We
must be reasonable and not get sick
by
Robert LaFrance
New Brunswick’s chief medical
officer of health, Dr.
Eilish Cleary, says the province’s health care system is “unsustainable”.
Here’s a warning: whenever you hear a politician in power
or some high (meaning important) official refer to ANYTHING as “unsustainable”,
continue listening or reading, because it won’t be long before they explain
what they mean – closing hospitals.
That wasn’t Dr. Cleary’s main message, although it was in
there of course. Pesky rural hospitals are a pain. Her gist was that the
Department of Health is focussing too much on taking care of the sick.
Writing in the latest issue of the
Journal of New Brunswick, she opined that: “All the money that is spent in this
province is not resulting in the population getting much healthier.” She cited
“bed and facility closures” as examples in diverting spending to target the
problem.
Here’s the
statement I thought the funniest: “Spending increasing amounts of money on a
subset of the population – the ill – will never make us healthier as a whole.
If we want to be successful, we need to put the well-being of
people first…the new government must learn to resist that temptation.”
The further
gist of her ideas was that people should get healthier and quickly by eating a better
diet, by exercising and (no doubt) by thinking clean thoughts. “A charge must
immediately be given to the Department of Health to truly become a Department
of Health and not only a ‘Department of Sick Care,’” she said, adding that the
political chips must fall where they may. (There’s always a simplistic solution
if you don’t do a lot of thinking.)
She’s
absolutely right that our own obesity results in much of the sickness, but
every year surely there are five or six people – maybe even a dozen – who fall
off cabbage trucks and break their beans. I guess that once we all become
athletes we just ignore those inconvenient few, including those who just plain
get sick although they’re in generally good physical shape.
I always cite
the example of the late James F. Fixx, the jogging guru of North America. He
didn’t have an ounce of fat on him, but crossed over from this world to the
next via heart attack at the age of 52.
Here’s a point: Last week Dr. Cleary
was in Sierra Leone, West Africa, working on the Ebola problem. Leaving aside
the question of who financed her trip over there and why she wasn’t here being
unsustainable, I wonder if she tells those who come in with the Ebola virus
that they should exercise more and have a better diet.
*****************************
As an experiment, one early morning
when I couldn’t sleep, I called some of the companies that ‘service’ us (as a
bull services a heifer). I wanted to check with NB Power, Bell Aliant, Shaw,
Xplornet, and our insurance company as to how soon I could talk to a real
person. I’m like that.
The first company was right on the
ball – it was only twelve minutes before I talked to ‘Raj’ whose accent was so
thick it sounded like me trying to speak Swahili. Mind you, before I spoke to
Raj, I first had to hear this: “We are sorry, but due to unexpected high call
volume, all our operators are busy…etc. etc.”
After I had gone through the usual
tag team activities of punching numbers, the next company answered with: “We
are sorry, but due to unexpected high call volume, all our operators are
busy…etc. etc.” In 14 minutes I spoke to someone named Terry or Terri. I didn’t
feel I knew her well enough to ask her how to spell her name.
The third and final company (the sun
was breaking over the woodshed) was amazing. Seven minutes and there was Raj,
the same Raj. I should add that before I spoke to Raj again – we were old pals
by this time – I got this shocking message: “We are sorry, but due to
unexpected high call volume, all our operators are busy…etc. etc.”
How could it be that Raj was working
in two different call centres at the same time and how could it be that the
same voice gave the following message for all three companies? “We are sorry,
but due to unexpected high call volume, all our operators are busy…etc. etc.”
I think it’s magic. Of course
another astonishing thing is that all three companies were suffering
“unexpected” high call volumes at the same time. Perhaps they should start
‘expecting’ (and quit lying).
-end-
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