That wacky MRI gap

I have to give the National Post credit - about all I usually see of it is the front page (in the newspaper box), but they come up with such wacky headlines that I often end up wondering what the heck they are talking about.

Case in point was yesterday's edition where the biggest headline read:

"MRI gap defies cash fix:
Most other developed countries have more machines per capita"

Imagine if you saw the following headline:

"Spoon shortage defies purchase of new spoons" and you can see why I was puzzled by this headline (I had 8 spoons and I needed 12, I went out and tried to buy more but I was defied by the spoon gap). If the problem, as the subtitle states, is that there aren't enough machines, then how did more cash not solve this problem?

The article suggests that there is a shortage of people to operate the machines, but really, couldn't money fix that too?

So what's my point? That when people say that 'throwing' (the verb they almost invariably use) more money 'at' the system won't fix anything, they're wrong. This is most clear when we are talking about a shortage of machines that we haven't bought more of because we don't have the money but really it's true about the whole system in general.

The truth is, the biggest problem with health care (in my opinion) is that people want to spend more on their health but they don't want to pay higher taxes and taxes are what is used to pay for their health. There's lots of other problems of course (which I'll save for another day), but that's the biggest one.