From: gld@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Gary L Dare)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,alt.activism
Subject: Re: Health care will-o-wisps
Date: 4 Sep 92 17:28:26 GMT
Reply-To: gld@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Gary L Dare)
Organization: Curious Goods (formerly Louis Vendredi Antiques)

kd1hz@anomaly.sbs.risc.net (Michael P. Deignan) writes:
>adamsr@netcom.com (Rick Adams) writes:
>
>>	Forget it Gary, Brett's mind was made up the moment he saw 
>>Harel's name on the posting.
>
>>	Providing him the facts will just confuse him.
>
>Its very difficult to consider someone's "facts" as accurate or 
>indeed relevant when that poster has a history of distorting 
>"facts" to support his own personal political agenda.

Just to lay my cards on the table, I've not had a need to counter any
of Harel's comments on this issue because they are nebulous; My own
suspicions are that he may not want as capitalist-compatible a system
of universal coverage as we have have in Canada, France and Germany
(only the basic insurance) but he has not brought up anything concrete
to counter (such as true socialized medicine as in Britain and Italy's
National Health Services).  On the free trade issues, as a Canadian it
is "deja vu all over again" for me and many other people 'cos we went
through that with the US-Canada treaty four years ago (more people at
the 1988 Republican Convention knew about the trade of Wayne Gretzky
to the L.A. Kings than the FTA, according to a CBC poll (-;) and I've
been more than happy to argue for free trade. (-;  [DuPont announced
a plant expansion in Kingston, Ontario on Wednesday, just one week
after GM moved Camaro production from Van Nuys, CA to Bromont, QU;
Health care costs were cited by UPI and by CNN, respectively.]

I think that a lot of Americans are doing themselves a disservice by
obsessing over faulty or made-up data on how our health care system is
organized up north, by painting it as being more socialistic than it
really is (unless ideological purity deems it otherwise necessary) 
and by not accounting for geography.  Although the Canadian private
insurance sector abandoned basic care to the provincial plans in
favour of the highly profitable non-medical supplementary and travel
emergency medical areas, Americans should be aware of that possiblity
happening here despite their personal wishes to involve the existing
private firms [My own prediction of private firms brokering for those
who can buy additional coverage will break down if the U.S. private
sector is unwilling, as happened up north ... having seen it once
before in my youth, our private sector protected its turf 'til it
realized there was a profitable alternative].  Everything I've said 
is empirically verifiable by atlas or by travel to Canada, and with
increasing movement due to continental free trade more American
visitors will realize that they are being hosed by propogandists
arguing for the status quo ... unfortunately, that would swing
credibility in the way of those who want a more interventionist
solution for America than what we enjoy in Canada, France and 
Germany, etc. palatable to the Tsongas/Perot/Kemp types (forgiving 
Paul Tsongas' lie on the Toronto-developed cancer treatment that 
saved his life).

gld
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Je me souviens ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Gary L. Dare				
> gld@cunixB.cc.columbia.EDU		Oct 26/92: Just say "OUI!"
> gld@cunixc.BITNET			(Let's worry about the economy!)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc