kimmy

Choosing "option B" in the poll requires an ideological assumption too. I don't see how. The assumption being made is that option A provides a worse standard of care for average Canadians than option B. You stated the assumption explicitly yourself when I proposed that the choice might be between a system where everybody gets "5/10" care, or a system where the rich can buy "8/10" care but everybody has access to "7/10" care. No no, you said, we're talking about a system where everybody gets "7/10" care, or one where the rich get "9/10" care while the rest get only "4/10" care. In your own words you explained the ideological assumption built into your poll. Feel free to conduct your own poll with whatever 'real' question interests you. MY 'real' question was the one I asked. Of course. You propose your little poll with its wink-wink-nudge-nudge connection to a current issue of considerable interest, but insist that the discussion be framed strictly in terms favorable to your viewpoint. Linked? Of course it was. Don't put words in my mouth (unless you're putting your tongue in there with them). Ok, fine. So your crappy poll didn't have a "wink-wink-nudge-nudge" connection to a current issue of considerable interest, it was an explicit link to a current issue of considerable interest. The people who self-selected wanting better health care for the rich than for their own children either read what the question said and answered what they think, or made an assumption about what the question should mean and answered the question based on that assumption rather than the plain interests of their children, or don't understand written English. I make no conclusions about 'love'. Sure you did. "...people who love their ideology more than they love their children," remember? While you contend that that conclusion is a correct and obvious inference from the question you asked, I maintain that you can't draw that conclusion from the question without making assumptions about the relative quality of the healthcare provided in each system. Specifically: If the system in Option A gives better healthcare to your children than in option B, then if your children's welfare was your foremost concern, you'd choose option A even if the quality of care isn't as good as Belinda.ca's kids get. If I was convinced the system in Option B gave my kids better care than the system in Option A, I'd choose it if my kids' welfare was my foremost concern. If the system in Option B gives my kids the exact same standard of care as the system in Option A, then it has no effect at all on me personally... but it means you've made my kids and Belinda.ca's kids equal not by elevating my kids, but by punishing Belinda.ca's kids. That's just spiteful, don't you think? -k

Choosing "option B" in the poll requires an ideological assumption too. As I already argued, the real question is whether my kids should receive better medical care than the system presently provides, not how my kids' medical care stacks up against the medical care Belinda.ca's kids have access to. Not really. My question was not really a "crappy poll". It was an attitudinal test. It was not designed to impugn motives and character, more like identify them. Consider: personality testing theory While you now say your crappy poll was not linked to the real issue facing Canadians in healthcare, I doubt anybody who viewed your thread viewed it as being separate from the issue currently in the news. "Boil it down" the poll suggests, and people who support private healthcare don't love their kids. A push poll, as you already conceded, designed to show that people don't want private care. -k

More Bernard Shapiro in the news. Shapiro clears Grewal of immigration wrongdoing While I'm sure Grewal is pleased with the decision, his enthusiasm should be muted by Shapiro's declining credibility. Being cleared by Shapiro doesn't seem to be a ringing endorsement. Grewal and Shapiro will continue to be close acquaintences, as the tapes matter will be investigated as well. As for the Sgro case... CP: Shapiro says he's learned his lesson. -k

Well maybe there's some people who voted that way by mistake, or some who voted that way to satisfy a contrarian or iconoclastic impulse. But they shouldn't need me to carve out their exceptions for them. But as to those who voted that they want their kids to have worse healthcare than the rich, I wish you would enlighten me on what other possible interpretation I should apply. As I said in the thread itself, it could be that people believe a system where their kids receive worse healthcare than the rich might also provide their own kids a *better* standard of care than a system where everyone suffers equally. And as I said in the thread itself, I think the way the question was phrased is an attempt to impugn the motives or character of those who question our present system ("the truth hurts," I believe you said in the thread.) -k

Well, if there is one issue where religious groups complain that their views aren't being respected, it's same-sex marriage, right? Sweal says faiths should arrive at a consensus before they bother the rest of us with their views. I think all major faiths have arrived at just such a consensus on the issue of marriage. Christian, Muslim, Jew, Sikh, and Hindu all have definitions of marriage that are identical. One man, one woman. Some branches of Islam believe that under special conditions it's permissible for a man to have more than one wife, and some offshoots of Christianity practice polygyny as well, but that's a miniscule fraction of either religion. The overwhelming majority of all major religious groups in our country are in complete agreement on the issue. I believe that the rallies in May in support of retaining the traditional definition of marriage were, in fact, organized by a multi-faith coalition. Personally, I don't have any attachment to the traditional definition of marriage. And I'm certainly not a religious person. I'm just curious, Sweal, if you would consider that Canada's religious groups have met your condition for participating in discussion of the issue of SSM, and if so, what recognition should their views be given? -k

And yet that's what passes for debate in this country, at least on the subject of healthcare. If you don't agree, go back and review the past election. Your intent on applying that assessment to everybody who voted for "option A" in your crappy poll is exactly what I'm talking about. -k

Perhaps advocates of more private participation in healthcare are not vilified as fascists or bigots. But certainly vilified. We've often seen opponents try to break this into an "either or" choice where if you're not 100% behind the Canadian model, then you must be talking about "US style healthcare", some Dickensian nightmare-world where poor people are dying in the street right in front of the hospital, while inside gaggles of nurses attend to a few wealthy patients in silk robes eating smoked salmon sandwiches with the crusts removed. Why, just last week I was in a thread where someone accused supporters of more private healthcare of "loving their ideology more than they love their children." Now, if that's not vilification, then what is? -k

Yahoo news: Shapiro and Stronach rock the hizzouse, say Liberals. While we've argued at length over Stronach's defection, I don't think even her most avid supporters hailed the move as evidence of democratic reform. We also discussed the "new appointment process", which as I recall was just like the old appointment process except for the addition of a pointless dog-and-pony show where Justice Minister Cotler got together with an all-party committee to provide non-answers to an array of strictly limited questions. But pointing to Shapiro as a great accomplishment seems, well, a little desperate. By coincidence, James Travers' scathing review of Shapiro's first year as ethics commissioner was in today's Toronto Star. Toronto Star column: Shapiro kind of sucks. oops. -k edit: thanks for pointing out the bad URL, it should be fixed now.

He's from Alberta-- no doubt a shadowy figure with some sort of hidden agenda. He's hiding something, no doubt. Be wary. Trust no one. -k

Ya, that's why %70.4 of Canadians voted for a party that supported SSM in the last election. Was SSM the top issue in the past election? If not, then I don't think you can interpret the election results as an endorsement of SSM. For me, SSM wasn't even in the top 10 issues on my mind when I cast my ballot. It's an issue of minor importance to the future of the country. -k

Somewhat. In situations where no amount of regulation could reconcile an individual's right to engage in commerce with the rights of the people around him to life and security. I shouldn't be allowed to sell sticks of enriched uranium or cars with brakes that fail at random. I shouldn't be able to go buy a hand-grenade or a vial of smallpox culture, even if I just want to put them on my desk to contemplate my own mortality. I can't bring myself to view private medical services in the same light as hand-grenades or sticks of uranium. To show that selling vials of deadly pathogens is an unacceptable threat to others' right to personal security is a simple exercise. To show that selling medical services to private citizens is a threat to others' right to personal security is contingent about a set of assumptions that I just don't feel are sufficiently supported. In Sweal-World, you propose a situation where we have a government willing to adequately fund public medical services. Well, why couldn't we adequately fund public medical services while also permitting private citizens to engage in commerce as they wish? This is Canada, right? The most civilized and prosperous and capable nation on earth, according to the brochures? Ok, then we should be able to build a health system that balances our community-minded values with our individual rights. Price control as a result, not as a method. Tomato, tomahta? Not necessarily, I suppose. Price control isn't a *necessary* condition of a single-payer system. What would the implications of that be? Limit the number of providers and you raise the price of the service. Limit amount you'll spend for procedures and you lower the price of the service. If the hypothetical Bupkiss County Health Authority can process 500 MRIs per year, at an average cost per procedure of, say, $1000 each, then the BCHA can pretty predictably budget $500,000 a year for MRIs. Now, say I hear about long waiting-lists in Bupkiss County, and sense a business opportunity. Kimmy Imaging Inc sets up shop in Bupkiss County, and will perform MRIs for the same $1000 each that the BCHA spends on its in-house services, and my clinic can also process 500 patients a year. Woo-hoo! The citizens of Bupkiss County are thrilled! The waiting list will be cut in half! The administrators at BCHA are a lot less thrilled. They've got a tough choice all of a sudden. They now have the *capacity* to cut their waiting list in half, but have they got the money? They could wind up paying for 1000 MRIs this year, instead of the 500 they'd budgeted for. What do they do? Go to the provincial government and ask for another half-million dollars so that they can use this extra capacity? But if that doesn't work, do they continue to process just 500 MRIs per year, letting half their capacity go to waste and waiting-lists run longer? Or cut back on other services to pay for more MRIs? The administrators might find themselves wishing Kimmy Inc hadn't set up shop, because ultimately they don't really have the cash to address their waiting list anyway. Limiting the capacity of the system might create expenses, but it also provides a handy means of controlling expenses. -k

Well, if nothing else, the past 20 messages or so appear to be a superb answer to Cartman's question. -k

I think we were talking about stage presence and personality, not a litmus test of leadership. As much as it might be nice to say that the two have nothing to do with each other, I think we're all realistic enough to recognize that stage presence and personality are factors in politics in our age of television and radio. Trudeau and Mulroney, from what I've seen from old footage, had tremendous amounts of charm. I can't say anything at all about McGuinty; I couldn't even pick him out of a police lineup. Ditto Filmon, Doer, and Campbell (any of them.) If you don't have the charm of a Trudeau or Mulroney, "reg'ler folks" appeal in the style of Bush Jr or Klein or Chretien seems to work a lot better than Harper's clone/droid syndrome, or Day's fake youth and energy. I think Paul Martin has also had success despite his public persona, not because of it. -kimmy

Did the tornado touch down? Was there any damage? I hope nothing bad happened! -k

In proper cases. I think we're going to disagree what constitutes a proper case, though. Yes. But I wanted to establish the scope of what we are disagreeing about. So, next step: would you agree that life-or-death needs of citizens fall within the type of public interests in which in might be legitmate for the state to infringe private interests? (I'm not trying to trick you (as if I could) . I'm just defining the issues between us. Yes, I would agree to that. Trying to trick me? No. However, I'm starting to wonder if I accidently wandered into an episode of Peter Falk's Columbo. ("Just one more thing, ma'am.") You first sentence is almost right, the second is misguided. First: demand is not the patient, it is the money. A patient with no ability to pay creates no demand. Second: we are not talking about controlling suppliers, we're discussing control of demand. (Remember we just discussed private provision of services paid by the 'single (state) payer', right?) Perhaps, but in either of the scenarios we're discussing, patients have the ability to pay. In your single-payer system, every single person on the waiting-list has the exact same ability to pay for medical services. There *is* demand. While you've used the phrase "monopoly on demand", it looks to me like a more accurate description is that a single-payer system would provide price-control. One thing that occurs to me about limiting the participation of private providers is that it provides a means of controlling health expenses-- limit the capacity of the system, and you limit the amount of procedures you have to pay for each year. -kimmy {"uh, just one more thing, ma'am," the rumpled detective began. "Do you like pistacchios?" "What?" asked Miss Kimmy, caught off-guard by the odd question. Who is this guy, she wondered, and why is he wearing a trench-coat in the middle of summer? "Pistacchios," Det. Sweal explained. "They're these little nuts. They dye the shells pink. I can't stand 'em, but Mrs Sweal, she loves 'em. Goes through 'em by the bagful. Just last week I had to run down to the corner store in the middle of the night to get Mrs Sweal a bag of pistacchios. She--" "I know what pistacchios are," Miss Kimmy hissed, icy facade begining to break as she slowly but surely lost patience with the wall-eyed detective. "What on earth do the have to do with anything?" "Well, it's just that the ashtray of Mrs Hoople's car was full of these little pink pistacchio shells on the day she got killed," Det. Sweal said, "and what's funny about that is that Mrs Hoople was allergic to nuts, so she didn't put them there. So somebody else was in Mrs Hoople's car. Ain't that a funny thing?" Miss Kimmy's face blanched momentarily. "But..." she paused, quickly composing herself. "Maybe one of her friends from the bridge-club had pistacchios in the car. Why, they might have been in that ashtray for weeks." "Yeah, that could be it," Det. Sweal said, pausing to write in his notebook. "Thanks for pointing that out. You could be right about that. Anyway, I was just asking because I noticed that you had pink dye on your fingers when I talked to you that day, so I thought maybe you might know something about that. Anyway, you think about that, and call me if you get any ideas. I gotta run, the department keeps me real busy. But I'll get back to you if I've got more questions. I bet we'll see each other again real soon." "No doubt," muttered Miss Kimmy, glaring daggers after Det. Sweal as he departed.}

True, true. But tell me: would you stay in your dreary loveless white-person relationship, or would you "get wit da flava?" -k

A Canadian Dubya? In terms of politics, Harper might be "right" by Canadian standards, but he's a liberal compared to his US counterparts. In terms of speaking ability, Harper is certainly not inarticulate. If anything, his problem is that he's too far to the opposite extreme from Dubya. He's too composed, too icy, too calculated, too precise. He seems to lack passion. Dubya was certainly exposed as an inept debater in the 2004 election, but as a speaker he is actually quite effective-- goofy malapropisms and all. Bush's inept turn of a phrase added to a sort of "regular folks" type appeal that a lot of voters connect with, and Bush can bring an emotional aspect to his performance that's so convincing you'd almost swear he's sincere. Harper has none of that ability. Bush's strength as a speaker is something that Canadians should be able to relate to. We don't like polished, precise, almost robotic speakers like Harper or John Kerry. We like folksy regular-guy types like Dubya and Ralph Klein and Jean Chretien. Surely there can't have been a more inarticulate political figure in our country's history than Jean Chretien... he wasn't just inarticulate, he was practically incomprehensible. And yet, he was quite popular for a long time. Why? Because he came across like a regular guy, somebody you could relate to. Perhaps even your neighbor... (if your neighbor had suffered some kind of massive head injury, at least). -k

You must have me confused with someone else. I can't recall participating in any climate change discussions on this forum. I have no issue at all with reducing greenhouse emissions; just immense skepticism over the steps being taken. Seeing Rick Mercer's intensely irritating face on my TV makes me want to go burn coal just to piss him off. -k

Having already had polls on "would you vote for an openly gay politician" and "would you vote for a womyn of colour", I can assume that we'll soon have polls on whether you'd vote for a Sikh, a disabled person, or perhaps a fat person. Would you vote for a blind Jewish African wheelchair lesbian? Also looking forward to the "would you live next door to an ethnic family?" poll. Should be great fun. -k

In proper cases. I think we're going to disagree what constitutes a proper case, though. Sweal, you've been asked to explain what you mean by this once already. The obvious way of looking at it is that healthcare providers are the supply and the people waiting for treatment are the demand. The obvious way of looking at it would be that allowing more healthcare providers to operate in Canada would increase the capacity of the system, (ie the supply.) As with your earlier "monopoly of demand" remark, its clear that your way of looking at is different from other peoples' outlook-- so please explain your position. Continuing to make cryptic marks is not helping the discussion. -k

I haven't time right now to respond fully, but a couple of quick points... I am having a hard time finding words to explain my reasoning for this, but I do not feel that police and courts can be likened to healthcare (or anything else in our society.) I feel that healthcare is something that we should strive to provide for all Canadians, like education and housing and income. Would it satisfy your criticisms? No. It would satisfy one of my criticisms-- that keeping private capital from being invested in healthcare seems contrary to the goal of providing more services. It might be a compromise I'd be willing to accept, depending on the circumstances. However, I still see it as an interference in peoples' rights that's not sufficiently justified. I should be allowed to sell medical services, subject to proper regulation. However, I should also be able to buy medical services, subject to proper regulation. -k

Is the Trilateral Commission the new darling of the tinfoil hat set? The Bilderberg Club is not going to be happy to hear about this! I doubt Rona Ambrose is very well-known or influencial outside the Greater Edmonton area. If she's a pointman for the New World Order, she's certainly a low-key one. -konspiracy kimmy

awesome -k

In discussions about same-sex marriage and minority rights and abortion access and so on, supporters of those issues have always talked as if charter rights were sacred, the Supreme Court's interpretations were unassailable, and our lawmakers would simply have to make legislation to be consistent with these rulings. But now people who had been so enthusiastic about the SC are instant critics. And some people who had talked about the Notwithstanding Clause as if it were the defilement of all that is good and pure are now advocating its use on this ruling. This is not directed at you, Sweal, just a general comment. The message seems to be "We believe in the Charter and the Supreme Court! (...when they're making rulings that support our views.)" They probably didn't rule on "more expensive" and "not equitable" because they have no legal weight that I'm aware of. I don't know why "more expensive" should be a concern of public health advocates if private care customers are paying out of their own pockets. As for "not equitable", what of it? As a society we take pride in caring for our weakest members. And as a society we place a value on providing equality of opportunity for everyone. But providing equal means has never been an objective. Providing care for everyone in our society is consistent with our values. Preventing people from seeking their own options is not consistent with our values. Well, it would be a start, I guess, but fundamentally I still feel it's wrong that our sick guy can spend his $60,000 on an SUV but not a treatment. -k

Here in Edmonton, the mighty North Saskatchewan crested yesterday without spilling its banks, and is now receding. I am busy removing the outboard motor from my skateboard. -k