A Monday Thought Experiment

As a matter of course, I allow myself one hour of television news per evening, 30 minutes local and 30 minutes of either American or Canadian national news. It is a practice I highly recommend, not simply as a means of keeping up with events in this tortured world, but also as a window into the lives of others.

One conclusion I have drawn from this habit is that we can never know the lives of others, especially the burdens they must bear on a daily basis. In this, I am not talking solely about the very public problem of the homeless, but they certainly count. I am also talking about windows into the often fraught lives of people caring for special-needs children,  elderly parents, waiting in the ER, or any number of other exigencies that comprise life. The common denominator is insufficient funding for the support they need.

In my more wistful moments I imagine a regime of fair and progressive taxation, where those who are more than comfortable pay a little more for programs directed toward the public good. At the very least, some of the aforementioned problems would be ameliorated. Yet we live in times where we have little control over how our money is spent, as, truth be told, we are not the ones calling the shots, political theatre notwithstanding.

This post was prompted by two letters in today's Star, which I reproduce below:

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Dental program leads to inequity

Federal dental care program will exclude 4.4 million uninsured Canadians: report, Jan. 17

Canada’s proposal for expanding health care coverage to dental and medical drugs is flawed. The law would have handsomely fed politicians arbitrarily sitting in judgment over who beneath them can afford dental care unassisted and who cannot. Further the plan cuts out any Canadian currently paying private insurance premiums, under the facile presumption that anyone — let’s say, a retiree struggling to support a live-in parent with dementia, and put food on the table under roof that is beginning to leak, heated by a furnace nearing the end of it’s projected life — who has private health insurance can comfortably afford it.

We live under the rule of governments that take their policy orders from corporate economists and boardrooms. We are told that fulsome public health care would be too costly, in the same breath that we are told the inflated prices corporations charge us for essentials must only be combatted by using interest rates to make those essentials too expensive, and that modest homes must be taxed yearly on speculated values.

Canada can afford universal dental, vision, medical care but taxing all wealth equitably. Level the field.

Darcy McLenaghen, Toronto

 

Health care crisis

No end to the ER crisis without investments and addressing workers’ concerns, Jan. 17

The conclusion of the authors of this article is that we just need to invest $1.25 billion annually to solve the health-care crisis. Where will the money come from? I would gladly pay a reinstated licence plate renewal fee of $120 per year, as would most people I suspect, if the billion dollars saved by cancelling it would be put toward our health care system. If that will reduce wait times, improve worker incomes and boost staffing levels across the province, I don't see a downside. Politicians are the only thing standing in the way.

Ken Beckim, Oshawa, Ont.