Browsing the healthcare babble

Just browsing around the “media” the last couple of days, overheard some interesting conversations and opinions.

-heard the John Moore show [quite by mistake, I make it a habit to change the station away from CFRB when John Moore is on] on Dec.6, 2007, at around 4:55 pm. Moore was talking about getting the mentally ill off the streets for help, and said something to the effect that we can’t infringe upon their rights in the name of public safety.
But it’s okay to infringe upon our rights when it comes to imposing monopoly health-care.

-watched the CBC 10:00 news (Dec.5, 2007 , I believe), where they had a report of an impending shortage of isotopes used for medical treatments due to a reactor shutdown. The report featured a patient who was affected by this situation, and who was able to find this isotope from some private source. But, ominously [as only the CBC can do ominous innuendo] the report closed by the reporter saying it cost $800...“of course”.

Obviously, such editorializing within a supposed news report shows that the CBC inserts its disapproval or bias. “Of course”! Give me a break.

-watched the Michael Coren show on CTS Dec.5, 2007, one of the panellists was former NDP Ontario cabinet minister Marilyn Churley. The discussion led to whether Liberal MP Belinda Stronach ought to have gone to the States for her medical treatment. Churley said yes that that was acceptable, then added something to the effect that ‘we can’t stop people from leaving’ .

Funny, that: a socialist Bob Rae cabinet minister whose government cut medical school enrolments, who still steadfastly clings to the idea of government monopoly health-care, admitting that it’s okay for citizens to leave Ontario because the socialized status-quo denies them treatment here.

"Of course" (!) we can stop them from leaving, Marilyn: we have to get rid of the socialized medicare monopoly which you so support! It is politicians who held power, such as Marilyn Churley, who are to blame for this health-care mess today in Ontario.

-watched Coren's CTS show Dec.6, 2007, with further debate on healthcare. Some lefty, Chris Watson, was cornered by Gerry Nichols who asked about the morality of peddling influence to pull strings for obtaining healthcare - with which the NDPer said he had no problem, but then when asked about the morality if the person paid to get better healthcare, the Dipper was at a loss for words, then objected to that. At another point I recall him saying that we don't have socialized medicine here. Unbelievable. The blind faith in Ontario's broken health monopoly is astounding. And now the socialists are pretending that the failed socialized system, all of a sudden, well, is not socialized. Another Liberal panellist, Akaash Maharaj, was insufferable as well, playing down the idea that "ideology" was the only thing left propping up our health-care system, at one point saying to Nichols "ridiculous". The only thing ridiculous is the ideological Liberal healthcare duplicity embedded in Ontario's health-care system. Get rid of that, and the system will then be ready for change.

Viewer Susan Urquart from Thunder Bay, Ont. wrote in (commenting on the previous night's Coren broadcast, the one with the insufferable Churley): "It's about time the government listened to how desperate people are for changes to how the system works."

Is there anyone in government listening? When will the federal Canada Health Act, and the Ontario Liberal's Commitment to the Future of Medicare Act (both of which are the basis for our current health-care status-quo) be abolished?

-listened to Michael Coren and Stephen LeDrew on CFRB , I believe it was Dec.4, 2007, on their ‘two-bald-guys’ radio act, when the discussion was about healthcare. Liberal windbag LeDrew made some dismissive comment to the effect that people are clogging up emergency rooms because somebody’s aunt goes there and waits for 15 hours because she has sniffles. This Liberal just didn’t make any sense.

-listened to Rush Limbaugh Dec.6, 2007 in the afternoon on a Buffalo station, who was reading a bit of an article, which he thought was pretty good, joking he's jealous he didn't write it. Anyway, listening to him read it, I was thinking, I've read that article too: turns out it was by Peter Foster, from that day's (Dec.6, 2007) National Post which I had read earlier that morning, titled "Road to Bali":

“The fate of the Earth hangs in the balance in Bali, but the issue is not whether humanity will succumb to a "climate crisis," or how the international community might craft a successor to the tattered Kyoto Accord (Let's call it KyoTwo). The real theme of this United Nations gabfest -- like that of its 12 predecessors, and of the hundreds, if not thousands, of related meetings --is whether globalization and trade liberalization will be allowed to continue, with a corresponding increase in wealth, health and welfare, or whether the authoritarian enemies of freedom (who rarely if ever recognize themselves as such) will succeed in using environmental hysteria to undermine capitalism and increase their Majesterium. Any successor to Kyoto will be rooted in hobbling rich economies, increasing the poor world's resentment, unleashing environmental trade warfare, and blanketing the globe with rules and regulations that benefit only rulers and regulators. Bali is not about climate; it symbolizes the continued assault on freedom by those who seek -- or pander to -- political power under the guise of concern for humanity.

Just at the point where Marxism was being consigned to the dustbin of history, the more or less concealed power lust that had fed it found a new cause in the environment. The fact that the UN's 1992 Rio conference followed hard on the collapse of the Soviet Union represented almost the passing of a poisoned baton. Capitalism had once been the enemy because it was alleged to make people poor. Now it was the enemy because of the alleged side effects of making them rich. The emissions of carbon-based industrial society would lead to a climate in turmoil: We would be beset by Biblical plagues of floods, droughts and monster hurricanes.

This simplistic narrative depended on carbon dioxide being the main driver of climate. Scientists who pointed that there were likely other more important factors, that climate science was in its infancy and that earth's climate had varied dramatically long before the invention of the steam, internal combustion or jet engine, were not scientifically refuted; they were howled down as "deniers" or industry shills.

The environmental left, centred in the UN, has achieved stunning success in building and pushing the climate change/sustain-ability bandwagon. They have done this first by funding, then hijacking, scientific research via the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. They have also promoted and allowed access to an ever-proliferating group of activist NGOs (Bali, significantly, is overrun by the non-elected "representatives" of scores of radical organizations, who have in turn forced similar numbers of industry representatives to follow them). NGOs have also had great success in pushing their alarmist message through a sympathetic media and thus --along with more direct lobbying--in achieving grossly disproportionate influence with democratic politicians. "Progressive" pols, meanwhile, have embraced environmental alarmism because it gives a much-needed boost to their flagging relevance.

Climate-change alarmism couldn't be presented as simply a new justification for power-seeking, so it had to be cloaked--as social-ism has always been cloaked, both consciously and unconsciously -- in concern for "the poor." Addressing climate change has always been linked in the UN script with Third World development, even though it in fact represents the greatest threat to such development. Nevertheless, the prospect of more international redistribution has meant that poor countries' corrupt and/or incompetent governments have become enthusiastic supporters of the Kyoto "process."

The rapid and unexpected explosion of economic growth -- and emissions -- in China and India has created a wrinkle. The United States and Canada claim that the ballooning emissions of these prospective economic superpowers mean that they must be part of any "solution." China and India, by contrast, assert --encouraged by their "poor" colleagues in the Third World bloc -- that since this "problem" was created by the developed countries, the developed countries must deal with it.

Bali will see nothing but posturing and preening, "tough" negotiations, and an agreement to talk further, in yet more exotic locations. But we should remember that the object of the exercise is not to deal practically with the problems of poverty, or to realistically address the challenges of extreme weather, whether caused by humans or otherwise. Bjorn Lomborg has eloquently pointed out why Kyoto-style approaches represent a very poor return on investment, and why we would be much better to deal directly with the specific threats of drought, flooding, malaria or hurricane damage, and with the broader issue of how to promote development. But that criticism misses the real significance of Kyoto and KyoTwo. They are not about effectively addressing specific problems, they are about exploiting ignorance about climate science, and continuing to demonize capitalism, in order to make ecocrats feel good, make others feel bad, pad incomes, and expand travel schedules.

Democratic governments have no choice but to cater to the ignorance/alarm/hypocrisy engendered in their electorates. This catering in turn reflects greater or lesser degrees of cynicism, skepticism, or moralistic bloviation.

The Australian delegation was feted on the first day of Bali because the subcontinent's new government chose at last to sign on to Kyoto, even though the agreement lay in ruins, and would have had virtually zero impact on the climate anyway. Canada's Environment Minister John Baird -- who must cope with the fact that his Liberal predecessors signed Kyoto without any plan or intention of fulfilling their obligations-- must sing from the U.N. hymnbook while keeping a firm hand on the nation's collective wallet. And preparing for the next meeting.”

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So...what's this all got to do with healthcare? It seems that the same types you often see pushing for state health-care control are the same kyodiots pushing state economic control. On our local level, Liberals like St. Catharines MPP Jim Bradley made a lot of noise pushing Ontario to get on-side Kyoto, and, his command-and-control Liberals have also helped ruin Ontario's health system. And they love to filter all the evil in the world (as they perceive it, anyway) through the filter of the terrible, market-oriented United States.

It seems like Jim Bradley's entire career is based on our "collective wallet".