Health Matters RORY CONROY COLUMNIST Yes I touched on this topic last issue and Cody tried (unsuccessfully I may add) to steal my thunder in his rumble on‘over-healthy” Canadians and desper- ate housewives and Tyler ‘went madly off’ about HIV/AIDS and sluts, so you just might feel that this much exposure to the subject is, well, unhealthy. But bear with me while I explain why Can- adians will continue to pay for ‘medicare’ CODY WILLET COLUMNIST If we don't annihilate ourselves by 2025, the world can be free of pollution, want, and conflict for the most part. To make such bliss a reality, I propose one radically simple solution to our prob- lems: Eliminate or dramatically restruc- ture the legal concept of patents. _ That's right, you heard it here first (well, maybe you didn't), but patents have to go. Think about it. What stops - despite repeated warnings of a crisis’ in the offing. F Top Ten Reasons Why Canadians (and Government) Will Pay Whatever it Costs. 10, Without good health, all else pales. Quality of life is meaningless without the health component. 9. The cost is not consuming a great or greater percentage of personal income. 8. A healthy society is necessary to economic success, Healthy workers make healthy consumers. 7. Tax dollars are going to health sci- ences and research. It would be foolhardy in the extreme to support innovative re- search or buy its products if the result- ant therapies-and devices are not going to be employed for the greater good. 6. Every innovation in health sciences has a potential ripple effect; it can gen- erate new ideas and innovation well be- yond the health industry. 5. Every dollar spent on research and health sciences is income. 4. Canadian business has a compara- the world from rapid technological progress and diffusion? Lawful obstruc- tion of innovation. Who holds most of the critically important and boundlessly useful rights to inventions we don't even know about? Monopolistic corporations that refuse to unleash the potential of the patents they bought up. Here's an example: There's a rubber compound in- vented that makes tires last WAY longer than they do today. If you guessed that a tire company owns the patent and re- fuses to produce the product because it would undermine their sales, you get my “coveted “primate with a brain” award. Just in this example alone, think of the potential for saving resources and the environment. Wouldn't it be nice to buy tires once for the lifetime of your car, and then not worry about the Iraqi’s killed to secure the petroleum needed in traditional tire manufacture, let alone the impact those tires have on the eco- system once they're bald? Now, I know some of you must be saying that youre still driving a car, and as long as you do that, the US is still tive advantage over its competitors due to medicare. 3. Every dollar spent on health deliv- ety is income. Doctors, nurses, support staff and administration have consider- able spending power. 2. Health services is a growing in- dustry taking its place along side other industrial sectors. 1. Medicare as an ideology is at the root of the Canadian identity. Given the above one would think that I do not believe in the benefits of open discussion; that is far from the truth. A discussion is necessary primarily to raise two issues, that of burgeoning costs and encroaching privatization. On the issue of cost, the Finance Min- ister warns that health costs will con- sume an inordinate portion of provincial revenues by 2017; I believe she used the figure of 70%. Numerous pundits have pooh-poohed the minister's observation and collectively affirm that in BC health services expend 40% of revenues and have so done for many years. According bullying the world for the gas you need. We'll yeah, but that wouldn't be the case if the car company who holds the pat- ent for super efficient diesel/hydrogen fuel celled powertrain systems would cough up the blueprints to all the other companies. My point here is not neces- sarily that this specific technology exists. Rather, my point is that thousands upon thousands of advances in technology get invented, patented and bought up by the companies which stand to lose the most from these products entering the mar- ket. All of this happens without most of us being the wiser. Think of what would happen if patents ceased to exist all of a sudden. Products would be made by everyone who had the capability and inclination to do so. In bringing production to the masses, there is bound to be innovation as would be inventors have free reign to tinker away. This freedom to explore the frontiers of what we can design and build leads to further exponential growth in human- kinds repertoire of gizmos and technical capabilities. OVER THE EDGE NEWSPAPER. OCTOBER 27 , 2006 to some, as a percentage of GDP health care costs have decreased. The issue of privatization I believe, is more prickly. “Line jumping’ is com- parable to claim jumping’ in Canadian society. If those with more money can buy treatment outside of the system, the rest of us will somehow be diminished. Further, one of the pillars of the Canada Health Act talks of ‘publicly funded and administered’ health services delivery. How then can we allow private enter- prise? ‘Taking a step back from the rhetoric reveals that the system is largely private. Most doctors conduct a private business as do pharmacists. Although some are private, most hospitals operate as ‘not- for- profit’ entities governed by a board of directors and administered by a CEO and administrative staff. For all intents and purposes these operate as corpora- tions themselves or under the auspices of corporations. The staff are not gov- ernment employees. ‘The question then is not one of priva- Need drugs to treat AIDS in Africa? Let a generic producer make the drugs and sell chem at a marginal profit. With the right regulations, safety isn't an issue, and hell, governments might just be tempted to step up to the plate and buy the drugs FOR the suffering peoples of Africa. Let's go a step further: suppose someone invents a method of producing food faster and cheaper then any meth- ods we employ today. In a special chem- ical reactor, the constituent elements of any kind of food are produced and con- figured into something nutritious, tasty and with good texture. Instead of Kraft Foods buying up the patent and con- tinuing to sell us trans fat laden peanut butter and Kraft Dinner, we alleviate the food shortages in the developing world. Sounds like a plan to me. If only we had politicians with guile enough to take this plunge. Logically, there is the problem of dis- couraging innovation if inventors don't stand to profit from it. Without pat- ents, inventors can't make money. After all, they're nerds in a lab, not capitalist tization but of how much privatization before our comfort zone is penetrated. A further related question is how can we keep the costs in check without innova- tive cost saving measures? The answer, I believe lies in our lack of information flows, benchmarking ability and special- ization. Every other industry has spe- cialized. The health industry must leap through the Fordist and Post-Fordist hoops directly to niche services some of which must be delivered by specialized entities, likely smaller than our mega- hospitals, operating at peak efficiencies. Many more clinics running with health teams and nurse practitioners must pro- vide services that will reduce emergency room gridlock. Clinics can be next door to emergency; private delivery can em- ploy underused facilities. The keys are knowledge, information and efficiencies. And no, this is not about the cult of ef ficiency’; this is the real thing. And yes; the government will fund; and the taxpayer will pay. producers. So what do we do? Make the government fund research and de- velopment and allow inventors a certain floating percentage of royalties their in- vention creates. That, added to the fact these scientists are on the fat govern- ment payroll, would make for a pretty sweet gig. Maybe we don't even have to get rid of patents altogether. Instead we cap patent holders to 5 or 10 year pos- session. That way, they either produce the invention (theréby letting other in- ventors have a crack at improving upon it), or they lose the, patent and it becomes public domain. That still leaves profit- ability room for inventors, without the stranglehold it places on rapid progress. Let's face it, there's no way we lazy humans are going to change our way of life to save the world from depravation, pollution and conflict. Either we give our heads a shake after some massive ca- lamity that forces us to live a shadow of our former existence, or we innovate our way out of the mess the people of the 20th century put us in. I say we resume using our brains. The Rumbling Echo People Who Go on Strike Should be Fired TYLER CLARKE PRODUCTION COORDINATOR I went driving past the Superstore the other day, and noticed the strikers were still out there, weeks [months?] after beginning their strike. I mumbled to myself just how pathetic it seemed. I laughed to myself at the lack of audible cars in response to their “honk for sup- port” signs. 7 My first exerience with these strikers was a few weeks ago, when I went to Superstore in search of the new Cracked Magazine, I'd looked everywhere, and decided to check out Superstore. At the door I was introduced to a striker, who suggested I not shop there, because their benefits had been cut off. She was successful, because at that point I didn't have a strong opinion on strikes, and unions. That, and she was cute. I'm eas- ily broken by a cute face. At this point in time, cute or not, my opinion has been made, and I will feel free to shop at the Supestore. The reason behind this is my be- lief that unions are utterly useless, and the word “strike” should have never been written into the dictionary. Well. “Strike,” as in hitting someone over the head with a baseball bat can stay, but the other meaning can be burnt. The bare-bones of it is that unions are pointless. There are labour laws that work rather well. Union's ability to strike is stupid, because if no labour laws are broken, and you're still not content with your job, quit. Find a new one. If everyone who didn't like their job just quit, employers would get the hint. ~ Id like to make the concession that employers get the exact same hint when their employees go on strike. However, the act of striking seems rather selfish to me. If you refuse to work, you should be fired. If an employee doesn't do some- thing the employer wants him to, within the laws, and common safety-related sense, he should be fired. Let go. Get canned. ‘The specific reason for the Superstore strike was that their benefits were cut out. These benefits were cut out for a reason. There is always a reason. Lining the pockets of Superstore's big-giant- heads? Probably. Its their company, their franchise. Thus it’s their right to do so, and I commend them in doing it. This is how capitalism works. If you don't like it, move to one of those pretty communist countries. A metaphor I use for this is a child with a Skittle [taste the rainbow]. If you give a child a Skittle [still tasting that rainbow] every morning, and then one morning the mother is no longer able to afford Skittles[in danger of no longer tasting that rainbow], so stops buying them and the child is Skittle-less [poor, rainbow-less child], the child will be upset. Just like the benefits of the Superstore employees. Another recent strike was the teacher strike, Needless to say, if they weren't happy, they should have quit. The strike they actually went on was illegal; as such, they should have been fired, or at least have had their wages reduced [the salary from the time they were on strike should have been taken away]. Every last one of them. True, it would be in the inter- est of everyone to give the teachers what they want because you can't exactly fire so many teachers, because the children would grow up without an education, but some lengths should be made to force teachers to do their jobs. They arent paid to hold signs bashing the man. If I ever join a union, and am forced to go on strike, I’m going to be the first scab worker.