The Canadian Academic Health Mafia, or The Canadian Academic Health Establishment?

I wasn't sure if I should use the term "Mafia" or "Establishment" in the context of this section. Therefore, I consulted with my "token" academic, Jim Cutt who passed on the following interpretation of the situation, which made me choose the term "Mafia."

What I discovered over the years in Canada -- I was away in Australia for most of the 70s-- from my return here in 1978, was that the academic establishment in health care--concentrated in an axis of fellow-travellers at McMaster and UBC--had made a major intellectual commitment to the sustainability of Medicare, concretized in the Canada Health Act model, and would not be discouraged by evidence to the contrary. They do this, first, by strictly controlling the internal debate--those who agree get published, get research grants, get promotion and tenure; those who disagree are ostracized and demonized. Young faculty members, having an eye on survival and progress, get in line by agreeing or avoiding the issue. What is most criminal and irresponsible about the establishment is that they deliberately ignore the one most important indicator of success--timely effective care. The second avenue is to place all possible barriers to examining evidence from other countries; if you search you can find it, but its use is discouraged and any evidence derived there from considered biased or culturally unsuitable. And this evidence is interesting. A classic example is the WHO (where you would expect socialist bureaucratic bullshit) survey that placed Canada 30th, after Morocco, by focusing on timely effective care. So the sad news is that the system is imploding while the academics travel to conferences congratulating themselves--on their intellectual rigour AND superior morality. It is really a Soviet model, and will unravel, is indeed unraveling, in just the same way.