The link between health and income is solid and consistent -- almost every major health condition has worse outcomes among people who live at lower income. I will continue to advise my patients to exercise more and eat healthier food, but this tax season I will also spend time prescribing tax returns.

Health care is a form of human capital. Considered in the broadest sense, health care encompasses public education and prevention services as well as the delivery of care when illness strikes. As such, it is actually one of society's critical means of keeping our population productive. Canadians can't afford productivity losses. The Conference Board of Canada reported last year that our productivity level has fallen to 80 per cent of the U.S. level from a high of 90 per cent in the mid-1980s. If we can agree that efficient health care is an enabler of productivity and that productivity is key to wealth, the next steps should be easy

OTTAWA - Canadians, it seems, love their universal health care.The monarchy? Not so much.A new national poll commissioned by the Montreal-based Associ...

There is an ongoing campaign to convince health care providers, decision-makers and the public that generic medications cannot be trusted and that if you want the real goods you need to pay the brand name price. The line is actually a twist, a re-packaging of some complicated statistics into an easy-to-understand sound bite, but one with the unfortunate weakness of not being true.

Tom, 46 years old and a skilled carpenter, came into my office the other day. He has not worked for the last eight years since he hurt his back in a car accident. He struggles to survive on $600 per month. For him, social assistance has not been so much a safety net as it's been a fish net -- a trap of indignity from which he has been unable to wriggle free.

How much a society spends on health care has not been found to be directly related to any health outcome tested. A society that spends so much on health care that it cannot or will not spend adequately on other health-enhancing activities may actually be reducing the health of its population. If a country wants to see significant improvements in its population health, the best public policy is to eliminate poverty.

When it comes to health care, we can clearly see that a cost-cutting approach only works for a while. Given the giant demographic shift underway now, we aren't going to save our way to great health care. Put simply, innovation is not a choice. Improving Canadian competitiveness demands it. Canadians in need of a more sustainable and effective health care system deserve it.

Jacquie was mentally ill, this much was clear, but after age 12 her parents didn't have the ability to force her into treatment, where they knew she belonged. Sure enough, with Jacquie living on her own and untreated, she launched a horrific attack with a saw on two neighbours, a mother and a daughter, who nearly died. Jacquie was found criminally not responsible for the attacks. The two doctors who refused to deal with and treat a severely ill young lady remain in place today. They are hidden deep in a broken medical system that protects them, but also sucks them in as a new kind of unintended victim of a sick health care bureaucracy.

The premiers recently announced the creation of a working group on health care innovation to examine three critical issues related to the health workforce. It will take more than an observatory to kick start real progress in the three areas identified by the premiers. Soap operas are "sticky" for a reason.