privatization « Social Policy in Ontario

Posts Tagged ‘privatization’

The waiting game

Monday, April 4th, 2011

Apr. 4, 2011
The allocation of medical resources is a political-bureaucratic decision in Canada, not a consumer choice. Instead of rejoicing that fewer Canadians are waiting for some procedures, we should be asking our governments why any delays to accessing necessary medical care are acceptable. Research consistently shows that there are little or no reported waits in the Netherlands, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Belgium and Germany -all of which have the same social goals as Canada: Universal access to health care.

Tags: Health, ideology, privatization, standard of living
Posted in Health Policy Context | No Comments »

Luxury for the rich but ‘realism’ for the rest of us

Monday, March 21st, 2011

Mar 21 2011
As deficits pile up, we are soon to be inundated with the message that we are living beyond our means and must learn to do with less. Certainly, our small wealthy super-elite seems determined to ensure that nothing gets in the way of its right to fully indulge its greed, and that the burden of deficit-reduction is imposed on others. A conflict appears to be looming therefore between Canada’s elite, typified perhaps by Kevin O’Leary, and the aspirations of millions of Canadians who don’t want to see programs they value — health care, education, pensions — sacrificed to deficit reduction.

Tags: economy, ideology, privatization, standard of living, tax
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »

The fairy tale land called Equilibria

Friday, March 18th, 2011

March 14, 2011
Citizen columnist John Robson poked great fun at me recently with his “Economic children’s story” (March 5): a humorous fairy tale about a land where unions kill the goose that laid the golden egg, until taxpaying denizens (starting in Wisconsin) throw off the yoke imposed by overpaid teachers and garbage collectors. Of course, if workers were really paid in golden eggs, unions would never have been invented. Instead, unions were born in a less pastelhued world where workers fought even for the basics of survival. Employers and their think tanks have been complaining ever since…

Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, privatization, rights, standard of living
Posted in Debates | No Comments »

In us we trust?

Friday, March 18th, 2011

Mar 17 2011
… the question isn’t: Do Canadians trust Harper? It’s: Does Harper trust Canadians? Trust is an essential component in a successful society and politics is the main way that societies attempt to act together. Those with high trust levels tend to create programs like public health care or education. Those lacking trust do less together; at most they build prisons or surveillance systems to keep watch on each other… If we trust our leaders to use our taxes to do things we can’t achieve on our own, then we pay — not happily but willingly. If we don’t trust them, then we’d rather not pay and we choose leaders who will do less.

Tags: ideology, participation, privatization, rights, standard of living
Posted in Governance Policy Context | No Comments »

Harper’s shadow public service

Monday, March 14th, 2011

Mar 14 2011
Economist David Macdonald decided to find out how many consultants, contractors and temporary workers the federal government was hiring and how much Canadians were paying for them. It took him about a year. What he discovered was a burgeoning “shadow public service.” Last year it cost taxpayers $1.2 billion. That was 79 per cent higher than when Prime Minister Stephen Harper took power in 2006. Despite a spending freeze in the federal bureaucracy, it is still growing by leaps and bounds… the government is building a parallel hiring system to replace workers who leave or retire.

Tags: budget, ideology, participation, privatization, rights
Posted in Governance Delivery System | No Comments »

Doctors urge Health Care Action Plan to thwart ‘looming crisis’

Tuesday, March 1st, 2011

Mar. 01, 2011
The citizens panel spent five full days learning how the health-care system works and, last year, it listed areas of non-core services that could be divested to other agencies, including the hospital’s diabetes complication prevention strategy clinic. That recommendation, along with another to get rid of outpatient rehabilitation services, were among those followed by the board. This year, the hospital is expected to have a balanced budget.

Tags: budget, Health, participation, privatization, standard of living
Posted in Health Delivery System | No Comments »

Capitalism touted as health care’s saviour

Thursday, February 3rd, 2011

Feb. 2, 2011
Dr. Arthur Porter of Montreal’s McGill University Health Centre called for government funding that is tied to specific services and harnesses free-market principles to prod institutions to treat patients better and more quickly… “Our current publicly funded, publicly delivered system creates little incentive to truly innovate… Some critics, though, suggest the idea would create “perverse” inducements, turning hospitals’ focus to the treatments that were easiest to deliver and generated the most lucrative fees, while more complex cases got shorter shrift.

Tags: budget, Health, ideology, privatization
Posted in Health Debates | No Comments »

Inept regulation fingered in Great Recession

Wednesday, January 26th, 2011

Jan 26 2011
In the aftermath of the Great Recession, we have learned for the umpteenth time that it’s wrong to trust the private sector to do the right thing without rigorous government oversight… The bottom line is that epic disasters – like an unsupervised greed on Wall Street that cost eight million Americans and 400,000 Canadians their jobs in the Great Recession – usually have inadequate or corrupted regulation as a root cause.

Tags: economy, ideology, privatization, standard of living
Posted in Policy Context | No Comments »

Harper’s medicare agenda isn’t hidden – if you look carefully

Saturday, January 22nd, 2011

Jan 22 2011
… our prime minister says he is a big supporter of medicare. He brags that he and his family uses standard medicare doctors rather than the pricey executive clinics preferred by some politicians. But at the same time, Harper’s Conservative Party platform contains important caveats. It says provinces should have “maximum flexibility” to deliver health care. This is a hint that Conservative governments won’t be overly worried if provinces try to introduce two-tier care. It also calls for “a balance” between public and private delivery. Currently, virtually all Canadian hospitals are public.

Tags: budget, featured, Health, ideology, privatization
Posted in Health Debates | No Comments »

Why the Irish aren’t impressed

Wednesday, January 12th, 2011

Jan. 12, 2011
This week, the Irish Times newspaper published a large report on Canada’s growing healthcare crisis. In a piece entitled “Another health system coming apart at the seams,” the Times describes the “bursting” waiting room at Montreal’s Royal Victoria Hospital… Apart from North Korea, Canada is the only country that prohibits health-care services covered by its public system to be also provided by the private market.