Health care funding in surgical practice and the Canadian health care system

I read with great interest Dr. Waddell's Editors' View in the June 2000 issue of the Journal (page 164). Having been involved with surgical administration for the past 7 years and having recently gone through the debate on Bill 11 in the Province of Alberta, the issues raised by Waddell are important.

In the Province of Alberta there has been a recent infusion of resources into the health care system, restoring the finding on a per capita basis to the levels that existed before the budgetcutting of the mid-1990s. The difference, however, is that the restored funding is going to a much more broadly defined health care system, including community care and many services outside the …