SiCKO and socialism
I sas Michael Moore's movie, SiCKO yesterday, overall, an effective message that suggests America is backwards in how we do health care and ought to look at other nations with "universal healthcare".
I'll try not to complain too much, but it would have been an interesting comparison if the 13,000 emails he got when he requested information from people on problems with their health insurance, perhaps it would be worthy to ask the SAME question to people in other countries he offered as comparsion - Canada, UK, France, and Cuba. Are horror stories unique to our system? Perhaps by frequency, but the question was never asked by Moore.
Being a terminal devil's advocate I suppose, wanting to see the bigger picture to give context to facts and judgement, I still don't have the curiousity to reach out on my own, so left with speculations to offer.
The biggest concern I have for "socialized" ANYTHING is how things are balanced out -personal accountability and what motivates the best behavior. I mean, for instance, If I take good care of my health and you don't do the same. Lets say you drive a car without a seat belt, do I want YOU on the same car insurance policy as me? If you smoke, drink, or consume drugs, do I want to subsidize your higher health care costs?
I can easily express outrage at a for-profit-health industry, and its short term interests at maximimizing returns for investors at the cost of reduced health and wellfare for its clients. Clear examples as shown in the movie say moral lines have been crossed, systematically, and intentionally, rewarding workers best able to minimize payouts by whatever excuses and loopholes they could find.
The republican position to government run health care is that without a profit motive, costs will spiral out of control. It's just as easy (and almost harmful) to nearly always say yes as nearly always say no, and programs costs will grow much faster than inflation until taxes can not cover the costs.
And on a parallel issue, government debt is about as horrible as personal debt. I mean like my complains of having a credit card. It is easy to be corrupted into the idea that as long as you can make the minimum payment, that you're using a credit card "responsibly", while the cumulative debt rises far about what can ever be paid back.
Government debt is a good tool if used responsibly, but as soon as debt is used as a way of paying for services, you go onto a slippery slope where there's no clarity of what is acceptable.
So I'm happy enough to raise taxes to COVER health care costs, but much less happy if the program can only be passed by increasing the national debt to cover the shortfalls when taxes are not increased enough to cover costs.
I remember governor Jesse Ventura complaining that education was a money pit, and I don't agree with any assessment simply, but I see that view. Systems and institutions ALWAYS grow, perhaps by nature, and corruption enters them. I think counter-systems that try to externally contain costs by force are mostly doomed, but I don't see anything else I have faith in.
Mostly I'll be with Moore, prefer to take away the profit motive, and find ways to "keep things stirred up" over time to expose the corruptions.
Running for governor in 2006, Peter Hutchinson repeatedly rejected the position of raising taxes. He said we're paying as much as we're willing, so its up to programs to deal with whatever they get. Overall, I was a skeptic to his message, seemed to be pandering to a political mood of resistance to taxes.
No great final thoughts, except democracy and life are messy things, far removed from idealism and clear principle. Everything grows and decays and nothing is fully resistant to the cycle. Principles run on idealistic simplifications of reality, and miss the differences between intent and result. When result is off course, I believe stirring things up is worth something, even if just a little windstorm that cleans out a few cobwebs.
I'll try not to complain too much, but it would have been an interesting comparison if the 13,000 emails he got when he requested information from people on problems with their health insurance, perhaps it would be worthy to ask the SAME question to people in other countries he offered as comparsion - Canada, UK, France, and Cuba. Are horror stories unique to our system? Perhaps by frequency, but the question was never asked by Moore.
Being a terminal devil's advocate I suppose, wanting to see the bigger picture to give context to facts and judgement, I still don't have the curiousity to reach out on my own, so left with speculations to offer.
The biggest concern I have for "socialized" ANYTHING is how things are balanced out -personal accountability and what motivates the best behavior. I mean, for instance, If I take good care of my health and you don't do the same. Lets say you drive a car without a seat belt, do I want YOU on the same car insurance policy as me? If you smoke, drink, or consume drugs, do I want to subsidize your higher health care costs?
I can easily express outrage at a for-profit-health industry, and its short term interests at maximimizing returns for investors at the cost of reduced health and wellfare for its clients. Clear examples as shown in the movie say moral lines have been crossed, systematically, and intentionally, rewarding workers best able to minimize payouts by whatever excuses and loopholes they could find.
The republican position to government run health care is that without a profit motive, costs will spiral out of control. It's just as easy (and almost harmful) to nearly always say yes as nearly always say no, and programs costs will grow much faster than inflation until taxes can not cover the costs.
And on a parallel issue, government debt is about as horrible as personal debt. I mean like my complains of having a credit card. It is easy to be corrupted into the idea that as long as you can make the minimum payment, that you're using a credit card "responsibly", while the cumulative debt rises far about what can ever be paid back.
Government debt is a good tool if used responsibly, but as soon as debt is used as a way of paying for services, you go onto a slippery slope where there's no clarity of what is acceptable.
So I'm happy enough to raise taxes to COVER health care costs, but much less happy if the program can only be passed by increasing the national debt to cover the shortfalls when taxes are not increased enough to cover costs.
I remember governor Jesse Ventura complaining that education was a money pit, and I don't agree with any assessment simply, but I see that view. Systems and institutions ALWAYS grow, perhaps by nature, and corruption enters them. I think counter-systems that try to externally contain costs by force are mostly doomed, but I don't see anything else I have faith in.
Mostly I'll be with Moore, prefer to take away the profit motive, and find ways to "keep things stirred up" over time to expose the corruptions.
Running for governor in 2006, Peter Hutchinson repeatedly rejected the position of raising taxes. He said we're paying as much as we're willing, so its up to programs to deal with whatever they get. Overall, I was a skeptic to his message, seemed to be pandering to a political mood of resistance to taxes.
No great final thoughts, except democracy and life are messy things, far removed from idealism and clear principle. Everything grows and decays and nothing is fully resistant to the cycle. Principles run on idealistic simplifications of reality, and miss the differences between intent and result. When result is off course, I believe stirring things up is worth something, even if just a little windstorm that cleans out a few cobwebs.
posted by Ares Olympus at 1:34 PM
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