Layton plan to fix Healthcare once and for all? Bull!

Jack "Moustache" Layton has determined that spending $1 billion over five years will fix health care "once and for all".  That money will increase the number of medical school places in Canada and provide up to 1,200 new doctors per year.  The reality is that you could put 5,000,000 new doctors on the streets in Canada and that would still not solve the problems - not if you are also dedicated to preserving our current system of health care funding!

Every doctor in the system bills an average of $500,000.  If you put 5,000 new doctors into the system, billing will go up by $2.5 billion.  Who pays those fees?  Assuming that each of those 5,000 new doctors orders 100 MRIs each year, that's an additional 500,000 tests.  Who pays for the new machines, the radiologists and technicians who support the machines?  Then we count lab tests, hospital admissions, nurses and on and on - ad infinitum, ad nauseum.  Who pays, Jack?

Throwing money at a identified problem (and health care accessibility is a problem, no doubt) is the easy way to side step and issue and get some press during an election but it does not solve all problems.  In fact, it could raise new problems, like who pays for the extra costs that the provinces will incur?  Will that be user pay?

Why doesn't some reporter get off the Dion-basing wagon for two minutes and Layton if he is advocating the destruction of our current health care system?