CANUCKISTAN ISN'T WORKING:

Canadians want 2-tier health: poll: Think-tank finds 51% in favour, says 'taboo' private option should be an election issue (Tom Blackwell, 6/01/04, National Post)

More than half of Canadians support a parallel private health care system that would let patients pay for speedier service, according to a new poll on an issue that has been largely ignored in the current campaign.

The poll found 51% favour a two-tier system, with support highest in Quebec, at 68%, and Manitoba and Saskatchewan, the birthplace of medicare, at 57%.

Michel Kelly-Gagnon of the Montreal Economic Institute, which commissioned the poll by Leger Marketing, said it is evidence the parties should be debating two-tier medicine.

"This is really in Canadian politics the ultimate taboo," Mr. Kelly-Gagnon said.

"It has to be broken ... If we're going to decide as a nation not to allow for a private, parallel system, so be it, but at least let it be done in a rational, objective debate where people pull out actual arguments, and not some sort of bogeyman about the two-tier system."

None of the mainstream parties has espoused private medicine.

If you want to grasp why the rest of the West is dying, consider only that no one in such countries is even willing to discuss the steps they'd need to take to save themselves.

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 13, 2004 9:02 AM