There was a time, from about the mid-60sto the mid-80s, when the Canadian publically funded system had new hospitals, lots of health-care workers, and enormous capacity.

The decline of the system is largely a function of political choices and is thus, in my view, a false scarcity. This is the result of a very specific political point of view which advocates free market solutions and maligns public solutions. It began with the rise of Thatcher, Reagan, and Mulroney, continued through Clinton, Blair, Chretien, and now Bush and Harper.

Here’s how it works. You can’t say you’re opposed to universal health care in Canada. That is political suicide. What you do once elected is chronically underfund it and then plead that the treasury cannot afford it. Keep doing that until people get so fed up with the crappy public system you create that they flock to your private market cure.

Remember, even the US had much more public funding of healthcare from FDR’s New Deal until the Nixon adminstration paved the way for private corporations. Many of us under such a system would be unable to afford healthcare, and we would be the ones filing bankruptcy.

The thing is, if there was no market for private health services, they would have filed for the other Chapter 11 and closed. The problem’s not that the government let them set up shop, but that our health care system is so overburdened that a business like this can flourish.

http://www.voteforenvironment.ca/

The Internet is moving into a new stage. We have been able to have open and free discussion for some time. Now we can effectively organize political action in appealingly simple and intuitive ways.

I’ll vote for that!