If the polls are correct, the BC Liberals will form the next government while the same surveys reveal that the voters' top concerns are the economy/tax cuts and health care. Too bad that on the latter issue, it won't make a bit of difference which party is elected. On this issue, the provincial election mirrors the recent federal one where all the parties were indistinguishable. As Henry Ford famously said of his cars, you can order them in any colour you like, so long as you like black. Alas, the end result of the parties' uniformity on health care will not be positive for your future health.

Given the polls, I'll forget the New Democrats and concentrate on the BC Liberals. Their platform makes the familiar and justified complaints: not enough modern equipment, not enough nurses, doctors, and beds. The solutions offered include - in their words - real leadership from government, a 10-year human resource plan, a hospital facilities plan, and about five other "plans." The Liberal platform also includes a long list of new spending initiatives for everything from training programs to recruitment drives and more pharmaceutical benefits. (The chances of the health budget remaining at $9.3 billion this year is precisely zero.)

There are a few cost-saving proposals in the document: Maximizing every current health dollar spent, reducing waste in the system, and eliminating administrative duplication. But these are generalities, and nor terribly different from what other provincial governments across the country already propose or do.

To be sure, the Liberals can claim - as they already have - that they will not spend $500 million on fast ferries. No, they will not, but unless they're planing to privatize BC Ferries which they have not indicated thus far, they will spend some money there as well as in the main set of books. Sure - over time, reversing net migration flows to other provinces will provide BC more taxpayers to shoulder the extra spending load in health care. Increased economic activity from lower taxes, less regulation, and a government that is less anti-business will also help; a larger tax base expands options on taxing and spending in general.

But cost efficiencies in health care delivery? The Liberals are tinkering at the edges, and this is odd given their bias on some other issues - auto insurance and tendering for construction projects for example. There, the Liberals are committed to the twin principles of competition and choice as a way to constrain the costs of those services and provide market-based wages (which would mean higher ones for nurses and doctors and lower pay for non-technical staff.).

But not on health care. For example, Gordon Campbell recently gave an interview to the Hospital Employees Union about private clinics. In the interview, he said his job was to make such clinics "redundant because the public clinics are doing so well." He also argued that, when he was mayor of Vancouver, public sector workers provided better value than private sector workers "nine times out of ten."

Now that's revealing. Private sector workers deliver automobiles, jets, computers, and care to seniors in private and non-profit nursing homes - and they, along with their companies, have done a better job of it than state-led monopolies. Why Mr. Campbell's automatic preference for the public sector?

Health care, like food, is a necessity. Unlike food, the Canada Health Act specifies that provincial governments pay for medically required care. It does not specify who must deliver that care. Clinics or hospitals can be public, for-profit (as doctor's offices are for example) or non-profit. But provincial governments have decided, wrongly, that you can have health care any way you want, so long as it's delivered by the public sector. Voters should hope that the unexamined political bias on health care is never extended to food.