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Regional: Follow the money
Commentary by Jeff Burgar
for South Peace News
For just $200 million, you can own your personal cancer killer.
For your money, you get a machine bigger than a house. OK, so that’s a tad out of reach but take heart. Engineers are working to get the cost and size down to where every neighbourhood cancer clinic can afford the machine. Today there are only about 30 in the world. Needless to say, specially funded researchers and rich people are the only people getting use of the machines.
Ka-ching!
On the Internet, one can find lots of websites worried about our health. On one, I took an easy test. After answering 30 or so questions, the website told me I have a fair to medium chance of living to be 95!
Of course, that’s assuming I stop eating grease (fat chance of that), exercise an hour a day, smile more often (ha ha, is that OK?) and stop worrying about potholes and jobs.
Helping me, or anybody else, live to be 95 is one big, fat, double Ka-Ching!
The point here is simple: no matter how many politicians whine about rising medical costs, no matter how many experts cry about how much money is going to be sucked out of the economy by aging baby boomers, no matter who says we can’t afford health care - the fact remains, health care is a fantastic, growing, booming industry!
Of course we want to cut costs. Just like anything else in the world, people are trying to make more efficient wheelchairs, operating rooms, doctors, nurses, medicines, ambulances and anything else dealing with medicine.
But hold your horses! When did we start thinking the movement to contain costs means fewer hospitals, fewer beds, fewer doctors and fewer nurses? What lunacy!
And this in the face of a bigger population, an aging population, more demand for service and more services available.
Can you imagine the president of KFC saying, “Whoa! We got too many customers! Let’s close down stores, make the buckets smaller, charge more for wings, reduce staff, make customers wait longer and cut our hours!”
Not a chance! Why do that with health?
The United States right now is fighting tooth and nail to keep one of the crummiest health care systems in the developed world as is. Instead of sucking up 12 per cent of the economy, health care in the USA sucks up over 20 per cent!
Of course, the money people in the States are fighting change! It’s a wonderful business as is!
Now, this concept of health as industry, besides being an absolute necessity in any community that calls itself a service centre, isn’t lost in High Prairie.
But we can tell you, every politician, every business person, every community leader and booster of any kind who thinks High Prairie needs economic development should have been out March 22, ready to beat on Alberta Health and Wellness Minister Gene Zwozdesky. Let’s keep getting our message out. A hospital is a bigger economic engine and draw than Wal-Mart, Costco, McDonald’s, KFC, A&W and Tolko rolled into one.
Were you there?
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