David Gratzer: Difference between revisions

David George Gratzer (born September 5, 1974 in Winnipeg, Manitoba) is a Canadian psychiatrist, conservative columnist, author, and critic of the Canadian health care system. He is a practicing psychiatrist in Toronto and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

Early life

Gratzer's father is a professor of mathematics at the University of Manitoba who emigrated from Hungary to the United States in 1963 and to Canada in 1966. Gratzer's older brother earned an M.D. and completed a psychiatry residency at the University of Manitoba and then emigrated from Canada to the United States where he completed a fellowship in and practices forensic psychiatry.

Gratzer earned a B.Sc. at the University of Manitoba in 1996, was president of the University of Manitoba Students' Union (UMSU) during his final undergraduate year 1995–1996, and was appointed by the Lieutenant Governor of Manitoba to the University of Manitoba Board of Governors for four successive years from 1994–1998.

Medical school and Code Blue (1999)

Gratzer attended medical school at the University of Manitoba from 1996–2000 and earned an M.D. in 2000. On November 15, 1996, during his first year of medical school, the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) published a letter to the editor from Gratzer criticizing a June 15, 1996 CMAJ report comparing reserve funds held by the Canadian Medical Protective Association (CMPA) to those held by medical malpractice insurers in the United States.

While in medical school, Gratzer was a regular contributor of opinion columns to Conrad Black's National Post, wrote a weekly opinion column for the London Free Press and the Halifax Sunday Herald, and wrote columns on health care that appeared in several major newspapers and magazines, including the Toronto Star and Conrad Black's Ottawa Citizen and Calgary Herald. A 1997 Gratzer column "Being a young conservative is nothing to apologize for" said "I am a conservative. This is somewhat unfortunate, as people don't seem to understand how anyone under 40 can be right-wing." A 1999 Gratzer column "Raising the minimum wage hurts the poor it hopes to help" lamented that even "two of Canada's three right-leaning governments have chosen to hike their minimum wages" and that "minimum wage earners are not underpaid but underproductive." Gratzer won $250 as fourth place runner-up in 1998–1999 and won $2,500 as first prize in the 1999–2000 Felix Morley Journalism Competition of the libertarian Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University for his newspaper columns.

During his second year of medical school, Gratzer began writing a book about problems with the Canadian health care system and his proposed solution--medical savings accounts, but couldn't get anyone interested. Rejection letters piled up after he completed the book and he had doubts about his ability to get taken seriously until his third year of medical school, when Robert Lecker, professor of English at McGill University and co-founder of ECW Press agreed to publish his book. In September 1999, during his fourth year of medical school, ECW Press published Gratzer's first book, Code Blue: Reviving Canada's Health Care System. The book's acknowledgments went firstly to:

• David Frum, National Post columnist, then senior fellow of the Manhattan Institute, later speechwriter for U.S. President George W. Bush
• Adrienne Snow, then director of programs for the Donner Canadian Foundation

then to six others who read early versions of the manuscript and provided valuable suggestions:

• Terence Corcoran, editor of the Financial Post section of the National Post
• William Watson, associate professor of economics at McGill University, Ottawa Citizen editorial page editor and National Post columnist, awarded $5000 in 1999 as runner-up for the first annual Donner Prize for 1998
• Cynthia Ramsay, then senior health economist at the Fraser Institute
• Stephen Harper, then president of the National Citizens Coalition, now Prime Minister of Canada and Conservative Party leader
• David Henderson, Canadian-born and raised research fellow at the Hoover Institution and associate professor of economics at the Naval Postgraduate School
• Arnold Aberman, then Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto

On May 4, 2000, during his fourth year of medical school, Gratzer was awarded $25,000 by the conservative Donner Canadian Foundation as winner of its second annual Donner Prize for best public policy book of 1999 for Code Blue.

Residency and Better Medicine (2002)

In June 2000, Gratzer graduated from medical school and in July 2000 began a five-year psychiatry residency program at the University of Toronto. During his psychiatry residency, Gratzer continued to write newspaper opinion columns. A 2001 Gratzer column "Make room for prescription drug ads on television" advocated allowing direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs on television in Canada (the United States and New Zealand are the only countries that allow direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs).

In April 2002, ECW Press published Better Medicine: Reforming Canadian Health Care a book of essays edited by Gratzer concluding with an essay by Gratzer on "The ABCs of HSAs." The book's acknowledgments went in particular for early and unconditional support to:

• Michael Bliss, professor of history at the University of Toronto and author of the first essay in the book

then to four others for their suggestions:

• Lorne Gunter, senior columnist at the Edmonton Journal, member of the editorial board of the National Post, editorial director of the Canadian Centre for Libertarian Studies
• Neil Seeman, in-house counsel to the National Citizens Coalition, founding director of the Fraser Institute's CANSTATS media watch project, founding member of editorial board of the National Post, former associate editor of the National Review Online
• David Frum, National Post columnist, then senior fellow of the Manhattan Institute, later speechwriter for U.S. President George W. Bush
• Patrick Luciani, then executive director of the Donner Canadian Foundation, now senior adviser to the Fraser Institute's CANSTATS media watch project

and to the Calgary-based Marigold Foundation, the Donner Canadian Foundation, and the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies for support.

The July 23, 2002 issue of CMAJ highlighted Medical Savings Accounts (MSAs) with: a commentary by Gratzer in favor of MSAs as a counterpoint to a commentary opposing MSAs, a peer-reviewed research article opposing MSAs, a peer-reviewed review article opposing MSAs, and a book review by a University of Toronto medical student of Gratzer's Better Medicine: Reforming Canadian Health Care.

In September 2002, Gratzer was one of 25 Canadians under age 30 featured in a Maclean's "Leaders of Tomorrow" cover story. In 2002, while still a psychiatry resident, Gratzer joined the Manhattan Institute as a senior fellow.

In 2004, Gratzer was first author of a peer-reviewed brief report "Lifetime rates of alcoholism in adults with anxiety, depression, or co-morbid depression/anxiety: a community survey of Ontario" published in the Journal of Affective Disorders.

On June 28, 2005, Gratzer testified in support of H.R. 2355, the Health Care Choice Act of 2005, at a hearing of the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Health of the Committee on Energy and Commerce.

Independent practice and The Cure (2006)

On June 30, 2005, Gratzer completed his University of Toronto psychiatry residency and became registered for independent practice of medicine in Ontario. In April 2006, Gratzer became licensed to practice medicine in Pennsylvania. In May 2006, Gratzer became board-certified in psychiatry.

In October 2006, Roger Kimball's Encounter Books published Gratzer's book, The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Health Care, about problems with the United States health care system and his proposed solutions:

1. Health insurance portability: end the tax exemption of employer-provided health insurance and remove government regulations mandating what conditions and whom and at what rates private health insurance companies must provide coverage;
2. Medicare financing: privatize Medicare using individual private accounts in the same way it has been proposed to privatize Social Security using individual private accounts, replace the current Medicare program with competing private health insurance plans modeled on the current Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) and free of state health insurance regulations, and raise the Medicare eligibility age to 70;
3. Medical innovation: end the FDA's 1962 Kefauver Harris Amendment mandate requiring pre-marketing demonstration of efficacy by medical device manufacturers and by pharmaceutical companies prior to new drug approval, and return to only requiring pre-marketing demonstration of safety.

For the uninsured and those on Medicaid, Gratzer proposed turning over all current federal funding for their care to state governments in the form of block grants to experiment with voucher systems allowing recipients to purchase private health insurance and health savings accounts (HSAs), tightening Medicaid eligibility for long-term care and encouraging the purchase of private long term care insurance.

The book's foreword was written by Milton Friedman. The book's acknowledgments went to colleagues at the Manhattan Institute, and to three others who looked at earlier versions of the book and provided useful comments:

• John Cogan, economist and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, former senior economic advisor to George W. Bush's 2000 presidential campaign
• Thomas Miller, attorney and resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute
• Sally Pipes, president and CEO of the Pacific Research Institute, former founding staff member of the Fraser Institute

and seven others who were particularly generous of their time and helped Gratzer understand the nuances of the issues:

• John Goodman, economist and founder and president of the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA)
• Grace-Marie Turner, founder and president of the Galen Institute, former executive director of the congressional Republican 1995–6 "Kemp Commission" set up by Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole
• Thomas Saving, economist and senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA), professor of economics at Texas A&M University
• Rodney Nichols, applied physicist and former president and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences
• Robert Moffit, director, Center for Health Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation
• Henry Miller, physician and research fellow at the Hoover Institution, former director of the FDA's Office of Biotechnology
• Milton Friedman, late economist and senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution; Nobel laureate in economics

Giuliani advisor and cancer statistics

On July 30, 2007, Rudy Giuliani's 2008 presidential campaign named Gratzer as one of his five key health care policy advisors, along with: Hoover Institution senior fellow Dan Kessler, Hoover Institution senior fellow Scott Atlas, Pacific Research Institute president and CEO Sally Pipes, and The Moran Company founder and president Donald Moran.

On July 31, 2007, one day after naming his health care advisors, Giuliani, the 2008 Republican presidential front-runner, unveiled his health care plan in Rochester, New Hampshire and criticized the plans of Democratic presidential candidates as socialized medicine that was European and socialist, and said that his chances of surviving prostate cancer had been 82% in the United States, but would have only been 44% in England under socialized medicine, which he repeated in campaign speeches for three months before making the assertions in a radio advertisement in New Hampshire.

After the radio ad began running on October 29, 2007, FactCheck.org, PolitiFact.com and The Washington Post consulted leading prostate cancer experts and cancer statisticians who found Giuliani's cancer survival statistics to be false and misleading nonsense obtained from an opinion article by Gratzer in the Summer 2007 issue of the Manhattan Institute's City Journal. The UK Health Secretary asked Giuliani to stop using the NHS as a political football and Florida's largest circulation newspaper, the St. Petersburg Times, said Giuliani was apparently a cancer survivor who was not above exploiting cancer to inject fear by citing survival statistics that even The New York Times eventually said were false, and made worst of 2007 lists in The Times and The Washington Post.

More recently, in a U.S. Congressional hearing on the issue of single-payer health care, Dr. Gratzer and Congressman Dennis Kucinich clashed over Canadian healthcare statistics.

Books

• Gratzer, David (1999). Code Blue: Reviving Canada's Health Care System. Toronto: ECW Press. ISBN 1550223933. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
• Gratzer, David (ed.) (2002). Better Medicine: Reforming Canadian Health Care. Toronto: ECW Press. ISBN 1550225057. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
• Gratzer, David (2006). The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Health Care. New York: Encounter Books. ISBN 1594031533. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help) Paperback edition (May 2008) ISBN 159403219X, ISBN 978-1594032196.

External links

• Manhattan Institute (2007). "Manhattan Institute Scholar - David Gratzer".