At Risk Of Becoming Carolyn Bennett's Publicist

Having once mentioned her Chicago speech, I feel I should follow up with her Chicago Powerpoint, when she was "Honoured to defend Canada's cherished universal public health care system in Chicago today" (April 13, 2010). More interesting to me is her blog post "This is what the British achieved between 1997 and 2010...BBC: NHS record praised on speed and access to care." The point being, of course, taken in combination with her speech, that we have made progress, things are getting better here and in UK, single-payer is cheapest, most efficient & fairest, given our particular evolutions (Cda & UK), but that as NHS example shows, we can do even better, and cheaper, if we press ahead with needed reforms within public framework. But make no doubt, health care costs will rise, as all costs do, but that being the case, and since we have loads of fiscal capacity, the only question is the administration and delivery methods, public or private? And as all those in the field keep trying to hammer into everyone's thick skulls, not only is public fairest, it is also cheapest & most efficient, viewed from macro perspective.

Finally, as regards societal specificity, I have previously commented on Obamacare & its consequences for us (higher USA taxes allows higher Cdn taxes) and I'd also like to remind people of Obama's line about how if they were starting from scratch they'd go single-payer, but they're not, because their system evolved in its own particular way. Similarly, we are not Sweden or Holland, our system evolved in its own way, with its own context, as theirs did, and we can't suddenly import theirs without importing much of their own internal web of taxes and services that ensure the public welfare. And even if that's what we wanted to do, adopt their tax rates, and social spending practices, etc., and thus be coherent in allowing a larger private role, it might still be a bad idea, given where we are and who's our neighbour and trading partner, as compared to them. Not to mention the time and money lost in such a massive transformation. We have an excellent system, born out of our own history and context, which is pretty cheap & efficient and can be made more so. The arguments for maintaining, improving and building our system vastly outweigh those for radical deconstruction and reinvention. Every developed country is in same situation, and our situation is golden compared to the rest. The progressive taxation-single payer model is best, supplemented by clever & equitable implementation of sales & green taxes. To claim otherwise is either ignorance or sophism.