Janet Daley in the Sunday Telegraph:
...The Big Secret – the conspiracy that dare not speak its name – is the understanding that is shared by all those members of the political class who are not halfwits or ideological zombies.Yes, it's true: everybody knows – and has known for quite a long time – what needs to be done. And almost nobody is prepared to tell it straight. Even though many voters know it, too, and would almost certainly be ready to accept that their own instincts were sound if a political leader enunciated them with the kind of unblinking conviction that inspires confidence.
It is not just passion or demagoguery that is called for here, but fearless, trenchant argument. Why cave in the face of vested interests who caricature your health policies as an "American-style market free-for-all" when you could make it clear that there is an alternative European model of mixed public and private provision that delivers better outcomes than the NHS? Why not make the case that our rationed state-monopoly health care is out of step with more competitive and patient-centred systems in countries such as Sweden, Germany and Denmark? Why not talk to the country in the honest way that you talk to each other and to your trusted confidantes?
There is an obvious and depressing reason why not: absolute terror of the axe-grinding lobbies and their friends in the media, who have no scruples about whipping up unfounded fears and amorphous resentment in the public mind. This is a politically (if not ethically) justifiable worry, but it must not – cannot, for the sake of the country – be allowed to run the show...
Indubitably.
Update thought: Consider also that in Britain, unlike Canada, there is an extensive private "second tier" of health care for medically necessary services, mainly accessed through private health insurance, e.g., Bupa.
I prefer to throw it back at them. "So you'd rather stay allied with North Korea when it comes to health care? What century are you living in?"
That could be written in any Canadian paper, in any Canadian city in any Province . . . same crap going on here.
Its all about the fight between what role government should have in our lives and unions enjoying their parliamentary granted liplock on the public teat.
The real discussion should be about government delivery of health care, rather than the red herring of public funding.
And almost nobody is prepared to tell it straight....European model of mixed public and private provision that delivers better outcomes than the NHS?
How about telling it straight that the reason the Euro model works better is because it includes private enterprise. And that the higher the percentage of private enterprise, the higher the percentage of good outcomes.
I mean, if we're going to be telling it straight...
I desire private medicine in this country as much as anybody, not least because I want to make a really good income PROVIDING it.
But we can't ignore the power wielded by the media and the associated liberal "think tanks", Associations, Councils For This And That, junk science factories and other propaganda mills that exist to maintain the hold of the Liberal Party on power in Canada. Most of which are funded entirely by grants from various layers of government.
We also can't ignore the army of liberal minions laboring out of sight in the wainscoting of the hospital system. Social workers, secretaries for this and that, Quality Assurance Supervisors, research assistants, blah blah blah. Pretty much everybody who works in a hospital that isn't an RN or a doctor, basically.
I include my own profession of PT in there, I might add. Hospital acute care PT is 80% a scam. Any honest practitioner will admit that most of acute care PT/OT/Speech is a waste of time and money and could be accomplished by the girl who changes the bed pans.
That's what Harper & Co. are up against, and I'm actually fairly impressed by their approach to date. They need to -slowly- erode the government funded part of the Liberal Party propaganda machine, and -slowly- remove the nest of competing regulations and policies which keep the army of roaches employed.
There's also the more fundamental problem of applying a just-in-time manufacturing/factory model to health care, but that is something Western medicine has been doing to itself these last 20 years, not just government.
Incidentally the Euro model ain't all its cracked up to be, their public hospitals are just as f-ed as ours, maybe worse. See England's NHS for evidence of massive breakdown. You can't give something away free and not be buried under people grabbing it.
None of the above truths are going to be well recieved by the Professional Left. Large incomes are going to get disrupted. The answer is of course posted on the mast-head of this blog, Limbaugh has been saying it since the 1980's, and yesterday Rick Perry said it again very well:
"It saddens me when sometimes my fellow Republicans duck and cover in the face of pressure from the left. Our party cannot be all things to all people," Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) said at a Republican party event in Louisiana today.
"Our opponents on the left are never going to like us, so let's quit trying to curry favor with them!"
We should all finally admit that this is not a debate, its a WAR. The Left has been fighting us like it was a war since 1950, and they have beaten our @sses at every turn. Time to stop whining at the unfairness and insanity of it all, pick up your Louisville Slugger and take it to the sonsab1tches.
Bottom line my friends, medicare is not a Canadian value. You'd have to be insane to think that, and the next time you hear some buffoon saying it you need to pin their f-ing ears back.
The Phantom
Most people agree. Its not us who run this system, but a burocracy of elitists who want the whole pie without baking it.
Every poll ive seen , most people I talk to think our Health care system is a piece of commuist trash. As your friend or work friends. Only those closeted in the system are for it because its become their turf with many perks.
JMO
Ah yes, the NDP epithet "American-style," one of those nasty and sneaky little digs (like most anything starting with "our American cousins") that makes my American wife feel some relief at no longer residing in Canada, despite her love for it and for her Canadian grandchildren.
Americans are one of the very few safe identity groups to stereotype and smear these days. It's always nice to have a Bogeyman, especially if you're an NDP politician. Much simpler than actually debating the issues...
Out here in Alberta about ten years ago,Ralph Klein announced that he would me making some changes to health-care delivery in a few months.
The group that calls themselves "Friends of Medicare" (more accurate would be "friends of nurse's union") worked themselves up into a petulant frenzy. They went out and spent thousands on signs that proclaimed Ralph's third way is the American way.
I don't remember exactly what the changes were,but they were insignificant. The "F of M" never fully recovered from that fiasco.
I must add to the above post,they bought the signs about a month before the announcement.
It's very unfortunate,but we live in an era where there is and has been very little adversity since the Second Unpleasantness in Europe,so we have reaped the benefits of that peaceful opulence, leaders at every level with the accompanying lack of character that adversity builds.
Politicians and other leaders have become so self-centred,so myopic,they can only consider THEIR short-term benefit in anything they do,and the concerns of the people,the Nation, are a very distant concept.
Naturally, we lack statesmen,we've nurtured the opposite type of personality and values for two generations. You don't develop "Churchills" from a system that exalts "self","social justice","human dignity",and other such feel-good notions.
Stephen Harper DOES exhibit the characteristics of a statesman, and is roundly excoriated by all,and forced to compromise his policies to the point that HIS effort is almost totally negated.
It's only going to get worse in Europe as the overall agenda still seems to include a "one-Nation under Brussels" policy.
Britain has to lead the way and opt out of this not-so-noble experiment,and find out if once again they can become the world leaders they once were.
I think Harper is in a position to make change to almost any broken system simply because everyone knows they are broken....The Pension systems of all workers have flat lined...The lies can't hold much longer
The brilliance of Harper (labor Minister) in announcing back to work legislation in the Air Canada strike was a Master Piece... The Unions rushed to settlement because they could not accept setting the precedent of Back to Work legislation. The US Congress would have, or now have, a moral obligation to follow Harpers lead..
The Canadian Healthcare system can be fixed far easier(it's funded) than the US system..hang tight
Healthcare is a provincial juristiction. PMSH is correct in not weighing in on it other than to say that experimentation might be a good idea.
Look for the Feds to give the provinces 100% of the HST in lieu of the CHA transfer and thus definanace the leverage that the overly restrictive cha has and thus facilitate the exit healthcare by the feds 100%.
Look for the Wildrose to engage in some very different approaches to helathcare once in power: the end of the healthboard(S), deregulation and autonomy for hospitals (to be run by non-profit boaords) etc. etc. - lots of experimentation.
Canadians believe it is noble for their neighbours to suffer and die on the altar of socialist medicine.
Mark:
The NHS is the worst of both worlds - lousy public (no chance of getting a hip replacement if you are over 65 and private that is poor quality and expensive. It is thought that the Abpc party has plans to go that way - a leaked PowerPoint would Suggest that - and it is the quitters solution to the problem.
what exactly is wrong with Canadian health care other than some incompetence of some so-called professionals? It's relatively cheap, compared to Americans we pay half the price for twice the coverage. literally
Cheap, blanks? Half or more of your income goes to tax, two thirds of that goes for medicare.
As for what's wrong with it, if you have to ask you haven't had a sick relative in the last ten years. And you haven't been paying attention, either. Better to ask what's right with it, that is a much shorter list.
"Consider also that in Britain, unlike Canada, there is an extensive private "second tier" of health care for medically necessary services, mainly accessed through private health insurance, e.g., Bupa."
Consider also that it came out in the press last year that the NHS pays for about 3,000 of it's top administrators and medical staff to have this private coverage, so they don't have to wait in Disney World-like lines and get Cuba-level "healthcare", like the vast majority of the British citizens chained to this debauched "healthcare". The NHS brazenly justified this as being more time-efficient for it's top snivel servants.
Is there anything more shameless than a bureaucrat with his snout in the public trough?! (Rhetorical question)
Dave in PA, nobody with a single neuron firing would use NHS if they could avoid it. No doctor or nurse would -ever- go there, not a chance. If using NHS was a requirement of employment for NHS brass, they'd all leave.
As a system, NHS is profoundly broken. Much worse than the Veterans Administration in the USA, worse even than most Canadian hospitals outside Toronto. Downtown Toronto might give them a run for sheer mal-functionality. Its frigged up.
Blanks, the cost of OHIP (Ontario Health Insurance Plan) will be above $44Billion this year
which is more than $3,400 per person. The total Provincial budget is going to be $123Billion so healthcare costs consume over 1/3 of provincial taxes.
I'm sure I could buy a great insurance plan and get treated more promptly in the USA for less than $3500/annum. Considering that the greatest expense for doctors in the USA is malpractice insurance if Canada had a free market health system the insurance would be even less due to our more realistic tort system.
While everyone jabbers about costs they forget about the moral aspect of government health care. Since the doctor can only work for the government at a rate the government imposes, the doctor is effectively an indentured servant, particularly if the doctor owes the government for student loans. The patient is thus a slave master and the government the slave boss with the whip. To escape the doctor must either quit the profession or go into voluntary exile, which is why there are many Canadian born doctors south of the 49th.
Also, if Canada is a free country, why am I not free to enter into a contract with an insurance company and buy the services of my doctor as I do with my dentist and optometrist?
The pundits have it wrong. Canada clearly has a two-tier system of health care...it is called the US medical establishment. Having taken my MS-plagued wife to California in March for the "Zamboni" procedure to clear obstructions in her veins, I have personal experience with our second tier. Of course it cost me $17,000 for angioplasty that would have cost our public system about $300, but what the Hell...wife's health trumps money every time.
Phantom ... on NHS in Britain ...absolutely right and further the doctors who practice privately are also on the NHS payroll and effectivley moonlighting for extra cash.
We need to open our system up to private services before we sink to the level of the Europeans. In Manitoba we need to dismantle the health authority bureaucracies which are sucking the system dry without contributing anything. Effin parasites.