Socialists and Commies everywhere come to this juncture, and the solution is very simple and effective.
Posted on 10/18/2003 2:38:24 AM PDT by friendly
Drs. Siva Sriharan and Srinivas Chakravarthi may never get rich staying in this small auto-producing city little more than a stone's throw from downtown Detroit, but they can eat all the hamburgers, ribs and potato skins they want for the rest of their lives at Casey's Bar and Grill.
For the next year, they can also get their hair cut free at the Touch of Class beauty salon, and lease a Pontiac Grand Am without charge from a dealer in nearby Essex. Patients have pledged free house repairs and landscaping for their properties, and nurses have teased them with offers of free massages.
All the two doctors have to do is continue practicing medicine in Windsor.
Residents started proffering gifts when rumors leaked out of Hôtel-Dieu Grace Hospital a few weeks ago that the two neurosurgeons — of the four serving the city — were toying with moving their practice to the United States.
"It's not about the money," said Dr. Sriharan, a 38-year-old immigrant from Sri Lanka. "We can't do our job properly with operating room time so extremely limited here."
Forced to compete for operating room time with other surgeons, he said that he and his colleague could complete only one or two operations on some days, meaning that patients whose cases were not emergencies could go months or even years before completing necessary treatment.
"Scarce resources are simply not being spent properly," Dr. Sriharan concluded, citing a shortage of nurses and anesthesiologists in the hospital where the single microscope available is old and breaking down.
The two surgeons are sharply critical of Canada's health care system, which is driven by government-financed insurance for all but increasingly rations service because of various technological and personnel shortages. Both doctors said they were fed up with a two-tier medical system in which those with connections go to the head of the line for surgery.
"It's the system that is pushing us out," said Dr. Chakravarthi, a 53-year-old Indian immigrant.
Many other Canadian doctors feel the lure of the United States these days, particularly if they live close to the border.
The supply of family doctors has increased at a rate lower than population growth in recent years, a problem that is complicated by an aging population and doctors seeking shorter hours. Waiting time for elective surgery is growing across the country, and becoming a hot political issue.
Meanwhile, there are signs that a brain drain of medical talent, particularly specialists to the United States, is becoming a serious problem.
There was a net migration of 49 neurosurgeons from Canada from 1996 to 2002, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information, a large loss given that there are only 241 neurosurgeons in the country.
"Physicians across Canada are in an advanced stage of burnout due to work conditions," said Dr. Sunil V. Patel, president of the Canadian Medical Association, who attributed much of the problem to technological shortages and the powerlessness doctors feel when patients complain about long waits for treatment. "That burnout causes them to retire early or pull away from certain kinds of work or simply leave."
John O'Kane, 46, the owner of Casey's Bar and Grill, is leading the local crusade to keep the two neurosurgeons in Windsor. His offer of free food is rooted in personal experience; he is convinced that superior surgery performed on him last year by Dr. Sriharan to remove a broken piece of a spinal disk rubbing against a sciatic nerve is the reason he can again play ice hockey and tennis.
So far the doctors have not come by for any free food, nor have they responded to any of the other offers that have followed.
"For all I know they are vegetarians," Mr. O'Kane said with a laugh. (In fact, Dr. Chakravarthi is.)
The grass-roots surge of offers and almost daily letters to the editor published in the local newspaper urging the surgeons to stay put has not gone unnoticed by local politicians. Windsor's mayor, Mike D. Hurst, has speeded up a physician recruitment and retention initiative to combat local shortages of medical manpower.
"The popular response is an indication," he said, "that there is pure fear in our community of not having qualified, professional medical expertise available when it's needed."
As for the two surgeons, they say that while they are touched and embarrassed, they do not see how they can continue to work at the hospital under the present conditions.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
And the Canadian situation must be horrific if neurosurgeons want to come to the US. Anybody who follows healthcare issues as I do knows how bad the malpractice crisis is in a number of states. Neurosurgery is closing down in Florida, West Virginia, and Nevada, for example.
Your comments are exactly correct and give a crystal clear picture of the future the rats envision for us! BTW, this is essentially the picture in the socialist paradise to the north.
You are more correct than you realize. Visiting Canada, I found many aspects of the health care system to be stuck in time at 1975 or so: completely outdated.
Needless to say the socialist politicians and leading bureaucrats bypass the cr*ppy system they impose on the general population via such Four Star facilities as the National Defense Hospital in Ottawa and the corruption the two neurosurgeons complain about in the article.
Meantime her winged monkey army of trial lawyers is doing everything in their power to f**k up the US system.
Brilliant observation.
What? Y'mean we can't all get beach-front property?
Perhaps a bloody purge will set things aright for a while...until the next bloody purge.
The answer is simple: People from these areas who have the drive to escape them also have the drive to excel in western academia (which is not that hard anymore). If you knew them in school, you would not have liked them much. They were dull. They didn't go out and party all the time, didn't get involved in crusades or causes, and hardly dated at all. They studied. For some odd reason they thought that if you go to a university you should study. Very odd.
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