Private health care erodes public system
The GDP or by the amount of garbage per capita that is able to produce are very poor measures of the health of a society.
A better indicator is how it takes care of its weakest members and how resources are allocated to help everybody to have its basic needs covered. Health care is one of these basic needs, and introducing a for-profit factor is the beginning of the erosion of the system.
If I am able to afford private medical care, after a while I will start asking why my taxes need to support a public medical system. At the end, funding for the public medical system will be reduced and its effectiveness diminished. At the end the society will end with an expensive private system and an underfunded and bad public system. The real life example would be the public school system in the U.S., a fairly decent one during the first half of last century, currently in a sorry state. Let’s not repeat the same mistake.
I support public health care and the B.C. government’s crackdown on private clinics and unlawful private fees in order to protect patients.
Carles Roch-Cunill
Salt Spring Island