Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - November 15, 1975, Winnipeg, Manitoba 14 features Winnipeg free press saturday november 15, 1975 new Leisure in Medicine the annual Hospital struggle is on again. The Manitoba health services commission has received Hospi tals spending estimates for 1970 and for openers it does t look As if health Zinsli Tulious in this province will Back to global budgets for a Lime if Ever. 4 with a global budget the it ziment allows an instil Union a carefully calculated sum. Leav ing it to the Board Ami administration to decide How much to spend in which department introduced Here for the budget year the Globe As experts in the Field refer to it replaced so called line by line budgeting in which a Hospital does to the commission advances los plans Tor cacti department and gets commission approval or disapproval. The global Gudgel was supposed to make Hospital operation More flexible and save Lime on line by line discussions. Only hospitals with More than 50 Beds became global budget institutions in 1972. The com Mission said then Luil 197o would be a line by line year in any event so that government planners could Check and re View the situation. So far so Good except thai the global budget planners had no Way of predicting the coming inflationary developments. In 1970, it Cost million to Manitoba hospitals. One year later the Bill was million an increase of almost m per cent. The year 1072 saw expenditures at million up about 13.5 per cent from the previous year. In ui73, there was a slight slowdown in the rate of increase to 10.7 per cent when costs jumped to million. Last year the Manitoba hos Pital Bill came to almost is million up nearly 18 per cent from preliminary Csizi Rales for 1075 Are that the hos pills will Cost a Cool s18y Mil lion to operate 29 per cent More than last year. Inflation is at the Yal lip in Chr health Field. Providing flexibility in inter Nal budget management through global budgets is of course out of the question when increases take off Inlo doubt digit inflation and defy All at tempts at control. Now there will be a return to Light budget controls in it province i understand several health institutions actually like the new situation because1 it gives them an Opportunity to shift sonic of their dilemmas Back on to the com Mission. Others however 1 expect. Will scream that the govern ment or the commission is be coming involved again in their internal affairs and Are impinging on local authority. Let there be no doubt about ii the funding crisis in health ser vice is finally upon us. Unless something happens almost immediately regarding Hospital budgets for next year the whole financial House of cards could Tumble before our Verv Eves be and yet when i read such Cost figures it seems to me that the problems facing politicians and their senior officials perhaps Aren t All that Tough after All. It should t be too hard to make a Tough austerity argument stick in tiie face of whopping Cost rises and Federal pronounce ments on the fight against inflation. By Manfry Jage r what me is the dedicated yet often Tunnel Visioned people who can t see beyond their own concerns. A Good example is the Eggres Sive lobby for an Immy Dianic and unconditional expansion of the Manitoba cancer treatment and research foundation to facilitate Quick program Exten Sion in the work of the Manitoba Institute of cell biology. Spearheaded by the Lale Elvie Blum the lobby was so effective for a time that a government health consultant. Or. Graham Clarkson in a recent report on development of the health sciences Centre and related facilities admitted that he and his associate or. Faigen Vayda temporarily were persuaded into urging immediate fund Al location to cancer. They later reversed their position. Or. Clarkson said in the report and advised All those concerned to Wail and tackle things in context with each other. The report came out in favor of a freeze on research facility expansion. Last week the health sciences Centre to Gether with the University of Manitoba medical school sent a four Page reaction slut Nazeni on research matters to the govern ment. There the Mailer with or. Clark sonics words thai Manitoba must now figure out its research priorities ringing in our ears. Would t it be much simpler for the Sake of argument if we could go to the people Mure often Here s what i mean a lobby comes along and says we re cancer a Licals and the cancer foundation needs expansion be cause demand on it has grown and treatment possibilities have grown too. What s technologically scientifically possible should nay must be made available to the patient. All right the govern Ieni would say. You have a Point. Trouble is that health costs Are skyrocketing and exceed even our wildest allowances for inflation. We Are in fact in a serious deficit position even without demand. So Well Pui in to people. Let s say then that the government would publish Adver Lishem cols explaining the Issue giving the Cost and telling Mani Loans just How much their taxes would go up if the a Nisei i was approved. The advertisement would in clude a reply Coupon. Let s Shiv thai returned coupons and that 300 were in favor taxes would go up. Say i a cents a week and the new facilities and equip no no acquired. Finl the government would Jyh Back for More. There Are of causes. The next one Cost us Only a paltry dime a Veeh bringing the add Lionas total to 45 cents. Before Long. 1 suggest there would be causes a y and it before the people and tens of thousands of opinion coupons would be sent in. The principle would be thai As Long As we remained in the red on health care the government would Lei the people decide on major expenditures and the people buy them on a pay As we go basis i suggest before Loo Long we d end up being taxed to the tune of an extra or a week and then we would suddenly Clamp Down on project after project after project. We would Al last have go the other one saturday while thumb ing through my newspaper. I came across a picture of some one i knew years ago. He was acting in a local play in fact he had one of the Lead roles. 1 was pleased to see his it s always Nice to see a Friend doing Well. Especially in such an up and Down Field As lie so i eagerly dipped Inlo the Aricide thai reviewed Ilic play. The review was a Culup. The reviewer notorious for his bile fitted commentaries on All sorts of local entertainment had these things to say the actor could t act. His performance was he blamed the rest of the vast s lapses on the apathetic performance of this one actor though rarely sees Good actors trip p just because someone else on stage is having a time of it finally the reviewer mus iced All his sadism and sue tested that this actor would be More at Home As a like an obsessed enemy he alluded again and again to the terrible performance ending by Blaw ing the actor for the play s rail it to by the end of the article 1 was furious All the More so because i d recently read another re View this time of a Book of poetry in which he author and not his work was termed la old and i had read the Book. I thought it was rather Good and i knew the author. Roth he and his poetry Are no doubt much warmer than the reviewer. After Reading that re View. I Felt i d just been present at a mugging but the main Point is this Winnipeg is not. Never was. And May Well never be a recognized Mecca of the arts. The City has had a Good Ballet company. Perhaps even a great one bul does t claim to produce Oliver Viers or Picasso or a Rock group of the stature of the Bucaj what s Good about Winnipeg arts As with the City s scientific Community Don t gel Credi for an Einstein Hillier b that the artists Are trying. In any artistic Community. Many of the Best minds the Best performers Hie most Brilliant innovators Are destined to be known As artists by their friends and no one else. Some who. Perhaps could oui write Norman Mailer Are never going to be Road by 10 people let alone Ien million. Those who write their novels or poetry on Loose Leaf or in English seminars. Who put together their dancing skills Al a local discotheque in Stead of on a television show. Who sing in local Coffee houses instead of Al Carnegie Hall they Are the life blood of and artistic Community. By Ron what keeps Many of them treating and experimenting is potential they risk their ideas or their less than fully devel oped talents before Ai audience because they know that process helps them to improve their work. With reviewers printing the kind of stuff i be described i m worried that Many begin ners arc going to be discouraged by the beatings they May have to endure if they make a wrong move in a play or give a poor or dare to try oui arc original product before an Audi ence. Ifs one thing to expect Nureyev to put up with an acid Bath now and then he s already been lauded by half the world and is As Rich As a Prince Al though the bitter criticism he s endured lately has also been pointlessly i i s quite another to demand such endurance from amateurs peo ple who often contribute to the Community without a Penny s Reward or an audience of More than 50 for their efforts. They Don t deserve to be ridiculed and our artistic Community should t have its growth stunned by a handful of bitter and themselves frustrated Crucs bul i must answer two incipient rebuttals to my proposal that critics exercise sonic Iasie and some humanity. The first is thai by condemning the critics harangues Well be depriving the Public of its right to know just How bad a play is. I Don t suggest that critics have right to pan a play but it s another thing to single out a person and make rude remarks about him that go beyond the critique of his performance no need to vivisect arc. A Dor while dissecting a play it s the sheer pointlessness of these personal a lacks. That make them bad criticise As Well As bad manners. The second possible rebuttal is thai actors and Amelr Essic need feedback about the Quality of their performances. To reply that silence is As always a potent criticism. If you say a play is poor or even that it stinks and you Point to Only actor As having then everyone else in the Paw yets he message. If i were on the receiving Cadi of a particularly Nirali choirs Aad. Persona review re look ints the wording of the Laws govern ing slander libel and Tion of character. It would is interesting to see if some fowl longed critic was t trifling with my Legal rights As Well As with my reputation and my feel ing-5 ;