VOLUNTARY HEALTH

SURGICAL

MEDICAL
> Senevt -

Source: Canadian Conference on Health Care

Saskatchewan Government
Carries Out Promise

There has been a great deal of
misrepresentation by those opposing
the Medical Care Plan on one half
of one of the five principles enun-
ciated by the government before the
Medical Care Insurance Act was
legislated. That is, Principal No. 5:
“Any programme which is instituted
must be in a form that is acceptable

- both to those providing the service
and those receiving it.” Y

Recently Premier Lloyd had this
to say on the question of accept-
ability: “The profession has no right
to a veto over parts of the plan
which are not a part of or do not
influence professional decision. This
is the area in which the decision re-
garding “acceptability” cannot be
delegated to any organization.

It is our opinion that the College
seeks to extend its right to determine
“acceptability” - beyond professional

Distorted press reports of the medicare situation in Saskat-
chewan has caused considerable speculation about what the
people of Saskatchewan themselves think about developments.

For this reason, the WESTERN CANADIAN LUMBER

WORKER publishes on_ this

page material supplied by the

Saskatchewan Citizens for Medical Care. This presents a different
aspect of the situation than published by the newspapers.

The government has agreed that
any doctor who does not find the
programme acceptable may elect to
work completely outside the Medi-
cal Care Insurance Act. In the case
of a doctor practising outside the
act, the insurance protection is then
a transaction between the people and
the commission rather than the doc-
tor and the commission. This
arrangement is quite consistent with
the fifth principle stated above.

matters into those which quite pro-
perly belong to the public.

This no government should allow
and no people be forced to accept.
This has been the basic argument
wherever public medical care has
been introduced. We have proposed
a means for determining the boun-
dary of these rights. The profession's
response has been to withdraw ser-
vices, thereby punishing the people
of Saskatchewan.”

Citizens Organize
Medical Services

In the face of a unilateral with-
drawal from their patients and the
illegal and immoral violation of the
doctor-patient relationship, many
citizens across the province have
acted to provide themselves with ser-
vices which will ensure quality, con-
tinuity and an effective relationship
between patients and doctors. The
way this is being done is through or-
ganization of group practices.

An organization of this kind has
already been formed in Prince Al-
bert. A medical group under Dr.
O. K. Hjertaas, who has practiced
in Prince Albert for sixteen years, is
now providing services to members.

In Saskatoon a similar group is
being organized and has obtained
the services of two local doctors.
The group has already opened
Offices.

Active organizations in Regina,
Moose Jaw, Weyburn, Estevan and
North Battleford are meeting and
laying plans. A number of rural

points have indicated an active in-
terest. On the basis of such wide-
spread interest and activity a co-
ordinating provincial committee has

been formed and it is anticipated ~

that rapid progress will be made.

All of the groups will operate
under the Medical Care Insurance
Act. Depending on the size of mem-
bership, the groups will be in a posi-
tion to provide a full range of medi-
cal services except those requiring
very large populations, such as
neurosurgery and others. Such groups
can go beyond the range of health
services normally provided in medi-
cal schemes. For example dental
and optometric services could be
provided to the members as part of
a general health service.

Doctors working in such groups
would have the advantage of readily
available consultation with colleagues
in the same field as well as ready
use of specialists in the group.

Doctors Refuse
To Compromise

From the beginning of the pre-
parations for the medical care in-
surance plan in 1959, the Govern-
ment has made repeated attempts
to obtain the views of the medical
profession so that the plan would
be satisfactory to them.

te The College of Physicians and
Surgeons was invited to name three
representatives to the Advisory
Planning Committee on Medical
Care.

> The Thompson Committee held
two private meetings with the doc-

INSURANCE BY PROVINCES

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Medicare
Backers

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Enquiries and Information

to:

Saskatchewan Citizens
for Medical Care

Post Office Box 1601
Regina, Sask.

tors, permitting detailed discussion
of all the doctors’ proposals.

3% As soon as the legislation was
passed, the Government asked the
College to take part in discussions
preparatory to setting up the Medic-
al Care Insurance Commission.

x The Government offered, while
the Legislature was still sitting and
the Act could be quickly amended,
to modify sections of the Act in
consultation with the doctors in
order to safeguard completely the
professional independence of the
doctors and to ‘overcome other ob-
jections raised by the doctors.

x Despite the refusal of the doc-
tors to negotiate on the terms of
the Act, the Government, in order
to make it possible for all doctors
to continue to care for their patients,
regardless of their objections to the
Act, revised the regulations to per-
mit doctors to practise completely
outside of the Plan, and without
any dealings with the Medical Care
Insurance Commission.

% In a final effort, just prior to
July ist, Premier Lloyd offered to
accept outside mediation in order to
reach mutual agreement.

BUT what is the record of the
Council of the College of Physi-
cians and Surgeons in these nego-
tiations?

3 The Council refused the invita-
tion to discuss with the Government
the formation of the Medical Care
Insurance Commission.

yx The Council refused to nego-
tiate with the Government on the
far-reaching changes in the legisla-
tion offered by the Government at
the April meetings.

yx The Council delayed negotia-
tions from early April until June
22, and then criticized the Govern-
ment for going ahead with the plan
on the scheduled date of July Ist.
x The Council asked for the
major concession of permitting
those who objected to the Plan to
practise outside it. When the Gov-
ernment granted this major con-
cession, Dr. Dalgleish stated on be-
half of the doctors that he did not
accept the word of the Government.
x The Council encouraged the
doctors of the Province not to prac-
tise under the Act, and then com-
plained bitterly that the emergency
service placed an intolerable load
on the doctors handling it.

% The Council encouraged its
members to withdraw their services
from their patients, and then assert-
ed that the Government was to
blame for any tragedies resulting
from the withdrawal of services.

Medical Insurance
A Pressing Need

A Regina woman confessed on June 19 that she is a Liberal,
she voted for the Tory candidate, and was in tears when she
learned that Douglas didn’t get in. She is in favor of a compre-

hensive medical care program but she is supporting KOD because
her doctor threatens to leave.

This is the kind of confusion that has resulted from the mus-
handling of the medical care story by the newspapers, TV and
radio stations in Saskatchewan. This is the kind of confusion that
prompts the Saskatchewan Citizens for Medical Care to issue this

small newspaper, and bring the other side of the story to the people
of the province.

The Saskatchewan news and editorial writers in most of the
popular media have lost sight of the fact that over a third of the
total population of Saskatchewan has no protection whatsoever
against the threat of having all of their resources taken away by
the high costs of medical care. And they have forgotten, if they
ever knew, that this portion of the population are, for the most
part, the ones that can least afford these exorbitant costs.

We regret to note that the KOD and doctors have also lost
sight of the existence of these pressing needs. This is too easily
explained, however, by their overriding political objective of
upsetting the present government.

But no one can condone action which deprives a province of
health services for such political motivation.

Writers and observers throughout other parts of Canada have
been much more objective. Particularly, great fear has been ¢x-
pressed across the country about the future of constitutional govern-
ment when a special interest group can say, in effect, “to hell
with the law of the land.”

Here is one point that no one can now ignore. The people of
Saskatchewan now have a universal and comprehensive medical
care plan. It is now in effect, and the people of the province are
starting to derive benefit from it. With each passing day, more
and more people will learn just how important it can be to them.

The newspapers and TV people may not tell the whole story
as it unfolds in the weeks ahead. We can promise you, however,
that we will reappear as often as necessary to make certain that

“the other side of the story is known.”

Congress Condemns Action
Of Saskatchewan Doctors

OTTAWA—The Canadian Labour Congress has condemned
the withdrawal of medical service by Saskatchewan doctors as a

mutiny against law and order.

“It is a clear act of defiance of the government,” said CLC
Executive Vice-President William Dodge in a strongly-worded
statement issued after Saskatchewan doctors stayed away from their
offices when the province’s new Medicare plan went into effect.

“The withdrawal of service by
Saskatchewan doctors on orders of
the Provincial College of Physi-
cians and Surgeons can in no sense
be considered a strike,” said Mr.
Dodge.

“Trade union organizations, on
occasion, take strike action. They
do so according to rules clearly
laid down in law and subject to
further stringent requirements of
the organizations themselves, and
violations are subject to full legal
recourse.”

He noted that 100,000 railway
union members respected the feder-
al government’s emergency law in
1960 that prohibited a strike against
Canada’s railways, even though all
legal pre-strike conditions had been
fulfilled.

Even when trade unionists strong-
ly disapprove of legislation mea-
sures enacted by democratically-

elected governments, they still re-
spect them.

Brazen Defiance

“The open and brazen defiance
of constituted authority by Saskat-
chewan doctors is in no sense a
strike. It could be more properly
described as a mutiny and deserves
the strongest condemnation by all
groups which place any value on
democratic government and its pro-
cedures.”

Mr. Dodge said the leaders of
the Saskatchewan College of Physi-
cians and Surgeons have assumed
a heavy responsibility in advising
medical practitioners to flout the
terms of their Hippocratic Oath and
to defy the laws of the province.

“For purely political reasons
these men have told the legally
constituted government of Saskat-

chewan: ‘Do things our way, or not
at all’.”

San Francisco Chronicle
Scores AMA Stand

“The organized medical profession, however, takes the position that any

health care program financed by social security is infected with a form
of socialistic leprosy against which doctors have a duty to ring their bell.
Since doctors are the world’s least impressive authorities on the econo-
mics of public finance, and since many of them already practise medicine
in government-controlled hospitals without serious socialistic side-effects,
this position strikes most laymen as simply absurd.
We are glad to see that it has not frightened Senator Kuchel.”

Green Gold Report on

—San Francisco Chronicle

Saskatchewans Medical
Care Insurance Act

Trade unions in British Co-
lumbia are firmly in support of
the Saskatchewan Medical Care
Insurance Plan, declared Re-
gional 3rd Vice-President Jack
MacKenzie on the Green Gold
radio program. Pickets before
the B.C. Headquarters of the
Medical Association carried pla-
cards voicing this opinion. The
Provincial Executive of the New
Democratic Party wired Premier
Lloyd of Saskatchewan applaud-

ing his establishment of the
medicare plan in that province,

The IWA officer took the position
that the facts about the Saskatch-
ewan Plan have been misrepresented
to the public in British Columbia,
If these facts were generally known
and understood, he claimed, the
stand of the Saskatchewan Govern-
ment would be approved, and the
action of the doctors seen as irre-
sponsible and defiant of constitu.
tional authority.

See “MEDICARE” Page 8