Northman's Fury

I understand why Congressmen soliciting sex while claiming "sanctity of marriage" is news. The hypocrisy is considerable. I also understand that exposing such hypocrisy is a good thing and a valuable service.

What I don't understand is: Why is Larry Flynt and Hustler Magazine the ones spearheading the investigative journalism?

The Canadian Transportation Agency on Wednesday suspended an application filed by Air Canada seeking to bar pets from its baggage compartments.

HAW Haw!

The suspension, which does not apply to domestic flights . . .

D'oh!

Oh well, I wasn't planning on flying them anyway.

Since Michael Moore has a new film talking about Health Care, it has become one of the major topics of conversation. Say what you will about his movies, Moore knows how to provoke discussions.

Timothy Noah at Slate has a story about one the big health care costs to the US that Moore apparently doesn't cover in his movie, but is one that I always point to when defending Canada's system over the US model, the cost to business.

Sicko tells story after heartbreaking story about ordinary people getting screwed out of the health-care benefits they thought they had coming. Yet one significant victim of America's market-based health-care system is left out: market capitalism itself.

I refer not to health insurers, nor to health-maintenance organizations, nor to for-profit hospitals, but rather to businesses outside the health-care sector that are saddled with the growing cost of providing health insurance to their employees. This obligation puts American companies at a disadvantage with respect to foreign competitors whose governments provide health care. The most obvious victim, ironically, is a company Moore knows very well: General Motors. Because of health-care obligations, the automaker that Moore pilloried in his first film, Roger and Me, is fighting for its life.

I remember reading a few years ago about Toyota looking for a new factory site. Of the various options, one was in Canada, the rest in the US. The Canadian site was chosen, and one of the main reasons was that Canada has universal health care, meaning Toyota wouldn't have to provide anywhere near the level of health insurance for its workers as it would had they chosen an American site, therefore lowering costs and increasing margins. It's no accident that foreign auto companies are beating the hell out of the US "Big Three".

If you want to know why the Free Trade Agreement has been such a boon for Canada, this is a large part of it. Once the trade barriers were dropped, the margins were better on the Canadian side of the border for factory-produced goods because of health care costs. The low dollar helped, but once a factory is built, it doesn't get moved easily, which is why the rising dollar hasn't hurt us as much as some would expect.

The second point Noah doesn't mention; healthier workers are more productive workers. The costs here are a lot harder to quantify, but the increased number of sick days taken due to the lack of affordable preventative health care, costs US businesses as well.

At some point, the US will probably realize what their economy is losing under their current health care system. Until then, I'm quite happy to watch Canada reap the benefits of the competitive advantage our system gives us.

The True North, Strong and Free.