Flushing your taxes

A few nights ago, I saw a TV commercial that used your tax dollars to advertise the Health Infoway – a government initiative promoting its missed objectives. I say your taxes, not mine, because my wife will tell you that my taxes are being used to fund those TV and print ads telling me how great the economic action plan worked for us.

The missed objectives for the Health Infoway? You may recall it was the budget in 2009 that provided $500M to the Canada Health Infoway with a specific target: half of us were supposed to have electronic health records by 2010. I don’t think I have an electronic health record yet; do you?

At the time I wrote up the program, quoting the budget documents that promised that this funding would also speed up the implementation of electronic medical record systems for physicians and integrated points of service for hospitals, pharmacies, community care facilities and patients.

What do we actually have to show for it? Click on the graphic and at least the Infoway folks have put together a nice multimedia ad for what they should have already delivered.

I am certain that the current advertising campaign is designed to help prepare us for the next injection of a half billion dollars to be announced in the 2011 budget later this month. Hopefully, the media will ask tough questions like what happened to the money 2 years ago and what is being done about the missed 2010 objectives.

At the end of the day, I’d prefer an ad campaign that brags about successful completion of a project, rather than squandering my cash to lobby for more of my cash.

The ad claims “Knowing is better than not knowing.” What do you think? Do you feel better knowing than not knowing?

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