Posts Tagged ‘privatization’
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The working rich [‘job creators’]
Monday, January 10th, 2011
January 9, 2011
… goodbye corporate fat cats, hello job creators… those new corporate tax cuts that seem so ill-timed given the large deficit, so unfair given increases in taxes for the middle class in 2011, are completely justified. They are not going to already richly compensated Bay Street fat cats but to job creators! …Three decades of unrelenting neo-conservative preaching have turned taxes into a dirty word, as left-leaning economist Hugh Mackenzie says, “to the point where even governments don’t defend government.”
Tags: economy, ideology, privatization
Posted in Policy Context | No Comments »
Privatization is not a quick fix for the health system
Friday, January 7th, 2011
Jan 07 2011
The Fraser Institute has recently called for a five-year suspension of the enforcement of the Canada Health Act, claiming that this would permit more “experimentation” with cost sharing and privatization, which would be a solution to access issues and sustainability of the health system. Cost sharing is a euphemism for double-dipping by physicians and user fees that lead to queue-jumping… We need to find ways to control health costs and get better value for money instead of looking for ways to shift the costs from the wealthy to the sick. So let’s get on with it.
Tags: budget, Health, privatization
Posted in Health Debates | No Comments »
What you don’t know about a deal you haven’t heard of
Thursday, January 6th, 2011
Jan. 6, 2011
In coming days, Canadian and European officials will intensify negotiations on a new trade agreement most Canadians have never heard of. The Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement is by far the largest free-trade deal this country has ever undertaken… CETA will likely have a NAFTA-type investor-state enforcement mechanism… [which] emphasizes investor protection over government policy… CETA serves the only profit interests of the big business community. We can do better.
Tags: globalization, ideology, participation, privatization
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2018: The new health care
Thursday, December 30th, 2010
Dec. 30, 2010
It is December, 2018, and at long last Canadian health care has been reformed. Long waiting lines are a thing of the past. Universal coverage has been maintained and expanded. The numbers of doctors and treatment facilities available to serve Canadians has been significantly increased. Health care for the vast majority of Canadians has dramatically improved and at lower cost per capita. How did it happen? Let me list the major factors.
Tags: budget, Health, privatization, rights, standard of living
Posted in Health Debates | No Comments »
Ottawa caved in to provinces on CPP
Tuesday, December 28th, 2010
Dec 28 2010
Proponents of the private approach are not ignorant of reality. They just don’t care that most Canadians have trouble making ends meet and few are able to make substantial contributions to RRSPs. They don’t care that future retirees will not have enough pension dollars to make ends meet. Clearly, the best way for most Canadians to improve their prospects in retirement is through improvement of the CPP… And the federal government has caved on the issue. So much for political leadership in the broad public interest
Tags: pensions, poverty, privatization, rights, standard of living
Posted in Social Security Debates | No Comments »
The big winner at Kananaskis: Little Canada
Wednesday, December 22nd, 2010
Dec. 22, 2010
Strong countries have one regulator, of course, but in our kingdom of principalities, four provinces – Alberta, Quebec, Manitoba and Saskatchewan – oppose the creation of something national… So we will wait for the Supreme Court hearing, in which the interests of the whole country will be pitted against those of some of its constituent parts. Big Canada needs an effective internal economic market, given the ferocity of external competition… The Alberta-Quebec alliance at the core of the opposition to a national securities regulator also scuttled expansion of the Canada Pension Plan at Kananaskis.
Tags: ideology, pensions, privatization, rights, standard of living
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
We don’t really know (private vs public pensions)
Wednesday, December 22nd, 2010
Dec. 21, 2010
Only two major OECD countries, France and Germany, have pension systems that give their average retiree a higher percentage of average pre-retirement disposable income… Moreover, it is by no means clear that Canadians will now lack sufficient retirement income to live independently and with dignity. Poverty among Canadian seniors is among the lowest in the OECD, so our retirement system is not failing the least well off. And the wealthy are generally retiring comfortably. So if there’s a problem, it lies in the middle.
Tags: pensions, privatization, standard of living, tax
Posted in Social Security Debates | No Comments »
Pensions need reform, not more bickering
Monday, December 20th, 2010
Dec. 20, 2010
There are good reasons to support a supplement to the CPP… But if participation in a supplementary CPP is voluntary, new enrolment may be slow. And the brunt of the burden of the payroll tax increase needed to create a supplementary CPP would be paid by working Canadians with low and moderate incomes… but the federal idea of pooled plans will, by being run through employers who can easily connect with their staff, likely create more actual savers.
Tags: ideology, pensions, privatization, standard of living
Posted in Social Security Delivery System | No Comments »
More power to the patient
Monday, December 13th, 2010
December 13, 2010
Reforms enacted by Ontario’s Ministry of Health aren’t what we need. The province is fiddling with physicians’ payment schemes, so that doctors bill according to the number of patients they see, rather than the sort of care they provide… Nor will… family health teams provide much help. So rather than investing in family health teams, shouldn’t the province direct its scarce resources toward supplying us with more physicians? …competition among doctors would shift the power dynamic… from the government and health care providers to the clients.
Tags: Health, privatization
Posted in Health Debates | No Comments »
It wouldn’t kill us to look at Australian health care
Wednesday, November 24th, 2010
November 24, 2010
Australia not only allows private insurance, it encourages a private system for doctors and hospital care, alongside the comprehensive public one…. Australia spends about 1.5 per cent less of its national income on health care than Canada. As in Canada, costs are rising about 6 per cent annually… the Australian population, it would appear… is generally content with their system… What Canadians would see as the inequities of such a system – “two-tier medicine” – Australians seem to accept as a reasonable compromise between efficiency and equity.
Tags: budget, Health, pharmaceutical, privatization
Posted in Health Policy Context | No Comments »
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