Silly Little Country

Blaikie's Creeping Privatization Argument

I commented earlier that his argument made more sense than Layton's totally stupid argument of the last election campaign.

Here is what I think I heard. The danger is that there will come to be a large number of clinics providing services on a private basis and not run directly by the government. They might also on the side provide services not covered by the state, and so could run those on a private basis (e.g. the blue-blocking lenses I have ordered from my cataract surgeon). It will become clear to people that these clinics are pretty efficient, and could be much more efficient if we sacrificed the single payer system to let them provide services even more broadly on a private basis.

I think this is what he said. It makes sense. It certainly is consistent with my view that the only way to assure equal service to all consumers in a community is to provide inferior service, below what each individual participant would be willing to pay for, to everyone, and likely service inferior to what anyone would get when things were run differently. Recognition of this is what the NDP fears most.

They have had a bad day in a sense as the leader of our key national union has semi-endorsed the governing party, sort of, as well as, maybe, the NDP. Weird. This is going to be a fun two months.

posted by Alan Adamson @ 5:15 PM