Poland’s public health service is still in a jock. Doctors out, nurses out, patients being evacuated—I’ve lost track to be honest. But here comes Agata Nowakowska of Gazeta Wyborcza to take me by the hand and patiently explain that “Raising Health Insurance Contributions Only Puts Out Fires,” (the title of her opinion piece in today’s paper). Her logic runs as follows: since equal access to health services is already a fiction there is no point in investing in public health (i.e. by raising – during an economic boom, mind you – the health insurance contribution paid by taxpayers, whom she cloyingly reduces to “emerytki” and “nauczycielki,” i.e. female pensioners and female teachers).

Sick people go private not because they are naturally capitalist but because the public service is an underfunded shambles. Nowakowska’s is the same circular argument used by Marek Rocki in his attack on publicly funded education: The state should stop funding BLANK because it underfunds BLANK. You can fill in the blank any way you please: orphanages, fire engines, nursing homes…