Why vote for Bush?

Great Debates
41

jshore:

OK. Let’s put party politics aside for a second.

Health Insurance

Health insurance is not a right. It is a business. If you sign up with a health insurance company, statistically speaking, they have an amazingly good idea of what you are going to cost them through your time as insured. They set the premiums accordingly, and make a profit. Once you are insured, their strongest desire is to keep you healthy, and paying premiums.

On your own you are not likely to seek health care if you are particularly healthy, but will if you are not. That is why if you work or belong to group health care policy, the premiums tend to be lower than if you seek it on your own. They insure everybody in that group, and assign premiums based on the demographics of the group, not the individual. Everybody benefits, and the insurance company makes money.

Health care on the other hand, may be a right, I dunno, it doesn’t say so in the Bill of Rights to my knowledge. Everybody has it. You will be treated in a hospital regardless of your ability to pay. That is law. Medicare and Medicaid will provide you with preventative care.

You are foolish to argue against private insurance based on paperwork. Making claims on Medicare and Medicaid is much more work intensive. Sometimes the Government changes the law and decides not to pay, after the fact. One of the best nursing home chains in the country, by the name of Genesis Health Ventures has gone bankrupt because of this. The whole industry is in trouble. The government’s actions in this sector have directly and disastrously effected the standard of care received by indigent retirees in nursing homes. And you think more socialization is a good thing?

Capitalism and Government

Every entitlement that everybody receives in this country has to be paid for. That comes from tax dollars. Taxes are paid for by people and companies who are out earning money. The more succesful they are, the higher are the tax-receipts for which to pay for things.

It follows logically that is in the best interests of Everybody to encourage success. Big business employs people, insures them, makes them self-sufficient, and provides tax-dollars to promote worthy programs. Big businesses are good. Successful people also pay taxes, and produce goods and services that are useful. When they spend their money, they contribute to the gainful employment and self-sufficiency of others, and the cycle grows. When money is spent on an entitlement, no matter how necessary, or worthy, it does not contribute to that cycle. The concept that wealth and spending creates more wealth and spending is called “inflation.(different from the bad kind.”)

That being said, overrall, Business and spending is good for the economy and those in it as a whole, and entitlements are bad.

But, it is not that simple. Productivity is good for everybody. It is in the best interests of the whole that everybody be encouraged to be productive and gain wealth, and that everybody have the opportunity to do so. There is also a moral imperative to provide for those who cannot be productive, for whatever reason. Also, Capitalism has the potential for abuse; monopoly, price fixing, labor abuse, etc. can all occur.

Therefore, it is necessary that we maintain a certain level of entitlements, and Government controls upon industry. These things are necessary evils, and they must be paid out of the system, for the good of the system.

It is also necessary that some people be wealthy, and that poverty should be difficult and unpleasant. It should not be comfortable. These two things encourage people to strive to become productive a. to avoid the unpleasantness of poverty, and b. to achieve the privileges of wealth.

Keeping these things; the incentive for wealth and productivity, necessary entitlements, and government controls in balance is a tricky thing.

Picture society as a wagon pulled by a horse. If the wagon is empty, the horse can move very fast, but it serves no useful purpose. If the wagon is overloaded the horse cannot pull it, and no useful purpose is filled. The road is also not level. Sometimes it is easier to pull the wagon, then others. While loading the wagon, it is therefore important to be efficient and conscious of the weight. Now in our example, the further the horse pulls the wagon, the bigger its muscles grow and the more weight it can pull.

It should be apparent that there is an optimum weighting that needs to be put on the wagon in order to get travel with the greatest benefit of wieght and speed. It is stupid to overburden the wagon when the going is relatively easy, because once you hit a hill you may proceed on momentum for a lttile bit, but the weight will bring you to a stop and even send you backwards.

Now, as a whole, Republicans beleive there is too much on the wagon. Democrats beleive there is too little. Some Republicans think it would be nice to untie the wagon and let the horse run. They are stupid. Some democrats beleive that the horse should ride on the wagon. They are stupid.

The fact remains that the horse can only pull what the horse can pull. Government cannot give us anything that doesn’t have to be pulled by the horse, slowing us down.

It is in everyone’s best interests that the wagon is packed efficiently so that the horse will always be able to pull those things we need.

Business, wealth, and productivity are good things. They are the horse.

42

Which is why when I hear people complaining that Republicans are for big business, I find it both offensive and stupid.

When I hear people say “Republicans are for for the wealthy,” I find it both offensive and stupid.

The necessary converse is that Democrats are for the poor. That is, for for keeping people poor, and making more people poor.

I recall reading (look it up yourself if you don’t beleive it,) that enough money has been spent on relief programs in the last 30 years to buy the entire Fortune 500. Outright. Today.

We’ve loaded the wagon, and it doesn’t work. Gore wants to “give” the american people all kinds of wonderful things. The truth is he can give us nothing. We have to pay for it.

The answer to poverty is not to throw money at it. The answer is to provide opportunity. Quite frankly, both Democrats and Republicans have done a shitty job of it.

43

No fair trying to take partisanship out of it and to start arguing on the basis of principles…Shouldn’t we at least wait til after the election to do that?!? :wink:

Okay, I am willing to grant you the distinction if you want. At any rate, I agree that at this moment in this country, health insurance is a business. What I tried to present was an argument as to why the providing of health care does not work very well in a completely private enterprise model. As a result, the current health system seems to be quite inefficient and unfair in many ways. And, while there is some sort of minimal emergency care provided to those who cannot afford to pay, it is very different from the sort of care you and me would get and one can argue that the result is overspending on treatment relative to preventive care.

I agree that group plans are good…And some of the reforms of health care that stop short of a single-payer system try to extend this sort of group plan to more people. (Wasn’t that a lot of what the Clinton health care plan was about?)

As for whether or not health care is a “right”…I will grant you this does not appear in the Bill of Rights. I believe it does appear in some international human rights thingy of one sort or another. Obviously, it is a matter of opinion…Rights in this country are construed somewhat differently than in other countries…I don’t think our take on rights is at all bad, but I think it would sometimes serve us well as a nation to consider other perspectives and not be too cock-sure that we have the monopoly on wisdom here.

Well, then, we need to understand how the Canadians are able to do it so much more efficiently, don’t we? Perhaps I can get you to agree that, in principle, at least it might be more efficient at the doctor’s office if they had one sort of form to fill out instead of zillions of different ones, depending on the patient’s insurance company, each company with their own procedures, contacts, etc. And, that the duplication at the level of the insurance companies themselves might also be inefficient. I know there are comparative numbers about the overhead costs for health care in various countries around somewhere, and I don’t think we come out looking very good compared to all the other Western democracies that have single-payer systems.

I agree with much of what you say here. In particular, I agree that business, wealth, and productivity are good things. What it comes down to is a matter of degree (and also some disagreements on how it all works out, which I will get to in discussing your horse-and-cart analogy).

I would say that my basic feelings about market capitalism are similar to what Churchill said about Democracy: It is the worst economic system ever invented, except for all the others. What this means to me is that we should have a market economy as much as feasible but should work hard to try to overcome the various disadvantages and inequities therein (some of which you mention). And, of course, there’s the rub, as people have vastly different opinions about the extent that we should regulate the market. Unfortunately, these days, markets seem to have become a religion in this society. (“Marketism,” with the Markets as God and the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal as the Divine Word.)

One example is that people don’t pay sufficient attention to issues such as externalities. So, people assume that if the market has bequeathed upon gas prices the value of $1.20 a gallon then that must be the correct price. (Of course, if the prices go up too high, they start to question this belief and say that OPEC is using its monopolistic powers to inflate the price, or whatever.) Now, this is simply not so, even within the framework of market economics if there exist large external costs associated with the use of cars which are not borne directly by the producers or consumers. (Even if they bear the costs indirectly, that is not enough to insure that the good itself is “correctly” priced.)

Another example is one made by Lester Thorow, who is Dean of the MIT Sloan School of Management these days, I believe. He points out that markets are basically an efficient tool for distributing goods within a society with a certain distribution of wealth but they don’t really care much about what that distribution is. That, society as a whole has to have some input into through the means of self-government.
(See his forward to the book Shifting Fortunes at http://www.ufenet.org/press/shifting_fortunes_report.html)

I am not sure why you suggest that monies spent on entitlements vanish into thin air. The people who get this money go out and spend it, thus creating more jobs, etc., and the cycle continues. Now, admittedly, the rich and poor use money in different ways. (The rich invest a larger fraction and spend a smaller fraction than the poor do.) This has various advantages and disadvantages, no doubt.

I agree with you here…But am going to quibble somewhat…I’ll take it up when we get to your analogy below.

Fine. Do you seriously doubt that this is the case now? However, if poverty becomes so unpleasant that people are stuck in a cycle of poverty, self-destructive behavior, and the like, I think it is encumbent on society to try to figure out what to do about it. Not that I claim that the answers are obvious.

Absolutely.

Okay, I don’t find this analogy too bad but, as noted above, when you talk of productivity being good for everybody, I do have some quibble with it. Productivity is usually measured by something like the GNP. The GNP per capita represents the number it seems to be assumed that we should be trying to maximize. However, this measure is imperfect for a variety of reasons. One, as some liberal economists have pointed out, is that it does not account for everything, e.g., not everything can or does have a monetary value put on it…The value of an unpolluted stream or a mountain in the wilderness, etc. Also, for example, if there is some sort of environmental catastophe and then lots of money is spent to clean it up, this all looks great from the GNP point of view…Money was spent on the original thing that produced the catastrophe, more money was spent on cleaning it up. But, is society really so much better off as a result of all of this?

Another problem with maximizing the GNP is that it says nothing about the distribution of the fruits of this productivity. It is not clear why you want to maximize this average quantity of the wealth of the society. Why not maximize, instead the “median” of it? Heck, John Rawls, an admittedly-way-Left social philosopher, argues that if people had no idea who they would be in the society, then they would choose to maximize the situation of the least-well-off. (I personally believe Rawls has gone overboard in the other direction…I think people are less conservative [in the non-political sense of the word] than he believes and would be willing to accept some trade-offs here for the possibility of being, through their own industriousness and hard work, better off than the least-well-off.)

Anyway, at the end of the day, I would say that there is not simply one wagon…I think the problem is that people are in many wagons and it is possible for the wagons in back to become unhooked from those in front, so that not everyone ends up moving forward…perhaps at all…or at least not as fast as they would if we adopted another configuration that moved the wagons forward on average a little bit less, mainly by making those wagons in the front which are breaking the sound barrier go just a little bit slower. Some of the various cites I have thrown out in other threads (Like “Rich Party, Poor Party”) go into the statistics of this in detail.

44

jshore:

We may make a good Republican out of you yet!

I agree with much of what you have to say. The multiple cart analogy is apt (Society as Wagon Train,) “Forward Ho!”

Distribution is an issue as well, and one that I touched on briefly under the idea of opportunity.

As for the natural gas price issue, well, two out of three ain’t bad. Inneficiencies in price do occur. It’s part of the nature of the beast. In the case of natural gas and other commodities their are people who do nothing else, but search for these innefficiencies. They then exploit them, and make money until they go away. These arbitrageurs fix the pricing discrepancy.

The real discrepancy occurs as you say with distribution and opportunity. If you live on the wrong side of town, you may recieve a 2nd rate education that will severely impact your ability to be productive. Goods and services may paradoxically cost more than elsewhere, and for some you may not even have the opportunity to purchase them. Then you have a price inequity.

But, without saying anything about Canada, socialized medicine sucks.

45

Well, this is basically short-hand for arguing that Republicans are so worried about not slowing down the wagons in front at all that they are unwilling to do anything that may do so, even if it allows most of the other wagons, and particularly those in back, to go faster. (There are also other issues, like the planet that the wagons are riding on and what is happening to that.)

The fact is that there are some trade-offs in this game. All solutions are not simply better for everyone. And, unfortunately, those who seem to claim these trade-offs don’t exist seem to be the ones who are advocating policies that will allow the wagons in front to go the fastest with the claim that this is the best way to speed up even the wagons in back.

By the way, I will remind you again that we are not doing this social experiment in a vacuum. There are other Western democracies who have gone for a different balance between the competing ideologies (i.e., of how unregulated the market, how generous a welfare state, etc.). When you walk down the streets in some of these other countries, the feel is very different. Of course, they have their problems too (generally higher rates of unemployment being one example…to the extent that one can compare the figures cross-nationally) but I happen to believe that there are things that we can learn from them.

No, the converse is that the Democrats (sometimes) advocate policies that attempt to help those in the wagons in back and in the middle, even if they have the effect of slowing the wagons in front. Of course, the extent to which the Democrats do this is exaggerated, since they have considerable influence exerted on them by those in the front wagons. (Good God, Bush tries to label Gore as “a big spender”…Compared to what? Gore is the economic right wing of the more left of the two major parties in the U.S., which itself is pretty right wing by the standards of Western democracies.)

I also recall reading that one man in this country has more wealth than a significant fraction of the population put together. (I forget exactly what the fraction is.)

We haven’t loaded it nearly as much as most other Western democracies who are doing quite well, thank you.

Well, here, I agree with you. As I’ve argued before, I think how to best reduce poverty is a hard question that lots of people can debate about. However, first, one has to get agreement that the current situation is not tolerable, and I seem to have a hard time getting agreement on that. (Okay, I admit, one way is to advocate the general trickle-down, or supply-side, approach. And, while it seems to me that many Republican politicians seem to pretty much ignore the poor almost entirely, I’ll admit there are some others, like Jack Kemp, who seem to be honestly trying to address the problem. Some of his ideas may even be good, although overall, I think they suffer from this trickle-down approach.)

46

Very doubtful…But, you can keep trying!

I’m not sure what you are saying here. My point on gas (as in gasoline) prices was more about the accounting of external costs, and as long as there isn’t a mechanism in place to push these costs back onto the producer/consumer, the price is going to be “wrong”. (The classic externality example is a company who produces beer and pollutes the river downstream, affecting the lives of the fishermen, recreational users, etc. If the producer or consumers of the beer are not made to bear the costs of cleaning up the river, the price of the beer will be too low. In fact, even for consumers living downstream from the beer company, who may in net have the positive impact of the lower beer price offset by the negative impact of the pollution, so that the net cost to him is “correct”, things are still screwed up…Unless the person makes the direct connection that this cost imposed on him through the pollution is a direct result of the buying of the beer, he will continue to buy too much beer relative to what he would if it were priced correctly. [And even then, I am not sure if it works out…I sometimes get confused in the accounting of all this.])

Well, I am not saying all systems don’t have their bad sides and the Canadians were certainly struggling with issues with their health care system. But, overall, they seemed pretty happy with it and couldn’t understand why the hell America hadn’t gone the single-payer route. (This includes one of my roommates in Vancouver, who was not exactly liberal and was also what I though of as a Republican’s wet dream :wink: … a small business entrepeneur who worked his ass off.)

47

You can keep saying it, but it’s not going to suddenly become true.

You can’t get medicaid just because you’re poor. You also have to either be a kid, pregnant (and then it only covers pregancy-related costs), or already sick. If you’re a working adult with no dependents who just can’t afford to see a doctor, you’re SOL as far as Medicaid is concerned.

Reasonable people can disagree on UHC (I have my reservations, as I mentioned before), but I don’t want you to misunderstand what Medicaid does and does not do.

I do, by the way, consider health care to be a basic human right. I should also mention that few people who seek it are denied the health care they need, but this is often done in spite of the system rather than because of it. (Health care workers can be sneaky when they have to be.)

Dr. J

48

Mr. Invisible:

I understand your point, which is well and fairly said. Please consider my silence as respectful of your wisdom in this, and all things.

Your average healthy guy is SOL as far as regular preventative care is concerned if he has no insurance, or means.

There are a huge number of clinics, and volunteers out there to provide the service, but this in no way excuses the stupidity of the government’s standpoint.

An ounce of prevention can save a whole lot. Lives and money.

You may now return to the shadows from whence you came.

It’s enough to know that you are out there. Watching :wink:

49

jshore:

I think of environmental concerns as part of the “necessaary regulation.”

the fact that it’s stupid to “Crap where you eat,” goes without saying as far as I’m concerned.

50

Glad to hear it…But, whereas the Europeans have made some attempt to tax gasoline up towards a price that better reflects the environmental and other external costs, that sort of policy isn’t even on the radar screen here. (I think that “Earth in the Balance” shows that Al Gore at least recognizes the issues here, albeit there is little evidence he has the guts to do anything about it…And, to be fair to him, I don’t know if he could do so and have any hope of being elected. (It would certainly entail a mass effort in public education about market economy pricing in the presence of externalities and the like!) From George Bush, I haven’t heard anything resembling any sort of comprehension on this issue.)

And Dr. J, thanks for filling us in more on the whole health care thing. I am not up on the details of qualification for Medicaid and the like, although my intuitive sense was that health care for the poor…particularly the preventative variety…is far from a solved problem.

51

jshore:

I read Earth in the Balance. What I learned from that book is that Gore wants to be percieved as the savior of the planet.

52

Exactly what does the gas tax have to do with the environment when the money isn’t set aside for environmental protection, it is just thrown into the heap of federal revenue. Higher gas taxes will hurt the poor and middle class a hell of alot more than the rich. This logic seems precisely backwards of usual Democratic/Socialist/Commie :slight_smile: redistribute-the-wealth rhetoric. I fail to see the wisdom in increasing the costs of basic human needs.

You want environmental protection? Fine the hell out of corporations that contribute to environmental destruction, but don’t blame/punish people for using the only transportation tool at their disposal. There are already significant tax breaks for R&D and electric car purchases, but noone is biting because a comprable vehicle is not yet available. Make it and they will buy. Maybe offer more tax breaks or hey, spend a few billion dollars of tax money to develop the technology. We spend that much on a freaking airplane after the technology is complete.

Health Care:
That Canadian doctor would make alot more money here and could afford the service or single/shared secretary he might need to do paperwork.

In warmest regards to government provided health care…
My wife is a COTA at a nursing home. She does all her own paperwork, it isn’t as bad as some people make it out to be. In fact she does all the paperwork for the Occupational Therapy program at the home in which she works. She also works part time, and sees 4-5 patients a day. She is truly amazing. :slight_smile:

Point… in the last few years, Medicare has been refusing little things like… a wheelchair for a man who suffered a stroke and can’t walk, but is recovering; an orthopedic cast for an elderly woman who needed one while healing; Occupational Therapy for people that won’t be returning home. [Why should they be healed when they have nurses to dress them and clean their bedpans?] Meanwhile, an HMO would get smacked to the wall for any of the above.

There are good HMOs and bad HMOs, the good ones know that a little preventive care costs less than the alternative of a problem delayed in treatment. However, the federal government is a bad HMO [if you can call it that] straight across the board. Also, the federal government is NEVER held accountable (except in election years of course). My wife works the system as best she can, but sometimes the answer is still ‘no’. Annoying persistance with an HMO has a good chance of reaching human ears. BTW, my wife is a democrat, [sarc]her one flaw[/sarc].

53

The United States is the world leader in the development of new drugs and new treatments for disease. Why? Because drug companies make a nice profit off the drugs they sell us. Are my prescriptions 4 times more expensive than they are in Mexico? Yes,but that’s because Mexican drug companies don’t have to develop the technology - they just copy it.

We should encourage free enterprise, not stifle it. Drug companies should vie with each other to find new and better treatments for diseases. Not just because it may be profitable for them in the end (though that’s a damn good motivator), but because new and better drugs benefit us all.

I have no doubt that under a government run health care system, the government would force a cap on profits - not only on drugs, but on doctors. And that would be a bad thing. Because it would funnel more money away from r&d.

So when Al Gore spouts off about how “big drug companies” are a threat to the health of kids and seniors, I want to scream. Who else is going to come up with a cure for cystic fibrosis, breast cancer or leukemia but “big drug companies”? The over-bloated, inefficient government?

Russia, Great Britain, Canada - they all have universal health care plans. But when the Prime Minister of Timbuktu needs a heart valve replacement, he comes HERE. And that is all anyone needs to know about universal health care.

54

PunditLisa:

I think I’m in love.

55

Here in Canada, the Prime Minister of Ontario needed cancer treatments… He went to the United States.

The head of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce elected to stay in Canada for his cancer treatment. He died while sitting on a waiting list for a CAT scan.

The big worry for me, as a Canadian, is that the U.S. is going to regulate its drug and medical device research so heavily that it will kill the industry. We all know that most innovation comes out of the U.S., precisely because it is less regulated than many other countries. As a Canadian, I benefit from that.

And BTW, when considering how well other nations do with their socialized medicine, you should consider how much of a ‘free ride’ they get from the U.S. If you guys kill your own R&D industry, there won’t be anyone for you to fall back on.

The demonization of ‘big drug companies’ by Al Gore is terrifying. If I were an American, that one issue would be enough to prevent me from voting for him.

56

Well, actually, PunditLisa, I believe most of the drugs in question are those which are patented. (The others are not so expensive because there are generic versions.)…They aren’t sold there by Mexican drug companies; they are sold there by the same companies that are selling them here. Only the price is different.

For God’s sake, is there no middle ground for you followers of marketism? [Y’all must be them fundamentalist marketists!] Well, hell, if you want even more R&D, why not pay the companies huge gobs of money! [Actually, we do that already in a way…It is called NIH. (Oh, sorry, to convert it to your language of market-speak, “the overbloated, inefficient government”)…And, I read recently that the claim that the drug companies are responsible for all this wonderful innovation is overblown. Basically, they often take discoveries made with government money and then do the final step of product development and then make a killing on it.]

Are drug companies evil incarnate? No. Are they too powerful and making excessive profits? Yes. For God’s sake, the head of health imaging at Kodak, not exactly who you would most suspect of being a socialist pinko, was saying that the drug companies have really gone overboard in their greed!!! [And, by the way, what you are advocating here is not a market-based system but one that allows a monopoly, in the form of a patent, to a company…which is why their profits are so huge. Now, one can argue externalities to justify this form of subsidy (in order to encourage research), but let’s at least be clear on what we are advocating here! I.e., it ain’t a pure unfettered market and the case has to be made that the social benefits are worth this subsidization.]

As for Sam Stone, well, I am glad to see that Canadians aren’t completely monolithic in their views on health care. But, you must certainly be in a small minority there in wanting to get rid of a single-payer system! I remember when I was living there, the Reform Party suggested some rather modest changes to the system. Well, they were immediately attacked as going in the direction of eliminating the socialized medicine system…And, holy cow! I don’t think I have ever seen politicians try so hard to assure voters that, no, they were not in any way advocating anything like that!

And, JAG, as to your point that “that Canadian doctor would make alot more money here”…Do you think he doesn’t know that?!? And yet, he prefers the system there. Hmmm…He’s either a masochist or he has some principled or self-interested reasons for liking it better!

And, finally, JAG, let me try one more time on the gas tax thing. See, I actually believe in market economics, believe it or not. And in market economic theory, a good that has large externalities (external costs) associated with its use is only priced reasonably correctly if some attempt is made to pass those external costs on to the producers / consumers. If this is not done, the good will be priced too low and consumers will over-use this good. (Exhibit A: all the huge SUVs clogging the roads and people who won’t walk a block when they can drive.) This is basic market economics theory.

Now, on to your question of whether such a gas tax would be regressive. I haven’t looked in detail, but I would have to say that undoubtedbly it probably would. But, I would prefer to see the regressive effects offset in other ways. Yes, I suppose proposing a tax that may be regressive goes against my normal “Democratic/Socialist/Commie redistribute-the-wealth” ways. But, alas, while I may not be happy with the net regressive effects that such a tax would have if not coupled to some other more progressive moves, I won’t back down from advocating such a tax because I think the evils introduced into the economy by having automobile use so highly subsidized needs to be addressed. (And, by the way, it is not just gas vs. electric cars, it is also big huge monstrosities vs. smaller, more fuel-efficient cars, it is excessive and illogical use of automobiles vs. more careful and efficient use, and it is cars vs. public transit…at least in areas of high enough population density to support public transit.)

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jshore said:

**

I have a problem with you, or anybody judging what is excessive. Those “big profits” are what drives venture capitol and R&D into esoteric areas of research at great risk.

R&D, testing, getting a new drug to market all represent huge expenses of capitol. If there’s no big payoff, why bother?

58

Well, who should judge then? And don’t say the market, 'cause I will say “Fine…remove the subsidization of research through NIH and the patent process that allows for the monopoly on various drugs and I can guarantee you that the profits will come down…But you won’t like the results of that.” (Nor would I; I am not advocating anything that dramatic…since I think there are really some positive externalities in this market…But, perhaps, we might have gone too far in a certain direction?)

P.S.—How do you always respond so quick…Are you always lurking here or do you have something that tells you when a new post goes up. Enquiring minds want to know!

59

jshore:

I’m in investment management, and on the net almost all the time (Even more so in this environment.) I got an internet phone and a wireless connection when I’m travelling. I usually keep a window or two open on auto refresh. Plus, I don’t sleep much.

60

Actually, there is a very strong move here to introduce more privatization into Canadian Health Care. In fact, Prime Minister Jean Cretien made a speech yesterday in which he claimed to support private clinics. Here in Alberta, we’ve been moving to a system of private clinic supplements for a long time.