Those Funny Globe and Mail Letter Writers

You never know what will pop up in the letters section of an OpEd page. Just this weekend I perused the letters to the Globe regarding the Supreme Court of Canada's medicare decision. One of them concerned an experience someone had accompanying an ailing loved one to an emergency waiting room. After what appeared to be a cogent summary of the symptoms of what's wrong with the public system, the writer concludes with a preference to pay taxes for health services over private health insurance. Incredulous, I read it again. Same conclusion (and my irony detector didn't ping).

There is a significant constituency of people out there that likes the idea of socialized health care and, for that matter, socialism in general. There are precious few people that appreciate the ends of socialism but realize that many high-minded concepts like central planning simply don't work in the real world. Those in the former category usually are the same people who think that simply throwing more money at a problem is a valid solution. The Martin government's national pledge drive leading up to the confidence votes a few weeks ago bears this out.

The LCBO, Ontario's liqour monopoly, certainly pulled up its socks under the threat of privatization; the very potential of losing the monopoly was enough to wake up the managers. It still does asinine things, however, like offer Air Miles (i.e., why does a monopoly need a loyalty program? I'd prefer lower prices, thank you). Maybe the SCC decision will breathe some life into the medicare corpse, but I won't hold my breath. Sure, mistakes are made in the free market, but that market has thousands of decision makers. Good calls tend to outnumber bad and the bad ones are allowed to fail, making room for better decision makers. When the government controls things, there is but one decision maker and when a mistake is made, we all pay for it and management rarely gets fired.