The evidence from all OECD countries shows that the private sector is far more bureaucratic and much less efficient than the public sector when it comes to providing health care.
Ten Health Care Myths
Gentlemen from Hooker - and many other places - are quite literally pouring these and many other poisons into your coffee and your kids' juice. They just do it in a more indirect, anonymous, and apparently socially acceptable way.
150 Years of Dirty Water
In the summer of 1973, newly settled into our own flat, my partner
and I took the leap and made a long-term commitment: we acquired
two kittens. Determined to give them the best of everything, we
decided to name them after two of the public intellectuals we most
admired: "Stone", for I.F. Stone, and "Chomsky",
after Noam. Whether Izzy and Noam would appreciate the "honour",
we didn't know, but since it seemed unlikely they'd ever find out
about it, it didn't really matter.(1)
My first encounter with Chomsky's writings had come about four
years earlier, when I read his essay "The Responsibility of
Intellectuals". I had recently become involved in the student
movement at the University of Toronto, had been immersing myself
in the writings of Karl Marx and Rosa Luxemburg, and considered
myself a marxist (as I still do today). At the same time, I was
uneasy with aspects of the radical student movement - tendencies
to dogmatism, anti-intellectualism, and authoritarian Leninist models
of political organizing - which seemed to be increasingly in the
ascendancy.
Discovering Chomsky was a revelation. Here was a voice of rationality
and of moral outrage. Chomsky's writings were radical, anti-authoritarian,
and critical, as well as closely argued, thoroughly researched,
and copiously footnoted. He opposed the war against Vietnam on principle,
because it was morally indefensible, not because it was costly,
he was prepared to risk imprisonment for resisting the war, yet
warned against lashing out with tactics which seemed likely to increase
popular support for the forces of domestic repression.
I thought he was wonderful. Of course, we radical libertarian socialist
types don't believe in having heroes, but if we did....
I've been reading Chomsky ever since and foisting his books and
articles on others. (I've also got the video, in case anyone wants
to borrow it....)
Though much of what he writes about as a critic of the existing
world order is necessarily horrendous - Vietnam, Cambodia, East
Timor, the moral blindness of intellectuals and the media - I find
that I almost always come away energized after reading Chomsky.
He is an amazing source of information and analysis on so many topics.
Beyond that, he makes me feel that research and critical thought,
coupled with principled activism, can help to bring about change.
I agree with him that one has a responsibility to act whether one
feels optimistic or pessimistic about the chances of success, but
Chomsky's own immense contributions have helped me feel more optimistic
and thereby helped me keep my energies focused on activism for the
past thirty years.
Thanks, Noam.
1. No
authentic tribute to Noam Chomsky would be complete without footnotes,
so this is the place to record that years later, I discovered from
a comment of Alexander Cockburn's that Chomsky apparently doesn't
even like cats - an inexplicable deficiency in an otherwise wholly
admirable person!
Ulli Diemer