Friday, August 24, 2007

We need choice in health care

It never fails to amaze when the politically-correct continue to raise the "two-tier medicine" bogeyman in their misplaced attempt to portray choice in healthcare as an evil.
Such politically regressive mindsets need to be freed of their reactionary rigidness. Defenders of the current public system, which is failing on so many fronts right before their very eyes, should truly re-examine their real motives.
Trotting out the trite "rich versus poor" chestnut as a justification for not considering other, more-efficient, hybrid models of healthcare delivery is foolish and harmful.
The prescription for reform should include less government intervention, not more. For years we've witnessed Chretien's federal Liberals spitefully withhold the transfer of billions of our hard-earned tax dollars, while blatantly squandering, without account, billions more on useless projects.
Typical Canadian households now pay 47 per cent of their income for taxes. The health-care system devours nearly 50 per cent of Ontario's provincial government spending.
Yet despite all this, OHIP regularly shuttles Ontarians to the U.S. for care than is unavailable here.
Family doctors are hard to find. Is this the kind of "one-tier, one-choice status-quo" system to proudly champion without question?
R. Bobak, St. Catharines Standard, Feb.21, 2004

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