A Cogent Rebuttal To Privatized Healthcare

Here in Ontario, the newly re-elected Conservatives under Doug Ford are making oblique sounds about private health care as a way to help solve our hospital crises. While we do have private clinics, etc. in this province, it would seem that they are suggesting much more than that. 

One needn't be a particularly deep thinker to see some of the flaws in that logic, the most egregious being that private entities exist to make profits, and that anyone working for a private healthcare entity is bled off from the public system.

The following is Brittlestar offering a clear explanation to those who react ideologically instead of thinking critically. I also include a couple of comments from his followers:

Geez..you nailed this! My sister has a doc who runs a private clinic in TO. She pays $5,000 a year to see her doctor. When she had a heart attack this doc actually said she couldn't treat her as her annual fee was due. She suggested my sister find an OHIP doc. Private Healthcare!

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My daughter was in the hospital for 4 months due 2 complications from brain surgery. Nine years ago i had cancer. I could not imagine having 2 pick & choose what healthcare 2 get based on our income. My daughter & i are still alive thanks to universal Healthcare.

A Creeping And Very Real Threat

I am currently reading Linda McQuaig's latest book, The Sport & Prey of Capitalists: How the Rich Are Stealing Canada's Public Wealth. As with most of her books, despite her very clear, accessible writing style, I am having a hard time with it, disturbing as it is in so many ways. While I am not prepared to discuss it at this point, its thesis, not exactly startling, is that our government is ceding more and more of our formerly proud public institutions to the depredations of rampant capitalism.

I came across the following video on The Guardian today, about threats to the British National Health Service by Boris Johnson as he prepares to negotiate bilateral trade deals, perhaps the most impactful one being with the U.S. It addresses the sort of mentality that McQuaig talks about in her book. You can read the article here, and watch the disturbing claims being made by Labour's Jermeemy Corbyn below: