Squandering Billions: Health Care in Canada

Squandering Billions is a brutally frank indictment of health spending. The book demonstrates that the absolute power of medical doctors, pharmaceutical companies, health bureaucrats, and hospital administrators enshrines mediocrity at the expense of patients. Mistakes, inefficiency, and malpractice in the Canadian health system may be causing ten times or more unnecessary deaths a year than the toll from traffic accidents (3,000) and crime (500). Some acute care hospitals seem to have become disease factories. Why do health care tragedies not face the scrutiny typically focused upon other accidental and wrongful deaths? Canadian medicare was designed to insure the patient, not the practitioner. Why, then, are medical doctors and hospitals exempted from competition? Evidence shows conclusively that expanded use of community health centres, nurse practitioners, doctors of chiropractic, and others can be more effective and less expensive within their area of expertise. This book goes where official commissions have been afraid to travel.