I have long been a great fan of HANS because they speak for people, not interests. This is not only important, it's as rare as hens' teeth, as my Mom used to say. The healthcare system in Canada is not only broke financially, it's broke morally. Let me explain.

Everybody with half a brain knows that health does not come exclusively, if at all, from the medical profession, yet the medical profession runs the system. They make regular deals with provincial governments-after lachrymose claims of poverty-and in fact become the system. This monopoly on medical virtue has created a partnership, between pharmaceutical companies and manufacturers, of sharp knives. The stories of doctors being lavishly entertained by pharmaceutical companies is neither myth nor legend- it's the truth. The referral system within the doctors "combine" is scandalous, but just as one is not supposed to talk about sex, politics and religion (the only fun things to rap about) one is not supposed to notice what goes is the medical fraternity.

Medicare mess
I should pause here and say that if my family doctor had not, 20 years ago, known something about depression, which almost none of his colleagues did, I might not be writing this. Wouldn't Doctors of Medicine be liberated, and really be able to deal with the sick and, more importantly, those who don't want to be sick, if they no longer had to fight to maintain 99 percent of the medical pie? Wouldn't they be liberated, and better able to help their patients if they had to share?

The present system of over-treatment, over-medication, and over use of the knife has left the citizen caught up in a debate that has nothing to do with wellness and everything to do with divvying up the spoils.

I must now let it all hang out: We have moved so far from the original intent of Medicare that we've forgotten what it should be. Remember when it was supposed to be access to a system that gave basic service guaranteeing reasonable rates of mortality and morbidity? The trouble is (and for years after I was Health Minister I made excellent fees in talking about  this) we put in a system without defining what we were covering. It's rather like expecting that you can go to your friendly ICBC agent and say "I'm a citizen and I want to be covered for everything that might happen to me and I don't expect to have to pay for it!" Because
we bought into such a system, our tax dollars go into pills and knives and not one red cent into alternative options that have proven records of preventing disease and granting relief
instead of nostrums and knives.

Stuck system
What's also distressing is that the system is now so ingrained into our political lives that it seemingly can't be amended. Take $5 from an MD and give it to a dietician, chiropractor or naturopathic physician, for example, and all hell breaks loose. The broken healthcare system is not what is best for the citizen, but what best suits the politicians and those who have crowded everyone else away from the public trough.

I'm not bashing doctors nor would I wish to. As I mentioned earlier, I likely owe my life to my physician who decided that he should know something about mental health if he was to be a trusted healer. Things aren't what they used to be-that huge house on the hill with the three car garage doesn't belong to Dr. Brown anymore. And when MDs look at what dentists and lawyers make they have plenty of reason to squawk. But it surely is not the responsibility of the general public to sort out the inequities of professional incomes.

The world, especially in North America, is suffering and dying from obesity. It's a sickness (I dare not say disease) that is best treated early, not when the expensive fat spa, extensive surgery, heart attacks and strokes are involved. What the hell is the point of someone weighing twice what they should going to a medical doctor when other health professionals could have prevented the condition in the first place? Of course, resources would have to be allocated to nutritionists and other health professionals for this to happen. What is so disappointing is that we, who go to those who prevent or heal without pills and a knife, do so out of our own pocket, yet somehow we can't wait to vote for the politician who says we must save and preserve Medicare no matter what the cost! We live in a system of barely controlled madness.

So what do we do? What we don't do is take politicians joined at the brain to Medicare and the soul of Tommy Douglas, like my old friend Roy Romanow, and ask him to find the answers. Roy is a decent person who has served his province and country magnificently, but he's hardly an unemotional, detached investigator of the truths of healthcare.

I don't believe we need another Supreme Court Judge. Frankly (and it's hard to spit this out), I think Premier Campbell's notion of going to the public is the right one. The trouble  is that everyone knows that any public recommendations contrary to how "those who- know-best-for-us and declare Medicare and the Canada Health Act as sacred" will wither on the vine. I fear these meetings will be a catharsis and no more. Investigations into healthcare are like the periodic enema- there's always more where that came from.

Rafe Mair is a lawyer by profession, the former British Columbia Minister of Health, a longtime radio talk show host, and the author of seven books.

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