Saskatchewan Healthcare:

Using Research to Blatantly Lie to the Public

By Mario deSantis, November 27, 1999

     
  Yesterday, as I read the article "Negative stats discouraging(1)" I became disgusted and my thoughts
  swirled around the last research performed by the Health Services Utilization and Research
  Commission (HSURC). This research(2), costing thousands and thousands of dollars of taxpayers'
  money, suggests that rural health has improved since health reform were implemented in 1993. I
  made fun of these reductionist researchers(3), but now that I read the above mentioned social
  statistics I realize the atrocious consequences of the present governmental direction in healthcare.
  Healthcare is supposed to progressively support healthy communities and healthy people; instead,
  the latest 1998 figures from Statistics Canada picture a desperate condition of the health status of our
  population. I report below a brief summary of these statistics:
     
    - Saskatchewan has the highest crime rate in Canada
     
    - Saskatchewan has the highest rate of sexual offences in Canada
     
    - The Saskatchewan youth crime rate has been the highest in Canada
     
    - The Saskatchewan infant mortality is the second highest in Canada, behind the
    --Northwest Territories
     
    - Saskatchewan has maintained for the last ten years the highest rate of impaired driving
    --charges in Canada
     
  The writers of this article conclude "...to even be among the worst is enough to drive a person to
  drink..." This remind me of the times, when in the late 70s, while working under the Saskatchewan
  Health-Care Association (SHA), I would come back home and I would express my disappointment
  to my wife Sharon "...these people at SHA are professional liars, they are paid a salary just to lie,
  I can't believe it..." Today, the situation is worse, we have a corrupted government which has
  alienated the public at large, and researchers selling their souls. How long more should we endure
  such emperors with no clothes?
     
-------------Endnotes:
     

1.
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Negative stats discouraging, SP Opinons, The StarPhoenix, November 26, 1999, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
     

2.
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Assessing the Impact of the 1993 Acute Care Funding Cuts to Rural Saskatchewan Hospitals, by Health Services Utilization and Research Commission (HSURC), Summary Report No. 13, September 1999, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
     

3.
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Fragmented Research comes to the help of Saskatchewan Reform, by Mario deSantis, September 28, 1999