So here we are: the conservative states are demanding increased taxation to pay for increased services, and progressive groups are demanding the implementation of a market-based, individualistic funding model that will turn people with a disability into “potentially empowered consumers“. The cognitive dissonance, it burns!
But why does any of this matter? Surely any funding is better than none? What could possible be wrong with supporting a disability funding model that is “an entitlement-based funding mechanism, which will provide flexible, person-centred supports so that people can participate in ordinary, daily life.”
For starters, how about this study of a Queensland program of individualised funding that found:
“… few consumers felt that individualised funding arrangements had personally delivered the benefits which the quasi-market model and associated policy paradigm had indicated that they should receive.”
We are citizens, not consumers.
Categories: culture wars, economics, ethics & philosophy, health, parties and factions, social justice
Hoyden About Town 
Thanks for the pointer tigtog. I don’t know where we as a society left off believing ‘entitlement’ referred to a basic human right, and instead loaded it with all sorts of other meanings, but I think that was a not so subtle change that has diminished us all.