A solution for Canada's health care? Reduce the financial disparity between the rich and the poor
Nipawin - Saturday, November 2, 2002 - by: Mario deSantis
	Three days ago my son Rico mentioned that he was considering to deliver a five minute speech on "System Thinking" as part of his university communication course. I told Rico that I was very pleased to hear this and that there is a lot of educational material on system thinking. As I think about Rico's interest in system thinking so I recall the satisfaction I received when my other son James told me in the Fall of 1997 that he was interested in ecological economics.
social remedies	Today, as we are experiencing the ultimate corruption of the BIG LIE of the Free Market so I believe that system thinking and ecological economics will provide the social remedies for developing better democracies and fairer global markets.
social history	System thinking refers to our ability to understand our complex realities as interwoven to each other, and this understanding of our realities contrasts with today's Linear Thinking mentality to see our realities in terms of singular cause - effect relationships. Ecological economics rebuffs the exclusive mathematical and monetary notions of economics and sees economic development as dependent on our social history and our pursuing of freedom.
root problem	Yesterday, I wrote few lines on the ongoing issue of health reforms in Canada and today I want to highlight our social need to use our intelligence and therefore use system thinking to address the root problem of health care.
confusing statistics	The root problem of health care in Canada is the linear thinking mentality of the elitist uppercrust. In a nutshell, to have a linear mentality means to look at things in a static way, such as when we make static comparisons of realities without too much thinking. For example, The StarPhoenix editorial "Kirby report primes pump" reports that
	"According to recent OECD figures, the 9.1 percent of GDP Canada dedicated to health spending in 2000 was lower that France's 9.5 percent, Switzerland's 10.7 percent and America's 13 percent. Canada's per capita health expenditure of slightly more than $2,500 US was about half of the $4,600 spent by the US and on par with the likes of Germany, France and Australia."
qualify facts	My first thinking in somewhat trying to break down this comparative analysis is the realization that the above comparisons could not include homogeneous data as such data come from different social systems; also, the above comparisons neglect to identify that spending in other public sectors affect our health as well, for instance education. In addition, the fact that the US may spend twice as much as Canada in health care doesn't say too much either unless we qualify the facts that some 43 millions of Americans have no health insurance, and that the richest one percent of Americans, whose financial wealth is greater that the bottom 90 percent, have a propensity to misspend their private money and be ripped off too.
disparity	I have no ready solutions for Canada's health care; however, political solutions would certainly be better if the elitist uppercrust would be forced to misspend less private money in health care. This can be achieved by pursuing a more intelligent social system with less financial disparity between the rich and the poor.
	Mario deSantis
References:
	Pertinent articles published in Ensign
	G. Ossimitz: System Dynamics/Systems Thinking Mega Link List http://www.uni-klu.ac.at/~gossimit/linklist.php?uk=10
	Kirby report primes pump, October 30, 2002, Saskatoon Star Phoenix
	US Health Insurance Coverage. Issued September 2000 U.S. CENSUS BUREAU http://www.census.gov/prod/2000pubs/p60-211.pdf
	Ownership Statistics: Why a Shared Capitalism is Needed... http://www.sharedcapitalism.org/scfacts.html
	Abelson, Reed, Tenet Hospital in California is searched by U.S. Agents, November 1, 2002, New York Times
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