Letters, June 19

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 19/06/2023 (1182 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Browaty out of touch

Re: Councillor speaks on bike registry (Letters, June 16)

I read the letters to the editor daily and haven’t had the urge to write in until I saw Jeff Browaty’s June 16 nonsensical response to Patrick Dirks opinion letter pertaining to Browaty’s stance on bike registration.

Browaty’s rebuttal focused on the idea that having licence plates on bikes will help police immediately identify, from a distance, if the bike has been reported stolen.

It puts my heart at ease knowing the thieves will leave the licence plates attached to the bikes they steal so the police can do their thing. Thanks Jeff, you just solved the issue! (Insert atomic eye-roll here.)

Just another example of how Browaty is completely out of touch and well past his best-before date. Time to go, Jeff.

Bryan Burron

Winnipeg

North Dakota: not worth the trip

Recently the Free Press ran a full-page ad on the back of the first section promoting tourism for the state of North Dakota. “Welcome Neighbours!” read the ad.

Really?

I guess if you are straight and white! Perhaps the tag line should have read “North Dakota advances record-setting 10 anti-LGBTTQ+ bills in one day” (NBC News headline).

North Dakota will put doctors in jail who provide gender affirming care. Teachers are not allowed to use preferred pronouns in schools. North Dakota has become Texas north.

The Free Press was quick to jump on the cancel Dilbert bandwagon for the author’s racist rant on YouTube. That was easy, the paper would save money by not printing the comic.

It is time for the Free Press to take a stand against homophobic groups who want to advertise in the paper. They would be complicit in promoting homophobia and hate. It is no surprise that North Dakota has the smallest LGBTTQ+ population in the U.S.

I hope you will consider taking a detour around this homophobic state. I, for one. will never visit N.D. with my non-binary kid.

Kevin Slippert

Winnipeg

Setup for failure

Re: Winnipeg, where Tory election hopes go to die (June 16)

With little hope of winning the October election, Premier Stefanson appears to be playing the long game. By cutting taxes and increasing the deficit before they leave office, the Conservatives will make it more difficult for the incoming NDP to govern without resorting to tax increases.

I can already see the Conservative campaign slogans for the 2027 election, lambasting the NDP as profligate “tax and spenders”, when in fact it will have been the Conservatives who forced that reality.

In a province with crumbling infrastructure and failing health and education systems — in large measure because of Conservative policies — it is distressing that the partisan good so badly outweighs the common good.

Linda Mlodzinski

Winnipeg

Universal patient portals a must

Re: Digital access needed for health information (Think Tank, June 15)

Bravo to Dr. Demeter for continuing to advocate for fundamental changes in our health-care system that should have been implemented decades ago.

But before the patient portal to a health care record is designed, we need to bring Manitoba up to speed with the rest of the provinces. We haven’t yet achieved a “universal” health record for Manitoba; many physicians offices, laboratories outside Winnipeg, and facilities in smaller communities are not linked to the eChart system.

Test results and specialist reports still get lost in the shuffle. At Mayo, every health-care professional that sees a patient completes a short report of their findings and recommendations the same day, and patients have access to all test results and provider notes as soon as they appear in their portal. This in itself saves countless dollars and more importantly, senseless errors.

We cannot afford to have anything less than “universal” across Manitoba, with patient portals.

Cathy Moser

Winnipeg

Return to what worked in past

It seems in Manitoba wait lists for most surgeries are measured in years rather than days. The loss in income and productivity and the increase in morbidity and even mortality must be enormous. All of these untoward issues occur with a health care system that is the second costliest in the entire world.

Canada started with a wonderful universal government funded hospital insurance system back in 1958, lasting until 1972. Medical insurance was also added in 1968. I fondly remember those golden years. Hospitals were on a fee for service basis. There were seven general hospitals in Winnipeg, all of them competing aggressively to recruit the best doctors and nurses and provide the best service. In those days it would take me mere minutes to admit a patient to the hospital, not weeks or even years.

There are two countries in the world today that have a universal government insured health-care system. Taiwan has such a system. They started a universal government funded Medicare system in 1995. They looked at the Canadian system and rejected it. Traditional Medicare in the U.S., for people over 65 years, is also like that.

As a dual citizen of Canada and the U.S., I am insured with traditional American Medicare. I can go to any doctor or hospital in the U.S. and never experience any wait time. The insurance premiums are paid out of social security and the provider fees are set by the U.S. government. After every service, Medicare advises me exactly what was charged and what was paid on my behalf. There is no extra-billing. Medicare also informs me if a higher fee was charged by the provider, greater than the amount remitted by Medicare, and I am not obliged to pay the difference. The U.S. does not have Medicare from the cradle to the grave — I wish they did. It is an extremely popular program.

The big spoiler in Canada was Lester B. Pearson in 1972, when he insisted on five cardinal rules for Medicare, one of which was “public administration.” With a fixed global budget and rampant mismanagement, money is squandered by institutions on nonessentials. Money has to be saved by curbing the volume and quality of patient services. The public service has been sidelined and there is no incentive to perform efficiently or effectively.

The relentless trend to consolidate services and to deprive patient choice leaves patients without any alternative options or choice.

By the way, Susan Martinuk, in her recent book called Patients at Risk, extols the proposal by Dr. Brian Day to offer a two-tier health-care system like they have in England. I respectfully disagree with her rationale and conclusions. I think the poor deserve the same high quality health care as the rich.

When I ended up at the Mayo Clinic as a urologist in 2002 I thought I had gone to heaven. The standard of care was the same as what I had seen in Manitoba in the 1960s — no wait lists and abundant technical support. Patients had freedom of choice. We worked very hard to win patient trust and keep them satisfied. The motto of the Mayo Clinic is, “The best interest of the patient is the only interest to be considered.”

We know what made Manitoba health care so popular and successful in the ’60s. Reform should be a universal government funded health-care insurance system, with robust government regulations to protect everyone from exploitation and abuse, and a glut of competing providers to choose from.

Henry P. Krahn, MD

Winnipeg