As genocide rages, doctors must choose: Care or collaborationism

“The physician is the natural attorney of the poor” was a slogan Rudolf Virchow, a wealthy German pathologist, politician and social medicine activist, helped popularise in the mid-nineteenth century. More than 100 years later, Frantz Fanon – a Martinican-born psychiatrist who resigned from his position in the French medical system in protest against French colonial violence in Algeria – expressed a less-idealised impression of the profession.

Although the physician presents himself as “the doctor who heals the wounds of humanity”, he is in reality “an integral part of colonisation, of domination, of exploitation”, Fanon wrote.

Ontario’s top-billing doctors overcharged OHIP, Health Ministry audit suggests

The province’s 12 top-billing doctors — who received payments of between $2 million and $7 million in one year — are overcharging the Ontario Health Insurance Plan, documents obtained by the Star suggest.

A Health Ministry audit into their billing practices uncovered significant “concerns” about their claims to the taxpayer-funded plan.

Government Accused Of Using Junior Doctors' Row To 'Bury Bad News' On Courts, Health Spending And Welfare

The Government has been accused of “deceit” for using its row with junior doctors as cover to bury bad news.

Ministers “slipped out” an announcement that it is to close 86 courts in England and Wales just minutes after Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt announced yesterday he would controversially impose a new contract on junior doctors.

Officials also released controversial details of a key welfare reform, student loan repayments and cuts to health spending on the same day.

Count on it: Alberta's doctors got more than the press release indicates

It will take a while to sort out what really happened in yesterday's deal between the Redford Government and Alberta's doctors, but you can count on it there's more there than meets the eye.

Premier Alison Redford, Health Minister Fred Horne and Alberta Medical Association President Dr. Michael Giuffre were all smiles at a news conference in Calgary yesterday afternoon where they announced the seven-year agreement that will run from April 1, 2011, to March 31, 2018. The deal will give the physicians three years with no pay increase, followed by two years with 2.5-per-cent increases, then two years of cost of living adjustments.

Is Alberta Premier Alison Redford's bitter fight with the docs about money, or control?canad

Is the increasingly bitter fight between Alberta's government and the province's physicians just about money? It's said here it’s more about who gets to control the health care system.

If you need evidence for this assertion, look no further than the fact just two and a half months ago Alberta Health Minister Fred Horne said he was going to impose a pay deal on the docs that would have seen their salaries keep on rising.

Alberta doctors highest paid in the country for second straight year, new study finds

EDMONTON - As Alberta’s doctors remain locked in difficult negotiations with the provincial government, a new national study shows they earn the highest average pay in the country compared with physicians in other provinces.

The findings from the Canadian Institute for Health Information, which compiled billing and compensation information from all 10 provinces, found Alberta doctors, on average, received gross payments of almost $350,000 in 2010-11 — the most recent year of which statistics are available.

Doctors fight to save refugee health benefits

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney has political power, taxpayer-funded polling and a bagful of emotion-triggering phrases — abuse of Canadian taxpayers, bogus refugees, gold-plated benefits — on his side.

Canada’s doctors have passion, medical ethics and a grassroots network of nurses, midwives, therapists, church leaders, social activists and health experts on their side.

Alberta health minister to doctors: Shut up and take your medicine!

When Alberta's most powerful union -- the Alberta Medical Association, which until yesterday represented the province’s 8,250 physicians in fee negotiations with the province -- slammed the government of Premier Alison Redford just a few days before the April 23 provincial election, they really should have thought about the potential reaction they might get.

Yesterday, they got it. Health Minister Fred Horne told the docs, in effect: Here's your medicine. It won't taste very good. Swallow it anyway and call me in the morning!

Six Ontario doctors each billed taxpayers more than $3-million last year

Half a dozen doctors in Ontario each billed taxpayers more than $3-million last year, ranking them the province’s highest paid public-sector workers. The gap between doctors and the rest of the public sector is expected to widen even further under proposed wage-freeze legislation.

The government announced on Wednesday that it is imposing a two-year pay freeze on just under 500,000 workers in the broader public sector – hospitals, long-term-care homes, universities, colleges and electricity utilities. Ontario’s 25,000 doctors are the only provincial workers excluded from the draft legislation.

Doctors call on Ottawa to reject ‘backdoor’ attempt to recriminalize abortion

Canada’s doctors have sternly rejected what they see as a stealth attempt to recriminalize abortion.

At the general council meeting of the Canadian Medical Association on Wednesday, delegates called on the federal government to reject attempts by a Conservative backbench MP to amend the Criminal Code so that a fetus is defined as a human being.

Doctors interrupt Conservative cabinet ministers to protest cuts to refugee health benefits

OTTAWA—Dr. Mark Tyndall rarely wears his white lab coat while working at the hospital, but he knew it would make an impression when he barged onto the race track.

“It’s symbolic. It’s the only time I wear it,” Tyndall, head of infectious diseases at the Ottawa Hospital, said with a chuckle Friday morning shortly after interrupting a Conservative government photo op to protest recent cuts to health benefits for refugees.

Doctors' protest interrupts Pan Am Games event in Toronto

Doctors concerned about the Harper government's recent cuts to refugee health benefits have disrupted another public appearance by a cabinet minister.

Amateur Sport Minister Bal Gosal was speaking at a promotional event for the 2015 Pan Am Games in Toronto when he was interrupted by four doctors wearing their white coats who approached the stage yelling.

"What about health care for refugees? What about medications for our patients?" yelled the protesters.

Cuba-trained doctors making difference around the world

SANTA CLARA, CUBA—Every morning, on the edge of town, you can witness a spectacular migration. Hundreds of students in white lab coats pour from a squat university building on to the street, around the line of horse-drawn wagons, and into nearby hospitals.

You can play a game, watching from your perch beneath a flowering flamboyant tree: where do you think the guy with dreadlocks is from? What about the girl with a hijab? Some have telltale signs — an Argentinean or Angolan flag stitched over their medical uniforms.

They are international students at the world’s largest medical school, the Escuela Latinoamericana de Medicina — ELAM.

Why Ontario’s doctors won’t win fight on fees

Remember that warm and fuzzy ad campaign depicting doctors in white coats, sporting stethoscopes and smiles?

Doctors aren’t smiling any more.

That feel-good branding exercise, part of a year-long charm offensive by the Ontario Medical Association just ahead of fee negotiations, has faded from bus shelters. Now, doctors find themselves sheltering from a perfect storm that is branding them as the fall guys.

It’s not just the governing Liberals taking a hard line, but the opposition Tories demanding a blanket freeze and New Democrats wanting to make the rich pay. With public servants taking a hit, the healing profession is feeling everyone’s fiscal pain.

This time, the writing was on the wall before both sides even sat down at the table. Cabinet approved its final negotiating “mandate” in February for doctors — and teachers: No spending increases.

Ontario budget: Liberals warn teachers, doctors over pay

Mired in debt and at risk of an election by late May, Ontario’s minority Liberal government took dead aim at teachers and doctors Thursday in a bid for public support to keep their wage hike demands to zero.

Education Minister Laurel Broten warned elementary teachers of 10,000 layoffs unless they accept a pay freeze while Health Minister Deb Matthews told physicians “I am here to stand up for taxpayers.”

There is no room in Premier Dalton McGuinty’s latest budget — which forecasts a $15.2 billion deficit this year — for salary increases, Matthews told a hastily arranged news conference.

“This is a tough time. This is a difficult budget,” she said shortly after Broten delivered her second stern message since Monday, when she slammed the elementary teachers’ union for walking away from provincial bargaining.

Teacher contracts expire in August and the latest OMA agreement was over at the end of March.

The government’s future hangs in the balance over the budget, which goes to a crucial confidence vote in the Legislature by April 25. Defeat would force an election by the end of May.

Montreal doctors accused of taking bribes

Two Montreal cardiologists are facing disciplinary action over allegations they received hefty kickbacks to push patients to the top of the waiting list, the Quebec College of Physicians says.

The college's investigation uncovered at least two doctors who were allegedly taking envelopes of cash in exchange for providing faster service, Dr. Charles Bernard told CBC News.

"It's awful," said Bernard, who heads the college. "It's unacceptable … Usually, physicians have a good job, a good pay. It's very difficult for me to understand that."

The investigation was triggered 14 months ago, when a Montreal woman told the news media she had paid a $2,000 cash "incentive" to have her mother bumped to the top of a waiting list.

After the investigation, the college said two cardiologists from Montreal would face a disciplinary hearing later this year in connection with such incidents. Bernard would not discuss the details of the cases, as nothing yet has been proved.