Competition surest route to top quality health care; AIMS in the London Free Press
London Free Press columnist Rory Leishman turns to AIMS President Brian Lee Crowley and AIMS Fellow on Health Care Policy, Dr. David Zitner, to explain the absence of publicly available information on the effectiveness of the Canadian health care system and individual providers within that system. The problem, Zitner and Crowley explain, is that in Canada, "health care is an unregulated monopoly, devoid of any performance requirements." The bureaucrats who run the system have a vested interest in keeping the rest of us in the dark about how well or poorly they are doing. After considering this fact, Leishman concludes that there can be no hope for any significant improvement in medicare until Canada, like every other democracy, opens up its public-sector medicare system to vigorous and across-the-board competition from service providers in the private sector.
AIMS On-Line for early June 2002
Here is what's new at AIMS, Atlantic Canada's Public Policy Think Tank
Canadian Aquaculture
Canadian Aquaculture: Drowning in Regulation, AIMS latest report on Canada’s aquaculture industry, argues that the current federal-provincial regulatory environment for aquaculture is dysfunctional and that fundamental institutional change is required if this potentially vibrant and growing industry is to achieve its full potential in Canada.
Ideas Matter
A special publication, released by AIMS in June 2002 in collaboration with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy and the Montreal Economic Institute, providing a summary of our Sir Antony Fisher Award winning Equalization Initiative
Canada could follow Britain’s example on improving Health Care – Learn from Sweden
Health care is becoming more and more of a political issue in Britain. Long waiting lists, poor response and low standards have led to rising popular discontent. The Government is now taking radical steps to transform the National Health System (NHS). Just as in Sweden, “more money” has for many years been counted on as the recipe for putting things right. But the Blair administration has gradually come to see that pouring new millions into a malfunctioning system only serves to perpetuate the problems. And so now the NHS is to be reformed, from monopoly and bureaucracy to decentralisation and a consumer focus. In this piece, Johan Hjertqvist, AIMS’ commentator on Swedish health care reform, discusses how New Labour has derived most of the inspiration for its reform from the Stockholm County Council. He concludes that the efforts of Britain’s Labour Party offer a glimpse of what can be achieved when you move past ideology and focus on the more practical question of what actually works.
Waiting for Voisey’s Bay: Six Years Was Too Long
After six long hard years of negotiation a deal has been struck that will see the nickel ore deposits at Voisey's Bay begin to be mined. In looking at the deal, Peter Fenwick, AIMS' voice on Newfoundland & Labrador, asks why a similar deal was not concluded a long time ago. Most of the terms included in the final deal have been on the table for some time and the public has given a rousing endorsement to the terms reached between Inco, the provincial government and the Innu and Inuit people. Gauging the damage done to the Newfoundland mining industry by these negotiations is difficult. What exploration programs were cancelled, and what promising finds not developed, is impossible to say.
Newfoundland’s Curious Attitude to Private Property
Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto argues, most recently in his award-winning book "The Mystery of Capital", that the world's poor often possess considerable capital which could be used to generate wealth, income and employment. Unfortunately, because that wealth is tied up in things like self-built houses to which no formal title exists, it cannot be used as collateral and no bank will lend against it. It is, in de Soto's words, "dead capital", capital whose value has been destroyed by the absence of clear, simple and defensible property rights. In this Commentary, former AIMS Director of Communications, Peter Fenwick, applies these insights to Newfoundland and its perennial problems of economic underdevelopment. He writes: "Although Newfoundland is far from a third world country when it comes to property rights, long held attitudes towards the commons have severely stunted any attempt to use the natural wealth of the province as the grubstake to build prosperity."
Private financing, private delivery. Two tier health care?
Brian Lee Crowley, President of AIMS, gave a talk at the National Healthcare Leadership Conference in Halifax on May 27, 2002. Dr. Crowley was a member of the five-person panel discussing “two-tier health care,” in Canada. Below is a quote from Dr. Crowley’s concluding remarks, if you would like to read the entire analysis that led to these conclusions on our website, please click here. In sum, much of our debate about multiple tiers is ideological, and has little to do with the quality of care delivered within the public system. We cling to a system that outlaws private spending on publicly-insured services, usually on the basis that parallel systems of care rob the public system of resources, while both objective and subjective international rankings show that multiple tiers of access are fully compatible with high quality public systems and high levels of care overall and high levels of patient satisfaction.
U.S. casts itself as fair-weather free trader
In his regular column, AIMS President Brian Lee Crowley discusses the heavy toll the United States’ recent protectionist stance is having on freer trade and the prosperity it brings. Dr. Crowley emphasizes that no one has benefited more from freer trade than the United States, however with the recent signing of the protectionist Farm Bill, the abuse of anti-dumping rules, new tariffs on imported steel, lumber, and textiles, and the failure to grant Trade Promotion Authority to the president, the US is destroying its credibility with the friends of free trade around the world and endangering the foundation of global prosperity. Publication: CHH, May 22, 2002
Manley on a mission
“Free and fair trade will prevail” was the promise Deputy Prime Minister John Manley made to his Halifax audience during the highly successful Economic Leadership Speaker Series event, held on May 15, 2002 and co-sponsored by AIMS. Mr. Manley discussed the need for an aggressive stance by Canada when negotiating settlements for the boiling trade disputes with the United States.