B.C. Health Bonds: Public Investment in Public Health Care

Now that the election is over, the B.C. Liberals are no longer pretending to care about the welfare of British Columbians, as the current budgetary bloodletting by the regional health authorities demonstrates. The Liberals care only for money, and the wealthy men who control money, and they are much more worried about maintaining as small a deficit as they can (and keeping corporate taxes down), than about investing in health care. They are indifferent to the fact that their refusal to adequately fund operating rooms, and acute- and long-term-care beds (the latter being needed to free up the former) will, literally, hurt many individuals needing so-called 'elective' operations.

If the Liberals were sincerely concerned about health care, and if they also had any interest in easing the impact of the recession, they would address both issues by increasing funding for health care providers, instead of forcing the regional health authorities to cut both jobs and surgeries. By increasing health care budgets, the Liberals could tackle health and economic problems together, but their narrow, ideological view prevents them from seeing this. Instead, the Liberals are doing their utmost to undermine the public health system in order to create opportunities for private corporations to make a profit from the sick.

Where is the money for investing in public health care to come from? One source could be B.C. Health Bonds--government bonds, the income from which would be reserved entirely for health care. We'd still be increasing our deficit and debt, but taxpayers could also benefit from such government borrowing even as we were paying for it. And if the price of the bonds were modest, say $50, or even $25 each, then those on lower incomes could also afford to buy them.

Some may argue that such bonds have been tried before, and found wanting. True, a previous issue of B.C. Bonds lost money. However, those bonds were offered when competition for savings was relatively high, and were therefore sweetened with a tax break in addition to an attractive interest rate. These days, when many investors are seeking safety for their capital above all else, a decent rate of interest in government-backed bonds (which could be purchased only by permanent residents of B.C.) would likely prove very popular with the B.C. investing public, and no tax break need be added.

Properly spent, temporary deficits in the provincial budget would enable British Columbians to better weather the recession, especially if the government borrowed from us instead of from the banks, which, whether national, or international, suck their profits from our debt out of the province to the benefit of shareholders elsewhere. As long as we borrow from the private banks, our debt is only a liability. By borrowing from ourselves through B.C. Health Bonds, our debt would be both a liability and an asset for B.C. taxpayers.