Ghosts in the Machine

Happy birthday George;

I disagree with your guest. I think Canadian Health Care's "Socialist system" is the best. I just spent all day with my wife getting tests, no waiting, no paying, and very efficient. Free health care has defined us as a nation. It has been under attack from those wishing to get rich on our sickness but so far we have resisted. Your guests suggestion of increasing the two teared system will lead to the rich having socialized medicine and not the rest of us. Keep up the fight!

Thanks,

flip

I must agree totally with Flip. John is showing his American roots. There is nothing at all inherently more efficient about a large private bureaucracy than a large public bureaucracy. Since they don't even pay lip service to the public good, the reverse is true.

I spent some years working for the staff of Treasury Board in British Columbia, the civil service secretariat of the government's main budget committee. Health costs were the perennial problem. The main reasons: huge cost increases from the private drug companies, huge cost increases due to privately funded technological innovations of dubious health value, and huge cost increases resulting from the demands of the doctors, who outside of the fact that they have only one source of payments, are still private sector entrepreneurs here.

[To be fair, I think John was being diplomatic. He did say very clearly that he believes in universal coverage and that he thinks the Canadian system is better than the American one — it wouldn't be reasonable to expect him to completely trash what we do down here. That's my job! g.]