On private opportunities

Last week, I noted that the Harper Cons' generally opaque austerity plans include one cause for alarm, as they're looking to turn public services into sources of corporate profit. And via Digby, the L.A. Times offers an example of how that type of strategy has worked south of the border - with such cataclysmic political consequences that its architect became a frontrunner for the Republicans' presidential nomination:

Louise Cohoon was at home when her 80-year-old mother called in a panic from Terre Haute: The $97 monthly Medicaid payment she relied on to supplement her $600-a-month income had been cut without warning by a private company that had taken over the state's welfare system.

Later, the state explained why: She failed to call into an eligibility hot line on a day in 2008 when she was hospitalized for congestive heart failure.

"I thought the news was going to kill my mother, she was so upset," said Cohoon, 63. Her mother had to get by on support from cash-strapped relatives for months until the state restored her benefits under pressure from Legal Services attorneys.

Cohoon's mother, now suffering from Alzheimer's disease, was one of thousands of Indiana residents who abruptly and erroneously lost their welfare, Medicaid or food stamp benefits after Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels privatized the state's public assistance program — the result of an efficiency plan that went awry from the very beginning, the state now admits.

Though the $1.37-billion project proved disastrous for many of the state's poor, elderly and disabled, it was a financial bonanza for a handful of firms with ties to Daniels and his political allies, which landed state contracts worth millions.

Now, it could well be that privately-determined arbitrarily restrictions (which would never be tolerated in a public institution) might well save a small amount of money at the expense of the programs currently delivered by the federal government. But nobody aside from the private actors siphoning off a percentage of program spending actually figures to gain substantially in the long run - making the Cons' determination to push toward privatization one of the most important issues facing the country over their term in office.