Healthcare capitalism

The Communist Party (KSČM) will gather this weekend to call for an end to global capitalism. The Communists will no doubt pay special attention to the proposed privatization of Czech medical insurers. Communist Chair Vojtěch Filip told Czech Radio that ODS wants to upend the entire system and take away the ability of taxpayers to monitor where their Kč 200bn in health-tax money goes. There's a morsel of truth to the claim that the big financial groups are now targeting healthcare because there otherwise isn't much left to "piratize." It's also true, as Tomáš Sedláček of ČSOB noted today in HN, that Czech healthcare still operates in more of a communist environment than a capitalistic one and needs to be changed. The question, though, is whether healthcare capitalism will be any better than healthcare communism if the ODS greed machine is allowed to work its usual black magic. [Czech Republic Hospodářské noviny insurance]