A Burnt Offering At The Altar of Free Enterprise

[chris_gerrib]

So, Rand Simberg is fighting the good fight and defending the right of private health insurance firms to be free of government competition, or something like that. The only real justification I can get as to why we need private insurance is that "socialized medicine" will be Bad For Freedom. (Or suck our Precious Bodily Fluids out of our ears - not entirely sure. But It Would Be Bad.)

Well, I asked Rand a question I asked before, namely if "socialized medicine" is so bad, why do foreign conservatives love it so?

While I'm waiting for the answer, I thought I'd share the Conservative Party of Canada's plan for "socialized medicine," which is more funding.

ETA Now I'm told:
a) they’re as misnamed as the “Democratic Party” and
b) the people there aren’t familiar with any other system and
c) they unknowingly piggy back off the US pharma system

Or in other words, "those poor foreigners are idiots."

Comments

[jetfx.livejournal.com]

Dude you fired a hand grenade in their garden of ideological purity. By announcing support for some sort of public healthcare, these people heard "I support concentration camps and I can't wait till all of you end up there." There still remains alot of choice in a public system if not more choice. I can still pick my doctor or the facility I want to visit and still remain in overall control of my health care. Private insurance limits my options to what I could personally afford, which at this point is basically nothing.

And of course there are groups within Canada who are in favour of abolishing public health care. But you have have pretty damn selective hearing to think that they represent anything more than an insignificant viewpoint in public discourse.

And "conservative" is a term whose definition is contingent on the nation it is being used in. It is certainly correct to say that conservatives in other countries are not the same as American conservatives, but to use the American ideology as the universal definition is ludicrous. In Russia, an American conservative would be regarded as very liberal and the conservatives are the unreconstructed Stalinists.

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

Yeah, they are not interested in being confused by the facts...