The best part about selling off the hospitals is that it's essentially an irreversible move. Sell them off cheap to somebody who commits to ensuring the operational costs, so you can justify the lowball by holding up the continuity of service. You also get a modest, one time bump on the good side of the balance sheet you can parade during an election cycle, while committing to pay for services indefinitely on the other. If at any point capital upgrades are required, the new owner will lobby the government for investment to allow the level of service the government wants, and the private provider would love to provide if it just weren't so uneconomical to pay for those capital upgrades. When faced with the choice of caving to their cronies, or committing huge amounts of capital funding on a new building, the former will be the likely way to go. Win-win for the private sector, lose-lose for the public sector. Like when the Holy Cross got sold off for a few million dollars, then the government had to pay hundreds of millions upgrading Rockyview while still continuing paying for services and upgrades at the Holy Cross. That has the side benefit of a whole lot of lost opportunity for property taxes for the city by having a significantly underutilized 8-acre site in Mission. It solidifies private service at the expense of public by providing no economic path to reverse it, in order to subsidize cronies at a greater cost.
Wait, did I say best part?
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