This CBC news article made me do a double-take.

Jim Gouk, a Conservative candidate in BC believes that privatized health care is okay, as long as the private hospitals are publicily funded.

So according to Gouk, it's perfectly okay for me to have to pay taxes to support a health service that I personally cannot afford to use?

The privatized health care issue is a big one in this election. Conservatives are pushing hard to open up two-tier health service in Canada. But there's a problem that the proponents don't seem to address. As soon as you open for-profit health care in Canada, the public health care system will suffer.

For-profit health care centers will be able to pay their medical personnel higher wages than the public system. As a result, medical staff with greater experience and skill will be drawn from the public health care system to the private system.

In an already overworked, overburdened health care system, this will lead to even worse wait times for non-elective surgery and treatment. And even worse, you'll have an overall lower level of skill and experience in the public health care system.

Publicly funding these private hospitals means one of two things: either I'm paying additional tax for a service that I am economically prohibited from using, or the amount of public funding for public health is decreased. Neither of these situations is acceptable to this tax payer.