Geekman's World: In the News...

Firstly, you should all be apprised of the fact that we have a new roommate. His name is David, he's from Sweden, and he's an engineer. Neato!

Now that our Conservative government has gotten nice and comfy over the past year and a half, it can turn from the basic aspects of governing and keeping the peace in parliament to what its members really want to do: push the Conservative agenda. And I argue that there is no more important agenda than health care.

I know a few of you have had unpleasant experiences with our health care system over the years. For non life-threatening injuries, getting treatment can be barred by arduous wait times. Our system is heavily used and our population is growing all the time, especially here in British Columbia. This frustration leads us to call for some sort of reform. Regrettably, this makes us curious about the possibilities of incorporating privatization into our public system.

Advocates of private health care argue that it can help to rapidly expand our base of care providers while reducing costs. But as Arnold S. Relman of the Globe and Mail points out, one needs only look at the American health care system to see how woefully wrong that assertion is. If you'll review the statistics from last week, you'll notice that 108,000 Americans have died since 2001 because they simply couldn't afford medical treatment. That's 36 times more people than have died from terrorism. It is the dysfunctionality of the American system that prompted Michael Moore to take it to task in his latest movie, Sicko.

Proponents of private health are often bandying out the phrase, "This is a complicated problem, you can't solve it by simply throwing money at it." This in itself is an oversimplification. Money pays for more doctors, more nurses, more equipment and more facilities. Money well spent can improve our health care system. And that burgeoning population I mentioned means that we have more tax dollars that should, as a priority, be spent on health care.

The time is going to come very soon when your voice will help decide which direction our nation's health system will take. Should we continue to provide Universal Health Care, a model used by many, MANY nations around the world, or should we move towards an increasingly privatized model like the United States? The pebble that starts the avalanche will be a small one: a bill regarding private clinics, perhaps. But make no mistake, once the box of private health care is open, it will be a lot harder to shut. After all, why would our government ever increase public funding again when there are private alternatives?

Ask yourself: in the lower mainland, where food, housing, fuel, transit, everything is exorbitantly expensive; where we often wonder if we will own a home in our lifetimes, can we afford to pay profit to private health care institutions? Ask yourself: when your son or daughter is dying of a curable disease, because the public system is too underfunded to treat them in time, and because the private system is so expensive it's out of your reach, will private health care still feel like a viable option?

That's not fear-mongering, that's how it works in the U.S.. The next time someone starts talking about private health care, be it a friend, a family member, or a politician. Tell them how grossly wrong they are. You may very well be fighting for someone's life... perhaps even your own.

Firstly, Congrats on the new roommate, a swede eh? I'll have to brush up on my swedish. Is he a nice guy, and when does he officially move in?

Public or private? Public is better, but perhaps it's not the way to go. Don't get me wrong, I'm a firm believer that anyone who needs treatment deserves to recieve it, wether they have money or no. But perhaps there's another option, as yet unexplored. What about a system incorporating both. Where private health care facilities are free to operate and have all the bonuses of that system, for those that can afford it, and public systems remain in place, serving all those who can't or won't pay for health care. Those who say that that's silly cuz who would pay for services you could get for free. I would argue that there would be those who would pay to reduce the wait for transplants and other major surgeries. Heck, there are already people who are willing to fly across the border for that priviledge. It's just a thought.

As I've stated, the problem is that once a private system is in place and thriving, there's much less of an incentive for politicians to improve on the public one. If your constituents are complaining about wait times and poor service, tell them to go to a private clinic. If they can't afford it, too bad.

once money starts going into private health care, pulic healthcare will suffer from a lack of funding and staff (doctors and nurses). Previous governments have for years balanced their budgets by skimmimg from a public healthcare system creating the problem we now live with today. It showed a lamentable lack of foresight on their part to undercut healthcare to a population that was aging and growing and actually needed the kind of funding that used to be provided. If you want a democratically run country that provides equally for everyone that pays taxes in it, then you provide the kind of health care that is available to all equally. Other wise you create a class of unfortunates.

I stand corrected, I guess it's just a problem of wanting cake and eating it too. Though I will say, that in the case of public health care suffering a lack of funding, does it not already? And why would the opening of private health care facilities draw funding from established public ones? Why not make them like any other business? Self sustaining, taxed for their service and governmentally regulated not subsidized? My thinking was to create an alternative to existing health care and thus relieve some of the burden put upon the rest of the infrastructure by overpopulation and underfunding.

It would be nice if it worked that way but hospitals are aready overburdened and underfunded and the clinics are not taking the overflow unless you can pay for it. There are patients that are being forced to wait years for surgeries that can give them pain free and normal lives because the hospitals have had no operating facilities, staff and equipment in order to keep up with the demand. I can tell you from listening to other people in those situations that some of them are not willing to mortgage their homes in order to get those operations because it would create resentment in other family members or financial difficulty. A rock and a hard place.

I see what you're saying, but how can it then be a bad thing to give people the option? As I said before, there's no reason that private healthcare has to be government funded. But it can be taxed for it's income, there by providing yet more tax revenues for the government to work with. Maybe I'm just not understanding. What is standing in the way of private healthcare facilities opening? Is there a law against practising medecine in a private facility in this country? And if so, why? As long as it doesn't draw funding away from public facilities, how can it be a bad thing?

There is a law that states that healthcare must be delivered in a timely and competent manner to everyone who needs it. It was set up by Tommy Douglas long ago when he realized that many people couldn't afford the healthcare that they needed and that doctors often were not paid. Clinics are not supposed to exist to deliver paid for healthcare that the province is supposed to provide equally to everyone, regardless of ability to pay. If you start it, it will mean that somepeople will opt out of needed surgeries or medications. Starting with the liberals under Paul Martin government started chipping away at the ammount of money being sent to the provinces to fund this program until we arrived at the mess we are in today where hospitals have been closed and the same standard of healthcare is not being delivered that existed before. This was very shortsighted because the countries aging population, who has been paying for this system through their taxes for years, are not getting what they payed for all these years. That's like paying into an RRSP and then having the bank go bankrupt on you when you finally need it. What will happen is that there will be only clinics that can afford the new specialized equipment for newer procedures and that underfunded hospitals will not be able to perform them. When that happens it will mean that if you need a certain type of procedure that is not available in a hospital you will have to go to a clinic and cough up the cost wether you can afford it or not or suffer from a lack of this procedure. This is already happening. Only clinics will be able to afford the specialized equipment (always expensive) that will treat people and hospitals have been starved for the funds or the power to attract newer doctors trained in these procedures.