Harper must give provinces free rein over health care
Prime Minister Stephen Harper should take the positive stance of utterly ignoring Premier Ralph Klein’s and Premier Jean Charest’s imaginative health-care reform initiatives.
Let Klein and Charest get on with the job unimpeded.
The reason: Both Alberta and Quebec are on the right track on health-care reform and the only individuals opposing them are embittered Liberals and intransigent New Democrats with gristle from ear-to-ear.
Big government health care has failed—as Premier E. C. Manning predicted in the 1960s it would—and the only solution is now to change it.
Here’s an idea: Let each province decide individually whether it wants to keep a one-tier system under the auspices of Ottawa or voluntarily move towards two-tier systems within their own jurisdictions.
Isn’t that what federalism is supposed to be about?
Just check the British-North America Act.
That Ottawa can’t be trusted with overall authority for health care—which it basically now has, and stole—was proven by no less a personage than the unlamented Paul Martin, when as finance minister in the 1990s he undermined health care and social budgets and downloaded them on the provinces.
Yes, the Liberals, including those clinging to boring Alberta Liberal leader Kevin Taft, are hypocrites when it comes to ensuring adequate delivery of health care for all.
Martin, himself, demonstrated his own hypocrisy yet again when it was revealed his own supposed genial Marcus Welby MD operated a bunch of private medical clinics on the side.
Talk about being two-faced.
But, the tugboat captain has already been kicked in the teeth enough, so we’ll move on.
Federal New Democrat Leader Jack Layton, in his usual bristling style, talks in a bellicose way of stopping Alberta’s health-care reforms.
Yet, this jumped up little popinjay’s party has never been able to win a single seat in Alberta under his leadership.
Never even came close.
Surely this demonstrates Layton’s socialist philosophies have no appeal in this province whatsoever.
Nor has Layton any understanding of what makes Alberta tick, so why would he, except for his supreme arrogance, poke his nose in our affairs?
By stepping aside and letting Klein and Charest move ahead with their reforms free from fatuous threats they are breaking the Canada Health Act, the rest of the nation will be able to see whether opening up the field works.
It obviously will.
Competition always does.
It weeds out lower-quality products or services, and enhances the entry of better products and services.
It also puts efficiency in the marketplace, and makes it more effective.
Costs actually go down under an open market, while quality goes up.
Actually, the gates to a fairer two-tier system are about to open up even beyond Alberta and Quebec.
B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell has just returned from visiting Britain, Sweden, Norway and France to examine health care in those countries and likes what he has seen.
In all four nations, two-tier systems exist.
In reality, there are only three nations in the world that do not allow a private medical system to operate alongside a government-run system: Communist North Korea, Communist Cuba and Canada.
Even Communist China has a flourishing system of private health care.
Are we so out of step with the rest of the world our ideals are tied to the philosophies of two brutal dictators—Kim Jong-il and Fidel Castro?
One guesses once Alberta and Quebec—and likely B.C.—are given free rein by Harper to go ahead with opening up their systems, the results will be so positive other provinces will soon clamour to go the same route.
The clenched-teeth dinosaurs of totalitarianism will be left to fume alone.
Soon, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development won’t be ranking us an appalling 24th out of 27 nations with a pitiful ratio of only 2.3 doctors per 1,000 people even though on a per capita basis we spend more of our GNP on health care than any other nations except Iceland and Switzerland.
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