Health Care Misspending:
Walter Robinson and Roy Romanow cannot compare apples and oranges

   
Nipawin - Monday, February 11, 2002 - by: Mario deSantis
   

 

"Logic is a system whereby one may go wrong with confidence"

Charles F. Kettering, engineer

 
 

recycled
garbage

I have casually read Walter Robinson's response to Roy Romanow's interim report on health care and my initial feeling was that I would just read additional senseless rhetorical garbage and that is what really happened, recycled garbage over and over again.
   

free
market

A few days ago, I wrote about the white lies of politicians and their friends who operate within the social and economic environment of the BIG LIE: the Free Market. We have the resources and above all the intelligence to redirect our social and economic priorities, however leaders have been brainwashed by the gospel of the BIG LIE and continue in a vicious cycle their useless work to look for solutions to problems of their own making.
   

regressed
unequal
world

Sometime ago exasperated by the inadequacy of our leadership I stated that we must be able to compare apples and oranges for our own common good. So let me say first of all that the Free Market is the market for corporations and fortunate sons. Secondly, let me say that in a regressed unequal world the most important justice causes are education and healthcare for all.
   

evidence
based
researcg

I don't want to enter into the details of either Roy Romanow's interim report or Walter Robinson's article at this time, and I confess that I didn't read Romanow's interim report. But let me point out the absolute truth shared by both Roy Romanow and Walter Robinson that "You can't manage what you don't measure." By the way, this is a concept related to the so called evidence based research conducted by the experts, and I have already reported the kind of garbage coming out of our evidence based research in Saskatchewan.
   

own
truth

As I have always mentioned in my writing, we must construct our own truths, and we will have our own different doubts about our own understanding as our experiences change. Therefore, let me provide an extract of what Professor John Sterman can say with respect to the fact that "You can't manage what you don't measure." and you, readers, can make up your own mind on what is required to further our understanding and have a dialogue in health care or in other matters. Professor Sterman says:

GDP
assets
liabilities

"We experience the real world through filters... The act of measurement introduces distortions, delays, biases, errors, and other imperfections, some known, others unknown and unknowable. Above all, measurement is an act of selection. Our senses and information systems select but a tiny fraction of possible experience... We define gross domestic product (GDP) so that extraction of non-renewable resources counts as production rather than depletion of natural capital stocks and so that medical care and funeral expenses caused by pollution-induced disease add to the GDP while the production of the pollution itself does not reduce it."

 

 

both
are lost

It is my understanding that both Roy Romanow and Walter Robinson don't understand how to compare apples with oranges as they have been both brainwashed to think in terms of comparing apples with apples at the most infinitesimal level. So, the moral of the story is that we must learn how to compare apples and oranges for our own common good, and the good of our health care.

 

 
-----------------References:
  Pertinent articles in Ensign
   
  Romanow Lifts Many Ideas, Ottawa - Saturday, February 9, 2002 - by: Walter Robinson, Federal Director, Canadian Taxpayers Federation
   
  Business Dynamics, by John D. Sterman, 2000, Limited Information, page 23