(I spelled your name wrong in my previous reply to you -- sorry.)
> Yoshie wrote:
>
> > I believe that the ruling class would rather not have a single-payer
> > universal health care system and, if they have to have one at
> all, forced
> > by the working class, they try to make it as meager as they
> can. Canada
> > is a good example of countries that do have a single- payer
> universal
> > health care system that the ruling class have underfunded and are
> > threatening to privatize <http:// www.healthcoalition.ca/>.
> Attacks on
> > the welfare state, from eduction to health care to old age
> pension, have
> > been universal, only differing in degrees, depending on relative
> > strengths of the ruling and working classes of countries.
> ---------------------------------------
> No one in Canada is calling for an end to medicare, including the
> capitalist class.
>
> They are calling for the supplementary formation of private
> clinics, mostly for elective and diagnostic procedures, which
> higher-income Canadians can afford through private insurance and
> would do so to avoid waiting in line. At the same time, they want
> lower-income Canadians to assume more of the cost of medicare
> through higher co-payments and deductibles and narrowing the scope
> of available services.
>
> This is a major problem because these pressures are accompanied by
> underfunding of the public system in an effort, as you say, to
> "make (the single payer system) as meager as they can". But it is
> not wholesale "privatization".
Not yet, but ruling-class attacks on the welfare state rarely come in a wholesale fashion (except when they believe it's possible to get away with it -- sometimes correctly, other times incorrectly). Changing a universal system into a tiered system is a great first step, from the ruling class point of view. It will break solidarity, help them underfund the system further (the ruling class find it easier to underfund a system that the well off don't use than a system that covers all), make the system less valuable (objectively and subjectively), build discontent to which they will present private individual solutions, etc. They wouldn't do such a thing if a single-payer universal health care system added to their bottom line.
> But the bourgeoisie as a whole understands that most people can no
> more easily save for the full cost of their own health care as for
> their own pensions, and that some form and degree of state support
> is necessary.
A few liberal capitalists -- of the Jerry Cohen variety -- probably believe that getting workers to pay too much out of their own pockets for health care, schooling, retirement, etc. might later create a systemic problem of aggregate demand maintenance and/or threaten class peace, but that's not the hegemonic view among capitalists today. They have had class peace for too long, so they have forgotten about what lack of it feels like. Capitalists have short memory. And they don't worry too much about the future (beyond quarterly statements). In truth, no one can predict when and how workers will say enough is enough and if they succeed when they say it.
Yoshie Furuhashi <http://montages.blogspot.com> <http://monthlyreview.org> <http://mrzine.org>