Ok, the rest of the songs are up...

Taa-daa !

Ah...the memories...

I'll get the rest of the links up once I track down some more free storage space.

Why didn't we make it big ? ;-)

Am I sick ?

Is it wrong that I wish Fox would put on another episode of "Who's Your Daddy" ?

The train-wreck factor surpassed that of even the great Gigli...

In honour of yesterday's predictable verdict...

Why does Michael Jackson like twenty nine year olds ?
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Because there are twenty of them.

Private Health Care

I know and understand most of the arguments against private health care and P3's (private-public partnership) in Canada, and I agree with many of them.

In fact, I'm a huge supporter of keeping the universal public health care system, essentially at any cost.

Having said that, I have some thoughts on the potential benefit of some form of private health care existing.

It is often argued that with a private health sector competing with (or "filling a 'gap' left by") the public system, the best doctors will leave the public system and go to the higher-paying private clinics. While that would undoubtedly happen to some extent our biggest problem isn't a shortage of good doctors, it's a shortage of equipment and technicians to run the equipment, especially for diagnosis--mostly due to under-funding.

As long as those who choose to use private health care do not get any tax break for it, wouldn't the following benefit the system as a whole ?

1) The same tax would be collected and earmarked for health care, but fewer people would be using the public system.
2) More tax would be collected as those using the private care would generate profit for the private clinics which would then have to pay tax.

These points seem like they would lead to a better-funded public system, even if it is a notch or two (or three or four) below the private one. If A is greater than B, but B is greater than C, then isn't everyone better off with A and B rather than just C ?

Having said that, any significant (in size) private health care sector would require some important rules/legislation to keep it from blowing the public one away, especially some form of prescribed doctor salaries--perhaps allow the clinics to exist, but force the salaries of the doctors to be equal to, or at least very close to, those in the public system. The clinics could be allowed to make as much money as they wish by charging what they want for services, but must not be allowed to use that to pay doctors so much that the public system experiences a significant brain drain.

I'm not advocating an immediate opening up of health care services in Canada, but I just wanted to state some thoughts I've had while reading about the 100% private clinic opening in BC this fall.

Well whatta ya know ?

I was just reading the latest issue of Decanter that I just picked up (May 2005), and check this out, from page 15, a letter from a wine merchant in the UK:

"It's amusing that decanter.com's report about the film Sideways remarks that Miles' trophy bottle is Cheval Blanc 1961. Indeed, nobody bothered to tell him that there's no Pinot Noir in it, but surely they really important point is that it's made almost entirely of his two bete noir grapes, with 60% Cabernet Franc and 37% Merlot."

Looks like I'm finally catching on...makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. Not quite as warm and fuzzy as a '61 Cheval Blanc would, but it'll suffice.