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Getting Through to the Left: A Story of Success
I have a friend, a dear and kind man. He’s not an intellectual, neither atheist nor agnostic; in fact, I’m sure he does not even know what an agnostic is. (I’m not sure I do either, except that I think I’m one.) He’s Christian and accomplished, but not highly educated. He’s hardcore blue collar, the son of a farmer. Yet despite all this, he’s of the Left. It seems incongruous, but that’s what he is. He doesn’t hate conservatives, he just believes that the Left shows a more empathetic way; a kinder way. In his world, life is hard, and harder for some than for others. Government, to him, seems the best and most efficient way to soften life’s edges and help those who have it tough. To him, that is progress. Republicans impede that progression in his view: they oppose funding; they oppose welfare programs; they oppose everything. In his mind, it’s always about money for the Right. Dirty pieces of paper with pictures of dead men on them.
So, this morning, I was relaying the fact that I had promised a second essay for Ricochet on health care reform. I explained how I struggled to put my thoughts together, having earlier tweaked my back. Vicodin was clouding my mind, but I got it done. He asked about the details and I gave him my “unleashing the uncanny ability of American consumers to find a bargain” speech. He was following the logic when he stopped me, and asked “Why don’t we just nationalize health care? They do it in Canada, and in Britain. People say it’s great.”
I answered thus:
There is not enough money for some things. Education is one of those things. Health care is another. If health care is nationalized, the government will be placed in charge of our health! We will rely on the government to use its authority to force unpopular compromises to keep costs down. Many people will be affected by these decisions and actions, heavy-handed as they must be, and will take exception, calling for more money to be spent on health care. Thus, we will make the serious and intimate discussion of our health a national, politicized conversation about money and priorities. It will be an unending, unstoppable shout fest that will drown out all other conversation and no one will ever be satisfied. Is that what you want?
I could see his mind churning away as he took this all in. My revelation had slammed against preset dogma, collided with his settled questions, and upset the organization of his liberal mind.
I left him in this muddled state.
This is how conversions begin.
Published in Healthcare, Politics
Note:
Personal attack.[Redacted]
And, I fear, no small number of people who voted for our President would add the working class to that list.
Point.
Combine the unfunded liability reality with this hallucination
California, with a population of just under 40 million, has 10 million immigrants. One in four is illegal. Almost half of the immigrants are from Mexico.
Calicadia, or Alta California? Canada may let the Mechistas have the place.
Two steps are all it takes to fix US Healthcare.
Write these laws with a 6 month implementation window to permit people and systems to line up their ducks.
Within 72 hours of the enactment of these laws, we will see the rebirth of a truly market-based system for those who wish to pay for their own care and a dramatic reduction in the cost of market-based care, while maintaining the fabled Safety Net. We will have universal health care without losing the important impetus of the private sector.
Sorry Dr., but your plan suffers three fatal flaws that’d prevent it from ever being considered: it makes too much sense; it reduces the power of our “betters” to manage everyone’s lives; and most fatally, it provides insufficient opportunities for graft.
This is a good basis for an argument. In my opinion, laws work well when they have been formulated to work with human nature, to use human nature to gain their goal. The problem with Obamacare is that it was expected to work against human nature. It expects people to pay premiums for the entire time they are in good health, when, human nature will naturally lead people to not pay premiums until they become sick.
Something else we overlook is Canada’s neighbor (US) spends about 32 x more on defense than they do. They spend about 21 billion and we spend about 682 billion (according to Nationmaster.com). And I think that is important in determining how a country like Canada affords (which they don’t) socialized programs. Some of our citizens criticize our military as being too large and imperial, but we have been a force for good. I believe that the world without us is poorer for it.
Maybe I’ll get banned or flamed for this, but my answer is always the same no matter if I am posting or if I am talking:
“The reason we can’t have ‘free’ healthcare or ‘free’ education is because we are an extremely free nation, which causes there to be far more deadbeats here than in any other country, and we cannot afford them.”
Sometimes I may call them ‘Takers’, which means they take far more from the country than they give, but the meaning is the same.
They are discovering this in the EU after the Middle East invasion. Some countries there are beginning to increase the amount of deportations as a way to decrease the amount of deadbeats. Once the EU countries have eaten the rich, they will have nothing else to eat. I think the smarter ones are figuring out that this is how Socialism fails: when the takers outnumber the givers.
Ask them why their dog can get an MRI today, but they have to wait 18 months.
Silly moi. I’m so sorry.
The good thing about the NHS is that it’s always there. The predictable corollary is that this has become its defining virtue; rather like schools, the fact of existence outweighs any criticism. So yes, the NHS is indeed “great” if you accept the criteria for success.
A recent report on the NHS concluded that it was very good at everything except preventing deaths, so make of that what you will. Another report, which I’m citing from a fuzzy memory, suggested that Brits and Canadians spent more than Americans on “top-up” healthcare.
This phrase “the government makes your decisions” always strikes me as misleading. The government doesn’t literally make my healthcare decisions, it sets the parameters within which they are made. With health, the decisions usually come down to “do I want to be sick or well?” – not the same kind of decision that we make with consumer goods.
The “problem” with nationalised healthcare is that I’m paying for it when I’m not using it. Unlike, say, food, it’s not a daily necessity. It’s more like car or home insurance: I don’t want to use it, but I probably need it. And it’s rather unfair to make other people pay for my needs.
I’m sure we all know the pros and cons of insurance pools, so (in sum) is there a case for providing “basic” healthcare defined as “catastrophic” (and possibly paediatric), and attempting freedom with everything else? Rather like we pay for fire and police: as an emergency service.
I have a friend in MN with diabetes, an actual beneficiary of the ACA, who is desperate to come to the UK for the healthcare. Say what you like, but I understand his thinking.
That’s a fair point. Also when I was in the western provinces earlier this year I heard Canadians complain about how expensive the healthcare was and how the full costs are hidden. I didn’t get a lot of specifics, but I given the sense that there are complications with the Canadian system. The simplicity of the socialized system seems to be a selling point for some, a person just shows up and gets seen and doesn’t worry about the bills. However, it doesn’t necessarily mean that simple system delivers the best services.
Overall nice piece. The perception of empathy factor is where the right gets beaten up. This man sounds decent. Unfortunately many on the left do in fact hate conservatives. And I don’t mean the word “hate” as overkill or hyperbole. I’ve seen ardent people on the left who have viscerally angry reactions to conservatives, I’ve been on the receiving end of it before.
Included in that US defense budget is the nuclear deterrence that enabled Western Europe to fund its social programs in the face of Soviet (and now Russian) aggression since 1945.
In other words, the U.S. spends about 3 times what Canada does on a per capita basis.