Wednesday Morning Links

Assorted content for your midweek reading.

- It's tough to disagree with Jamey Heath's view that a united Canadian left is a long way off. But perhaps more important than his recognition that it will take awhile to reach that end goal is his rightful identification of the process most likely to get there:

Many left-leaning Liberals are Liberals for no reason other than it used to be a viable alternative to Conservatives. They would find a happy home in the NDP if they accepted its invitation.

But they are leery. They fret the party's success may prove shortlived and worry it has not taken on board enough lessons from successful Prairie cousins, or the not-sosuccessful Bob Rae experience in Ontario.

Convincing them the NDP can form the base of something new -able to work with Quebecers -will take more than a welcome mat. It also depends on more introspection from Liberals who mistake being in the middle with avoiding the polarized politics their party long fed.

- Alice's latest chart comparing the riding-level two-party races in 2008 and 2011 is definitely worth a look. But it's particularly worth noting that the two largest blocks of ridings involve races where the NDP seems well positioned to take over Con territory - including the 50 where the NDP came second to the Cons in both 2008 and 2011, and the 43 where the NDP eclipsed the Libs as the second-place party. And indeed, an even split of the 148 ridings where the NDP and the Cons were the top two contenders would result in the NDP ranking at the top of the federal party standings.

- Thomas Walkom points out what the Conference Board of Canada's report on health care really says - contrary to the media spin about it somehow serving to justify further privatization:

(The report) makes the obvious point that health involves more than doctors, hospitals and drugs. It suggests that Japan’s high life expectancy is related more to diet than anything else (the Japanese are far less obese than Americans).

And it points out that the countries with some of the worst health outcomes are often those with the most poverty.

That Canada has the second-highest level of infant mortality among advanced nations may have little to do with our health care system and much to do with the fact that our poverty rate is almost as high as America’s.

The second question the Conference Board looks at is why U.S. medical costs are so high.

Its findings here won’t give much solace to the National Post.

The study attributes much of this extra spending to America’s reliance on private medical insurance. Administration costs in the United States are twice those of its nearest competitor, France.

Incidentally, Canada already has the third-highest rate of private health spending among the countries surveyed, a fact that should give pause to those who claim that privatization leads to lower costs.

The study also fingers another panacea of the right: market incentives. It notes that outpatient surgery and diagnostic testing in the U.S. are skyrocketing — in part because pricey tests (such as MRI scans) are needlessly duplicated and in part because fee-for-service billing encourages specialists to schedule more operations.

- Shorter Charles Moore: Better to redefine "democracy" as meaning something other than government supported by voters than to acknowledge that a distorted first-past-the-post system doesn't live up to the standard.

- Finally, pogge notes that at least some of the lessons from Maher Arar's abduction seem to have been wilfully ignored by CSIS in identifying Canadians as "suspected of terrorist-related activity" based on nothing more than distant association.