Very poor rebuttal -- you get pretty good services from banks and credit unions.

Nickel and diming? Yeah. But have you looked at hospital bill lately? I just happened to see one today. Cost of bed: $7350 per day. (Fees and supplies not included.)

I dunno. I know there's a lot of interesting shiny tubes and canisters and shit in those rooms, but... $7350? Shouldn't that come with a harbour view, grand piano and "happy finish" massage?

There are efficiencies to be found in any sector. I am not necessarily in favour of opening up health care to bidding (especially low bid) but agree with Rafe that we have to examine the articles of faith once in a while, especially if they can serve as a cloak for gouging.

Oops, damn statistics...the bill was seven grand. The room was only a paltry $2500 per night (no phone).

The unfortunate thing for those in support of private medical care is they can't come up with any examples of the private sector doing services for less money. Even in Alberta the lack of any positive examples have held back Ralph Klein from going farther than he has.

I get a kick how nurses and doctors are portrayed as a selfish special interest groups but medical corporations are to be considered philanthrops out for only the public good (and not share-holders).

"Why not, then, permit the private sector to pick up part of this cost"

Yeah. Right. Since when does the private sector pick up any costs out of the goodness of their heart?

There are two choices: individuals pay for their own health care or their employers provide private health insurance. And if you think companies are outsourcing jobs overseas now because of labour costs, see what they do when their employees start demaning full "parallel" medical coverage. Medicare is actually one of the things that has kept many of our companies competitive to American firms that are being swamped by employee health insurance premiums.

But anyway, this is all beside the point. The issue isn't so simple as saving X dollars from Medicare by having it paid for privately. The problem with waiting lists is a lack of capacity: there are not enough doctors/nurses/technicians. There are operating rooms sitting in empty in hospitals because of a lack of staff. Setting up a "parallel" system isn't going to fix that. It's just going to make it worse. Doctors will spend more time in their "private" clinics where they can charge what they want and this will further starve the public system of staff.

What's more, the "parallel" system will cherry-pick the easy procedures that can be whipped off quickly, leaving the more complex, costly surgeries for Medicare to cover. They will also not deal with complications arising from the procedures they do do. Why should they when they don't have to and it's not profitable?

I will guarantee that a two-tier system or parallel system or whatever other euphemism you want to use will result in LONGER waiting lists for the public system. Don't believe me? Take a look around, there are many countries that have a two-tier system. I just spent 3 weeks in Portugal and that is absolutely the case there. The waiting lists in the public system are much longer there than here.

Or take a look at Britain:

"Independent sector treatment centres (ISTCs) are paid on average 40% more than National Health Service (NHS) providers. They are often guaranteed five- or 10-year contracts. They have no requirement to teach and train and they do not provide expensive emergency and high-dependency care. They mop up "easy" cases, leaving the difficult and more costly ones to the NHS. This has skewed the case-mix seen by the NHS and is affecting training in some specialties. And because fewer of the low-risk cases are being seen in NHS hospitals, young surgeons are no longer getting the training they need."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1515335,00.html

Anyway, enough of a rant. Though I wonder what Rafe would think if someone said that expanding fish farming would take some of the stress of the wild salmon and allow it to thrive...sounds like the same argument to me.

By the way, I agree with the start of the article. Free education for all is an absolutely great idea and would certainly help prepare us for the next century -- it was a huge part in turning Ireland around. But if you want to pay for it and you really want to shift some of the costs to the "private sector", I have a novel idea. It's called corporate taxes.

I think the solution is to make WalMart deliver healthcare. They've managed to bring down the cost of clothing, and of random consumer goods throught there innovative supply chain, perhaps they could do the same for healthcare. Their secret, will be to totally standardize all surgery, have all knee surgery done in one clinic, and nail it down to a 15 minute operation, and do it over and over for 50 times.

Also, I'm not sure what people have against rich people paying more for things that we are willing to give poor people for free. The rich, have little to do but save money in foreign bank accounts, and buy items made in foreign places. By allowing them to spend more money in clinics based in this province, just to sit in a room with silk rather than cotton sheets, and to have the most attractive nurses work on them rather than the most competent, and to use space age alloys for replacement joints rather than boring old stainless steal, they will help our economy greatly. And not only that, since we get to tax their procedures, society benefits more.

This is a huge and complicated issue that will not be resolved by increasing for-profit healthcare. I don't doubt that many in the media who shill for this, hope in doing so, to favor their stock portfolios.

Massive savings would result from exposing and curtailing the many abuses within the system. A good start might be ruling that patients receive duplicate copies of billings to the system.

That probably wouldn't make much difference to a talk show moderator who admitted to not caring whether his blood tests were done at the hospital or in a private lab. He would do what was most convenient, he said, regardless of costs to the system.

If we look at the corporatist American system, where your health care is provided if you have the right job, the cost, per capita, to deliver health care is 10% higher (after currency is accounted for) than in Canada because of the weight of bureaucracy that comes with all the myriad private insurers. In the US, pharmaceuticals are costlier, generally, than in Canada. In both countries, pharmaceuticals, as a component of health care, make up the fastest growing cost. Yet there is no evidence, long term, to suggest that the drugs brought to market in the last 25 years have increased longevity or reduced child mortality. Public health initiatives have done that, not private companies. Some measure of equitable wealth distribution in Canada has helped extend longevity too, although this stagnated some years ago.

Let's not forget that this type of system - one with private healthcare providers - would open us up to EXACTLY what Canadians fear... an American system. Can anyone say "NAFTA"? Opening up our health care to private companies would mean that our healthcare system is open under the NAFTA rules (unless I'm misunderstanding NAFTA). If I wanted to live in the US, I'd move to the US. We won't ever have a European system that the right likes to wax poetically about because we have partners next door that have too much vested interest in our becoming more like them.

yeah, add to that the americans tendency to sue, and the lack of caps on settlements. that alone has brought there costs up 2x. private insurance without base healthcare, also does no one any good.

Is this the neo-socialist Raif Mair, we were told about a few months ago?

Rafe, me thinks your tail is hanging out behind your borrowed pink undies.

Give us a break, let the private sector health corps shave 10 per cent off health costs?
Give me a friggin break, since when do health corps operate for less than the public system.

The lure of the health corps is they are quick, perhaps even efficient, but they ain't cheap. The only way they can survive is to concentrate on the relatively easy medical operations where doctors, working on somewhat of a high volume schedule can flit from patient to patient in some form of production line.

Oh, of course the sheets may be satin (maybe pink is an option), and the nurses and other staff eye-catching, but the only real differences for the patient for say a knee operation, will be the speed of getting onto the operating table and the fact that most people will not be able to afford it.

We are short of health care people now, so if private operations are allowed, how do we ensure ther will be one left in the local emergency room.

Speaking of emergency rooms, where the real quick responses aimed at saving lives now can mean tossing buckets of money into one patient who may have been cut out of a mangled car, will the private healthcos compete to take over that function?

Not bloody likely.

No Raif, but I do like some aspects of your idea of robbing Peter to pay Paul so that we do have public education.

One method, and I admit as much expertise as you Raif in counting pennies, might be to go for other revenues streams governments have some control over like say deferred corporate taxation.

Don't know the current amount deferred, but I do understand it's considerable.

Besides, why should the most popular program Canada offers be gutted for the second most popular when one of the least popular programs (deferred corporate taxes), sits their burning holes in our collective pockets?

Perhaps we can even put a few dollars from that deferred tax mine back into health care too.

Usually when people talk about "private" health care they actually mean "for profit-publicly funded health care". Real private health care would involve someone spending $50 million dollars to build a hospital and then another $50 million to equip and staff it. Then operations would be at full cost with medicare not paying a single cent. If that is what is meant, well OK, but good luck finding enough patients to make it work.

That is not what is meant, though. Usually it means someone paying a premium to get preferred access (jump the queue). Medicare is billed the same amount, and this is supposed to be a saving. I have never understood how medicare paying out unplanned costs saves money. I understand how doctors incomes increase, but not where the savings come from.

The problem is that for every person jumping the queue, someone else is knocked back a poaition somewhere. What is needed is more surgery, not an income based redistribution of access.

You've opened a real can of worms here, Rafe. But I think your first mistake is oversimplification, not surprising since you seem to think Friedman is such a genius. I think he (Friedman) comes upon a simplistic metaphor in his tiny brain (i.e. "flat world") and then writes a whole book that serves to stretch that already slim idea to explain the whole history and future of the universe.

The rich are basically greedy, in many cases that is how to get rich, buy low, sell high and screw (oh I guess I should say "exploit," that being the business school term) the other guy, or the planet. That is when the rich are self made, the other type, like the Bush that runs the world very poorly these days, born with a golden coke spoon stuck in his nose, is an even more despicable type.

Acting on the basis of self interest is the core value of "capitalism," unfortunately everyone seems to have forgotten the part about "enlightened" self interest.

If there is an alternative private sector in health care, for those who are willing and able to pay, those who are willing and able to pay will also be willing to pay MORE and eventually hog the cream of the available resources in health professionals and equipment. Those unable to pay will have to settle for the severely overtaxed left overs, like the current situation in the US. By the way, in the US the constant battle over just who pays consumes an inordinate proportion of the health care dollars, but hey, that's okay, at least it goes to insurance companies, lawyers, big Pharma etc. If all of these elite are successful in passing the buck it is in the end picked up by the taxpayer. This is especially true in the case of an employee of Wal-mart, who sell crappy stuff cheap because they make state and federal government subsidize their underpaid employees.

I've seen the likely re-distribution of the world's resources coming since I was a child, and I will be sixty this year. I just knew a planet on which so few lived in luxury and used up the lion's share of the planet's resources was unsustainable and had to be re-adjusted. I guess I was too naive though, because I didn't realize that the Corporations and the elite would fight for an ever bigger share of an ever shrinking pie. I think John Kenneth Galbraith said that conservatives basically try to elevate greed to a positive moral value, in order to justify their own greed and get everybody else with their program.

I agree with you that our health care system needs work and I also agree that all citizens should have access to education for the benefit of society as a whole. However, current trends indicate a concerted movement in the opposite direction the right wing whackos to our south try to starve government till it can be "drowned in a bathtub, unless it is handouts to their corporate buddies. The rich don't need the government to provide services for them, or they don't think they do, though they love to help their poor friends like Ken Lay or Halliburton.

It took the French Revolution and a bit of guillotine action to straighten out the French Aristocracy and it took the Great Depression, World War II and FDR to ameliorate the excesses of the Gilded Age and Robber Barons. What will it take to put North America and the world back on the right track towards a world with true social justice this time?

Camgra, I don't think that 10% you've calculated is bureaucracy I'd bet that it's the tail end of the profits that the private insurers and facilities seek to the tune of billions every year from the U.S. public. I would be just guessing but I doubt that their system would have more bureaucracy than ours. You brought up an interesting point, though, about one of the differences between the two existing systems in that the Canadain "universal" system with all its wait list problems we still manage to have less heart disease, diabetic & obesity related problems, live statisically longer and have much lower child morality.
Alot of pro private care Canadains are just plain ignorant on the actual costs of health care here(they call it a black hole which makes me laugh, what insurance isn't and who wants to actually be sick enough to "profit" off it or even collect?) and there: the profit levels to satisfy the insatiable shareholder. Private insurers in the U.S. actually spend, typically, more every year fighting paying out claim costs than they do paying for the care the population thinks they've bought. Which is probably why the doctors who seem to be for for-profit facilties still want to collect their cash from the gov't; none of the unpleasant collections or the difficulties of telling the patient you can't afford to pay my fees.
We (Canadains) need to educate ourselves on the system, how to use it most cost effectively, educate ourselves with at least basic first aid so we have an idea of when to go to the hospital, when to go to the doctor/walk in clinic and when to stay home and care for ourselves.
In Canada, what wastes our money the most is the bottlenecking(one main one is elderly care) in our facilites because you have a shortage of "long term care beds" in a variety of forms. Some old folks would do just fine with a few hours of daily homecare, others would be better off with assisted living situations, some need constant care. But when there isn't appropriate space available they clog up the hospitals. Even with 24hr a day "home care" it would cost the system alot less than the acute care beds in the hospitals and leave the beds for the wait list people and the inevitable emergency cases. In most cases the elderly do better and are happier in "a home style" enviorment -if they can't be at home in first place.
Pharmacueticals, well I sure don't want to say that meds aren't necessary but a good diet, regular exercise, less stress would do wonders for preventing the need to use meds that, in the most part, just treat the symtoms/after effects of many illnesses not actually cure or prevent them.

Thought that I would go to the trouble to look this up, before somebody called me on it, so here is the exact words.

"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."

John Kenneth Galbraith

How about fighting back rather than giving in to the greed creep version of globalization? There is another form of globalization, which consists of the world's social movements banding together and defeating the plans of the corporations. Remember, we don't need them - they need us!

In the past year it has suddenly become popular for the right wingers to say we should adopt the European two tiered system. While I'm not saying that our system is perfect and couldn't use some adjustments one of the differences I found is that the people in the top providers, France, Germany, Switzerland and Japan pay directly 14 -20% of their income for their medical care instead of the ambigious taxation that funds the Canadain system. The Canadain gov't spends about $3500 which is about 10% of the average canadain income yearly. Not quite at par, is it?
They have better,less processed diets and generally less likely to be couch potatoes. Also they are older, smaller countries and as such have less need to develop the infastructure(medical, education, etc.) to support the population.
So how do you think we would do with using the their pay rates whether by personal / corporate taxation or directly paid by the people / corporation. I personally lean towards cutting out much of the middle man - gov't- and have the populace pay directly to B.C. Medical. I personally believe that there's way too many people cashing in top dollar paychecks who have nothing to do with the frontline care that is essential.

Predictably, I suppose, this discussion is all pro or con public health care and not about the more interesting idea Rafe is floating — that all public education should be tuition-free. Anyone here in Tyeeland want to break new ground by discussing a fresh idea, rather than rehashing the stale ones?

Too bad the depth of Rafe's concern is 'kids unready to take their places in the job market.' How about kids with no sense that they are more than employees and consumers? How about kids ready to take their places as citizens?

Post-secondary education already is heavily subsidized, a kind of socialism for the already privileged since the tuition fees that remain are just sufficient to signal who belongs and who doesn't.

Universally accessible post-secondary education is not revolutionary. Still, 'knowledge is power' and I'd welcome seeing kids who now cannot afford it — and therefore don't even consider it — offer a reality check to those who already assume this privilege as their birthright. We'd start to see a different class of people not only taking their place in the job market but in the sphere of political expression as well.

Let's go with this one, Rafe. No need to obscure it with your 'common sense' (read 'faith-healing') prescription for healthcare.

Public vs private health care misses the main point. Industries that cause health problems to begin with should pay the medical bills. 90% of cancers are caused by environmental factors. Why should victims and innocent bystanders be forced to pay for cancer treatments through either public or private insurance premiums?

Medical insurance needs to evolve into a Workers' Compensation Board (WCB) type system that extracts appropriate premiums from individual industries that cause pollution, sell junkfood etc. based on the amount of damage they're doing. This will motivate industries to produce less pollution, sell healthier food and so on. WCB premiums, ICBC premiums and tobacco taxes have dramatically reduced health problems in their respective spheres of influence by motivating constructive changes in behavior. The benefits of properly assigning financial responsibility have been proven.

Blaming victims and innocent bystanders is not rational because:
a) It's unfair.
b) Victims and innocent bystanders are not in a good position to prevent health problems to begin with, whereas those who cause the health problems are in a better position to prevent them.
c) Victims and innocent bystanders don't have deep pockets, whereas those who cause health problems tend to have very deep pockets. This is especially true of addictive products that cause health problems. Addictive products are highly profitable. When the tobacco industry started to be held financially responsible for the harm they're doing, they moved some of their investment dollars into other areas of addiction such as junkfood production. They are well aware of how much money can be made by creating addictions in children and feeding these addictions for decades while dumping the resulting health care costs onto victims and the general public.
d) Innocent bystanders resent paying for problems they didn't cause, which puts a limit on how much money can be extracted from them to feed a voracious health care system. On the other hand, there's little public sympathy for the whining and squealing of tobacco industry executives as the tax screws are tightened and they are forced to pay for the damage they're doing. The same goes for employers who provide unsafe work environments. The public has little sympathy for their whining if they get hit with increased WCB premiums.

Medical insurance premiums paid by victims and innocent bystanders are theft on the equal payment plan, regardless of whether public or private insurance systems are collecting those premiums.

... or we could have education and health care. We just need to tax our wealthy and corportations fairly. Oh I know it sounds like leftist dogma, but it works in the more progressive parts of the world. Why not North America too? Do we really want Wal-Mart and Microsoft to have more influence than government. As for the whining, corporations will whine so long as they pay any tax at all.

I've been finding it difficult to take Mair seriously for awhile now, and am a tad taken aback Tyee continues to give him "progressive" credibility. (Which is the kind of thing that happens when one tries to be all things to all people-, seeming to be the MacLean's Mag road they have chosen to go down. Indeed, with some notable exceptions, most of the "left wing" material provided editorially, like CNN, is typically pretty tame stuff.)

Suffice it to say that on health care, Mair totes the pretty straight out corporate "privatized" line, which the Canadian majority continues to reject in poll after poll. But, as is typical in the corporate system, they are going to keep going after the "mixed/privatized" health care thing, mixed being merely but a lead in phase to the latter over time, until they get the result they want anyway. Their pockets are deep enough to produce whatever result they want and take up.

Shaft to where the sun doesn't shine, what the corporate agenda wants on either health care or education. Tax the bastards to the same relative level as ordinary folks, making them pay their share, instead of turning it back to them as corporate welfare, and provide universally available "on demand" education and health care.

Better yet, truly democratize with worker, community and interest group representation and control, all health care institutions, bar none, private or otherwise, along with all corporations throughout the economy, and we'll sort out the financing of health care and education ourselves. This bullshit ruling class and corporate media game of button, button, who's got the button needs to be brought to an end, once and for all.

Hell folks, ain't the message of the decades since the late 70s clear enough yet? The new de-regulated and privatized neoconazi capitalism is a bust. Our society is on the social skids and getting worse all the time. It worked better when we regulated and controlled the assholes.

What? Is the economy and our social services network, including health and education, going to have to hit a brick wall and totally fall in on itself before more of us get it? That capitalism is an already advanced cockup and wreck looking for a place to happen, unless you're in that cocooned protective bubble of ruling class great wealth and power.

Kinda looks that way.

Eh, is that coffee I smell? The old lady must be up. :-)

Anybody who reads and quotes Friedman as a serious writer has problems.The man is nothing more than an overpaid PR hack. This so called globalization is here because people have been brainwashed to permit small groups of bureaucrats to decide their fate and because governments are signing criminal treaties, selling out their peoples, to please big business. In other words, the present system of globalization is a mixture of fascism and communism collectivizing the world's economies by depriving people of their democratic decision making powers.

Is this crime wave of globalization really unstoppable? I remember when Hitler's Thousand Year Reich and Stalin's Communists Workers Paradise were also unstoppable. One of these days people may just wake up and kick these PR hacks in the ass and demand the reinstitution of democracy.

In any case, under NAFTA there can not be a so called Two Tier Health care system, because the minute foreign service providers enter the country, they can demand the wiping out of the public health care system. Chapter 11.

If Rafe Mair doesn't know this he's misleading people either through ignorance, or ideological
mind enslavement. Ed Deak, Big Lake,

Cycling commuter, the biggest threat to our healthcare system and social services is not those who die prematurely, but those who try to live forever, and spend years draining our system.

dangrice.com your correct, should you be lost and injured due to airplane crash,lost and injured at sea, lost and injured in back country skiing, lost and injured back packing, fell off your veranda and injured in the gulf islands(due to not having a railing in place) injured due to a fall from your bicycle, these are all drains on our health care and social services, for all these reasons you will be left to manage your own circumstances,why should I pay for your misfortunes, now we can save the system money.

dangrice.com: Who has paid into our system for the longest period of time? Who once took care of us and who fought for our freedom? Who fought for medicare in the first place?

Who is really draining our system?

Get rid of those those private, foreign companies that are draining our medical system, running away with our money, and need the plug pulled on them...get rid of them first...and then the politicians that front for them. Then pull the plug on those big, fat salaries for the business CEO's now running our health authorities for Gordo and his privatization crew...that, at least, would be a good start.

Which is crap too. The reality is, other than humane pain easment practice, when it becomes clear that death is the only possible outcome, and quality of life basically non-existant, more and more the practice is, in fact, to ease rather than prolong the passage to death. I worked in the hospital care system for ten years and know of what I speak.

There are those who demand all intervention, reasonable or unreasonable, of course, and sometimes they get their way, but typically they are right wing and religious zealot "cause celebre" and "right to lifer" loonies, out to score fundamentalist religious and rightist political points. (Who reverse it onto its head, like the recent example of the woman in the US who was brain-dead for fifteen years, with no appparent awareness of their contradiction, like dangrice.com here, only when it serves another purpose. It's the classic Brownshirt style.)

No doubt, there may be some work that needs to be done on this point of how long to intervene in the prolonging of life, I would assume case by case, to determine the precise point where "intervention" is a waste of time and futile, and indeed even unnecessarily cruel. We all know on which side "privatized care" will tend to err however, depending on how deep your pockets are, with "the poor" tending to reach death's door much quicker than the wealthy-, where the formers interest especially, begins to interfere with the profit bottomline.

In the privatized model of care, the only time the poor will have ever got to a place ahead of the wealthy, is when its to and through Death's Door.

Dangrice, not unlike his mentor Mair, with his right wing "ageist" and anti-poor and working class view of health care accessibility is the real biggest threat to universal AND equal access to quality medical care. When cash becomes the determinant, we know to what class strata the lesser will invariably fall.

The real solution? Return to a system of properly funded health care and education through a system of equitable taxation based on ability to pay. End the system of wealthy and corporate welfare NOW.

You want to encourage business activity? Put money into the pockets of the poor and other working class strata, and watch "business" get off its ass trying to come up with new ways and products, and real economic activity, to separate these folks from the contents of their wallets. Create "demand pull" on meaningful economic activity in this way. Put worker consumers with cash in their pockets, now marginalized and indebted up to their assholes, back into the economy AND observe the "trickle up" effects that are the real way this thing works. Trickle down economics has been a well demonstrated failure since Friedman and the neo-liberal economists.

Handouts to the wealthy and corporations only makes them lazy. :-)

Stop the bullshit.

Ahh..a very fine piece Coyote...especially liked the succinct last line to dangrice.com who delights in using the vulnerable as scapegoats for the failure of a system based on corporate welfare...

My bank once let me go bankrupt rather than assist me with some temporary mortguage difficulties. They then sold the property to one of the manager's buds for a third of it's value. Another bank once stole my 15 year old daughter's trust account due to a "prolonged period of inactivity", while she was in Europe.(2 years) I have another "Savings" account at another bank and it has a negative balance because of bogus "service charges" that keep the account open. Banks only know how to do one thing well and that thing is ripping off thier clients. BTW... anyone out there feel well served by oil companies, railways, trucks, airlines or any other entity in the private realm of providing services. Remember... "your call is important to us so please continue to hold."

Good one, Eddy Haskel. I'm still chuckling at its truth.

Mr. Mair is raising a question which should concern us all: we don't generate enough tax revenues to pay for our health care costs. The prime example is Saskatchewan, where all tax revenues from all sources do not even meet the provincial expenditures on health care alone (Saskatchewan makes up the difference through transfer payments). Public policy is about choices: we can choose to spend all of our tax dollars on health care (and this is the scenario we have followed in the past decade) to the exclusion of other things. It's worth discussing the tradeoffs.

Eddy Haskel,

You asked:

"BTW... anyone out there feel well served by oil companies, railways, trucks, airlines or any other entity in the private realm of providing services?"

From cradle to grave, we exist to be milked - even by some whose code includes, "...to do no harm".

You failed to mention the pharmacuetical industry - perhaps because the venality within it is now common knowledge. A U.S. company supplying a drug used to fight cancer has just increased the cost to B.C. patients and doctors nine-fold

When we're talking about "tax revenue" we should remember that profits are also a form of unilateral taxation. When the richest country on Earth, by the name of Canada, ask the World Bank, has trouble paying for health, education or even food for its people, there's something wrong with thre cash flow from resource conversion.

It always amuses me when special interest groups, like the Conservative Party, keep complaining about taxes, but never mention excess profits.

Both taxes and profits are necessary for the survival of a society and economy, but there must be a bit logic used on whether either of them should be unlimited ? E.g. What use, or good are outfits, like Weyerheauser, or CN (Canadian No more) for the Canadian, or BC economy ? How much taxes do they pay and how much do they take out of BC? No, kiddies, they are not employing people. It is the resource base that employs them. Ed Deak, Big Lake.

Our federal budgetting process is flawed and continually understates our income and overstates our costs, depriving social programs in the false name of fiscal responsibility. Our EI fund stands with a $46 billion surplus.
We do not have a shortage of wealth in Canada and it is certainly unnecessary to attack one social program to finance another.
Rafe's simplistic argument relies on assumptions that the private sector can do health cheaper. Does he feel the same way about public education? We've already privatized our Government.

Skeptikool... you might recall the Red Cross blood scandal under Rye and Baloney's watch during the Eighties. The company collecting the blood was using the Arkansas penal system to obtain the product. When it was learned that the blood was tainted the company stepped up both collection and sales in an effort to maximize profits. The company was also an avid Clinton supporter and when Clinton tried to expand medicare in the US and was planning to give the contracts to his pals the political right in the US used that fact to defeat the process by stating... "look what they did to Canada!"

"I offer the argument of common sense and admit that someone else will have to crunch the appropriate figures"

If one statement can sum up right-wing ideology it's gotta be this one.

And yet after someone does the math for them they still wrap themselves in what they call "common-sense".

Great comments you guys, loved your illustration Eddy Haskel another example of the Tyee comments section being a better read than the actual article.

Just Me, great line : "How about kids with no sense that they are more than employees and consumers? How about kids ready to take their places as citizens?"

Says it all.

Drug companies are the real pirates here. The largest increase in expenditures in our health care system is due to drug costs. Factor in the cost to our health care system from adverse drug reactions, and the costs would really be overwhelming to digest. We need to change doctors attitudes with the prescription pad.

C'mon now. Credit where credit is due. Mr. Mair may be on the right track. The wealthy are willing to sacrifice themselves by removing themselves from the poor people's medical system even before they complete its destruction, so they can establish the private for profit one to be ready for to rescue us all when the time comes.

It's just so altruistic. It brings tears to the eye, such civic unselfishness. But we can't let em do it, you know. It's too slow and lingering and cruel. I have a better way.

Most illness comes of poor nutrition amomg the subsidised classes. We should cook the rich and feed them to the poor. The increased high quality protein in their diet will make the poor much healthier, and their demands on the medical system will diminish, thus saving medicare for the future!

Plus, the high rate of death duties will be a windfall for the provincial treasuries out of all proportion to the numbers who are volunteering so selflessly to help. I recommend we start with the Billionaires, then gradually descend through the list of those who actually paid less taxes after the Great Liberal Pay-For-Itself Tax Break.

Let's hear three cheers for the selfless rich for being so selflessly willing to remove themselves from the system they laboured so hard and so long to wreck.

Hip hip.....

Coyote, i agree an earlier comment sounded a little ageist, it was meant to be a rebuttal towards some earlier comments stating that we some should have to pay more for taking risks, but i didn't add the context.

Living longer does cost more, that doesn't mean I'm advocating kicking them off medicare, it was more to say i'm against these pricks who want to tell me how to live my life, who would prefer i live a boring lifestyle, safe dull, and in a bubble. Show me how I'm costing the system more in the long run, and I'll show them they are wrong. Thats a moralizing argument, and i cannot stand moralizing arguments by people who think their choices are better than mine.

And what is wrong with Rafe's argument. He's not advocating eliminating public healthcare, he's just stating that if someone wants to go out of their way and pay for something completely out of pocket that they've already paid in their taxes, then let them. The whole "universal" and "equal" is way to communistic for modern tastes. Universal healthcare is good for society, it ensures people have a safety net so that if they get injured they can get back into being a productive citizen, there are great advantages in cost structure in have a public system over a private system, but that doesn't prevent you from having both. I don't think it is the government's role to prevent people from seeking alternatives within their own country, and neither do the courts. As long as a minimum standard is set.

And you know, what this has nothing to do with working class and the poor. You do realize the rich pay for the healthcare of the poor.

And you think there is such a thing as handouts to the wealthly or corporate welfare? If you're talking about federal money being wasted in pet projects to bombardier, I'll agree with you. However, why don't we flip the tables and eliminate handouts. We'll start with a flat tax, so everyone pays the same. We'll get rid of tax writeoffs, as well as the break on taxes for the first 10k. Or we could move to a user pay system, where we only pay for the resources we use. The rich would love to have universal and equal treatment. They would love to get rid of tax brackets which make them contribute a far larger portion of their income to the government that the working class while using far less resources. Anyways, drop the i hate the rich rhetoric, its pointless, not one bit progressive, and takes away from the issues.

That being said, you did diverge on something rather interesting, which is the social credit (not WACs, but the original) idea of universal redistribution. Where everyone receives a divident from the public coffers. I've always been curious to whether that could be possible in a global economy.

Also, I was sifting between articles, and I see a clear comparison between conservatives arguing that gay marriage should never be legalized, and progressives arguing that private healthcare should never be legalized. In both cases we're talking about one group trying to impose their moral code on another group. We have the same arguments essentially: the slippery slop argument, if we do this, what will happen next; the sentimental, we are rewriting a traditional definition and a proud institution; and in both cases, its about preventing a minority from choosing their own lifestyle, when their choices have no bearing on how the majority live there lives.

Way back when Friedman's book came out he was on hour long interviews with Charlie Rose and Russert and anyone else who will listen to him. I think there was a headline just recently blaring "Freidman Wrong Again".

I can't remember how many times Ive heard Doctors say the waiting times are caused by the lack of operating facilities and time they are allowed to operate - imagine a surgeon being allowed to operate twice in a week for knee and hip replacements, etc. If common sense and number crunching were truly used the way the health care money is distributed should be changed and hundred of MRI machines be purchased and many of the hospital wings that were closed down be reopened and let the Doctors do what they really want to do - help people! I think when Gordo was closing down hospitals or hospital wings and courthouses it was a planned to gear down to this result of forcing the public to accept the idea of private care facilities. Also I agree with Lynn about the overpaid CEO's.

I think the Federal gov should make some of these things a stipulation to be enforced then doleing out our money to the Premiers.

But, those difficult and unpopular decisions
Rafe talked about wouldn't be any good if good old fashioned common sense were used and we all pulled together for the common good of the country - no it would just dash the ambitious greedy dreams of some.

"the biggest threat to our healthcare system and social services is not those who die prematurely, but those who try to live forever, and spend years draining our system."

People who suffer health damage caused by irresponsible industries seldom die nice, clean, fast deaths. For example, children who are exposed to lead that gets into the environment from smelters, garbage landfill leachates, hunters' shotgun pellets, improperly disposed of car batteries etc. don't instantly drop dead. They tend to suffer from learning disabilities their entire lives. In many cases, their lead-induced learning difficulties prevent them from acquiring the skills necessary to obtain and hold gainful employment. So they spend their entire lives collecting welfare. Then the same individuals who own the industries that caused these people to be unemployable sneer and scoff at their victims and call them lazy.

People with severe learning disabilities tend to have all kinds of other lifelong health problems too. There are cascading effects.

Scientists have recently found high levels of lead in people with cataracts of the eyes. Again, the lead isn't killing them, but it is making them lose their eyesight. Truck drivers who lose their eyesight due to lead-induced cataracts have to wait several years for cataract surgery. In the meantime, they can't work, they're not paying taxes and they're collecting EI, then welfare. By the time they finally get their eyesight back, they've lost their trucks, their businesses have collapsed, and if they're in their 50s, they'll likely spend the rest of their pre-pension years on welfare being sneered at by the industrialists who caused their problems.

Considering the link between lead and cataracts, lead shotgun pellets and fishing weights should be outlawed. All other products containing lead should be hit with a hefty recycling fee at the retail level. Computer monitors and TV sets contain huge amounts of lead. Alberta has already imposed retail level recycling fees of $25 to $40 on computer monitors and TVs. Ralphie is smart enough to realize that lead pollution causes people to be unemployable, and unemployable people always vote NDP - never Conservative.

Deafness is not an inevitable consequence of aging. Most elderly people in non-industrial countries have perfect hearing, but that's not the case in industrial countries. I don't want to eliminate industry, but if the manufacturers of Harleys, leaf blowers and pressure washers had to pay for all the hearing aids their products create the necessity for, they would very quickly redesign their products to be a lot quieter.

Quieter technologies have existed for decades, but as long as the deafness costs of noisy products can be offloaded onto victims and the general public, the quieter technologies won't be rolling off production lines any time soon.

Another example is asthma caused by smog. Lots of kids have expensive-to-treat smog-induced asthma and will live many years with it.

A further example is diabetes. Diabetes doesn't kill people right away. It often destroys the kidneys, which leaves fairly young patients on dialysis at a cost of up to $50,000 per year for decades. Some go blind or lose limbs. Other expensive diabetes side-effects include heart disease. A 1998 estimate pegged the economic burden of diabetes in Canada at $7 billion per year. The rate of diabetes is skyrocketing. Industries that cause diabetes are making massive profits, while dumping the health care costs onto the rest of us.

One of my relatives will celebrate his 102nd birthday later this year. Throughout his entire life, he has had very little to do with the sickness industry. He's an important asset to a proper health care system in that he's living proof of the fact that a rational lifestyle can substantially reduce the need for an expensive sickness industry. As a healthy and active 101-year-old, his health care theories are a lot more credible than the theories of doctors, academics, the Fraser Institute, the NDP, or any of their followers.

My 101 year old relative can read a newspaper without reading glasses. He can hear perfectly without a hearing aid. His mind is sharp - sharper than a lot of 20-year-olds, especially 20-year-olds who sniff glue, smoke crack, or use crystal meth. He doesn't forget things. He walks a couple of blocks every day to check out his Post Office box. His greatest joys in life have been reading, girlfriends, the occasional very small glass of vodka, and his pet cats. He has never smoked. He has never eaten a lot of sugary foods. He eats vegetables. He eats fish and a small amount of meat, but he has always trimmed-off the fat and fed it to his cats (cats need lots of fat).

Since he has always lived in a very small town, he has never been exposed to smog from cars. He doesn't live downwind from a pulp mill, coal-fired power plant, nuclear reactor or plastics factory. He doesn't live downstream from any mines or municipal garbage landfill sites. He does live near farms that spray pesticides on their crops. That's most likely why he had surgery for prostate cancer a few years ago. The prostate cancer incident has been his only major exposure to the sickness industry.

My 101-year-old relative has always been fairly laid-back about life. He has a strong sense of humour. The only thing that seems to anger him is his recollection of the way the government confiscated farms from struggling families who couldn't afford to pay land taxes during the great depression. Farmers had no problem growing lots of healthy food for their kids with enough left over to give free food to their hungry neighbors in town. But they had no cash for taxes. After the government confiscated the farms and sold them for taxes, the farmers' kids went hungry. The townsfolk too. In the meantime, the postmaster and other fat-bellied government workers drove around town in their shiny new Cadillacs.

When the time is up for my 101 year old relative, he'll likely just quietly fade-away in his sleep as a female relative did at age 104 some years ago. For her, there were no expensive medical procedures. She just sort of got bored with life and faded-away after her 98-year-old boyfriend had to leave town to be with his kids when they moved.

You seem to think that declining health is inevitable as we age. This reminds me of a scientist's discussion with a Taxi driver who was taking him to an international conference on obesity. The obese taxi driver said he was saving his money so that when he needed a coronary bypass, he'd have enough in his bank account to hire the very best surgeon around. It never dawned on the driver that he could bypass the need for a bypass by means of a healthier lifestyle.

It's true that my 101-year-old relative has been collecting a pension for over 36 years. I'm strongly in favour of doing-away with automatic, mandatory retirement at age 65. Some people have rotted their minds with excessive alcohol or other drugs (including prescription drugs) by age 50. The sooner they retire, the better. Others have perfectly sound minds well into their 90s.

While doing some technical research, I came across a series of interesting papers written by a scientist during the early 1960s. He was in his 50s at the time the papers were written. I figured he would have been long since retired and deceased. But after I did a little more digging, I found that he was still working part-time in his late 90s as the editor of a prestigious technical journal!

A rigid, mandatory retirement system is unnatural and unhealthy. Too many retirees become inactive, spending every waking hour sitting in front of a TV set munching Cheezos and drinking beer. A more rational system would let workers start tapering-off their working hours as soon as their financial needs start to decline - generally when their kids grow up and leave home and their mortgage is paid-off. A lot of people would like to work part-time at a regular boring job for a small but steady income while doing some sort of exciting and creative entrepreneurial work the rest of the time.

Union bosses usually fight against flexible retirement, flexible working hours, and flexible job descriptions. They prefer to use their bureaucratic collective agreement sledgehammers to bludgeon and pound individual human beings into identical, narrow little job description pigeonholes. Too many union bosses think everybody should be forced to do exactly the same boring work every day for exactly 7.5 hours per day for 40 years until age 65, then 0 hours per day thereafter. This is one of the reasons why I deeply despise a lot of unions. I was a union treasurer in my early 20s. I resigned because I got to see from the inside how controlling, corrupt, self-serving, and just plain stupid some of these people can be.

Getting back to the link between lifestyle and health, I'll leave you with my favorite quote from Albert Einstein. He said of one of his ideas : "I thought of it while riding my bicycle." He never said "I thought of it while sitting in my SUV at a fast food drive-through, wolfing-down great gobs of trans-fats." Junkfood doesn't just clog the coronary arteries. It also clogs the cerebral arteries, leaving people incapable of clear thought.

I don't give a hoot for mandatory retirement, as long as the pension, a good pension, starts coming at 65. My basic vocation and profession is in the arts, but I was working most of my life in so called "creative" occupations as a furniture designer and custom furniture maker, aside from farming, which almost killed me with poisons and the organic part we're doing now is a hole in the ground we're pouring our pensions in. I consider 75 to 80% of my 50 years of "working life", meaning mandatory "money earning" life, complete waste. With most people today it is 90 to 95%. They produce junk and pollution for no rational reasons, waste their lives sitting by desks pushing computer keys and worthless paper around.

Since I "retired" 13 years ago, finally I can do things I always wanted to do. I'm a workaholic, as long as there's no monetary demand at the end. Both my wife and I are working 7 days a week, without any holidays. Constantly designing and building things, painting etc. either for ourselves, or to give away. Recently I gave 13 top notch paintings to a young woman, who modeled for us for about 10 hours. Right now I'm painting a series on the figure in dance movements, which will never be offered for sale, and building a twin axle stock trailer and a sorting corral for our cattle. My wife is similarly occupied with her artwork, gardening and so on. In other words, our pensions gave us the kind of life we've been dreaming about. I would sooner be dead than have to work for money again, wasting my precious last years.

I fully agree that many who retire just fade away with "nothing to do", but to "travel" and waiting for death. We've seen many, some who drank themselves to death in a year. As far I'm concerned, if somebody is that stupid they deserve to die, as they're useless as human beings either to themselves, or to society at large. If anybody wants to "make money" after 65, it is their business, but they may be taking jobs away from young people. There are millions of very useful, creative things 65 and older people can do . If they don't, it is their own fault and good riddance. Ed Deak, Big Lake.

Progressive Taxation in this country could more than pay for education, health care and other social programmes. We do not as Rafe suggests need to start privatizing health care. All we need to do is create a tax system that can support the programmes that Canadians time and time again demand. I am not a supporter of the green party for various reasons but they have been proponents of polluter pay taxation for sometime now. The contributers to this debate who have mentioned that a major cost to our health care system is due to industrial pollution and harmful chemicals. Imagine if Health Canada actually did its job! For forty years now, since Rachel Carson eloquently told us in Silent Spring, we have knowingly allowed dangerous chemicals enter our foodchain directly and indirectly through environmental pollution, application of pesticides and waste dumps. The costs of the rape and pillaging of our country are being paid for by us directly through our taxes and our health. One final thought: The NDP needs to get with reality and offer a serious alternative to the liberal/conservative hegemony. This will mean high level dialogue with the greens and an end to the big labour union affiliation. I am not anti-union by any stretch, but unfortunateley, too often unions have a vested interest in the industries that cause huge pollution and other catastrophies such as deforestation here in BC. Rafe is right that we are headed for some rough times ahead, but I believe that the problem is political and ideological. We have the intelligence to face the uncertaintly, unfortunately there is a large vested interest to keep the status quo so the plunder of Canada can continue.

"

Great quote you offered 8 hours ago dangrice.com.

Screw your flat tax, your two-tiered help for the wealthy and tell your corporate friends to simply pay all that outstanding deferred tax not sitting in Ottawa where it ought to be.

There isn't a shortage of money to maintain and improve Canada's univeral health care system.

There is only a lack of politicians willing to stand up to these people who get filthy rich while crying corporate poverty (corporate welfare), before heading off to holiday.

'Also, I was sifting between articles, and I see a clear comparison between conservatives arguing that gay marriage should never be legalized, and progressives arguing that private healthcare should never be legalized. In both cases we're talking about one group trying to impose their moral code on another group' dangrice; since when is the debate between public and private health care a moral issue? that's exactly the problem with our system; the left has made this an ideological issue and that makes absolutely no sense. the concept of universality, which is untouchable if you're on the left, has created a nation of mediocrity, and we're desperately falling behind because of it. the socialists need to get their heads out of their asses, realize that universal health care no longer works, and show some pragmatism for a change. even the cbc's 'greatest canadian' would probably realize that today.

Good one, Bailey. Another chuckle.

These right wing-nuts spin such lines of drivel, often overlapping and contradicting one another. They don't even seem to care if we notice.

Too often, they are the waste of a reply. Dangrice spins his wheels longer than say, sirjohna, who quickly runs out of concentration and gas, but no less just grunts, spits and farts interminably as a substitute for serious discussion.

Left is left and right is right, and nair the twain shall meet. :-)

Workers for Sodexco(French multinational) who replaced fired hospital workers have recently voted 96% in favour of job action because the employer can only find 20 cents for a raise. These people are underpaid, few earn even $10 per hour and many have a second or third job. Few last for more than a year. They do the crappiest jobs until they burn out and are replaced by the seemingly endless supply of marginalised workers (most are women). Sodexco didn't create these conditions, the Liberals did with a breathtakingly illegal attack on constitutional rights in Bill 29. You can look it up.

Camgra, how can you say Sodexco didn't create these conditions? They knew the Liberals broke a legal contract to solicit and hire their services. They put their proposal forth with these poverty level wages turning the rest of the contracts' value into outflowing profit. They move personnel or short them hours to prevent the Co. from having to pay benefits. They don't care the plight of their workers. They have a history world wide of crappy results for the dollar and poor respect for the workers. While I agree the bulk of the blame should land on the Liberals for even beginning this mess the Co.'s involved should shoulder some too simply because of their behaviours.

dangrice, I've got a better idea than a flat tax. How about no taxes at all? Wouldn't that be fair to everyone?

With no government and no police the economic readjustment of society on the Darwinian model should take about a week.

The wealthy benefit more from government than the poor do.

Right on Frank! That one made my day :-)

CRH - I think drug costs are the biggest problem too. They say they need to charge so much so that they can afford to do research. And what do they come up with? Pills to give you a hard on, pills to make you 'well-adjusted', pills to lower your cholesterol so you dont have to give up your triple burgers with 2 pounds of fries on the side, etc etc ad nauseum. And if that pill gives you headaches, well there's another pill for that. And if that pill makes you drowsy, well then there's another pill for that. How about we take all of that crap and make it the second tier of health care for the idiots who can afford it, and nationalize all the work on actual cures that people actually need? Let's have the government supported/owned life saving pharmaceutical industry, and then the moron supported comfort drug industry. That's something I could support.

An excellent idea, Frank. Then we'll find out as my grandfather used to say "who really knows how to tie their own shoelaces". The Seven Day Revolution...you've got the timeline just about right as well...

Like Mel from Calgary and a number of other commentors have observed, the lofty assumptions made in this article about the selfless private system are just pretty damn funny.

The public health system is not a "bone tired cliche"...it is a very good, simple, timeless idea that remains so...despite the relentless attempts to discredit it... allowing the privatized foot to wedge itself in the door has contributed most to weakening the system and tampering with its effectiveness.

Rafe's allusion to education via Friedman is even more interesting...the belief that "properly trained people to deal with an utterly different workplace" will be necessary for economic survival. And that's a big hint as to the desired direction of so-called "education" under the Right.

There is not a better investment a society can make than universal accessiblity to education... but it has to be about the quest for knowledge and the advancing of critical thinking ...not just job creation as is obvious in Friedman's and Rafe's interpretation of it. Not just to facilitate globalization's hungry need for labour and management.

No, the corporate hand has its fingers all over this idea...this kind of education will come with a price...the last thing THEY want is for people to be able to think for themselves.

Coyote, how did you know I had a stomach ache? I think I'm still able to put out some half decent drivel, even in my melancholy.

I actually am a strong believer in the social contract, and support social service spending. I strongly support public education, and healthcare and high spending on it, as well as I sort capitalism. But if you're so deadset against free enterprise, I'll have to say we differ on that. A highly educated and healthly population is good for the economy, and I'm not against redistribution of wealth, if done sensibly. As frank mentions, those who profit should pay much more to maintain their status, property, and freedoms.

The solution is not to aim to penalize those who achieve success, it is to figure out what we need to do to raise the bar for those at the lower end. Some of the richest people on the planet spend more than countries do in reaching out to third world nations. Aim not to stop the rich from being rich, but on finding solutions and come up with business plans for dealing with social issues. Then perhaps, we can find more people who will voluntarily invest in our own well being.

It is no good to polarize society by breaking it down into rich and poor, and using ideologies to justify it.

hey dangrice; you should enter a beauty contest. you'll get all the tough questions just right.

There's no such thing as "free enterprise". Never has been, or will be. It is a propaganda a catchword for the licenced power of exploitation by special interest sectors. It is on the same level with the nazis' and communists' claim of "fighting for freedom".

By the way, I'm a dedicated private, as opposed to "free" enterpriser, business owner in BC since 1957, so I do know a couple of things about how this so called "free" enterprise works. E.g. I sold a business in Vancouver in 1978, but as the new owner didn't have the cash, I kept majority shares. When we were moving the guy begged me to give him majority, so he can make decisions after I'm gone, with tears in his eyes. So, being a good guy and desperate to get the hell out of Vancouver, I gave him the shares. His first act was to set up a dummy company, which he used to buy the products of my business at half prices and resell them at double. He ran my company to the verge of bankruptcy, careful not to go all the way to maintain the name and the 22 year established reputation of the business. Then, when the arbitrator went after him he threatened to put the business into bankruptcy, unless I take .20 cents on the dollar. It was perfectly legal, I had no leg to stand on and had to take my losses after 22 years of 60-80 hour workweeks.

Fraud ? Cheating, or crime ? No way. This is every day "free enterprise" business practice that made some of our biggest name billionaires super rich. I could easily name names and cases I've known of and have seen, but don't need any libel suits.

As far "investment" is concerned, there's no such thing. It is a small loan to prime the pump for perpetual flow. Foreign investment is the biggest fraud in history, an everlasting and daily growing debtload, enslaving and ruining the lives of billions. A lot of people are beginning to wake up to this fraud, even here in sucker Canada, where our idiot politicians are still begging for more, selling the country to crooks.

As I said, I'm all for private enterprise, locally owned businesses, the family farm, but when from what I've seen in my business life, these mammoth corporations are nothing more than criminal organizations whose CEOs and Boards should be in jail. They should be destroyed tomorrow, broken up and handed over to local enterprisers and communities.

Neoclassical market capitalism now kills more people on a long term daily basis than both World Wars and the death camps of Stalin, Hitler and Mao put together. A child dies of starvation and poverty somewhere around the Earth every 5 seconds, 3 seconds in Africa, while these criminals are playing the money markets, turning over up to $2. trillion every day, with taxfree profits from the blood of millions. To hell with them and those who support them. Ed Deak, Big Lake.

I support publicly-funded health insurance, but how to do this gets complicated when you look at it closely.

A few years ago I was a technical writer for the Romanow Commission on the future of health care in Canada, and had the opportunity to sit in on several discussions that were held among the health care bigwigs. One panel was trying to decide which services should be "core" or essential services that should be provided to all Canadians under our public health insurance. Their intent was to identify a cluster of essential services, and then leave the rest to the private marketplace.

At first there were the relatively "easy" choices, from a medical professional's perspective, which eliminated therapies that had not yet undergone western-style medical testing, such as shiatsu, acupressure and other so-called "alternative" medicine techniques. Many of these services have since been de-listed from our provincial health care insurance. I think this is regrettable because many of these therapies help to treat chronic conditions and/or were considered beneficial as "preventive" medicine. It is extremely difficult for these professionals and health economists to support these therapies because they (largely) aren't trained in their use and they are unable to demonstrate how many illnesses and deaths could have been prevented through alternative, preventive medicine. (that is, illnesses & deaths prevented are not countable because they didn't happen)

So we already have a two-tier system, in which there is a cluster of health services which are publicly supported, and another cluster which must be paid for through private insurance or directly from the consumer. I would find it a whole lot easier to unequivocally support public health care if some of the services I use regularly (in my case, shiatsu therapy) were part of the public health insurance package.

Beyond the simple western medicine vs alternative therapies question, there was also vast disagreement on which western therapies were suitable for public health insurance. The big disagreements between dedicated, public-sector health care professionals really muddied the waters for me as to how much health care should be provided by the public system. I'd like to see some clear criteria to make the distinction to help us with this debate.

Very interesting and good points. We switched over to homeopathics years ago, with excellent results, while our contemporaries are creeping along, overloaded on medications. We may have to see a doctor in case of injury, but our costs to the official medicare system have been and are virtually nil, for years. Of course, we cover the costs ourselves and never expected to get paid for them. On the other hand, we feel that they should be tax deductible as ordinary medications and other services are.

Even the arch capitalist WAC Bennett realized that people should have some kind of hospital coverage. That's how the 5% SSMA tax came into being. We had some friends back in the '50s who had a boy in Vancouver, which cost them $5, in hospital fees, at $1/per day. Then they moved to New York and had another boy, at a hospital fee of $500. Today it might be $5000.

The most important point is to keep foreign service providers out of Canada, because if they're permitted in they will destroy any degree of human rights and common decency.
Ed Deak, Big Lake.

Private medical insures, Private auto insures, Private hwys maitenance, are all cut from the same cloth,Their bottom line is profit and lots of and screw all those in between, thats their creed, oh I almost that other hemorrhoid in this equation The Life insures, their pretty quick at comeing between a fool and his money, in the states the insurance companies. bombard the yanks with constant advertising about the virtues of insurance and they swallow hook line and sinker, in the states you don't have a crap unless you have crap insurance, or at the very least don't let any use the crapper with out proper coverage,then don't forget the wipe policy, just in case a guest should slip during his wipe, aw forget it you guy's get the picture

Well. look at this. A story buried away in today's G&M states that ICBC auto insurance (public), rates in BC are one third or more cheaper than the privatized auto insurance offered in Ralpho land across the Rockies.

Oh say it ain't so. Public insurance, like public health care is less expensive than the for profit sort most of Canada suffers through?

Wow!

I think I'll just thank Dave Barrett for that little gift way back when the capitalists began yelling "the sky's falling, the sky's falling.

Sure is and the public insurance rates are too.

Say isn't that Barret guy just like Douglas, another pinko trying to bring ruination to Canada?

Oh well, maybe Ron Erwin can clarify this for us.

I'm 78, driving a truck with an agricultural plate. My ICBC rate is about $660/yr. In some provinces private insurers don't even accept farm vehicles and by conservative estimate, my insurance would be several thousand dollars under any private scheme.

Then, private companies pay as much and when they feel like it. Around 1970, before ICBC, an old guy hit my stationary, parked Ford van on 47th Ave, in Vancouver. The damage was estimated at $450. His New York based company sent me a cheque for $350. with a release form, which I refused to accept. The company's Vancouver agents ignored me. I was driving my van with a smashed front, couldn't open the driver's door and had to climb over the engine in and out, for 5-1/2 months. Finally, I told the old guy that unfortunately, I'll have to take him to small debts court and he sent me a personal cheque. This is only one in a long row of disgusting experiences with private insurers. I'd almost be ready to pick up a gun and fight against any attempt for the privatization of ICBC. Ed Deak, Big Lake.

It is chilling that corporations that are not even human enjoy such a status in the law that the threat of libel forces an average person to censor their own narrative. We tolerate behaviours from corporations that a five tear old wouldn't get away with, although that is the problem: corporations are treated as humans for the purposes of law but in practical terms this breaks down. Corporations don't die, the ones who don't go bankrupt outright have a theoretically endless life full of corporate growth. They have They are accountable only to invisible shareholders(you and me?) and not really accountable to them either in practise: see Enron, MCI, CitiBank, World Com blah blah blah. Capital punishment for corporations!

It is chilling that corporations that are not even human enjoy such a status in the law that the threat of libel forces an average person to censor his own narrative. We tolerate behaviours from corporations that a five year old wouldn't get away with, although that is the problem: corporations are treated as humans for the purposes of law but in practical terms this breaks down. Corporations don't die, the ones who don't go bankrupt outright have a theoretically endless life full of corporate growth. They are accountable only to invisible shareholders(you and me?) and not really accountable to them either in practise: see Enron, MCI, CitiBank, World Com blah blah blah. Capital punishment for corporations!

nice try allan; if dave 'the little fat guy' barrett had run icbc for more than 3 years it would have been a complete disaster. the only reason it is in such good shape is b/c gordo brought in nick geer, a real businessman, to run it until his resignation last year. and that's the truth.
camgra; without corporations there would be no economy, hence no employment, and who would contribute all the taxes for your welfare cheques?

Corporations don't create employment, the resources they use do. I owned 3 corporations, so I should know a little bit. Without resources there's nothing. Europe had all kinds of monies, corporations and businesses, manpower, skills, idle machinery etc, after WW2, but no resources, so nothing was done, except clearing ruins and starving. I was there for 3 years after the war and have seen what was happening.

How many businesses did you have sirjohna? Considering all the blurb coming from you, when are you going to say something? Ed Deak, Big Lake.

big ed; do you realize that your last post made absolutely no sense?

That depends on your level of intelligence,
Ed Deak, Big Lake.

sirjohna say what you wish about cuddly dave,but he is the father of ICBC,two things that had better not be FUCKED WITH or FUCKED UP in this province, ICBC or BC MEDICAL, there are many of us with the same mind set as FIAT LUX when it comes to these two crown jewels.

I don't think privatizing ICBC would make sense. As they're tied in with road safety and licensing. They do need to be run right, but private insurers would increase litigation 10 fold.

On the other hand, the government should get out of dodge on the liquor stores.

The market dictates the cost of things and that is the way it ought to be. Taxation takes the bite out of profits, and that is way it ought to be.

Bottomline, public ownership is a bad thing as such is artificial that requires tax dollars to support, private ownership creates employment and opportunity. This is especially true in a non-union environment.

We need smaller government, less taxes, less intervention by nebulous special interest groups, and a general reduction in Union power.

big eddy; i'm extremely intelligent. 2 degrees, top of my class. your post made absolutely no sense.
woody; all that fat dave did was START icbc, which was one of only two good things the ndp have ever done for this province. the socreds then salvaged it before the ndp almost destroyed it in the 90's under bob williams reckless management. since then the liberals have made it efficient and profitable. as for the medical system, it's been a mess since elizabeth cull screwed it up in the early 90's. in fact when she was defeated in the 96 election glennie hired her to fix the mess she had made and paid her $1000/day. another ndp boondoggle. those idiots couldn't manage a peanut stand, as wac would say.

I left the mainstream media to get away from crap like just above. At least writers there are a little more articulate in their NDP-slamming.
ICBC was profitable before the Libs took over, that's why they toyed with selling it off. Libertine governments who preach privatization only sell off valuable assets to their friends(supporters) for a song. Their buddies in business are not interested in the dogs. Icbc is still public because the guy the Libs put in to facillitate the sell-off liked the publicness of the system more and more.
As for Medicare, Paul Martin drastically reduced the cash from the Feds and made it easier to spend what the Feds did give on anything, not just medicare. But sirjhna was right about one thing: it happened in the 90's.
Is it a real boondoggle, or is it merely because someone says it is? Does a boondoggle have to involve money or did the Liberals commit a bigger one when they put Aboriginal People's rights up for election?

In response to sdgreen:
You are so behind the curve, it hurts to watch.
The World Bank(!) has said that unions serve a purpose: pay people a living wage that is decent and they are hard to bribe. This is especially important in places with a lot of corruption, like some African countries. And it goes a long way to explaining how Canada had a reputation for an excellent civil service at one time, unionized as it was. Attacks by libertine apologists, such as yourself, have torpedoed morale and made the civil service easy to politicize, to the benefit of no one.
If Canadian capitalists are so benevolent, then why are more and more profits going offshore, never to return? This has been happening to the tune of $billions, since 1997, when Canada balanced its budget and recommenced corporate tax cuts. We have an economy in BC that is built solely on low interest rates, not by prudent Liberal policies. Leave trickle-down theory to the plumbers, at least they can get it right.

sdgreen, i don't like large government or monopolization any more than you. but i think there are certain areas where free market competition wouldn't necessarily have an economic benefit.

with ICBC, privatising it would create an abundance of jobs, in the legal sector. if you look at private insurers in other industries, they are often very reluctant to move into settlements. this would result in increased litigation that we would have to pay for anyways, as we flip the bill for the legal system in this country.

our no-fault legislation causes some frivolence, but I think few people would want to go back to having to sue after each accident, or being settled with the expenses of an accident. obviously, on the bureaucratic side, ICBC needs to be careful, but I do agree that Nick Geer has done a good job or reorganizing it.

also, and correct me if i'm wrong, isn't ICBC self sustaining? I don't think outside of the automobile industry the government has any duty to get into insurance, but houses, to my knowledge, very rarely run into each other. are rates may be higher than other jurisdictions, and there is room for private companies to be involved for certain aspects, but basic liability insurance like public health insurance, ensures that everyone is protected off the bat, and keeps most cases out of our courts.

It is soooo refreshing to see you neocons desperately trying to downplay the success of ICBC and it's genesis as an NDP gift to British Columbians that even el Gordo is afraid to mismantle.

In fact, I fully suspect that ICBC would be endorsed today by Wacky Bennett if he were still around, because he too realized you can't trust outside capitalists to look after the needs of BC people.

sirjohna, if you have two degrees that is certainly a surprise to vertually anyone who has parked in this web site for more than a minute.

Your inability to do anything other than trying to disrupt things here certainly offers no evidence of your claims, but rather points toward a streak of maliciousness that is beyond petty.

Did I irk you by invoking "fat" Dave's name?

sdgreen, I must say you at least attempt to offer real discussion. It's just too bad you are so locked into capitalist jargon you can't acknowledge the success of such a non-capitalist sustem as ICBC.
To suggest that ICBC would not be a success without crippling taxation as you did above, is silly.

As for profit, I'd suggest that there have been geat profits earned from ICBC, but instead of being kept for the few they have been spread around this province for the past 30 years.

I'd recommend both of you start paying a bit more attention to people like Dangrice, who may not share my political philosophies, but can at least acknowledge success.

allan; i acknowledged that icbc was one of the two good things that the socialist hordes did for this province. as for barrett's name; he was known, fondly or not, as 'the little fat guy'. as for your underestimation of my intelligence; most posters on this site almost instinctively assume that anyone who doesn't agree with their arguments is ignorant and simple. comprenez-vous monsieur?

For 3 years after WW2 I was listening in the DP camps to some of the most educated people, lawyers, doctors, professors, hiding out and trying to whitewash Hitler's actions with the same excuses and doubletalk we see now excusing the exploitation and mass murder of innocents by the neocon theory and neoclassical market economics.
Hitler "wasn't permitted to finish his great work". Now we hear the same baloney excusing the madness of Bush, Harper, Campbell and the rest of these warped minds. Fascists are fascists no matter under what flag they're rallying. I may still have some papers from Cambridge somewhere, but I'm proud to call myself an artist, cabinetmaker and farmer. At least I can say that I have accomplished something with my life, which is more than some of our politicians, economists, CEOs and their pimps can say. Ed Deak, Big Lake.

sirjohna so you have 2 degrees, hmmmmm, interesting, so has Bin Laden. comprenez-vius monsieur.

allan, i'd be careful before you claim that ICBC was a non-capitalist organization. that would be like claiming the bank of canada was a non-capitalist organization.

as a follow up, ICBC's role is to licence drivers, and to resolve claims. insurance plans are sold through third party brokers, who are quite for profit. ICBC also payed its management 18 million in bonuses last year.

Wasn't many years back ICBC handled along with auto insurance,general house insurance, they no longer handle general insurance,because the american carriers couldn't compete,they squawked and bitched,cried foul,my house policy has probably gone upwards 800-1200% since the removal and loss of ICBC general house coverage, in addition the americans now have us(canadians) subsidize 9-11,and terrorism through higher house insurance premiums, but just try to buy flood insurance here in BC you can't it's not available to you ,the broker will tell you, well only the people liveing near rivers, creeks,and low lying areas would would buy it anyway, I asked a broker where in hell can you live in BC and not be near some form of water,his answer was no answer, a shrug of the shoulders, so in lieu no flood insurance avaiable our gov't covers us the citizens with disaster coverage, now I ask why are not you so called free enterprisers complaining againsts this gov't funding (subsidy),this is one example how hypocrite the insurace companies are, we all pay more for couverage due to 9-11 which occured 4000km from here, in addition a foreign land, but they won't raise local premiums 5 or 10% in order to cover local flooding,why should they, we the tax payers are takeing the hit for them,remember these are the same DOUCHE BAGS who want your medical premium dollars, and you won't get you jack shit for coverage incidently if you live in the states and you want flood insurance, you got it just say how much coverage you want,after all the dumb canucks are helping subsise it,

Back in 1984 my daughter's mobile home, insured by ICBC, was burned to the ground in this community. We had no local fire dept at the time. She was storing some of the custom furniture I made, as we were still building and had no room. She received full coverage and we the estimated INCREASED value of the furniture within a couple of weeks after the fire.

Since then there have been more fires and the trouble people have to go through to collect on their insurance is unbelievable. One of our neighbours had to fight the company for about 8 months on a full replacement value policy.

Private insurance is the biggest racket in existence. No wonder the private companies wanted to get rid of ICBC. Now they want the vehicle insurance racket too and Gordie would be happy to give it to the "competitive enterprises", but knows that it would be political suicide for the Liberals. Ed Deak, Big Lake.

"big eddy; i'm extremely intelligent. 2 degrees, top of my class. your post made absolutely no sense."
does anyone else here smell a duplicitous pile of crap? Who refers to themselves as 'extremely' intelligent when they are debating others? No one with two non-imaginary degrees that I have ever known or worked with talks like that.
Here's another pile of self righteous crap that sirjerkboy tried to get us to buy the other night:
"i have no grief. my life is wonderful. i'm very happy, have great family and friends, and am very well respected in my community."
Again...this is a desperate and ill advised attempt to obscure what can, in reality, only be the exact opposite. The following quote from jerkboy is true for sure:
"in fact the only emotion i get from this website is pure glee at making you lefties shit your pants with frustration"
Well..the turd has turned..I can smell SJO's diaper filling up from here..anybody check out the thread on the London bombings? SJO has been trying to get me censured by the editor....I'll let you guage his success to date

woody and fiat, while i see value to ICBC in auto insurance, I won't agree with you that it should be getting back into any of those other insurance aspects anytime soon.

the difference is everyone who drives is obliged to have auto insurance, as everyone who breathes in this province is obliged to have health insurance. however other forms of insurance are commodities, and while I'd agree that some insurance companies ought to clean up their business practises, there are also some benefits to larger insurance companies such as regional disasters like a nasty fire season such we had a few years ago.

however, in a free market, you also have a choice of insurance companies, and you can very well find a cooperative plan, in which all profits are self invested in the company. just like banking, i never touch anything but a credit union myself (and mine offers no fees). we don't need the government to step in, and if we are going to give ICBC a monopoly, we need to keep very strict regulations on the extent of their activities.

Free markets exist nowhere and never have. As long as markets have unequal levels of power among the interests in the market, the rules of operation are set more and more by the bigger sharks, who see governments, at best, as enablers for the corporate wish list.
ICBC is a refreshing exception.

dangrice, no, it would be like claiming your municipal water utilities dept. isn't a capitalistic organization.

sirjohna, is that a scratched ego I read between those last lines of yours?

BTW, I wasn't underestimating your intelligence. I was questioning your real intent here at Tyee and suggesting you don't really contribute much, other than to try disrupting as often as you can.

allan
Have you googled sirjohna yet?
this nazi piece of crap has whined about welfare bums living off "good working" folks like him, yet he is to be found on sites dedicated to ripping off satelite providers... I've also found where he has registered on bangkok sex sites..is this where he gets his kiddie porn?
I'm sure many on this site are a tad uneasy with my characterizing sirjerkoff as an inbred, homosexual child molester but I am dead serious about that....more on that subject later.
My advice to SJO is to take his repressed, perverted personna to some right wing site, where they can appreciate his lying, shitforbrains style, and never come back.
It's the only way he'll be rid of me..if he stays..I'm going to keep digging into his life and analysing his shit...until he gets a visit from the vice squad..which he so richly deserves.

allan, only if its metered.

sleeps, you're way off topic, you're repeating the same sickening shit over and over again, and you're towing an ugly line on some really serious issues.

even look at your string on insults. first, why the hell are you associating homosexual and pedophilia? what kind of progressive person is going to stand next to you. and for fucks sake, molestation isn't something to be thrown around lightly and neither is child porn. if you're serious about posting this kind of shit, you're going to bring this whole site into disrepute.

this goes way past politics into the realm of decency.

S.W.A: Bravo! and next time say what you really think!

btw, Internet degees are fast and cheap.

FYI: I have one, not quite useless(with hindsight) degree(UofA) and 3/4 of a less useless degree(I hope) from Simon Fraser. The learning is the thing, (something some self-admitted, multiple-degreed people seem to have forgotten) but in the internet age a person is probably better to err on the side of more, if it seems important to disclose information about educational attainments.

What has to be remembered in all this talk is that the neolib/neocon/neoclassical movement has vested interest to discredit and destroy all public ownership and control of every part of the economy and turn it into a Road Warrior type of permanent war under the guise of "Free to Choose", the Bible of the conspiracy, originally written by Milton Friedman.

This is why they're presently engaged in the secret GATS negotiations at the WTO in Geneva, over 160 now publicly owned and controlled services thrown to the dogs of war for privatization. The treaty will, or would, strip democratic decision making powers even from municipalities. If a foreign investor should feel that a certain bylaw cuts into his profits , they will be able sue national governments for the elimination of any law, or bylaw and for compensation.

The GATS also includes our Medicare, education etc. services, eagerly supported by US service providers, already counting on big profits from Canada in their trade publications. This is called "free enterprise under free trade". Canada's ambassador at the GATS talks is former Trade Minister Sergio Marchi, who took over the OECD MAI talks from John Manley in 1996 and tried to force the treaty on Canada.

The MAI was scrapped when the French got cold feet, fearing a revolution, but now the whole text is included in all free trade talks and treaties, completely stripping elected governments of their decision making powers, supported by the Liberal and Conservative Parties. And, of course, the BC branch of the Reform/Conservative gang, the BCLiberals, hoping to sell the province and call it an "income" . Ed Deak, Big Lake.

whoa..danny boy..calm down..find some nice mellow sativa and chill
when I state that SJO is an inbred,'homosexual' pedophile it is a clinical distinction which recognizes that SJO only molests male children..not female children
crack a book why don't ya

all will be much more clear when I post my detailed analyses.

It is not enough to promise for later what is required now. Assertions are easy to make, but in the absence of evidence they appear as little more than ad hominem attacks, albeit serious ones.
If the evidence is not there, then let's just hound people who are wasting everyone's time here with clear-headed reasons to leave.
The term 'homosexual pedophile' is not a clinical one, although it conveys just enough meaning not to be totally unhelpful. But the term doesn't preclude a predator who chooses victims who are themselves homosexual even if the perpetrator is not. But as everyone knows, pedophilia is not about sex, it is about power, in the same way as rape.
Disclosure: this entry was made without the benefit of sativa.

Camgra
I've had to strap SJO onto a virtual couch and administer heavy doses of thorazine..then wait for him to display enough lucidity in order to complete my analysis..I don't want to rush this process as it would be prejudicial to the eventual outcome if I did.
btw...I didn't state that the term I used to descibe SJO was clinical, just that there is a clinical distinction used when assessing pedophiles for their specific proclivities.

If there is an issue of mental illness, there is also an issue of agency. A non-lucid person does not know right from wrong and is therefore not legally culpable. If there is an issue of mental illness it will not respond to the verbal attacks which have taken place here and in other streams. In fact, these stressors can precipitate psychosis, in vulnerable individuals, causing the very behaviours we seek to get rid of.
But, in the absence of evidence, it is all conjecture...

Let's review some of the available evidence we have that would seem to indicate our subject, sirjohna, is delusional and sociopathic:

"big eddy; i'm extremely intelligent. 2 degrees, top of my class. your post made absolutely no sense."

"i have no grief. my life is wonderful. i'm very happy, have great family and friends, and am very well respected in my community."

"in fact the only emotion i get from this website is pure glee at making you lefties shit your pants with frustration"

I have been busy studying his various posts in numerous threads on this site and have made many notes. I am convinced that a sane individual would not communicate in this manner. I am persuaded by many other indicators contained within his output here that he is a danger to others. His ego is self evident so I am hoping that there are individuals he knows personally who are aware of his alter ego and will read these posts and connect the dots...leading to an intervention.
Without face to face analysis and other hard evidence..perhaps a victim(s) filing a complaint(s), all I have is my virtual couch and virtual thorazine which I have been administering in Liberal doses.

There's nothing that wrong with delusions, they are quite normal as long as they don't involve harm to others or self. Most of us use at least one every day.

Anti-social behaviour is serious, evident early in life and correlates with higher intelligence.

Thorazine is rarely the treatment of first choice because of side effects and dubious benefits. Clozapine has success treating the positive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia better than other anti-psychotic agents but it kills a part of the immune system and you can get infected with a bacteria that attacks the heart and then, usually, you die.

If you suspect that the person you are diagnosing/torturing is a sociopath, you should know that chemicals do not help these people and it is coercive to thus use them if you are trying to gather information and nothing else

Clozapine eh?
I prefer to characterise my treatment of SJO as tormenting in nature...torturing is aginst the Geneva Convention.
Lest you think me a beast for my chosen methodology...please consider it a form of tough love...it's been known to work with society's most vile miscreants..where traditional treatments have failed.
As for any dual identity issues sirjohna might have..you should look at the latest posts in the 'big box-wal mart' thread in the views section.

administering noxious substances to people without consent, in Canada, is a breach of the criminal code and persons found guilty of this crime can go to jail if it is serious enough.
Is this your normal way to pursue a line of enquiry? Can you separate your thinking here from your thinking out there? Torturing, or tormenting as you call it is also a crime known as criminal harassment, if it is carried out in the real world.
It's always funny, until someone gets hurt.

whoa..camgra..take a deep breath
you DO realise that this is a virtual forum don't you?
if sirjohna had used a name here in this forum which was linked to his public personna then I would be in deep legal kaka
if you haven't done so already..you need to sample his output here..I know that there are many contributors who were uneasy with my characterizations of SJO but few will argue the need to give him a strong dose of his own 'medicine'...and I still stand behind my analysis
better check your meds camgra

Love is the best medicine, unconditional if possible. Corny but true

amen to that brother

sleepswithhispalms; i see you've been having a good old time of it while i've been away, spewing the same old sick gay-bashing garbage you twisted piece of shit. nice try attempting to change your persona by moderating your spewage but you must remember that anyone can look at the old threads to see what you're all about, and i'll always be able to remind them where they are. i've also noticed even your lefty buddies won't tolerate your pathetic gay-bashing and your feeble attempt to discredit me. glad you're still here anyway. as i've said before, nice to have guys like you representing the left. hope you get a life soon, but in the meantime don't forget to wake up in time to collect your welfare cheque.

I thought the both of you had taken that outside...

...although I wish sirjohna would stay outside if he's gonna drag in that crap.

...and i suppose you'd expect me to let this sick gay-bashing freak accuse me of being a pedophile in a public forum without trying to show the decent posters that he is a complete lying fool and a hatemonger?

by the way camgra, if you have any doubts about the above check out sleep's comments on the 'bill c-38 passed' thread.

Just as soon as I digest your comment about "decent posters". You have slagged pretty well all here at one point or another so I am not sure who you mean.
And right now it's pretty much your word versus his.
BTW, I can recommend a decent poster:
it's the one of the young chinese man
standing up to an american made tank in
China.

wow! you are one deep dude camgra.

not everyone on the tyee possesses your weak mentality sirjerkoff..you might get ron erwin or sdgreen or freebc to buy your line that I am a gay basher but even though I offered you a $1000 if you could show by full context quotes that I wrote anything that could be constituted as gay bashing..you came up as empty as your head.
even if you didn't trust that I would pay you..why wouldn't you want to prove your point

glad you are back...even if you are hiding here like a little pussy

sirjohnpu can you actually back all that rhetoric up or are you just another wind bag hiding behind your keyboard! ronny erwin are you an american?

sirjohn a

Sarcasm is not even the lowest form of humour, it is not humour at all. It betrays anger, at what I wouldn't even guess, not really wanting to know.
If you were serious, you should know that you are wrong. I am not deep at all and can provide references to this effect, can you?

I didn't think so. Bullies and people like you disappear as soon as your crap is exposed. good riddance!

sirjerkoff seems to be long on rhetoric and short on backing it up!

Tommy Douglas is the greatest Canadian!