| > I made the parent comment. D'oh, I didn't see that. > Linking basic health care to employment as a default is ridiculously stupid. There is no real relation between a person's health and their job. Basic health care needs to be connected to the individual, while "extended health care" (or additional options, etc) can certainly be offered as a benefit. I put it to you that no white collar (and a chunk of Blue collar) employers in Canada don't give "extended health care" as part of employment.. which is to say the basic health care provided in Canada is not sufficient for those people. They need those extras. For those people to have sufficient coverage, their healthcare is now tied to their employment, which you yourself said is "ridiculously stupid". There is no moral justification for this, only the monetary one (which I'll address below) > There is no viable reason why employers should be banned outright from offering extended benefits as a condition of employment to compete for talent. There absolutely is when those extended benefits are required to live at an acceptable standard for lots of people, which essentially makes them basic benefits, just using different semantics. Of course, the Canadian government only wants to scale-back the basic benefits and increase the public's reliance on "extended health care", thus transitioning the system to more closely match the current US system, where if you don't have a job with "extended health care", your health care sucks. > Interestingly enough, a socialized (single payer/universal, etc.) system of basic health care with privatized add on's and extras is basically the way every civilized society on the planet operates Yep, and Canada is one of the few where your employer gets to stick it's nose into those add on's and extras, which is, as you say "ridiculously stupid" > This statement shows a complete lack of understanding of actuarial science, which is the basis of all insurance. See Here: ... It's very interesting to me that I'm talking about trying to increase the standard of living, freedom of choice, and people's HEALTH, and you're constantly talking about bean counting, expenses and accounting. It's sad that you actually work in the health industry in Canada, and you're more interested in schooling me on basic accounting principles than having a discussion on how the system could be modified to actually increase people's standard of living. That's exactly what's wrong with the American system - accounting is more important than health care - and you're so far into the Canadian system you can't even see you're justifying the way in which Canadian system is doing the same thing on the basis of accounting. |