Providing sterilised instruments is now a value-added service

This is exactly the sort of thing that muddies the waters in any government-funded medical system discussion.

The body that regulates doctors in Alberta has ordered a Calgary clinic to stop charging patients for sterilized medical instruments.

In March, the Richmond Square Medical Centre implemented a fee of $5 for fewer than five sterile instruments and $10 for five or more that are used on patients during their visits. The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta ordered the practice stopped after inquiries by CBC News.

"Having sterile instruments is such a fundamental need in health care that I'm surprised. What are they going to be doing, charging us for cleaning rooms?" patient Kathie Booth said Tuesday (via Calgary clinic ordered to halt fee for sterile equipment).

This really isn't about lack of funding (though the AB system is both under and poorly funded). It's about physicians who treat medicine as a business in, what I have been calling, a 'disconnected' fashion. The disconnect is between the activity and the function: business is not properly (and by 'properly,' I mean 'morally') about making money. It is about providing goods and services.

It seems to me that far too many people have gotten into their heads the mistaken idea that businesses provide goods and services in order to make money that is of value to the owner of the business. On the contrary, businesses (should) make money in order to provide (and to sustain the activity of providing) goods and services that are of value to the community.

If we continue to tolerate businesses to be run as if they were not integral parts of the community, instead of some privileged portion of it (or even, above it), we are going to continue to see the kind of political dichotomies in this country that come to nothing. We might as well debate whether the brain or the heart is more important to healthy bodily function.