A Usenet persona calling itself frtzw906 wrote:

Scott Weiser wrote:
A Usenet persona calling itself BCITORGB wrote:


Scott:
===========
The argument made in the various letters from the Health Ministers of
Canada
worrying that a two-tier system would cause problems because the
clinics
would "cherry pick" the easy cases while leaving the hard, expensive
cases
to the state is idiocy.



Allow me to paint with a broad brush to
make my point -- there are minor and trivial exceptions to what I'm
about to say. And the insurance you buy MUST be provided by a
Provincial Crown Coporation. You may not buy your BASIC coverage from
anyone else. Why? Because, if the corporation is to gain the benefits
that come from having this monopoly and is to be able to provide the
blanket, global coverage the corporation was set up to provide, then it
cannot afford to have private insurers cherry-pick the low-risk
clients, leaving the crown corp to pick up the difficult, expensive
clients. [BTW, the premiums compare quite favorably to other
jurisdictions across Canada that use the private model]


Correct. This is true of insurance plans that are allowed to exclude people
and are allowed to control risks by excluding (by price or otherwise) those
who pose higher risks to the actuarial pool.

However, this problem does not apply when *everyone* is in the pool, by law,
and when the premium payments are extracted equally from everyone by
taxation, not by individual premium payments for those who are "in the plan"
or based on their perceived position in the actuarial risk tables.

In this case, people who choose voluntarily NOT to take advantage of the
coverage by buying and paying for their own insurance *which is additional
to the mandatory government coverage, for which they have to pay anyway* do
nothing but BENEFIT the members of the pool by NOT extracting money from the
pool when they can, and choose to pay the bills themselves.

===============
Correct. And there is *no* prohibition to buying extra coverage, so long
as you buy the basic coverage. As you say, so long as you are in the
pool. By law you must be.
=================

The problem, however, is that in Canada, your supplemental insurance *only*
covers extras and elective procedures that are not "medically necessary."
Supplemental insurance cannot cover what is covered by the national system,
nor can a person obtain care outside the national system for "medically
necessary" care by using either supplemental insurance or cash.

While it might be nice to have extra coverage so that you can have a
semi-private room or a TV, most people care more about getting timely access
to actual medical care when they need it, which their supplemental insurance
doesn't help them get at all.







Further, an anecdotal example of cherry-picking (that really ****es me
off): in the elementary school my daughters attended, there were two
sisters, one of whom was severely handicapped. The parents,
dissatisfied with the education their daughters were getting at this
school, took the daughter who was not handicapped, and sent her to a
very expensive private school. By doing so, they further diminished the
academic calibre of the school by taking a very bright girl out, and
leaving a handicapped one. This sort of cherry-picking diminishes our
ability to provide quality to everyone.


Hold on a second! You cannot compare the economic effects of insurance
cherry picking with some sort of "intellectual premium payment" that you
suggest a parent or child owes a school.

==================
Let me rephrase: what parents/citizens owe society.
==============

At the expense of their children's educational opportunities? No way. You're
still making pawns of the children. As for the parents, they STILL pay into
the public system for the child that doesn't even attend the public school,
so how are they damaging anything?




What you suggest is that
exceptional children must be "leveled out," or required to suffer an
educational environment that does not best exploit their learning abilities
merely in order to provide some kind of egalitarian "level playing field"
for other children.

=============
Interesting point. I have a "gifted" child and have made the
"educational environment that best exploits her learning abilities"
argument myself.

The argument I make is not an argument of egalitarian playing fields.
Rather, it is the argument that *if* all gifted, or even above-average
children, are taken out of the system, the quality of education becomes
a downward spiral.

How so? If the funding remains the same, I'd say that the quality of
educational opportunities for the poor and less-gifted children actually
increase because there are not as many children in the system, so more can
be spent enhancing the educations of those that remain.

Cherry-picking leaves the public system impoverished,

No, it doesn't. That only happens with voucher systems where the money a
gifted child is entitled to for public school follows the child to the
private school. I can't imagine Canada having such a system, since even in
the US, voucher plans have been mercilessly hammered into extinction by the
secularists because much private schooling is done at religious schools, and
the secularists claim that the public money can't be given to a religious
school because of the "wall of separation" doctrine.

So long as parents who place their children in private school still have to
pay their public school taxes, there is no "impoverishment." In fact, it's a
net benefit to the schools.

leading, eventually, to more and more people leaving. Ultimately, the
only pupils left will be the children of the poor and any others who can
find no way out.

So what? What you're suggesting is that because private schools are
"classist" that students in public schools are somehow inferior if the
upper-crust students are absent. I don't buy that argument at all.

Besides, there will be plenty of money to educate them, way more than there
was before, so they will have the chance to get every bit as good a public
school education as a private student will. Unless, of course, you are
tacitly admitting that public schools are inefficient, wasteful and
ineffective at educating children no matter how much money is thrown at
them. Is that what you're saying?

==============


What you suggest is akin to educational slavery. You suggest that a bright
child, who can benefit from a higher quality, more expensive education that
her parents can both afford and wish to give to her, ought to be forced into
an inferior (for her) school in order to benefit *other* children.

==============
In a simplistic sense, it is not to benefit *other* children but,
rather, to benefit the entire system.

Would not the system benefit from having fewer students with the same amount
of money being provided as before? I'd say so.


I don't say "don't provide the gifted (or the disabled) the education
they require". I'm all in favor of providing "higher quality, more
expensive education". But, any system needs a certain critical mass of,
let's say, gifted students before special programs are established.
Every *rich*, gifted child who leaves the system reduces that critical
mass and thus reduces the quality of the whole.

Once again, you're implying that it is the presence of these "gifted
children" that somehow make the educational experience for all students
better. Upon what evidence do you base this assertion?

Isn't that making pawns of gifted students? Isn't that denying them their
right to succeed and get the very best education their parents can afford
for them merely in order to make them leavening for the less fortunate?

I'm sorry, but that's just wrong. No child should be bound to a school
because someone thinks that they are needed to be part of some vacuous
"intellectual critical mass."

===================



That's
just wrong. No parent, and no child, should be required to sacrifice
educational opportunities at the altar of socialist egalitarianism. Children
ought not to be made into sociopolitical pawns to salve what I intuit as
your bruised academic ego.

================
My bruised academic ego??

Explain please.
=================

You evidence a rather impressive degree of dudgeon and ire over the fact
that some parents decided to give their gifted daughter a better education.
Why would you care? Why is it any business of yours at all where they send
their children? The only conclusion I can come to is that you are angry
because their child is getting a better education than yours. Or, you're
just ranting socialistically because you politically and philosophically
can't stand it when someone drags themselves out of the mire of mediocrity
and rises above the Proletariat.

Can you illuminate us as to why you feel so much anger about this that would
refute these observations?




As for the "handicapped" one, she has a RIGHT to that education, by your
own argument, and to suggest that her presence drags down the educational
environment for other children, which ought to be balanced out by forcing
her sister into academic slavery, is astonishingly uncaring and dismissive
of the fundamental value of each child, no matter how handicapped. I can't
believe you really mean this.

====================
You're mixing up way too many concepts. No matter how much programs for
gifted children (my daughter, for example) may cost, that cost pales in
comparison to the costs associated with educating disabled children.

So what? She's *entitled* to that education, by your own laws.

I was appalled by the hypocrisy of the parents, "leaving" (I do use that
term advisedly) the "expensive" disabled child for the taxpayers to take
care of (I don't object) while taking the bright sister to the private
school (cherry-picking). Why not the other way around? Hypocrisy!

It's not hypocrisy, it's common sense. Both their children are entitled to a
public education. In your system (as in ours) disabilities are not the basis
for discrimination in education, even when educating a disabled child takes
much more money. The parents are simply exercising their legal right to have
the state pay for their disabled daughter's education. Don't blame them,
they didn't write the laws, they are merely taking advantage of the laws
others imposed upon them. They pay the required amount towards public
education, and the fact that they have a special-needs student is
irrelevant. Even bringing it up smacks of bigotry and anti-disabled
discrimination. If the parents had left *both* children in public school,
would you be carping about having to pay more for the disabled one?

No, I think not.

What chaps your butt is that they decided to continue to take advantage of
the system and let the public school system educate their disabled daughter,
as the system is required to do regardless of her capabilities, while at the
same time spending their own hard-earned money to give their gifted daughter
a leg up in the world by sending her to private school while *still paying*
for her public school education...a portion of which can now be used to help
their other daughter. They're doing the system a big favor by taking on the
burden of a private school education for a child they've removed from the
system.

It's clear that you think they ought to have taken their disabled daughter
out and paid for her special needs themselves, but why should they? They pay
into the system, and it just so happens that they have a daughter who
consumes more educational resources than you do. So what? Big deal. That's
life. Get over it. You're paying for *many* disabled children, that just
comes with the territory.

By their actions, it was the parents, not I who "suggested that the
disabled child's presence dragged down the educational environment for
other children (including the bright sister)" Thus, you'd have to
characterize them as "astonishingly uncaring and dismissive of the
fundamental value of each child...."

I don't think they suggested anything. I think they exercised their right to
have one daughter educated by the public system while providing themselves
for a better education for the other. I don't think that they think that
their daughter's presence in the public schools "drags down" anything, and I
find it insulting to the disabled that you seem to think exactly that. This
reveals some character issues, attitudes and perceptions about the value you
place on the disabled that you might want to ruminate upon.

I might have applauded their actions if the roles of the sisters had
been reversed.
====================

Sounds like sour grapes to me. I suspect they realized that a public school
education was adequate for their disabled daughter's future and that they
needed to take the opportunity they had to give their gifted daughter the
best chance for success they could.




I understand that you may not ascribe to that philosophy, but I do. If
one ascribes to that philosophy, then cherry-picking can not be
permitted.


What I see as implicit in your argument is that you believe that no one
should be allowed to excel or enjoy individual success above any other. This
is the essence of socialistic oppression, and it's why socialism always
fails.

===========
NO.

I do not believe that in the matter of education or health care, money
ought to be a determining factor.
============

You seem to argue the opposite as regards the disabled child. You seem to be
very upset that the additional costs associated with educating her are being
imposed on the public while the parents obviously have the means to educate
her privately at their own expense. The clear implication of your arguments
is that you *do* believe that money ought to be a determinative factor: If
the parents have money, they should be *required* to take their children out
of the public system, particularly if the particular child is a
high-maintenance disabled child.

Unfortunately, you are ignoring the fact that the public is *obligated* to
provide those extra funds, no matter what the other sister does. You need to
consider the children, and their interests, as individuals, not your own
interests or your own judgmental attitudes about who is and who is not
deserving of an education funded by the public. I see a large degree of
hypocrisy in your statements.

And while you argue that money should not be a "determining factor," you
seem to evade the issue I brought up earlier regarding the Canada Health
system that not only makes it a system which does not discriminate based on
an *inability* to pay, but makes it a system that *does* discriminate based
on *ability* to pay.

Do you likewise believe that people should not be allowed to take advantage
of a "second-tier" educational system if they can afford to pay for it?
--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser