Rebane's Ruminations
August 2026
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George Rebane

Over-educated or mis-educated?  Hit to those who recognize that today’s description of the Left’s “over educated” young voters is fallacious.  The more accurate description is that most of these people have been mis-educated.  Their college education provided them no useful knowledge and/or valuable skillsets.  All employers immediately recognize a trash degree when they see one on a resume.  The only private sector work for them is a low-wage entry-level job (“Would you like fries with that?”), or in government, when available, where the only apparent acceptance criteria include spouting the correct ideology, belonging to a correct group, and fogging a mirror.

No nationalized healthcare system is sustainable.  By the strict metric of non-increasing GDP share, healthcare systems in all OECD countries have been expanding at an unsustainable rate. The fundamental unmet challenge for governments is to balance the rising demand for care (driven by aging populations and new technologies) with the need to restore public finances. The attempted path toward sustainability involves aggressive changes to service delivery: reducing reliance on expensive hospital infrastructure, heavily increasing investments in cost-effective primary and preventive care, and eliminating wasteful clinical practices.

Canada’s Healthcare is Failing.  Our leftwing readers continue promoting nationalized healthcare systems.  As pointed out above, no such systems are sustainable, all are costing more and delivering less.  In oft-celebrated Canada we have a clear real-world example of unmet global sustainability challenges and service delivery bottlenecks. Operating a predominantly publicly funded, decentralized system, Canada is currently grappling with the exact pressures outlined above.  An example of a failing system, Canada’s primary care bottleneck reports roughly 1 in 5 Canadian adults (over 5 million people) do not have a regular family doctor or primary care provider.  This is part of an overall service delivery failure, and because of this primary care gap, patients are frequently forced to seek basic medical attention in highly expensive hospital emergency departments. This creates a vicious cycle for all patients: it drives up immediate costs, causes severe hospital wait times, and actively undermines the goal of shifting care away from resource-intensive inpatient settings.

Personalized Pricing Debate.  Technology is taking shopping back to how it was in the good ol’ days in market places and bazaars across the world.  Back then no-one posted prices of goods.  When a customer walked in the merchant sized him up and quoted a price for the selected goods.  Then they haggled until agreement was reached on a price and the deal concluded.  Today sophisticated merchants are considering bringing back personalized pricing that would access customer databases to instantly come up with a price specific to that customer.  That could be the final price or with smart phones the customer could submit a counter offer and so on.  In other words haggling would return to the modern marketplace.  Our leftists consider this to be ‘unfair’ according to their addled sense of fairness, justice, and equity.

[26aug26 update]  Project Heart wins the Award of Recognition from the international Impact DOCS Awards Competition for its new film ‘Hope Has An Address’.  It will be available for viewing starting 24 September 2026.  Project Heart is a nonprofit organization serving individuals and families navigating some of life’s most destabilizing challenges through peer mentorship, recovery support, housing navigation, community connection and other services designed to help people build stability and move forward.  Jo Ann and I are board members and have supported the organization for the last several years.

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18 responses to “Scattershots – 24aug26 (updated 26aug26)”

  1. Paul Emery Avatar
    Paul Emery

    George

    You promoted Estonia as an example of an economy that you would like to see us emulate yet they have national health care for 85% of its citizens with a 15% tax. How do you explain your support for that and would support a similar system for our country?

    “The Estonian healthcare system is funded through mandatory contributions made through a payroll tax. It accounts for almost two-thirds of all healthcare expenditure in the country.”

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Estonia

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  2. fish Avatar
    fish

    It would be less cruel to just ignore him….dogs and card tricks.

    Like

  3. Rebane Avatar

    PaulE – There are more dimensions to an economy than healthcare. Comparing the advisability of nationalized healthcare between Estonia and the US is comparing apples and oranges. What works in a small culturally cohesive, highly educated, entrepreneurial country does not imply that it will also work in the US.

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  4. scenes Avatar
    scenes

    Concerning psul and his old man tricks of saying the same thing over and over…I’m willing to consider whether it’s better to have one health insurance company (gubmint) or a half dozen. Some advantage? Dunno. We’re probably 1/2 way there already what with poor people and government employees and old people and disabled people and illegal aliens and bar musicians.

    To their credit, I doubt that Baltic countries have let in millions of Latinos to bury their public health care system. Naturally it’s worth considering that Estonian doctors average $80k a year and the US version averages $400k/year. It’s why they want to leave to go to Finland I guess. It’s a difference that’s way too large to be explained by hand waving about college loans and malpractice insurance. I want to watch as psul explains to nurses and doctors that they need to take a minimum 50% wage haircut.

    In any case, as usual, it’s a thing that psul doesn’t understand being compared to another thing he doesn’t understand. These are big, complicated systems and don’t succumb well to analysis by the BarcaLounger crowd.

    re: the destruction of post-secondary education, especially the humanities, by The Woke. Genuine question. Is it fixable? Do you just starve the thing to death and let it start over? Probably the only way to cut funding, as modern colleges are viewed as Goodthink indoctrination centers by the same people who fund KVMR for the same reason, is for AI to crash and burn the keyboard-worker economy. Maybe data centers aren’t such a bad investment.

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  5. Paul Emery Avatar
    Paul Emery

    But George isn’t Estonia’s healthcare an example of Socialism where the government puts a mandantory 15% tax on the income of 85% of it’s citizens to provide healthcare?

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  6. Paul Emery Avatar
    Paul Emery

    To make it simple George do you consider an involuntary 15% tax on 85% of the population to provide health care for all citizens an example of Socialism?

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  7. fish Avatar
    fish

    To make it simple George do you consider an involuntary 15% tax on 85% of the population to provide health care for all citizens an example of Socialism?

    .

    “To make it simple George”…..that’s the saddest pseudo intellectual flex you’ve ever tried here!

    .

    “It’s a bold move Cotton. Let’s see how it works out for him”.

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  8. fish Avatar
    fish

    Here you go Paul Raymond…..a story more appropriate for your “level”.

    .

    Marmots Are Terrorizing California Hikers and Stealing Their Shoes

    .

    ….and here’s a starter link for you to practice on!

    .

    https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/travel/marmots-hikers-california-sequoia-a197b314

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  9. Rebane Avatar

    PaulE 26aug26 – Sure Paul, just like taxing income in the US to pay for universal retirement benefits through Social Security. Again, you didn’t follow my point – i.e. no nationalized healthcare system is sustainable. The same with SS, it also is not sustainable, now scheduled to run out in six years.

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  10. Paul Emery Avatar
    Paul Emery

    So George then you believe Estonia’s healthcare program is not sustainable

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  11. scenes Avatar
    scenes

    re: national healthcare (which differs remarkably from country to country).

    Phrase of the day: Postcode Lottery

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postcode_lottery

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  12. Rebane Avatar

    PaulE – Please pay attention, none of the nationalized healthcare systems are sustainable. They’re all failing at different rates and modes.

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  13. fish Avatar
    fish

    PaulE – Please pay attention…..Marmots…..!

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  14. Resurrected Hillbilly Avatar
    Resurrected Hillbilly

    Marmots have been ripping off tourists for decades

    Like

  15. scenes Avatar
    scenes

    I imagine that no healthcare systems are sustainable. Ageing populations that will spend whatever it takes to get that last year of life, the poor want to live like the rich, marginal value of health spending goes down generally…plus it’s a wonderful campaign issue as it hits fear of pain and dying dead center (so to speak). Hand waving abounds.

    You’d think that a state as well run as California, given that it’s a political monopoly for the Far Left, would get it right having special abilities and all. There’s no need for a national plan. So far the plan is to put well-situated government employees and illegal aliens at the head of the line, but that’s to be expected.

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  16. Ron Avatar
    Ron

    American healthcare is being strangled by mismanagement and an incredibly self important bureaucracy.

    Like

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