Good morning. Postcall is where we bring you the joy and laughter you haven’t felt since you filled out your 2nd grade stickerbook.

In fact, shoutout to reader JH who’s got a NEW entry to his stickerbook: you earned this exact sticker pack as the result of referring 4 friends to Postcall. If you want your own, share this link with fellow doctors: https://postcall.ca/subscribe

Let’s get into the good stuff:

• Canadian healthcare got its report card 📋️ 

• 🏘️ Let’s review some real estate basics

• Neopets 🐶 is making a comeback

• Shouldn’t inflation be stopping? 📈 

• Quick bites 🍉

• 😆 Memes of the Day

No pulse, No problem 😎

We knew the pandemic did a number on our healthcare system, but really, how bad was it?

What happened: The Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) released a report called “Taking the pulse: A snapshot of Canadian health care, 2023”. The verdict? We have PEA on our hands folks.

Why it's interesting: This is the first-ever compilation of healthcare data from every province and territory (except Quebec - quelle surprise). Here’s our snapshot:

• Roughly 1 in 10 Canadians don’t have access to primary care

• The national drop in surgeries from 2019 was 13%

• Less than 40% of Canadians have ever accessed their health info online

• No data specifically on First Nations, Inuit or Métis people.

And another thing, if you’re feeling burned out, you’re probably not alone: overtime hours increased by 15% during the pandemic - that’s over 18 million hours of OT. All the while mental health services have lagged behind, with national wait-times for community mental health sitting at 22 days.

Bottom line: We may be in trouble, but at least this is a big win for transparency in public reporting. But that doesn’t change the fact that doctors and hospitals are sounding the alarm across the country (here’s examples from Calgary, Surrey, and Nova Scotia).

Details at the CIHI

Together with Vivan Yu, Vancouver’s REALTOR

Real estate basics for your physician🔥 

Like any skill, managing your hard earned loonies and toonies for long term growth comes down to the basics. Fancy tricks like bitcoin or day trading are kind of like jumping a 360 on skis - looks cool when the pros do it, but we’d probably just get hurt.

So to help you avoid faceplanting into the snow, we’ve brought in real estate expert and realtor Vivian Yu to give you the top four tips to building a strong real estate investing portfolio, even in 2023.

1. 🏡 Presales and AirBnBs are the two most overlooked opportunities to getting great investment returns in today’s real estate environment. Presales give options to either buy and hold, or to assign and lock in returns without ever taking on a mortgage. Buying and operating an AirBnB merits an entire discussion on its own, so we’ll follow up with a specific AirBnB guide in a future edition of Postcall.

2. 📍 Location, location, location - markets vary, but in Vivian’s hot home market of BC, she sees Port Moody and Burquitlam as the next big growth opportunities. It’s likely that the Downtown and Metrotown areas have most of their value priced in already.

3. 📊 Look at the numbers. RE investing is still investing, and it’s important to know the math. While skipping a few calc classes probably won’t hold you back, missing out on key concepts such as capitalization, cash flow, and operating expenses may hold back your real estate investment portfolio.

4. 📈 Watch the market. As of Aug 2023, the market is in a dip. But when markets are bad for sellers, they’re great for buyers. Sellers are currently under immense pressure due to climbing interest rates, tentative buyers, and summer vacation slowdowns, which becomes an opportunity for long-term minded investors seeking to build a portfolio.

Don’t get us wrong, real estate is a high risk, high reward investment. But with the right partner who’s knowledgeable about the market, and how to make it work for you, you can go far. Reach out to Vivian Yu today if you’re interested in having your hard-earned money goes as far as possible in any market.

For the next 3 months, when you mention Postcall to Vivian Yu, she’ll send you her FREE financial model on making your first real estate investment purchase.

Guess who’s back? 🐶 is back.

In case you haven’t had enough franchise reboots this summer, Neopets is making a comeback with a $4M investment to remake the site and 50 classic games. Personally, we’re hoping for Meerca Chase.

What happened: Neopets has had a roller coaster ride over the past three decades. Launched in 1999, the British website peaked in popularity with over 25M users (impressive, back in the days of dial-up ☎️ ). However, aggressive monetization and rising competition meant that by the time it was acquired in 2005 by Viacom for $160M, the site was no longer keeping up with the times and that magical Neopian spark was starting to fade.

Why it's interesting: 

In an era where the noughties (years 2000-2009) are experiencing an explosion of interest across movies, music, and fashion, it makes sense that developers would seek to revitalize an age-old IP to bring it into 2023. However, it raises the question of whether constantly rehashing the old is beneficial for modern culture and media. It’s easy to see how big box companies like Disney aim for “safe bets” and churn out dozens of MCU and Star Wars movies, but does this come at the cost of cultural innovation?

What’s next: Whether you still remember your old login or not, the new Neopets is here! Now we’re just waiting for the Disney machine to splash some cash, and the Shoryu could be in next summer’s MCU blockbuster.

Details at BBC

Nombre de Jour 🔢 

3.4% - Canada’s national inflation rate for May has seemingly returned to normalcy. So why does everything still cost so much?

Inflation rate is a growth rate, which means that the current prices are simply increasing at a slower rate than before (in order to decrease, we would need to experience deflation).

And if we break down the components of inflation, we see that the primary driver of the decrease is gasoline, which has experienced a sharp drop since the highs of 2021/2022.

But do we want deflation? While we wouldn’t mind a sale for back to school supplies next week 🎏 , deflation is typically a negative signal for the economy. When prices fall, companies produce less goods and lay people off. So while today’s grocery store prices may take some getting used to, they will be the new normal for a long time to come.

Details at CBC

🍔 Quick Bites

1: The Minneapolis police officer who held back the crowd as George Floyd was killed receives a five year sentence.

2: The MrBeast Burger is suing MrBeast: Just one week after MrBeast sued his ghost kitchen burger restaurant, the company behind MrBeast Burger is suing him back for $100M. Talk about an Uno Reverse 🔄.

3: What Airbnb learned after a year of letting employees work from anywhere. Spoiler alert: They maintained high standards of performance from managers, and were able to retain top people.

4: 👩‍🍼 Huzzah! A breakthrough oral pill for postpartum depression (PPD) has been approved by the FDA. Zurzuvae improved the core symptoms of depression in women with PPD, with treatment effect maintained one month after starting the therapy.

5: Universities (and by extension, our tax dollars) are fed up with paying the academic journals for access… to their own research. But it’s a catch-22 as the establishment also rewards researchers for publishing in high-impact journals instead of alternatives like Peer Premier.

6: With the rise in car prices and the sharing economy, more of us are turning to car-sharing. Turns out these shared cars are goldmines for weird forgotten belongings.

Memes of the Day 😜 

Ain’t no party like a Postcall party 🎉 
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