Medicare arguments - redux

I was living in Regina, Saskatchewan in 1960 - 61 during the “doctor strike” there. The NDP’s Saskatchewan plan was based on the Scandinavian and British ones. The doctors lost, and the rest, as they say, is history. But the naysayers were loud and determined to stop it, as were the Saskatchewan Medical Association. I recall a hilarious cartoon in the Regina Leader Post, depicting an African” witch doctor” applying for a position at the hospital there.
However, it was not long after the strike was over that the doctors noticed that their incomes actually increased, and they had no fee collection problems any longer, and the complaints ended both from doctors and patients.

When the Canada Medicare was introduced by Lester Pearson’s government, there was less opposition because of Saskatchewan’s pioneering experiment. In this area we did leapfrog the Americans, not imitate them, as we do in most other areas.

Some abuse of the system is inevitable, both by doctors and by patients. I recall growing up in a small village in Western Norway, where the doctor held court each Wednesday, in a local office. In those days, housewives did not work, and village life got rather boring at times. Thus, the highlight of their week was Wednesday’s doctor visit, and a standing joke was that one Wednesday, Mary, one of the regulars, was missing from the doctor’s waiting room. When one of the ladies asked where Mary was, she was told that she could not come because she was sick (!). There was more than a little truth in that one. Yet, who is to judge if you need to see the doctor. Not the doctor; once you are there, you have all ready usurped his allotted patient time.

Accountant gets 5 years for bilking winemaker –Star, Aug 25/09

Christine Papakyrioku has a problem. Not just that she is going to jail, but that she is addicted to gambling. Her addiction made her steal more than 7.4 million from her employer where she was employed in a position of some trust; namely as an accountant. Addiction, as we all now know, is a serious affliction that must invoke pity and empathy from everyone. It’s not really her fault, since her employer “failed to examine her accounting practices closely” so as to prevent her from stealing millions. Her venality is really venial –she just could not help herself.

It is also the provinces fault, and Niagara Falls Casinos, for not preventing her from acting on her base impulses and reprobate desires –so she is suing them. Clearly, she is a VICTIM.
In today’s society, it is not “cool” to take responsibility for your actions and to say you are sorry. Surely, we are all victims of something or other, and the fault lies elsewhere, outside our control. Guilt and contrition are obsolete terms, and culprits should be handled with extreme unction, lest they suffer permanent emotional scars.

My question is this: with all these victims loose in our society, who is to be the victimizers?

Idea: Clustering | The Economist

Idea: Clustering | The Economist

Shared via AddThis

The GOP Has Become a Party of Nihilists

The GOP Has Become a Party of Nihilists

The Answer, My Friend ... - The Atlantic (August 19, 2009)

The Answer, My Friend ... - The Atlantic (August 19, 2009)

Shared via AddThis

Nortel, and our techno-nationalist delusions -Andrew Coyne, Maclean’s Aug 31st

Andrew Coyne has changed my mind about Nortel’s sale to Ericsson. I suspected the Conservatives were reluctant to get involved since Nortel had most of its work force outside the country, and thus did not represent many voters. It turns out that Ericsson has in fact more workers domestically. Coyne also makes a good point about past government investment as sunk costs that won’t be recovered by handing Nortel to RIM. In our global economy, corporate ownership is fluid and ephemeral. Canada has lost many of its old corporate names to foreigners – Stelco and Falconbridge just two of several. Nortel has had several corporate name changes in its long history in Canada. It started out as part of Bell Telephone, incorporated as Northern Electric in 1895 and later became part of Western Electric and AT&T in the US. In the sixties, Bell Canada & Northern Electric was separated from US Bell and Western Electric by government decree, and in 1972 it became Northern Telecom getting involved in the electronic switching market as well as manufacturing telephones and combined research with Bell Canada.

Thus, Nortel‘s origin was what we used to call a “branch plant” of US industry, making the nationalist argument rather weak. It never was a “national treasure”, and in the recent past, their CEO’s have all been Americans.

There are always at least two sides to every story. Thank you, Andrew Coyne, for pointing out this side.

RIGHTS ANS WRONGS

Toronto has many fine attractions, but the annual Gay Parade is not one of them. Here we even have our mayor riding around in the parade, mingling with raunchy half-naked men and women jiving to raunchy music and making obscene gestures. But, of course, it brings in money for the city, and money trumps decorum any day. It’s Sodom and Gomorrah combined into a, big public frenzy.

I thought of initiating a Heterosexual Parade, but realized that unless I got some naked Hollywood beauties on the floats, no one would come; and if I did, it might become an issue for the Ontario Human Rights Commission for not including everyone.

We live in a “rights” society, where you have a right to be different, even if it goes against nature. With our modern technology, propagating need not be limited to man and woman; why, some day we might find that you just get a baby in a bottle at the local baby dispensary.
But we still have our rights – right to be so obese that we need to occupy two seats on an airplane, and use gender-neutral address if we have a gender identity crisis while boarding the flight.

We are all “victims” of one thing or another, and need to be coddled and protected from our own vices. What I still don’t understand is that with all these righteous victims, who is left to do the victimizing?