Another Health Scandal Courtesy of Socialized Medicine
EDMONTON – The Wildrose party is calling on the province’s auditor general to investigate allegations that Alberta Health Services bought an estimated $10 million worth of computer equipment and left it in storage for 17 months before it was used by employees.
The allegations, which were by AHS, are contained in separate letters sent to Health Minister Fred Horne and Premier Alison Redford by an unknown whistleblower.
Source: The Edmonton Journal
Despite having a next-to-zero calorie intake of MSM news, it seems as if I’m inundated with stories of failures in the Canadian Healthcare service. Just a couple years ago, we had a homeless man die in the Emergency Room while waiting for attention – and nobody noticed the corpse for eight hours, or some such nonsense.
Any time you try and discuss this with Canadians there seems to be a disconnect in their brain. They’ve grown acclimatized to how terrible Healthcare is here, and they seem to be unable to envision how private medicine might actually work. The joke that was American Healthcare (before it became the Obamacare farce) only exacerbated this issue – as if that was a free market solution!
I suspect that a lot of this stems from our moral misunderstanding of money. We incorrectly associate our own moral failings with the agent of our moral failings – it’s no different from an ex-alcoholic hating alcohol. We see – or rather, we instinctively sense – how self-destructive consumerism is, and blame that on the dollars, praising charity and socialism, only to see those institutions fall prey to brand-new problems that anybody with forethought could have predicted.
The solution would be to start using money correctly, but that would require a Gene Roddenberry-esque “evolution” in our consciousness.
Just to clarify – I’m in no way opposed to shopping at malls or on Amazon (especially if you’re going there to Buy My Book!), it’s the attitude which it engenders which I find troublesome.
That is no ‘conspiracy theory’ Aurini, the ‘use it or lose it’ approach to budgets is alive and well (and is probably EXACTLY what happened here) – and it positively thrives in the private sector as well. The difference between a communist doing it and a capitalist doing it is a matter of competence – you will have a much harder time catching the capitalist at it than you will with the communist!
When I am having budget battles with the senior management I always put it to them this way:
You can invest two bucks and make four; our you can invest 4 bucks and make 8. Gimme my goddamn budget!!!! If I have any room in the budget at the end of the year I make sure it disappears and/or gets invested back into my branch.
And – fer chrissakes, you and the Captain need new threads. That crap you’re wearing ends up in the dumpster for a reason. If you want to improve your wardrobes I would suggest Value Village. Green jeans and rubber boots would be a vast improvement!
;)
If the cash is used to earn more money for a capitalist enterprise, and the manager can prove this, then he should be promoted.
Government agencies require continual audits because they do not make money, they burn it. They need to be supervised to prevent this budget hoarding.
Agree with both, I was being ironic in the video.
There are the occasional wastages in private enterprise, and usually the solution is more “free market/employee responsibility & ownership” practices.
The episode you’re refering to is Deep Space 9 S05E25… I had to back and watch it now that you reminded me of it. It’s one of the better episodes of what was otherwise a lousy series (DS9, not ST in general).
You make some excellent points, except that I would argue like the poster above me that this takes place in corporations as well, especially now since corporations are recipients of corporate welfare (a.k.a Fascism).
I think that that the episode you referenced very astutely explains what basic incentive based economics is, and thanks for linking to C.M. Sturges’ article “Why Work” which further expounds on your video.