Thursday, January 12, 2006

Wacko Jacko

At least the fears that no one would talk about the NDP over the final days of the campaign won't materialize.

I imagine this should get Jack a bit of press.

posted by calgarygrit at 9:06 p.m.

25 Comments:

  • Maybe he saw Junior there...

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 9:21 p.m.  

  • heh heh heh.

    We can also dream of footage of Jim Harris littering.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 9:35 p.m.  

  • Anything to push the booze runner off the front page is a good thing... hahaa

    But I chose to look at the positive sign of things, he wasn't smuggling in NRA/anti-abortion members, wasn't smuggling in AK-47s... and I think most people can relate to smuggling booze across the border? There was a whole episode of That '70s Show based on the premise. So I think we're touching "reality" and not a scandal. So be proud when you bum rush 15 cases of liquor across the border. Salute the flag while you bring over 25 cartons of smokes. And take a bow when you bring your handguns into Canada from the evil US, just be proud you're helping to make a US inner city a little safer.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 9:39 p.m.  

  • What's with Layton?

    He mentions the private hospital he went to is not-for-profit and took payment from medicare. Then he says he wouldn't have gone if he had known it was private.

    I thought he objected to for-profit clinics. For exactly what ideological reason would he be ashamed of going to a not-for-profit clinic?

    If there was no extra billing and it's paid by medicare it doesn't sound like a case of queue jumping.

    What the hell is he embarrased about?

    Does anyone have a clue?

    Is it because the not for profit clinic isn't a crown corporation?

    - Puzzled

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 9:47 p.m.  

  • CUPE says the hospital isn't a problem...

    http://www.healthcoalition.ca/shouldice2.pdf

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 9:51 p.m.  

  • I think Jack! is just embarassed by the fact that he proved that private providers, payed by the public system, do work. So transparent that even he didn't know they were private!

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 9:56 p.m.  

  • I am shocked! Shocked I say to learn there's private medicine being practised in this clinic!

    By Blogger Jeff, at 10:00 p.m.  

  • Oh my, get over it fellas.

    Its a "not-for-profit private clinic". The NDP position is not to give public funds to private FOR-PROFIT clinics.

    Give me a break. No problem here. No contradiction. No public funds went to a for-profit private clinic.

    By Blogger Mike, at 10:07 p.m.  

  • Does anyone think this will hurt him in Toronto? Or Vancouver? Really?

    It's not like he was busted getting a double-double at a suburban Timmy's driving Olivia to her bible study class.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 10:24 p.m.  

  • Here's another one:

    I saw NDP supporters putting signs up in NDG-Lachine - and guess what, they left their van idling while they were out putting the signs up!!!

    I'm not making this up.

    By Blogger Tarkwell Robotico, at 10:41 p.m.  

  • What were they driving?

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 10:43 p.m.  

  • A van!! A god-damned big old van.

    Now, I did the same thing for the Tories in the riding of Lac-St-Louis.

    We did it in my fuel efficient Elantra. I told the guy I was with that despite how friggin' cold it was, we were going to park the car and do several blocks at once.

    He said - you bet.

    But of course, because we're anti-Kyoto, we're anti-environment.

    Because they are pro-Kyoto, they get to belch all the emissions they friggin' want.

    By Blogger Tarkwell Robotico, at 11:11 p.m.  

  • CG -- I agree. Interestingly, this is not the first time an NDP leader has been caught in a controversy surrounding private health care. Check out my blog for all the details!

    By Blogger Right Ho, at 11:15 p.m.  

  • What controversy? Shouldice has been the place in Toronto they send you to have your hernia done for decades. Trust me, if it involved paying out of your pocket my mother wouldn't have had hers done there.

    By Blogger pogge, at 11:30 p.m.  

  • "never marry a champagne socialist ladies, they're gonna let you suffer."

    Hah... good one syn, I'm going to use that someday.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 12:18 a.m.  

  • Did anyone see dithers on Mansbridge tonight. I lost track at 167 the lies he was telling. Including that he doesn't do to a private clinic to see his docor. His doctor is at Medisys and IT IS A PRIVATE CLINIC. He said he used his health care. A bold faced lie. I sure hope someone picks that up. He was asked outright and lied outright. What a surprise. And then Daliwal or however you spell his name was on Kathleen Petty to comment on How The liberal Campaign is going so Far. Only one, I believe woman thought it was going to start going well from now one. I think she forgot her medication today!

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 12:18 a.m.  

  • You know, this really shouldn't be an issue for Jack unless tomorrow's headline is "Private delivery works, NDP leader too stunned to notice!" But, then again, what else is new?

    Shouldice's status as a private clinic is well known in Toronto, and it's not as though Jack hasn't ever been caught slicing the onion of credibility a bit too thin before. From my days in Toronto Jack was notable in my mind for only three things (other than a superhuman capacity for self-promotion, which really isn't a vice in a politician):

    1. His publicly subsidized co-op, which he an Olivia vacated soon after the Toronto Sun outed them

    2. His prodigious use of City of Toronto limousines while loudly proclaiming the virtues of not owning a car and riding a bike but, to be honest, he wasn't the worst offender (third worst, I believe). I'm not even sure if I was actually living in TO then. I may have been staying with my then-gf at the time the story broke.

    3. The satisfaction I felt at voting against him when he ran for mayor (instead voting for June Rowlands which only goes to prove Homer S.'s slogan "Democracy doesn't work").

    There is also that generalized buzzing in my head that he and Tom Jakobek were always threatening to close the rinks and parks if they didn't get an increase in the mill-rate (which was why I was pleased to vote against him for mayor). Was that him? I can't remember anymore (I'm sure about Jakobek), it was almost twenty years ago.

    As to Shouldice, I'm perfectly happy to give Jack a pass. The only question should be "Do they take OHIP?" If the answer is yes, the queue begins behind me. Once you start parsing ownership by for-profit/not-for-profit you inevitably start the interminable discussion about why the anaesthetist at the non-profit drives a Lexus while the receptionist at the for-profit only makes due with an '85 Hyundai Pony? It really gets tedious after that.

    Instead we should be asking why the province doesn't make better use of it monopoly purchasing power for medical services by extracting more service out of the service providers? Because then you can start asking questions like "Are our patients being better served by this clinic, or by that clinic?” You also don't get great edifices to mediocre service, in the form of super-hospitals when what you need is a clinic with two ORs that specializes in cataracts. As I said, it all gets to be so tedious.

    Smile into the camera Jack. You just got busted by the Grit dirty tricks squad. Yesterday it was Derek Zeisman; today it’s your turn. I expect that the “revealed hypocrisies” team will by going full out until the 24th.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 12:41 a.m.  

  • I like the fact that Jack said he used his healthcare card; it has to shut him up at least a tiny bit. I use my healthcare card at my doctor's clinic & never wait more than 10 minutes. When I had a health scare a year or so ago, I was in for FULL testing in 4 days.

    Big bad Alberta. Yeah right.

    By Blogger Candace, at 1:09 a.m.  

  • aw, hell.

    .... do I vote Green now? what the hell.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 1:31 a.m.  

  • Layton did not know how our health care system works at the beginning of the campaign. I'm not saying in some political rhetorical way that he is wrong on the issues. He really has not bothered to learn how our health care system works before criticizing it.

    He has been slowly evolving his description over the campaign as journalists have been educating him, fact by fact. He simply didn't know that family doctors were private delivery, for instance.

    So, yes, he has been all over the map on this issue because his premises were wrong. I truly did not believe it until I saw it, but so it is. This ignorance is why the NDP will never form the federal government.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 2:52 a.m.  

  • Man, everyone seems to be jumping up and down over the "private" part and completely missing the "NOT-FOR-PROFIT" part.

    I lived in Toronto for 8 years and didn't know it was a private clinic until yesterday.

    Oh, did I mention the "NOT-FOR-PROFIT" part yet?

    Just because the Shouldice clinic works does not mean that the Copeman Clincis will. Not making a profit, the Shouldice clinic willnot drive up healthcare cost. Jack did not "jump the queue" or pay extra money.

    In otherwords, no hypocricy and no problem. Shouldice was the model for the Trillium Queensway Clinic, a fully public clinic, in Etobicoke.

    It has always been the position of the NDP to stop for-profit privatization, not non-profits.

    By Blogger Mike, at 9:31 a.m.  

  • http://blog.thismagazine.ca/archives/2006/01/private_health.html

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 9:50 a.m.  

  • "Just because the Shouldice clinic works does not mean that the Copeman Clincis will."

    Nor does it mean that they won't does it? It is possible that if Shouldice was a for-profit operation it would have higher costs than it does now - but there is no guarantee of that. Our experience with other for-profit operations (ie, every company in the world) is that the profit motive reduces costs - that may or may not lead to a reduction in prices, but that is a market demand question unrelated to service provision. If the system remains public-payer it doesn't matter whether the service is privately delivered, or whether the private operator is for-profit or not - if their prices are too high the public payer will not refer clients, and they will either reform their prices (and possibly their costs) or they will fail. If their costs are sufficiently low they will make a tonne of money - either way the risk is on the clinic operator, and that's just fine with me.

    The reason why Jack!'s hernia is an illustrative little story is that the NDP have drawn a line in the sand at "no private health care delivery." In doing so, they have rejected the public payer / private provider model as "privatisation" of health care. This is a great deal for the health care unions, since it leaves them in control of a vital resource - but it makes no economic sense whatsoever, and is not so great for the public who have to pay for (and rely on) that system.

    By Blogger deaner, at 11:32 a.m.  

  • Actual deaner, there is plenty of evidence that the Copeman clinic will not work as advertised - try reading "The Efficient Society" by Joseph Heath or various studies by Dr. Arnold Relman, Professor Emeritus of Medicine and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical, that shows that for-profit private delivery drives prices up and quality down. But why consider facts or anything. Like profit motive causing costs to rise in a situation of market failure, like in health insurance (see the US) - which is why the government is involved in health insurance in the first place.

    "the NDP have drawn a line in the sand at "no private health care delivery." In doing so, they have rejected the public payer / private provider model as "privatisation" of health care."

    No, the NDP has clearly drawn the lin against FOR-PROFIT private healthcare delivery, and if you actually read the poicies on the NDP site, that's what they say. If you mis-interpreted, that's your problem, they've been pretty clear.

    And they have hardly rejected that model, since that's the model that the system has used since day one - its the way doctors bill the system. Billing for corporate profit, allowing Shouldice doesnot violate the Canada Health Act, Copeman does.

    By Blogger Mike, at 3:17 p.m.  

  • "Like profit motive causing costs to rise in a situation of market failure, like in health insurance (see the US)..."

    Wow Mike - how many straw men can you knock down? Does the US have a "single payer" system? No. Is their experience a template for what would happen in a single-payer mixed delivery system? No.

    "No, the NDP has clearly drawn the lin against FOR-PROFIT private healthcare delivery, and if you actually read the poicies on the NDP site..."

    That is not correct. The NDP site makes no distinction between for-profit and not-for-profit service providers. They are all eeevil and represent "creeping privatization" - and that will inevitably lead to "american-style" health care. Actually, the Dipper site is big on "american-style" scare-mongering - thoughtful analysis, not so much. As one example, they disparage the European single payer private delivery systems on the basis that "not many people use them." Boy - that's a telling argument.

    "...since that's the model that the system has used since day one - its the way doctors bill the system."

    I know that, and you know that - but apparently Jack! didn't - at least, not at the beginning of the campaign. By the way - in what way is a doctor not "for profit" - his net after expenses is cetrainly higher than his minimum cost to live - and the difference between net revenues and costs is usually defined as "profit."

    "Billing for corporate profit, allowing Shouldice doesnot violate the Canada Health Act, Copeman does."

    So if Shoulidice were to bill an additional $100/procedure to the OHIP it would be in violation of the CHA? Or only if that money was "profit?" If if it went to higher salaries it would be okay? The reason Copeman is a problem is that they are offering (at least according to their advertising) direct-pay services, not because they are doing it for a profit.

    By Blogger deaner, at 6:57 p.m.  

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