Despite a record surplus the Liberals continue to refuse to provide proper funding to maintain medical services. What more proof do we need that this government is trying to convince the public health care is not financially possible. What a con. once again their plan is revealed as the sham it is to make the sheep think we can not afford healthcare, then we can privatize and give corporations yet another way to take the money out of the poor pocket. Poor excuses for human beings if you ask me.

Unfortunately, public health care the way it is being delivered now is not financially possible over the long term. I wouldn't be making long term committments either.

I think their is room for both private and public health care. I also think we should have the right to choose the type of healthcare we need.

Throwing more money at the current one is not going to change the results in my opinion. Chester

Perhaps getting to the bottom of the incompetence in spending the funds is what is needed. Its time to realize there are enough funds to do the job and more than enough middle managers to waste it. Health boards and administration staff need to be held accountable. If private companies had this amount of funding they would run at a profit with highly paid staff and top notch delivery of services. Comparisons of private systems show that the money is there in the public system. Why can they not take the modle of private business and apply it without privatizing? Quit cutting back the services and start looking to track every penny that is going out to contracts, to administration and to waste.

What good does it do to rail against the present B.C government when the previous government threw vast amounts of borrowed money at healthcare (and education) for a whole decade and still could not reduce waiting times and really improve the system? People were still dying in ambulances because they could not get into an Emergency Room!

There is more than enough money being fed into the system - yet the results are not what they should be!

Anniemartin identifies some of the problems, one of them being extraordinary amounts being used up for administration and just plain waste.

>"If private companies had this amount of funding they would run at a profit with highly paid staff and top notch delivery of services."<

Our public system does not have to make a profit or justify by actual performance that it is the best system possible.

In fact it does not wish to have a surplus for fear that in the next year's budget there may be a reduction of funds!

Being on budget or having a surplus often has a negative connotation in services funded by the public.

The plans to get rid of public healthcare has in fact been going on for sometime. It actually started the day those who did not want public healthcare lost their fight. All governemts have worked towards its destruction. It's just the B.C. liberals who have once again increased the speed at which the sytem is being destroyed and who also once again have had the arrogence to make their plans so obvious, it remains an insult to those who have followed their path of destruction.If the government can not run healthcare, why should we beleive in their ability to run an entire province? Yes the system is a mess and inefficient that has been part of the plan to make it appear unsustainable. Please do not let these guys pull the wool over your eyes. Too much is at stake.

Ever wonder who really stands to lose when we allow more private healthcare and less public health care?

How about the drug companies? I don't think so. Our current type of healthcare is based on drugs and the doctors who are dispensing them. This is not the direction to go if we are more interested in creating a healthier population.

If you want to be healthy, you need to study how and why people are healthy. That is not the direction our current healthcare system is going in. It's like changing the direction of the Titanic. But, we need to change the direction of our healthcare. It cannot sustain the increasing demands required in the future with an aging population and dwindling tax base. Chester