Is it just me or does anyone else find it ironic that Mark Latham turns to the private system to be the saviour of our ailing public health system, so lovingly administered by state labor governments?
He says that the old codgers can now have publicly funded beds in private hospitals because they don't have any waiting lists and have a surplus of beds. What the?
This is not an admission of the superior service that a free market system can provide is it?
What next? We could pay for public school kiddies to go to private schools maybe?
That's tops!!!
By the way, is all this free health care happening after the end of childhood poverty in 1990 or is that off the list now?
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5 comments:
An empty bed is an empty bed. Thank goodness Latham is not an ideologue. Only an ideologue would find his proposal ironic.
Johnno.
Johno, the irony is due to the fact that if Latham had his way, the "empty bed" as you call it, would not exist. He has no problem belting the private system and yet he uses it to save his arse. I find this ironic. Call me an idealogue if you like.
Gibbo, you may be right that there would be no excess capacity in private hospitals had Latham been PM.
You might also allow that if the private sector had not been propped up with public money under Howard there would be no excess capacity.
So I guess we can agree. It is ironic. Under a true undistorted private sector market, there would be no excess capacity.
That is correct. There would be no excess beds AND no waiting lists.
No waiting lists? Private enterprise is efficient. An efficient hospital runs at full utilisation. Full utilisation is impossible without waiting lists.
Waiting lists have other virtues too. You can collect premiums from queue-jumpers. And you probably need to in order to afford private enterprise CEO salaries.
- Johnno
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