I'm really scared that this is already in the works
— Maria S (@Maria81z) August 17, 2022
What on earth is so scary about the joke? (specifically that Doug Ford would allow grocery chains such as Loblaws to provide health services)
As I've covered many times, there's an intense irrational fear of the boogeyman of "private healthcare". One thing I've often noted (going back sixteen years) is that the necessity of healthcare is being used as some sort of explanation why it's a weird outlier where the free market isn't better at providing services than big government.
Complaints like Maria's drive home how dumb that is: food is far more critical to human existence than medical attention. For huge spans of our lives, most of us need no medical intervention. Even for those suffering from long-term ailments such as multiple sclerosis they can often go months or even years without needing to visit a doctor. Obviously going to the doctor (pre-COVID at least) tended to help prolong your life, but then so could going to the clothing store before winter. In general we (wisely) let the free market handle all sorts of wants and needs and things in between. Yet when hospital care comes up, suddenly that's the worst thing in the world?
Loblaws and Sobeys and other grocery stores every day provide 99.9% of Canadians with products they need within days† to stay alive, day after day after day.
† My cousin is in the middle of a 21-day fast trying desperately to disprove my thesis (and, probably coincidentally, avoiding my pre-Christmas dinner party)
For those keeping score, if every government hospital shut down tomorrow (which the nurses unions have been claiming for decades is mere hours away without a pay raise) for 95% of Canadians it wouldn't become a problem for months if not years. If every single food provider shut down tomorrow (as the green protesters demand) it would rapidly be fatal for literally everybody.
Yet we do leave it to the private sector, and they (pre-COVID at least) do an excellent job of cheaply bringing us delicious foods in all variety from all corners of the globe. Just imagine if the hospitals ran like grocery stores do: like all markets do it could cater to all sorts of socio-economic statuses from the rich fru-frus who only shop at the laughably named Save On Foods and expensive niche markets and would want whatever the healthcare equivalent of that is, to the working poor who have to wander around No Frills or FreshCo-the-Ontario-abomination buying ciabatta buns that expire within days.
Earlier in the thread @mynamesnotgordy thought he had some clever satirical thing insulting Loblaws for selling "good enough" jeans and could also sell you "good enough" healthcare. Seeing as how, like all government-run systems, our government run healthcare system is always teetering on collapse only surviving by either killing you, watching you die, or waiting for you to die, there's no reason that a privatized healthcare system should be opposed. To "save" you from "good enough" healthcare the system promises you "excellent" healthcare...just as long as they receive $267.6 trillion annual increases to pay for it...until then you'll get that "excellent" care sometime in the next 12-72 months.
Under this context, it's nationalizing grocery stores which would be a complete nightmare...
