In our perennial whine fest over the state of healthcare in Canada, we tend to show our worst side. The editorial in last Sunday's Toronto Sun seems to sum up the majority of Canadians' position on healthcare most accurately: we don't mind eating sawdust so long as no one has an opportunity to buy steak.
The latest example of this is Dalton McGuinty's screed about alberta Premier Ralph Klein's musings on some possible ways to improve health care. McGuinty, accompanied by Health Minister Gerard Kennedy's contralto, is whining to Prime Minister Stephen Harper that Klein is out of bounds on health care and is urging Harper to make Klein behave. That's what makes liberal Liberals so endearingly predictable; their willingness to force others to submit to their own way of thinking. Even if the others are two thousand miles away in a completely different jurisdiction. and even if the orthodox way of thinking has been demonstrated to be totally defective.
Perhaps McGuinty's objections to Klein's ideas on healthcare best illustrate the difference between a liberal and a libertarian. Liberals appear to want to regulate everything, from childcare to appropriate bicycling attire to healthcare to the sale of burial plots.
Libertarians, on the other hand, seek to allow people to make up their own minds about what's best for them and do not believe that the panacea to all of society's ills lies in the ability of government to regulate them. Now, this is not to suggest that Premier Klein is a libertarian by any stretch of the imagination. What is intended here is a demonstration of how a commitment to "big government" always seems to put the common people at risk.
There is no arguing that our healthcare system is sufficiently able to serve all the needs of Canadians. Unless you have a friend who is a physician or can afford to cross the border for medical treatment, then the best advice is to make sure you do not get sick.
This is a direct result of the kind of dogmatic thinking that McGuinty is now demonstrating in wanting to limit Klein's healthcare ideas for alberta. McGuinty and Kennedy haven't recognized that no amount of money will make a difference in creating timely delivery of healthcare. They're still talking about getting the feds to kick in more money and considering increasing the healthcare tax in order to "fix" the system. Problem is, no amount of cash will fix the system, as the "root cause" of our healthcare system's failure is a shortage of doctors. Doctors aren't something that McGuinty can buy off the shelf in lots of a hundred with the extra money he can squeeze out of the Feds or his hapless citizens.
What's needed to tackle this problem is a commitment to examine all available options without discounting any for ideological reasons. I'm not sure that any of Ralph Klein's ideas can help to ease the healthcare crisis, but I'll give him points for thinking about them. The last thing I think we need is to have the likes of McGuinty set limits on what we can and cannot discuss when it comes to solving our healthcare problems. That's just one step removed from the Thought Police.
McGuinty and his constituents might benefit if he opened his mind to all the possibilities that may be helpful in tackling our problematic healthcare system. Rather than try to shut others' mouths, he might be well advised to come up with some original ideas of his own.
are you listening, Dalton? The problem is not a shortage of cash, but a shortage of ideas and your stale and hackneyed ideas are the problem, not the solution.
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