So I have three kinds of news

The good news is that this humble blog now has at least two readers. Hiya, Doc!

The bad news is that the geekiness quotient of Shades of Gray denizens has at the very least stayed static, if it hasn't actually increased. I mean, catcalls calling for health care posts? That's truly spectacular.

The news that may be good or may be bad, depending on your aforementioned geekiness quotient and tolerance for incoherence, is that the much-promised, much-delayed health-care post is here!

As Emily points out in the comments section (the plural is justified! Huzzah!) that immediately precedes this post, my views on the whole shmozzle are perhaps particularly important, as I'm now a year older and hence a part of the aging of the Canadian polulation that's driving the whole crisis to begin with. So sorry, folks. It's all my fault that waiting times have gone through the roof.

Jokes aside, it's pretty clear that what's driving the health-care crisis, such as it is, is the aging of the population coupled with rising costs for medical treatment, whether it comes in the form of new technology, new drugs, rising salaries for personnel. So you have more people using more medicine at higher prices. This, to no one's surprise even at this math-challenged blog, is going to lead to higher costs. So we find ourselves in a situation where "There MUST be more money!"

All of this is entirely obvious. There are certainly administrative changes that can be made to improve things as well, which I'll get to in a minute, but the most pressing thing is getting more money into the system, in my view. As magical rocking horses seem to be out as a fundraising option, I (brace yourself, kids) would like to see this financed, as far as is feasible, with tax increases. As I said earlier, the anti-tax crusade the right wing has been on for the past twenty-five years has done an awful lot of harm to the possibility of effective social programmes, and it's past time for someone to make an argument for shared sacrifice.

That said, I'm under no illusion that tax increases are any sort of political winner. So, as Jay suggests in an earlier comment, I think allowing people to pay for private health insurance seems to me to be only just if we aren't going to make the sort of financial investments to make the system work collectively.

The issue, I think, is that this is yet another excruciating example of Canadians comparing their situation to that of the United States and to nobody else. Our health-care system, for all of its problems, is still a lot better than their more expensive, more Byzantine, more Dickensian mess of a "system." The trouble is that they've got the worst system in the developed world, bar none. It's roughly like taking the Russian criminal justice system as a point of comparison and then saying that our flawed system is perfect because we at least don't have transparently political prosecutions and rampant corruption.

Instead of thumping our chests about beating the pathetic Americans in the healthcare league, we should perhaps be looking at other countries to see what they do well. Like, say, France. Or Britain. Or Sweden. Or anywhere but the States, because we have problems, and being less fucked-up than the most hopeless case in the room does not make you any less fucked up.

I think Jay has it right when he suggests in the comment linked to earlier that what's important is giving people options within the system. Setting up specialized care centres is only common sense-even I know about economies of scale and the efficiency benefits of specialization-and as he says, who cares, other than nutty ideologues, if the centres are run by corporations provided that people can still get the care they need?

Tying funding to patients, as he also suggests, is another excellent idea. The vast oceans of cash we spend on health care are meant, at least in theory, to make people well. I think we should allow people to buy supplementary private insurance if they want it, again provided that we fund the public system sufficiently well to avoid an exodus of doctors to the private sector.

None of this will ever happen, of course-absolutely every interested constituency sees their ox gored, and it can be demagogued from every angle. But it could also be sold by a particularly savvy politician as a grand compromise as well, I think-better care for all and freedom of choice for the lucky few in exchange for an acceptance of a certain amount of inequality and higher taxes for all. And then we'll all ride a rocking horse to find a winner.