Private insurance is no answer

Issue: BCMJ, vol. 49, No. 7, September 2007, Letters
By: Khati Hendry, MD,

I was discouraged to read Dr Arkinstall’s letter extolling the virtues of a private insurance system for those with the opportunity to get extra coverage, leaving the government to provide medical care for those without such coverage or unable to pay (BCMJ 2007;49[6]:296). It sounds simple, but I have two words of advice: look south. Having spent most of my medical career working in the US, I can attest that such a system is a Pandora’s box of intrusive oversight, endless paperwork, waste of money going into insurers’ pockets, and gross inequality of care. I am ever impressed with the increased quality of life people in Canada experience due to the relative health security they enjoy. Retire early? No worries. Change jobs? Ditto. People are free to worry more about their health, not how to pay for it. Are there solutions to improving Canada’s system? Of course. The Romanow report had many suggestions. Other countries have their own solutions, but the suggestion in the letter looks way too much like the system in the US, which is increasingly wasteful, unaffordable, and dangerous. Beware.

—Khati Hendry, MD
   Summerland

Khati Hendry, MD,. Private insurance is no answer. BCMJ, Vol. 49, No. 7, September, 2007, Page(s) - Letters.


Above is the information needed to cite this article in your paper or presentation. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommends the following citation style, which is the now nearly universally accepted citation style for scientific papers:
Halpern SD, Ubel PA, Caplan AL, Marion DW, Palmer AM, Schiding JK, et al. Solid-organ transplantation in HIV-infected patients. N Engl J Med. 2002;347:284-7.

About the ICMJE and citation styles

The ICMJE is small group of editors of general medical journals who first met informally in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1978 to establish guidelines for the format of manuscripts submitted to their journals. The group became known as the Vancouver Group. Its requirements for manuscripts, including formats for bibliographic references developed by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), were first published in 1979. The Vancouver Group expanded and evolved into the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), which meets annually. The ICMJE created the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals to help authors and editors create and distribute accurate, clear, easily accessible reports of biomedical studies.

An alternate version of ICMJE style is to additionally list the month an issue number, but since most journals use continuous pagination, the shorter form provides sufficient information to locate the reference. The NLM now lists all authors.

BCMJ standard citation style is a slight modification of the ICMJE/NLM style, as follows:

  • Only the first three authors are listed, followed by "et al."
  • There is no period after the journal name.
  • Page numbers are not abbreviated.


For more information on the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, visit www.icmje.org

BCMJ Guidelines for Authors

Leave a Reply