Canadian healthcare system on the verge of imploding.

The Canadian Medical Association (CMA) is calling for an overhaul of its nation's healthcare system that would make it (Gasp!) a bit more like ours. Jennifer Graham with the Canadian Press reports:

Dr. Anne Doig [incoming president of the CMA] says patients are getting less than optimal care and she adds that physicians from across the country--who will gather in Saskatoon on Sunday [August 16] for their annual meeting--recognize that changes must be made.

"We all agree that the system is imploding, we all agree that things are more precarious than perhaps Canadians realize," Doing [sic] said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

"We know that there must be change," she said. "We're all running flat out, we're all just trying to stay ahead of the immediate day-to-day demands."

The outgoing president of the CMA, Dr. Robert Quellet, echoes these sentiments and has essentially said that financial incentives must be introduced into the Canadian system. As to this, Graham writes, "[Quellet has] said the Canadian system could be restructured to focus on patients if hospitals and other health-care institutions received funding based on the patients they treat, instead of an annual, lump-sum budget. This 'activity-based funding' would be an incentive to provide more efficient care, he has said." He has also said, writes Graham, that "there could be a role for private health-care delivery within the public system."

Now that's change we can believe in. At least a little bit of it, anyway.