COVID vs the Flu

By |2020-07-21T18:54:35-04:00July 13th, 2020|Categories: Society|Tags: , , , , |

COVID-19 Versus Influenza Just Plain Wrong Costs Lives What do we call people who think COVID is at worst a hoax, and at least over-hyped? They are not so much Corona deniers as they are diminishers. What’s the fuss?  Nothing out of the ordinary here. The annual flu kills more people worldwide than COVID has so far. Governments are either acting like old ladies with the vapors or plotting to restrict our freedoms for a host of nefarious reasons -- please fill in the blank with your favorite conspiracy theory.   To make [...]

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Graft, Quebec & COVID

By |2020-05-06T12:18:08-04:00May 5th, 2020|Categories: Society|Tags: , , , , , , |

There is no shortage of COVID-19 coverage in the media these days; but I have seen very little analysis as to why Quebec is leading the country in COVID cases by a significant margin. I grew up in Quebec and have the greatest admiration for the culture and general joie-de-vivre to be found in Montreal where I spent my formative years -- I am often found comparing it favourably to the nose-to-the grindstone aspects of life in Toronto. There is however a dark side. Those of you who have never been immersed in the local politics of [...]

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Healthcare Metrics

By |2020-04-25T13:44:29-04:00November 29th, 2014|Categories: Society|Tags: , |

How does one measure the effectiveness of a healthcare system? (I have stated objections to the term healthcare system in a previous post; but we are stuck with it as the accepted label in policy circles.) Some measures seem fairly obvious, life expectancy, infant mortality, timely access to care, number of healthcare workers per thousand of the national population, etc. The number of metrics appears to be limited only by the ingenuity of statisticians. Harder to measure is the opportunity cost of doing option A rather than option B within the system because if B is never [...]

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Healthcare Myths

By |2020-04-25T19:26:14-04:00November 27th, 2014|Categories: Society|Tags: , |

Some months ago, I posted a short item about healthcare policy, and promised more to come. I have been dancing around this commitment like a bare-foot shaman around a nest of vipers. Healthcare policy in North America is a disheartening and daunting subject for analysis. As Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry puts it, “…debate often floats in a realm of fantasies, myths, and half-truths — more like a dream or a nightmare about a thing than the thing itself.” However, I return to this subject, putting fear and trembling aside, because it is a hugely important policy tangle and even [...]

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Healthcare Reform

By |2020-04-21T10:38:20-04:00June 30th, 2014|Categories: Society|Tags: , , , |

Some years ago, I did some work for a think tank called the “Atlantic Institute for Market Studies.” It was founded and run by a brilliant, somewhat mercurial economist named Brian Lee Crowley who has since moved onto other endeavours in Ottawa.  Health care reform was a policy focus at AIMS and I did a little work on this brief and was privileged to partake in a number of very enlightening dialogues with Dr. Crowley and others whose brows were more than a little furrowed by the formidable challenges faced by anyone or any group promoting change [...]

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