Policy planners and health-policy experts can build their models and do their studies, but patients want high-quality service now, they want it free and they want it effective. They pay their taxes for a health-care system that is among the most expensive in the world. They are not getting enough value for money. Why not?

A single-payer, universal system would not bankrupt the health care system. Quite the opposite, in fact; we're paying too much for prescription drugs now, and a single-payer system might just be what would save our health care system because it would be cheaper -- a lot cheaper.

Last week, the family that owns Shouldice Hospital announced that it would like to sell its facility to Centric Health, a for-profit company. When it comes to providing complicated medical and surgical care that must be customized for each individual patient, non-profits are generally better. Selling medicare off, piece by piece, to large for-profit companies is the wrong approach.

Many Canadians have developed an insidious culture of self-satisfaction that comes with being told repetitively by politicians and media that we have "the best health care system in the world." We have somehow taken this patent lie as a slice of authentic Canadiana. It makes us feel good, safe and comfortable. But you don't have a "comprehensive and universal" system if it takes two years to get a hip replaced, or eight months to get an MRI after a hard knock to the head. How can we keep a straight face and call our system a caring and "universal" one if many have no where to go?

OTTAWA - A new report says Canadians believe the country's health-care system needs to be fixed. The Canadian Medical Association report says peopl...

The zombie that nirvana exists out there if we only embraced more private financing or private delivery never seems to disappear. We never seem to get around to needed health care reform.

Our fiscally unsustainable public health care system is in deep trouble. Getting the health care system we want requires a shift from a sense of entitlement to one of personal responsibility.