>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.
But isn't that a way of undermining the public system over the long term? Create more private services, which undermine public support and peel off the affluent, leaving the public system with the poorer (and probably sicker) people? Then, as the quality of the public system deteriorates, invidious comparisons are made, and public opinion shifts further in the direction of a private system? That's a lot better long-term strategy than a head-on assault, which would get nowhere at first.
Doug