Welfare State Key To Canada's Successful Future

[Guest eureka]

Americans do not pay lower taxes than Canadians. The lowest 50% of wage earners in Canada pay less taxes than the same strata of Americans.

Figures of a few years ago are that Americans pay about30% of income in total taxes to all levels of government while Canadians pay 36.8%. That difference is completely made up of the difference in cost of the healthcare systems. As noted above, the lowest 50% of Americans pay more taxes than Canadians do and are correspondingly poorer.

The upper 50% pay far more for healthcare than the upper 50% of Canadians. They do that for a system that is noted for its inferior standards of care for all but the wealthy.

Social welfare programs are non-existent in America by any civilized standard. It is a sad joke to crow about private generosity since this, in total about $900 billion, I recall reading, does not even cover the health needs of those who have no healthcare let alone all the welfare needs.

Add to the above tax comparisons the inheritance taxes Americans pay that we do not. And, tragically, taxes on lottery winnings.

The picture is more one of the average American struggling and living in fear of a personal health or career calamity.

[Pateris]

The average American is better off than the average Canadian....

Go live there and see for yourself.

The middle class in the US can afford better healthcare than ANYONE in Canada gets.

At least in the US if something is wrong with you you get help when you need it, not in six months.

Doesn't anyone have a problem with the fact than thousands of Canadians DIE WAITING for healthcare?

Great system we have.

[Guest eureka]

That is balderdash. The middle classes in America cannot afford healthcare that is not paid by an employer insurance.

Thousands die in the US IN hospitals while being treated. The system is notorious for the death rate under care. The system is, as rated by UNESCO, one of the best - not the best, for high income earners and one of the worst of the developed countries for the rest.

My figures are accurate not a presentation of an ideological wish. They should be enough to stop all the political posturing about taxes. They should be enough to persuade those who cannot think or learn for themselves, of the deception that has been practised on them for years by the neo-libs.

I suppose, though, that it would be asking too much for those sheep to use the small minds God gave them to read and overcome their prejudices.

[Pateris]

eureka,

I'm not claiming the US system is the best in the world... I know that isn't true. Yes, people get health care from their employers. But those plans are pretty good. And there are now laws extending those plans into unemployment for some time. And those plans are in some cases CHEAPER than the additional taxes businesses and individuals pay in Canada for the government system we have.

But I am also not so blinded by ideology to recognize that the Canadian system is a mess and MORE MONEY won't solve the problem.

In Saskatchewan in the 1990s the government increased the health budget and waiting times went UP. Why? Because the unions fought to get more of the money and the resulting contracts actually REDUCED the number of staff...

I agree that having the government insure people's health is the right way to go. But having only government operated health care is stupid. Plus, why are Canadians of some means (and you don't have to be rich to do this) not allowed to pay for some medical procedures themselves? We already force Canadians to pay for some things themselves (like psychotherapy) that are not covered by the various provincial health plans.

[Guest eureka]

One of the problems with private insurance is that it goes through insurers. Those insurers must make a profit. In itself, that is no crime though it is costly and inefficient.

To make that profit and to keep premiums at a "affordable" rate, there must be tight control over claims. Healthcare does not exist when the first consideration is to keep the cost of a necessary procedure within the loss ratio prescribed for it.

There are many more issues but that is one that mitigates against proper treatments or treatment at all for those who do not have the clout to demand care.

The more important issue, as it affects Canada, to me is the tax one. It is time those real figures were trumpeted across the land and Harper, Klein, Harris, the Fraser Institute et al were made to pay for their attempts to sacrifice a civil society on the altar of personal ambitions and interest.

[Pateris]

Eureka,

I never called for private insurance. I called for private provision of health care itself. Private clinics, surgeries, diagnostics - make them compete for the business of the government. Create some incentive for the PEOPLE to help save money.

As for your statement about sacrificing the civil society... I would argue that since Trudeau took power in 1968 we have WASTED billions of dollars on the civil society ideals and have gotten nothing for it.

• Indian and Northern Affairs is a money pit and disaster.
  
• HRDC spends money on things with no evidence or justification.
  
• The Gun Registry is a multi-billion dollar propaganda device with no real impact
  
• Bilingualism and Multiculturalism are failing and multiculturalism is creating rifts in our society based on religion and country of origin.
  

The bureaucracy is really running the show and has created a system where there can be no accountability.

This is the most fundamental problem in the Canadian system. Lack of transparency.

[Guest eureka]

The trouble with that thinking is that health is not a business and is not amenable to business practises other than cost control. Competition can only lead to declining standards and the kind of shortcuts that have been noted in the US system.

Waste of money and civil society are entirely separate issues. The lack of bureaucratic control of expenditures is not a reason to diminish programs: it is reason only to improve controls. What does it matter whether money has been misspent in your examples in the context of provision of the other necessary components of a civil society?

You might well argue that Bilingualism and Multiculturalism are failing and creating rifts in society. I would argue that they are not and are an important first step along the road that all humanity must take if the world is to have a future and our species to survive.

However, if they are, then it is incumbent on us to improve our methods and not to abandon an attempt at civilizing and extending the scope of human interaction. Surely we can continue the efforts to widen human society. Or should cavemen have abandoned their efforts to broaden the band because the range of communicative gestures became onerous to lazy learners?

[Hugo]

The whole reason why healthcare is expensive and people cannot afford it on their own is because of government intervention. There used to be mutual-aid societies, which working people would join for benefits, paying an annual fee. The Shriners and Freemasons are descendants of these societies. In 1930, 18 million Americans were members of one of these societies, which provided unemployment and sick benefits, burial services, death benefits, education and job training, and medical care.

The society would hire a doctor or doctors, paying them a lump sum for one year. The doctor would agree to see any of the society members without charge and to treat them without charge, his cost being the annual fee. The cost to society members was as low as $1 per year and usually covered a members family (30% of American males in the workforce were members in 1930).

The system was mutually beneficial. Ordinary, working folk could afford doctors, a doctor could get a guaranteed patient base and a guaranteed income, and the service provided had to be very good or the society would simply find another doctor when the year was up.

However, some doctors got discontented with this situation. It made them providers and ordinary people their customers, and the customer is always right. They didn't like it that working-class people were getting to name terms to them, when they had years of expensive schooling. On the grounds that mutual-aid societies were "a threat to traditional fee-for-service medicine" they lobbied the government to artifically raise medical fees and prevent mutual-aid-provided medical care, which was largely complete by the end of the 1920s.

Then very few could afford medical care. Ordinary people became quite upset and lobbied for government to provide medical care itself, which was largely completed two to three decades later. Of course, the tax burden for this was borne by the rich (including the doctors), and increasingly now by the middle classes and the poor, so in the end the only people who benefitted at all from this process were government bureaucrats.

The trouble with that thinking is that health is not a business and is not amenable to business practises other than cost control. Competition can only lead to declining standards

But competition in all other markets has led to rising standards. Cars, computers, food, you name it: it's all more plentiful, cheaper and higher quality than ever before. In fact, the only fields in which there is a true worry about decline in levels of service are those under government control: healthcare, the postal service, the police, etc.

Health is a business. Food is essential to health (if you don't eat, you die), but food provision has been provided by a free market for a long time now, and last I checked, famine was unheard of in capitalist nations and the availability of foodstuffs is unprecedented. The only countries that routinely suffer famines these days are those that allow the state to provide food (Cuba, North Korea) or that allow governments to otherwise interfere in the food supply (Somalia, Ethiopia).

[Pateris]

eureka,

While some programs the government has implemented have been good, others have been wholy a waste.

Bilingualism has resutled in FEWER people speaking french than previously. And the failure of any federal government to challenge Quebec on it's language laws means the system isn't applied equally to all parts of the country.

I note you ignored the whole Indian Affairs mess... This is CLEARLY a waste of money because natives are NOT better off...

The other thing I think many on the left fail to understand is a statement made by Humphrey on "Yes, Minister":

The purpose of the civil service is not to serve, but to grow

The lack of controls is there because the civil service WANTS there to be a lack of controls. Further, the government (the MPs) are supportive of this because it creates "plausible deniability" when something goes wrong. No one ever takes the fall, but the government can still say "we were trying to do good, don't blame us"

Better than trying to improve controls is to simply reduce the size of the government. Particularly the federal government.

[Guest eureka]

Pateris!

I ignores the Indian Affairs "mess" because it was not relevant to what I was saying. Government waste is, and always will be with us. We are bound to do whatever we can to control it. More important is the intent of what government does and waste, in an overall context, is not terribly significant. There is probably as least as much in private enterprise: certainly, there is more in those health systems that are privately run.

I do not think that there are fewer people speaking French as a result of the federal government's bilingualism programs than formerly. Indeed, there are unquestionably more since the requirements apply to federal servoces and the need to respond on both languages.

What is happening in the general population is unconnected to bilingualism at a government level.

I note that you are an afficianado of "Yes Minister." I have the books. However, I read and watch that series while accepting it for the spoof on public perception that it is. Civil servants in actuality, are every bit as responsive and responsible as any private sector component.

The civil service has shrunk, particularly at the federal level very substantially since 1993. I gave the figures for that in another discussion. With that shrinkage has come a serious decline in services, the most notable of which are healthcare and Employment insurance, and the virtual ending of some necessary programs.

I agree with you about Quebec's language laws but they have nothing to do with bilingualism in the federal government service. If you had been longer involved in these discussions, you would know that no one writes more often or more critically about those language laws. I could fill these discussions for weeks with details of my involvement in that.

Unfortunately, while there is a "Notwithstanding" Clause applicable to the Charter, the federal government can do nothing under that which is, so far as a province's flouting of human rights goes, a Paper Tiger. The Supreme Court has also held thet the laws are within Quebec's jurisdiction. The Court is wrong and the decision was political but government looks on this, in my opinion, as necessary to avoid civil war.

My personal belief on that is that Quebec would cave in and, a short civil war would be preferable to institutional racism.

[Pateris]

eureka,

The federal civil service has GROWN by 40% since 1998 and is not 10% larger than it was in 1993....

So much for your numbers...

[Guest eureka]

If you wish to acquire the ability to debate, then try to use numbers properly in context and in proper relations.

Don't pick a year and post some mythical percentage as a support for your ignorance.

The number of employees at all levels of government shrank substantially after 1993. They began to grow again in 1998 and are still below the 1993 levels.

That, though, our population is some 15% higher now.

That includes the federal civil service and reflects only the savaging of social programs and of healthcare since the swing to what is called the right.