Once again, we do well to enlist Mark Steyn in the project. His latest NRO piece, "Twilight of the West," addresses the levels of our collapse - economic, political, cultural - in the way that shows their real seamlessness. As we bloggers say, read the whole thing, but for now take in this money paragraph:
[T]he unsustainable “bubble” is not student debt or subprime mortgages or anything else. The bubble is us, and the assumptions of entitlement. Too many citizens of advanced Western democracies live a life they have not earned, and are not willing to earn. Indeed, much of our present fiscal woe derives from two phases of human existence that are entirely the invention of the modern world. Once upon a time, you were a kid till you were 13 or so; then you worked; then you died. That bit between childhood and death has been chewed away at both ends. We invented something called “adolescence” that now extends not merely through the teenage years but through a desultory half decade of Whatever Studies at Complacency U up till you’re 26 and no longer eligible for coverage on your parents’ health-insurance policy. At the other end of the spectrum, we introduced something called “retirement” that, in the space of two generations, has led to the presumption that able-bodied citizens are entitled to spend the last couple of decades, or one-third of their adult lives, as a long holiday weekend.The emphasis on the key phrase is mine. It tells the whole story of everything from why banks in Spain are failing to why American television is a sewer.
The plain fact, and it is the message intended by this blog's name, is that there's not much of a chance we'll get to continue living the way everyone reading this has lived for however long they've been around. Perhaps - perhaps - if Tea Party Pubs accomplish a blowout takeover of both houses of Congress and a President Romney can be continually nudged to the right, we as a nation can take the uncomfortable steps necessary to remove government involvement in what we eat, how we care for our health, how we insure ourselves, how we plan for our sunset years, and what kinds of energy we use to live and make things. We would then join - who? Canada, I guess, for the time being anyway - in turning around the ship of Western civilization now speeding toward the iceberg. But in the meantime, Europe is going to continue its collapse, Iran and North Korea are going to use their nuclear status to pose an apocalyptic threat, the middle east is going to further descend into choas - oh, and, yes, our own culture, which is already basically ruined, will still be in a state of ruination.
So are we at a point where all that can be done is to look at how we might have prevented this state of affairs?
That's not a question that can be answered by collective consensus. That's something to be decide in each American heart.
The fact that this blog goes on with at least a post every day is my way of making public my decision. The forces of darkness have not taken me out. Therefore I struggle for the possibility that light can prevail somehow.
You seem to single out Canada alone as exemplary of a country where it's somewhat earlier in the day. You also want to suit up and defend a country, Israel, with universal health coverage yet the semblance of same within our boundaries is often cited as indicitive of our decline. Wonder what's up with that?
ReplyDeleteCanadians strongly support the health system's public rather than for-profit private basis, and a 2009 poll by Nanos Research found 86.2% of Canadians surveyed supported or strongly supported "public solutions to make our public health care stronger."
A 2009 Harris/Decima poll found 82% of Canadians preferred their healthcare system to the one in the United States, more than ten times as many as the 8% stating a preference for a US-style health care system for Canada[9] while a Strategic Counsel survey in 2008 found 91% of Canadians preferring their healthcare system to that of the U.S. (from Wikipedia)
They may prefer it, but they can't afford it.
ReplyDeleteEverybody likes something they think they're getting for free.
http://www.macdonaldlaurier.ca/files/pdf/Turning-Point-Balancing-the-Budget-While-Confronting-Rising-Healthcare-Costs-Oct-2011.pdf
From as Physicians News Digest inteview with Simon Glick, professor of internal medicine at Ben Gurion University. He winds up still believing that some collectivist solution to Israel's debt-financed government system is possible, but he has to strain to so believe, as he is well aware of the economic realities (as well as the superiority of American healthcare quality (Some money lines: "It may not provide as much choice." "The sick are going to be paying more at the time of illness") :
ReplyDeletePND: How would you evaluate the success of the system thus far?
SG: It depends what you compare it to. We were spending about a thousand dollars per capita on health care, which is about a third of what the United States is spending. There’s nobody in Israel who’s bankrupt like in the United States because of health care. Health care is available readily. It may not be as luxurious. It may not be as pleasant or offer as much choice, but I think most people are reasonably satisfied with the health care system. Each year we go into a problem. I don’t remember a year in Israel when there wasn’t a problem. Right now, because of the deficit, the Minister of Finance has come up with a plan which, at the present moment, cannot pass even with his own party because it aroused so much opposition. They said they weren’t going to raise taxes. So what did they do? Instead of raising the amount deducted from everybody or on a scale according to salary, they allowed each sick fund to put a head tax, a supplementary tax, and they’re allowing sick funds to charge a small amount per visit. It’s a whole package of what most health economists would regard as regressive taxation. In other words, the sick are going to be paying more at the time of illness. So now there is a big public uproar, every month that passes the deficit gets bigger and they’re going to have to come some head. I think this is the first time that there’s been a public outcry in Israel about health care. Consumer groups, the cancer society, diabetes, they’ve all gotten together and formed a very vocal constituency. The doctors and nurses have joined them too, each for their own reasons. The government doesn’t have the votes to pass it, so they have to go back to the drawing board and do something. What’s going to happen I don’t know.
And yet, the quality of health care: there is no place in the world you can get better than in America. Competition has improved the quality of how the sick funds treat their patients because they don’t want to lose them to the other sick funds. On the other hand, it has also created competition which isn’t always healthy: competing not necessarily on what’s good for the patient, but what the patient would like.
One way to differentiate bewtween human beings on the one hand and livestock and house pets on the other: the former each individually define the term "health care" for themselves and then use their own money to obtain it, and the latter have their health cared for by their overseers, who have complete control over every aspect of their destinies.
ReplyDeleteThat Israeli commentator may be right when intimating that competition from other sick funds makes for the best sick fund, but actually the winners have the fewest losses, which means they cherry pick the risks. Now that may be great for the bottom line to hallalujas from the stockholders but its not the way to pay to treat sick people. There is no cherrypickin goin on with universal plans. All pay premiums, all are covered. Simple as that.
ReplyDeleteThat's why it pays to get what ever health insurance you think you need before you get sick. Of course, at least as of now, no one is forcing you to. You're still free, as of now, to make your own decisions, be they wise or foolish.
ReplyDeleteAnd don't pick where to work based on whether they offer it. Just go get it, the way you buy everything else in life.
Why should I pay for, under duress of government force, the medical services of someone who made different life choices than I did?
ReplyDeleteWhat life choice did you make to pay what you quite obviously have to pay for health insurance at your age? Your wife's age? When you get to a certain age, of course they don't want you. I'll bet you two could pay for a pretty damned nice house with the money going into insurance. I do not accept your equating a universal health plan (not at all what we got with Obamacare, we got a windfall for the health insurance industry which is why the Heritage Foundation originally conceived the plan, for the carriers, not the people) with citizens being sheep. Hey, bet you feel good paying out the wazoo, right? It is only going to get worse as you age. Did you plan to spend all your money for health care?
ReplyDeleteA couple of things occur to me off the top: One, whose problem is it if "they don't want you" at a "certain age" or any other life circumstance? Why should my hard-earned money be seized from me at gunpoint to address the particular situation of someone else? Two, re: this question about "plan[ning] to spend all [my] money on health care." Your point is, it seems that health care is very costly. Well, compared to what? Other porducts or services we need and want? Other countries' health care systems? (If that's it, name me the single-payer system that's solvent.)
ReplyDeleteAnd then there's the freedom angle. What if we had you single-payer system and five years after its implementation, somebody had the idea, "I have a business model for a privately-owned health insurance company, and I think it could render this government system obsolete by reducing costs and thereby offeing consumers a better deal." Would he be able to start such a business, or would he be banned from doing so? If so, why?
ReplyDelete