Medicare was conceived in Saskatchewan as hospital insurance and subsequently medical care insurance; once established, in the words of Duncan Sinclair (2000), "growth in public expectations is understandable and will continue." Morris Barer (personal communication, 2007) neatly packages the current issue as timely access to quality healthcare for Canadians within a publicly funded healthcare system. This, of course, introduces long-term sustainability. And so it goes; each issue leads to another.  

On the pages of our journals, learned men and women have considered the questions and provided their commentaries - all of it archived and, similar to the stacks in a library, used over and over again. Titles have included "Canadian Medicare and the Global Healthcare Bazaar," "Medicare's Fate: Are We Fiddlers or Firefighters?" "Rethinking Medicare," "Home Care, Continuing Care and Medicare: A Canadian Model or Innovative Models for Canadians?" "Now's the Time to Stand Up for Medicare," "Baneful Legacy of Medicare and Mr. Trudeau," "Can Medicare Be Saved? Fact and Fiction: The Medicare 'Crisis' Seen from the United States," "How the Private Sector Can Save Medicare" and "Chaoulli and the Supreme Court: The Two-Tier Magna Carta."  

In recognition of 10 years of healthcare journalism dominated by the analysis of medicare, you will find two papers in the Longwoods Review section - one from Irfan Dhalla exploring the implications of private insurance and another from Raisa Deber and Brenda Gamble discussing the boundaries of medicare as seen from the stakeholders' perspective. We also prepared a list of our best-read papers from Healthcare Quarterlyon related topics. And then we thought, "What the heck, let's see what other lists our readers can conjure up." You will find them throughout the journal and, of course, on our website. Some are serious and some are playful, and they make good reading. Of course, in this issue, you will also find articles covering a full gamut of topics including overcrowding in emergency departments, ethical considerations in access to care and the impact of high technology on health human resources.  

This issue of Healthcare Quarterly begins our 11th year. Healthcare Quarterly continues as Longwoods Publishing's flagship journal but is now complemented by other journals and media that make up the Longwoods library. You will find news, cases, podcasts, video records, databases, white papers, learning programs and more - all provided by dedicated authors and editors and managed by a parsimonious publishing model focused on presenting ideas, policies and best practices that matter. Much of this is found in print. All of it is found online. For the record, on a month-by-month basis, we have as many as 200,000 visitors to our website (www.longwoods.com), who access more than 500,000 documents.  

Thank you for contributing the ideas, the material, the financial wherewithal and the collaboration. We are honoured to be your stewards.  

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