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talkpoliticsHere in Toronto tonight, my position on taxpayer-funded healthcare has changed radically. It's not just the desolate urban landscape and the small children begging for change on the streets that has done this. It is the vacant look in the eyes of able-bodied adults as they shuffle along the sidewalks in their entitlement-induced torpor. Sapped of any will to work by the ready availability of free doctor visits, the once-industrious populace has become a city of sleepwalkers. It is a sight that would change the heart of even the most ardent supporter of the Nanny State.
Of course, my own personal experience should have alerted me to this possibility long ago. I guess I have been in denial about the fact that what really gets me up and going every morning to face the rat-race of tech-sector punditry is the four-figure monthly health insurance premium I have to pay as a solo practitioner. If it were not for that premium, why would I bother? There is, after all, nothing as important as one's health. So if I didn't have to pay through the nose to safeguard that, I too would probably slip into the same zombie-like state as the god-forsaken inhabitants of Canada's once-great metropolis.
So here is my new position. Since free healthcare clearly robs human beings of their will to work -- and since costly insurance policies are that upon which we advocates of free enterprise must hang our hopes for the future -- a fresh and radical approach is clearly necessary. I therefore propose that we double insurance premiums across the board in the States while we still can. Certainly the desperation of people to secure their own physical well-being and that of their loved ones will drive them to unprecedented heights of innovation and hard work. Who knows what entrepreneurial energies might be unleashed in an America where it takes a million dollars just to get your kid's broken bone set! Why should we allow a generation of slackers to wallow in cheap antibiotics and preventive dental care. I say that healthcare is not a right. It is something you must earn. And not too easily, either. If you want to live, create the next Facebook or RedBox. Otherwise, you're just another leech on the body of working capital.
Necessity is indeed the mother of the invention. Let us then raise the bar of necessity -- and safeguard for ourselves another American century.
Of course, my own personal experience should have alerted me to this possibility long ago. I guess I have been in denial about the fact that what really gets me up and going every morning to face the rat-race of tech-sector punditry is the four-figure monthly health insurance premium I have to pay as a solo practitioner. If it were not for that premium, why would I bother? There is, after all, nothing as important as one's health. So if I didn't have to pay through the nose to safeguard that, I too would probably slip into the same zombie-like state as the god-forsaken inhabitants of Canada's once-great metropolis.
So here is my new position. Since free healthcare clearly robs human beings of their will to work -- and since costly insurance policies are that upon which we advocates of free enterprise must hang our hopes for the future -- a fresh and radical approach is clearly necessary. I therefore propose that we double insurance premiums across the board in the States while we still can. Certainly the desperation of people to secure their own physical well-being and that of their loved ones will drive them to unprecedented heights of innovation and hard work. Who knows what entrepreneurial energies might be unleashed in an America where it takes a million dollars just to get your kid's broken bone set! Why should we allow a generation of slackers to wallow in cheap antibiotics and preventive dental care. I say that healthcare is not a right. It is something you must earn. And not too easily, either. If you want to live, create the next Facebook or RedBox. Otherwise, you're just another leech on the body of working capital.
Necessity is indeed the mother of the invention. Let us then raise the bar of necessity -- and safeguard for ourselves another American century.
(no subject)
Date: 5/4/12 03:32 (UTC)I'm sure the insurance companies are working that out on their own, no worries!
Great piece! It helps to balance out the libertarianism.
(no subject)
Date: 5/4/12 03:58 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 5/4/12 03:56 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 5/4/12 04:36 (UTC)And it's true that the "threat" of "socialized" healthcare has been waaay overblown by the Republican right.
That said it is also true that when government pays for healthcare, in a sense, it does control that healthcare. And I only foresee its entrance into yet another arena as enabling dangerous possibilities in the future. With the history of government's entrance into other sectors of life, I would say that caution is not unjustified at all.
Personally, I would rather see neither exorbitantly priced heathcare nor government-paid varieties. But to do that requires thinking of about how to eliminate profit-based healthcare, which requires an alleviation of the burden which capitalism imposes upon people to charge in order to survive. With free healthcare provided by collectively-ran clinics staffed by people who actually love practicing (med geeks?), who offer the services not in order to survive but because they enjoy the study and the activity or because they possess an altruistic desire to care for the needy or like growing the medicines or even because they love the challenge of saving an against the odds case, the threat of both high-priced healthcare and the government-controlled variety would seem to be eliminated.
(no subject)
Date: 5/4/12 10:32 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 5/4/12 11:17 (UTC)You are also I think assuming that people will just stand around (at least in a country with its rich industrialized luxury history) if there isn't any of that needed tech and suffer rather than work toward making or acquiring it so they don't have to anymore.
Not saying I think I have all the answers either, just think that alternatives whereby we are not allowing profit-driven medicine or essentially government-controlled healthcare to continue is worth exploring. But I have no expertise in the specifics.
(no subject)
Date: 5/4/12 11:55 (UTC)BTW, I don't think you can wave these away by saying "I don't have the expertise, we'll leave it up to the experts." If it's your solution, you'd better be prepared to tell us how it's feasible.
(no subject)
Date: 6/4/12 01:07 (UTC)Furthermore, collective needs require (and are benefited from) collective solutions, not somebody deciding what will happen in isolation.
So yeah if I'm ignorant on a matter, I'll continue holding my tongue and listening. But that doesn't mean I can't critique the flaws or merits of an established proposition
Any ways, good points you made there indeed. Although I really wasn't referring to barter either, the incentive was imagined more as, "it's a social need, so eventually that need will result in its implementation" as people can't actually maintain an advanced way of life if everyone around them dies because they cannot possibly do all the tasks and work necessary to maintain that life..
But something else that comes to me is how many MRI's are there now? Furthermore how many do you imagine of those are concentrated in wealthy city centers versus poor areas? Do those centers need all those MRI's or some be redistributed to those places without? Assuming there are competent people who know how to use the MRIs would the existing technology be enough to meet the reasonable demand for their use if shared? Especially in the wake of other revolutionary changes such as getting away from corporately poisoned foods, unhealthy pollutants, and returning to preventative medicines as well?
(no subject)
Date: 6/4/12 01:23 (UTC)But something else that comes to me is how many MRI's are there now? Furthermore how many do you imagine of those are concentrated in wealthy city centers versus poor areas? Do those centers need all those MRI's or some be redistributed to those places without? Assuming there are competent people who know how to use the MRIs would the existing technology be enough to meet the reasonable demand for their use if shared?
Maybe, if we stopped everything today. But how many MRI techniques will we develop if we keep researching? How many will become the best available method for diagnosing an illness? The truth is that right now, health care is rationed globally. The US does it based on how much cash you have, everywhere else does it by other means, but there's not enough, right now, to meet immediate demand. That means that if we just stopped producing new MRI machines or doctors, we'd lose ground to the growing number of medical problems, especially as the population ages and needs more care per capita. And of course you'd need the guy who can maintain the MRI machine. How many of those are there in the world? Not that many, since one can move around to multiple machines, right now. Post-collapse-of-money? I dunno, I mean I like you and all, but I wouldn't travel cross-country to help you fix an MRI just out of the goodness of my heart.
Especially in the wake of other revolutionary changes such as getting away from corporately poisoned foods
2 citations needed: one that this will happen under your communal health care reform, and another that corporations are "poisoning" us with our foods. I suppose you'll tell me that there are just toxins and "chemicals" in all this processed food? Oh, and then describe how many people nationwide need treatment for preventable illnesses, or those caused by "corporately poisoned foods [or] unhealthy pollutants." I'd wager it's way the hell lower than you think.
(no subject)
Date: 6/4/12 02:20 (UTC)As I understand it, there are unnecessary and potentially harmful additives put in processed foods with a variety of justifications. I would like to see this practice discontinued as well as that of GMOs and unsustainable growing methods, etc. and a return to local "organic" sustenance. I agree that most people are not coming in for treatment for those things as well, however I do imagine that such things progressively weaken the immune system over time and lead to a greater risk of developing worse things.
I wouldn't travel cross-country to help you fix an MRI just out of the goodness of my heart.
Um..is there any reason why that couldn't happen through internet messaging or real time video conferencing? Find someone online who knows the stuff and ask if they can walk you through it...? The beauty of the internet in aiding decentralization my friend...
(no subject)
Date: 6/4/12 02:25 (UTC)Um..is there any reason why that couldn't happen through internet messaging or real time video conferencing? Find someone online who knows the stuff and ask if they can walk you through it...? The beauty of the internet in aiding decentralization my friend...
And who is going to leave their home to upkeep these lines connecting them to Rural Nowhere, Idaho? Nobody. So unless Rural Nowhere has a fiberoptic technician, it's pretty well screwed in the next big blizzard or wind-storm. Face it: centralization allows for specialization, which allows for a more efficient division of labor.
(no subject)
Date: 6/4/12 08:13 (UTC)Do you really not think that people in these places would not work hard to stay connected? I don't think people want to lose their internet and all the good things it allows (although undoubtedly some perhaps primitivist places might wish to do that very thing). That said, any isolated place is screwed in a big blizzard or windstorm--even today (if not especially because of dependence on centralized apparatus). But places like Nowehere, Idaho tend to be especially suited to those kinds of disasters because of their cultural proneness to be prepared to survive and "ride out hard times" and their access to natural resources which cities often lack.
Centralization is not desirable--it is vulnerable because of its monism, leads to homogeny rather than diversity, and easily falls under the control of a central group rather than the whole body, which makes them dependent on the masters of the process.
Also on GMOs and such. If you want food etc. that has such things in it you are welcome to it (as long as the process is not polluting nearby fields along with it--which is a danger right now). But a lot of people would prefer not to have to eat or drink such things, would like clear labels to know what goes into their sustenance and recognize that current ways of production are unsustainable and environmentally destructive. They too should be allowed freedom from such things. Even if you think their distrust for them is irrational.
We all know that naturalness does not mean it is good for you and I recognize that anything can be harmful, not my point.
(no subject)
Date: 7/4/12 11:28 (UTC)GMOs:
http://www.biolsci.org/v05p0706.htm (link to organ failure)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-smith/genetically-modified-soy_b_544575.html (link to sterility and infant mortality)
ADDITIVES:
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/monosodium-glutamate/AN01251
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2010/07/18/14749881.html
http://www.fluoridation.com/adverse.htm (if someone makes a "precious bodily fluids" joke, I will hit them)
http://www.zerowasteamerica.org/Fluoride-WhitePaper.htm
A helpful archive: http://www.cspinet.org/reports/chemcuisine.htm (but I don't see many links there, although it's nicely laid out)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leslie-hatfield/our-melamine-theres-mercu_b_161334.html
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2004/05/07/aspartame_gate_when_donald_rumsfeld_was_ceo_of_searle.htm (contains some theory but also a few good links on the aspartame danger)
http://www.dnaindia.com/health/report_widely-used-chemicals-linked-to-adhd-in-kids_1412798
(no subject)
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Date: 5/4/12 11:14 (UTC)That said doubling health insurance rates would do wonders for American health care as providers were forced to cut rates and people demanded to know exactly what a treatment would cost before getting it and then make rational decisions about whether it was worth the cost rather than simply saying give me everything whether I need it or not.
Finally as I indicated yesterday, we already have government provided health care in the US as some level of government is paying for between 70% and 80% of all health care spending, we just have not gone to the final step of making all doctors government employees.
(no subject)
Date: 5/4/12 12:02 (UTC)I think you vastly over-state the rationality of individuals when either planning for far-away, remote possibilities, or when dealing with potentially life-threatening situations.
(no subject)
Date: 5/4/12 13:54 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 5/4/12 16:00 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 5/4/12 17:17 (UTC)See it works both ways.
(no subject)
Date: 5/4/12 20:37 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 5/4/12 22:46 (UTC)Do you deny that if everyone had to pay for all of their health care out of pocket that health care costs would have to decline because health care utilization would decline and patients would become much more price sensative?
Your emotional diversion, apart from being irrelevant because it will impact something like a tenth of a percent of the population at worst did nothing to impact either POV because that same irrationality you worry about in a system where you are on your own leads to excessive uncontrollable costs in a system where the patient is divorced from all concerns of cost.
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Date: 5/4/12 18:24 (UTC)It will be the American Productivity for Patriotic Americans for America Company inc.
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