Journal maps out 3rd way, amost.

The Edmonton Journal has given an even handed overview of the privatization of our health care in the Third way Taking the pulse of the third way, a good read. In their limited considerations they are correct.

What is missing is the why and the statement “Universal coverage is gone!”
It is the Conservative way to turn every aspect of our lives over to private industry. This is what they said they will do; this is what they will do! Their abhorrence of the Canadian “welfare” state has never been hidden. This would be the why of it and the costs in the analysis are not even a consideration, more like a poorly structured red herring. No effort has been made to inject reason into the costs.

Science and technology has made some wonderful break troughs which we all applauded.

Mapping the genome combined with DNA tests that are now inexpensive and can be completed in days or hours.

Knowledge of the intricate way the genome works! From Mother to son, from father to son and so on. Look at the spread of red hair. It has been 500 years since the first red hair showed up in the gene! “What are the odds?” Becomes a real question solved in real time on so many things we would not have thought of just 10 years ago!

Canadian Insurance companies are already restricting coverage for individuals and communities based on the frequency of incidient for a given population. Considering their profit motive their decisions are correct.

Recently on CBC there was a celebration of a young boy receiving a heart repair that was the same one his father had 15 years ago and was not available for his Grandfather a short period of time before that. The health care system has been taking care of ailments caused by genetic errors for a long time. Each time there is a fix, a budget should be set aside for the next generation so they have money to pay for the same fix over and over.

I would guess that when this kid grows up he and his family are going to have to give up all of their chattels; their worldly belongings so they can get that next generation chance for a repair.

The bottom line; ailments can be accurately projected in a family line and the treatment of those ailments will not be covered by the public health system. I can see a mastectomy costing you your house cars; everything! It was charted in you family history you can’t get insurance coverage and universality is a dream gone.

Computers have also made great strides in speed and costs have fallen. Weeee! Look at us go!

Now, computers are used extensively in data mining. This isn’t just the “cookies” and “add ware” left on your computer. It is very real in Insurance, Marketing and Government for making plans; deciding what to cover and what not to. Where to make electoral boundaries. Geo-Political mapping.

It works like this:
Go over the health care records for a province and make a record of the number of asthma cases; heart attacks; bicycle accidents etc. To this add the time of day it happened. Make a geo political map and overlay the incidents by location onto the map. Notice now they up next to Refineries or incinerators and what not. Then decide what you are going to cover, where and to what extent.

Being the conservative way, they get a super deal by having the insurance industry collect he data, actually pay them to do it. At the end of the day there is lots of information in the hands of the insurance companies that allow them not to include certain coverage in defined areas. Not surprising is no information is allowed out of house to protect you.

If you happen to be one of those luckless people who get tagged by both the genome search and the data mining; Well!