ballz said:Wow, 58% of people don't feel that "on the whole, the system works pretty well and only minor changes are needed" and somehow you are trying to spin that into a positive.
That actually doesn't say that. It's also only one survey. Canadians value universal healthcare as a principle in far greater numbers.
I never said anything about "universal." You were talking about the "single payer system." It's you that is speaking to one thing and one thing only.
Single payer is the type of universal coverage that Canada chose. There are other less desirable models.
You don't know what statism means, obviously. "A political system in which the state has substantial centralized control over social and economic affairs.
Unless the military is being used to influence (enforce) social and economic policies, it really has nothing to do with whether or not the country is "statist." What makes a country "statist" is, as the definition points out, whether the state is exercising control over social and economic affairs. With the Crown centralizing control of healthcare at the federal level (both social from a social services perspective and economic from a taxation perspective), this healthcare system is almost a walking talking definition of a statist policy. We can debate the merits of it, but you really can't argue that 2 + 2 = 5 when it in fact, happens to equal 4. The Canada Health Act, and Canada's healthcare system in general, is statist.
That's a very extreme interpretation of what it is. In reality, the state exercises some control over everything. Most of our health system is regulated private enterprise, just like the rest of the economy. The difference in this case is that the government pays for about 70% of the services.
No, they didn't. They had that decision made on their behalf by the federal government through the Canada Health Act. Stop trying to make this sound like it was voluntary and everybody agreed, or that it was some big favour the federal government did to the provinces. This was a loophole Trudeau Sr found in order to further their belief in a heavily centralized way of governing, exactly opposite of what the provinces had in mind when they signed into Confederation.
The provinces do not have to participate. That is the reality. I'm not sure how we got to talk about health care. I only brought it up to serve as an example of how an escalator that increases faster than government revenue is impossible to maintain.
There are plenty of people who favour a two-tier healthcare system. Alberta would have one already if it wouldn't be taken out at the knees by the Canada Health Act. They probably favour it because they've seen that every single OECD healthcare system that ranks above Canada's has a mixture of private and public healthcare.
I never said I was opposed to that (in theory, anyway). Perhaps I misunderstood you. I was under the impression that you wanted to end single payer altogether.