Machjo

They did the same with Tuberculosis. Even then they knew that if a person had tuberculosis, he had ot be quarantined. With the First Nations children in the residential schools, it was the opposite. And again, some Aboriginals alive today who did survive, either out of luck or natural immunity, tell stories of the nuns forcing them to play with sick children, providing no care, etc. It'w well documented. Even a Dr. from Indian Affairs got fired in 1907 for reporting this systematic attempted genocide! Just read my sig. If a nun can so cold-bloodedly kill a fiv-year-old in 1966 (so she'd be about 42 years old today), we're not talking about ancient history. Even in the 1950s medicine was not that backward. Even in 1907, the Dr. (I'll find his quote later) recognized the necessity of quarantine. To defend this is to be an accomplice.

Then again, if the objective is to put an end to land claims, eliminating the status indians, either physically or culturally, would certainly be desirable, which would naturally attract support of some level among most Canadians, or at the very least, apathy, a desire to turn a blind eye and ignore it. Recently, I'd been looking for self-instruction books for local Aboriginal languages and found none, in spite of all the claims on the part of the government that it wants to help their cultures develop. Yet if the claim were true, such texbooks would be among the first things to be created to make their languages anc cultures avaialble to a wider audience. However, more people learning their languages would risk further legitimizing and strengnthering their cultures and people, not a good idea if we're trying to usurp their land and the courts are standing against the government in this attempt.

Actaully, thsi thread title is wrong. Cultural genocide was committed. But physical genocide was too. And again, much of what you describe above in the residential schools was witnessed by people who are just in their middle-age today. I just don't get how so many Canadians talk about it like it was ancient history.

And imagine intentionally spreading smallpox in the Aboriginal schools and forcing healthy kids to play with contagious children! And again, this is within the memory of Aboriginals still living today!

http://www.hiddenfromhistory.org/ The info on the full-length video on this link is may shock some of you, and may already be known to others among you. Either way, though, it shows tales of murder, beatings, and abuse done to people in residential schools many of whom are still alive today and just past middle-age. Yet we seem to talk about these events as if they are a part of our ancient history. Why is that?

My sig below should say something of the attitude toward Aboriginal on the part of many Canadians. 1966 isn't that long ago. If that girl was 5 in 1966, you can imagine that many of her classmates are still alive today.

http://www.hiddenfromhistory.org/

The Singaporean model is well described here too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muSd9xw1qwo

http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/179/2/129 It would appear that the Swedish system is going two-tier too.

I'd say it started long before the Bushes. As mentioned above, Reaganomics was all about cutting taxes, borrowing and spending. The best way to win votes but the worse way to manage the economy. Also, I'd say even more to blame than politicians is the electorate. After all, what option do the politicians have to to give in to every selfishwhim of the electorate? A responsible politician when not in a recession woudl be preparing for recession through possible tax increases, spending cuts, or a combination of them. Not the most popular politician, but the kind I'd vote for.

Reagan borrowed his way through the Cold War. He was the model fiscal liberal if ever I'd seen one. By borrowing, all he was doing was postponing and worsening hard times. Clinton managed to deflate the deficit a little, thugh the Bushes simply went along with the Reaganomic borrow and spend regime. Finally, it all blew up in our faces last year.

Exactly. A boom is not a time for politicians to pat themselves on the back. A boom is the time to raise taxes if necessary, sell crown assets if feasible, and reduce or cut spending if possible. No, none of these remedies is popular to the electorate, but a responsible politician would not just give the people what they ask for, but convince them to accept the right thing. In a boom, we should be fighting inflation, debt, and interest rates with the same vigour with which we fight recessions. But we never do, and that's why we always end up with the vicious recessionary cycles.

We haven't had anything like the depression for awhile. I think it has more to do with governments not planning ahead in good times and then taken by surprise in bad times.

I believe that the shift to a common world currency is only a matter of time. Multiple currencies in the modern age is paramount to welfare make-work jobs for currency traders. In fact, the trend has already begun with the Euro.

Or another way of looking at it is that the government would not prohibit private health care, but if it does a good job with public health care, then interest in any private system would wane anyway.

I'm just saying, why would we want teh state to take all the risk of fluctuations in government demand for services? Let the private sector deal with it.

Essentially, here are what I see as the advantages of true two-tier health care: 1. It provides a pressure valve when government underfunds the public system. 2. It serves as a quality barometre for the public system, indicating when it may be time to increase funding. 3. It prevents Canadians from going abroad for private health care, thus keeping jobs in Canada. If the public system is well designed and maintained, then the private system will exist only in the law, and nowhere else. So if we have that much confidence in the public system, thre is no reason to fear it.

Legal monopoly or de facto monopoly? If legal, then such protectionism doesn't say much for its competence. If de facto, then that would suggest they've done something right.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saab That's different from private health care. Though Canada does technically have a two-tier system already, it's extremely restricted and in most cases, one must go abroad to the US to get private care. If we legalized private care across the board, maybe it still wouldn't come into being, but then that woudl be a sign of the quality of the public ssytem, wouldn't it?

I was just reading on the sites I'd linked to above that it has consistently been voted among the best repeatedly for decades. I'd also posted the description on sites linked to above. But essentially, regardless of the system adopted, if it's going to be sufficiently funded, then there will be no need to prohibit private health care because no one will want it anyway. And if it's underfunded, then we need to allow for it as a pressure valve. So either way, prohibiting privatization doesn't make sense. But if the Swedish system is more efficient (assuming it doesn't just have to do with its advantage in having a higher population density), then we ought to adopt it. If it's advantge simply has to do with populaiton density, then we may have no choice but to either provide more funding or alternatively just accept that we can't ahve the best system.

We should bear in mind too that Canada has a low population density. I wonder what role this plays in lowering efficiency or increasing costs in transporting patients, etc.

And if it's so good, we won't need to prohibit private health care, because no one will want private health care right?

So then let's adopt the Swedish system. The link did not explain how it keeps its costs down. Is it because it's more decentralized than ours? Or is it something else? Whatever it is, then let's adopt it. If it's so good, people won't want to opt for private, right?

And Sweden, though it has among the highest tax rates in the world and among the best education and social systems in the world, is also among the most privatized systems in the world. I rememebr reading a few years back that the Swedish government owned less of its GDP than the US government did of its! Sweden uses a school voucher system, and about 10% of its compulsory education system comprises private schools! SAAB is a privately-owned company too by the way. So how does it function? I don't know, maybe government spending is consistent most of the time? I guess the same would apply to private health care in Canada. If the government funds public health care as well as the Swedish governemtn does, then private hospitals won't even come to be in Canada. It would just be a law on paper saying that they may exist, but no fruit would come of it. Alternatively, if successive governments consistently underfund the system, then some private companies might enter the system. If government after government keep changing their minds, then maybe some private hospitals might decide to open on the US side but near the Canadian border, profitting from the US healthcare system but always ready to take advantage of Canadians who are willing to pay, though granted this last option is likely already in place. But what would be the point of banning it legally when if the public system is underfunded, then let the private system compensate as needs be. I'm all for sufficient funding of the public ssytem, but if the government fails to do that, then two-tiered is the way to go.