In Canada in 2003, doctors, nurses, pharmacists, licensed practical nurses, nursing attendants, hospital cleaning crews, chiropractors and physiotherapists all profit from medicare, each and every day. Their pay cheques put food on the table for themselves and their families, in the same way that contractors, executives, and entrepreneurs feed their families. The only difference is that nurses' salaries come from profits indirectly - through the filter of taxes - whereas a businessman pays himself profits more directly. Doctors, too, profit from the health care system. Doctors charge the government more in fees than what they pay for their office's rent, supplies and staff.

Profit is nothing other than the money which is left over after expenses have been paid and after labour has been performed. For example, a businesswoman takes in $500,000 per year from manufacturing and selling widgets. Her bank loans, machinery leases, raw materials, office supplies, and the salaries of five employees cost a total of $400,000 per year. Out of the remaining $100,000 she pays municipal and provincial property taxes, and federal and provincial corporate taxes. She might then pay herself a salary, out of which she pays income tax and the health care premium tax. But neither the federal government nor the provincial government would collect any income tax from her - or from her employees - if there was no profit.

If you shut down the business - or destroy its profits through cumbersome regulations and high taxes - there will be no money for hospitals and MRIs and doctors' salaries.

All tax dollars are directly or indirectly taken from profits. Without profits, there would be no dollars for a public health care system.

So why are the Friends of Medicare campaigning to stop "for-profit" health care Do they expect nurses and other allied health professionals to start working for free Do they want every surgeon and pediatrician to become like a self-sacrificing missionary, content with room and board (and no salary) in anticipation of eternal rewards To the contrary, the Romanow Report and the Friends of Medicare say that more profits (in the form of taxes taken by government) should go into the health care system.

If doctors and pharmacists and nursing attendants are already profiting from the health care system, why even bring up the word "profit" Perhaps the Friends of Medicare know that "profit" is a dirty word for some people. Apparently there is big moral difference between a nurse earning $50,000 per year and a construction contractor earning $50,000 per year. The contractor's profits are kind of dirty, somehow, whereas the nurse's salary is good and wholesome because it's paid with tax dollars which also come from profits. Ridiculous Yes - so why raise the "for profit" bogeyman

Our health care system lacks accountability, because neither doctors nor patients have any personal incentive, at all, to reduce costs and discover efficiencies. In the health care system today, the government is in a conflict of interest as the primary health care provider, the primary health care deliverer, and the primary health care evaluator. Improved health care requires introducing accountability into the system. So let's not waste time attacking the profits which sustain the system.