Despite declining profits and accusations of fake news, Malcolm Gladwell isn’t worried about the state of journalism today.
“This is the golden age of journalism,” the best-selling author argues.
Soon after launching Season 2 of his hit podcast Revisionist History, Gladwell sat down with Martine and Isabelle to chat about everything from Trump’s privilege to listening to Barbara Frum as child and his thoughts on The Beatles (not a fan).
- Do you think about childhood as a training ground, where difficulties can be helpful?
- White people are weary of race and want to move on. Indifference is harder to overcome than Opposition.
Are the GOP’s Proposed Medicaid Reforms Mean?
Trump has repeatedly praised Canada’s health-care system, which has a very similar structure to Medicaid, as offering a model for the United States to emulate. However, the reforms proposed in both the House and the Senate bills would in fact bring Medicaid even closer to the structure of Canada’s health-care system — only with a far more generous level of funding.
.. Canada’s federal funding system was established in 1957, with the national government providing one dollar for every dollar that provinces spent on hospital and physician services. By the 1970s this arrangement was widely recognized to be causing costs to soar, and the Liberal prime minister Pierre Trudeau reformed this “Canada Health Transfer” so that provinces would receive a fixed annual allocation from the national government.
.. The U.S. Medicaid matching payment to states ($344 billion, or $1,071 per American, in 2015) already well exceeds the Canadian block grant to provinces (US$26 billion, or US$716 per Canadian) — even though the Canada Health Transfer is supposed to cover Canadians of all ages and income levels, whereas Medicaid is dedicated to 21 percent of the U.S. population with low incomes.
.. U.S. federal taxpayers spend an additional $646 billion on Medicare, and $122 billion on other health entitlements such as CHIP or VA — yielding total federal health-care entitlement spending of $3,461 per capita.
.. Canada is not getting more value for money; it is just getting fewer services. Canada’s federal payment doesn’t cover prescription drugs; only hospital and physician services are paid for. Canada also saves money by rationing operating-room time and the ability of physicians to order costly services.
.. Nor does Canada pay significantly less for its physicians than the United States; it just limits access to the expensive ones. In 2010, family physicians earned incomes (net of practice expenses) averaging $159,000 in the United States and US$156,000 in Ontario, while cardiologists averaged $325,000 in the United States and US$283,000 in Ontario. According to the World Bank, the United States has 2.45 and Canada 2.07 physicians per 1,000 inhabitants, while the United States has 0.55 specialist surgeons per 1,000 and Canada 0.35.
.. Waiting lists save lots of money because some patients get better by themselves, others give up seeking care, and a substantial number die before receiving treatment.
.. the allocation of federal payments by open-ended matching has caused funds to be distributed according to how much states can themselves afford to put in. As a result, the states that need help the least received the most assistance. In 2015, Connecticut collected $12,240 in federal Medicaid funds per resident under the poverty line, whereas Alabama received only $4,070.
To keep funds from being captured by the richest states (which generally use them to expand eligibility to wealthier individuals who mostly already had private coverage), it therefore makes sense to cap the increase in funding that each state is able to claim from the federal government every year.
.. The Canada Health Transfer currently increases the funds received by each province at a standard rate of 3.0 percent every year. By comparison, the House GOP’s proposed reform would limit the annual increase in federal payments claimed by each state to a statistic that has increased around 7.0 percent for spending on the aged and disabled and 4.9 percent for that on able-bodied adults and children
Canadian Banking Sector Downgraded: High Private-Sector Debt
Moody’s Investors Service also downgraded the Canadian banking sector in May, citing high private-sector debt levels.
Canada’s Hidden History, My Mother and Me
More than a century of Indian policy by the Canadian government included forced migration, segregation, limiting education, outlawing culture and separating children from their parents. As recently as the 1980s, indigenous women would lose their Indian status and rights if they married a non-indigenous person. We were not allowed full voting rights until 1960.
.. Residential schools were government-funded, church-run institutions found across Canada and the United States that put seven generations of indigenous children through their doors. Children were not allowed to speak their language or practice their culture; as young as 6 years old, they faced electric chairs for punishment, and siblings were separated. Many, including my relatives, faced physical, sexual and mental abuse. One report estimated at least 6,000 children perished of malnutrition and disease, or while attempting to escape.
.. Nor did we learn that MacDonald justified the schools this way: “When the school is on the reserve, the child lives with its parents, who are savages, and though he may learn to read and write, his habits and training, mode of thought are Indian. He is simply a savage who can read and write.” In residential schools, he added, “they will acquire the habits and modes of thought of white men.”
.. In order to expand Canada westward, the government displaced and confined my people — a stark contrast from the Canada so praised these days for welcoming refugees from Syria and other nations.
.. Learning about our past won’t change it, but mandating indigenous history in our school systems is a good start. Without an honest dialogue and recognition of this history, we will hide behind a comfortable ignorance. My hope is that on July 1, Canadians who raise their flag high in celebration will also take a minute to reflect on the loss many have faced along the way.