[Vision2020] Warning to the GOP: Don't Mess with Medicare

[Ralph Nielsen]

The item below might be of interest. I posted it to another  
discussion group at the time.

NIELSEN (Feb. 22, 2008)
Last night I listened on my internet radio to the 2-hour debate in  
Edmonton, Alberta, between the heads of the following political  
parties: Conservative, Liberal, New Democratic, and an upstart  
libertarian group called the Wild Rose Party. (The wild rose is  
Alberta's provincial flower.) The Conservatives have been in power  
for 37 years.

The election was called on 4 weeks notice and will be held on Mon.  
March 3. Voters will put an X beside the name of the local candidate  
of their choice, put it in the box, and go home. The party that gets  
the most members elected will form the next provincial government. My  
guess is that the Conservatives will win again.

In the entire 2 hours not one candidate proposed scrapping the single- 
payer medical insurance system they have in Alberta. Not the  
Conservatives, not even the Wild Roses! Several improvements were  
suggested but the system itself will remain. There is no popular  
desire anywhere in Canada to revert to the old American-style health  
insurance system that they used to have. Not even in Alberta.

I have lived in Alberta for several years, so I still keep posted.


March 3, 2008
The Alberta election is over. The Conservative Party of Alberta won  
reelection and gained 11 more seats than it originally had! The Wild  
Rose Party (libertarian) got no seats at all. Doesn't this tell you  
something about so-called "socialized medicine," as Senator Crapo and  
others like to call single-payer medical and hospital insurance?

Ralph