalls, as natural resorce revenues inarguably are, need to be invested not wasted. Slightly different versions of this column appeared in both the Chronicle Herald and the Times and Transcript.
AIMS visits prestigious Heritage Foundation in Washington to discuss Health Care
AIMS President Brian Lee Crowley's seminal talk - "The Top Ten Things People Believe About Canadian Health Care, But Shouldn't" continues to be a "best seller" with US audiences. On November 10, 2004 Crowley delivered this talk to an audience of informed and influential health stakeholders in Washington, DC at an event hosted by the presitgious Heritage Foundation.
Business Voice explores positive impacts of Atlantica’s deep roots
No one was surprised when the United States responded to the 9/11 terrorist attacks by locking down security wherever people and commerce move. In an interview with Business Voice just after the attacks, Brian Lee Crowley, president of the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies, said “If there’s going to be a North American (security) perimeter, we must be on the inside.” Now, three years later, Business Voice returns to the Canada-U.S. relationship in this cover story and discovers that Canada is increasingly “inside the perimeter” and that things are not as gloomy as many think. Read this piece to see how the concepts underpinning Atlantica: geography, economic trends and trade patterns; common problems and experiences; and politics, are having a positive impact as this region copes with a new reality.
AIMS 10th Anniversary Banquet
On Tuesday, November 9, 2004, AIMS celebrated it 10th anniversary with a banquet, which featured speakers such as former United States Senator and Secretary of Defense, William Cohen and former Prime Minister of Canada, the Right Honourable Brian Mulroney.
AIMS brings Atlantica message to Canada-US Border Trade Alliance in Chicago, as well as to the Management Committee of the Council of Atlantic Premiers
AIMS President Brian Lee Crowley was invited to bring the Institute's Atlantica message to the annual conference of the Canada-US Border Trade Alliance (CanAmBTA) in Chicago on November 8th. In this speech and slide presentation, Crowley walked the delegates through the logic of Atlantica in the context of a growing movement to continental economic integration and globalization. This conference, which included one representative of each of the Canada-US border regions reaching from the Pacific to the Atlantic, underlined the extent to which the Canada-US economic relationship is increasingly being managed by the emerging regions. Atlantica is well behind some of the most advanced regions, such as PNWER and the New York-Quebec region, but it was clear from the reception given to the AIMS presentation that there is tremendous support and enthusiasm for the Atlantica concept.
Atlantica Council officially launched
At a meeting in Saint John, New Brunswick, recently, several groups joined together with AIMS to form a new Atlantica Council to promote this cross-border region and its natural economic affinities. Among the groups represented at the meeting were the Atlantic Provinces Chambers of Commerce, Enterprise Saint John, the Eastern Maine Development Corporation, Progress Corp., the Maine International Trade Center and Enterprise Greater Moncton. AIMS took advantage of the occasion to launch its new Atlantica website: www.atlantica.org. This is further evidence of the growing momentum behind this concept, which AIMS has been instrumental in popularizing.
How NOT to shorten the queues for needed surgery (NS)
To consider the issue of how NOT to shorten queues for needed surgery from the NS persepctive, read this story.
How NOT to shorten the queues for needed surgery (NB)
If your top priority was to cut waiting times for vital surgery in our public health care system, the very last thing you would want to do would be to cut the number of operating theatres and their hours of operation, and put surgeons on salary so that the monetary rewards for a hard-working productive surgeon are prety much the same as those for a surgeon who prefers golf to appendectomies. So what have the managers of the Nova Scotia health care system done? They've cut the number of operating theatres and their hours of operation, and put surgeons on salary. How crazy is this? And before New Brunswickers and Prince Edward Islanders get too smug about this, they should recall that Halifax is an important regional centre offering surgical services to patients from these neighbouring provinces.
Alice in Borderland: Why Canadians Cannot Afford to be Complacent About American Drug Re-importation
The idea that Americans should be able to buy their prescription drugs in Canada, either in person or, more importantly, over the Internet, has been gaining favour with US politicians for some months now. It’s to the point where a number of states have either passed, or are considering passing, legislation that they believe will make this kind of cross-border shopping legal. This commentary explains why, if re-importation ever becomes law in the US, American prices will not fall, while in Canada we will either find drug prices rising to US levels, or supplies being restricted and shortages developing.