Quote:
Originally Posted by mysticaltyger
That is the crux of it.
It seems many Americans from across the political spectrum see the country as being in decline....but for different reasons. Liberals think we're failing because we need to be more socialist like Europe. Conservatives think we're failing because we're too socialist and/or too godless. Everyone thinks America would be great if everyone would just do things their way.
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Not really.
Yeah, that's the standard meme, the minimalist's credo -- "Everybody thinks the country is declining simply because things aren't being done their way!"
Yet there are certain inalienable truths that can be discerned from the arguments that have absolutely nothing to do with the person making the argument or their political views, socialism, godlessness, or whatever.
Let's take the "we need to be more socialistic like Europe" remark as an example.
Our for profit health care system is an unmitigated, immoral disaster. There is obviously some truth to this otherwise the entire civilized world would not have universal health care; America would not be the ONLY nation with this horrific insurance system that places a price tag on an individual's "human condition."
I wrote Matadora about this privately but I'll outline what I said here, as well:
America's health care system is modeled almost precisely on the Third Reich's slave labor camp model such as Auschwitz. In other words, our health care is doled out in much the same manner as the Nazis doled it out to their slave labor force.
It all hinges on production. Now, a person like myself, being disabled and a non-producer would have been considered a "useless eater" by Nazi standards and simply gassed. Fortunately we don't do that here, but in some ways, that would almost be a blessing if that were at least an option (instead, the uber-Christians fight against euthanasia so people suffering ungodly pain have to linger here for ages and suffer; torture is crueler than a quick death after all so it's actually worse than anything the Nazis did).
Anyhow, yes, we don't gas the useless eaters in America but we're not going to spend much money on their health care, either. Sure, we'll give them
something, some little bit of coverage but a non-producer like myself essentially receives squat. In fact, just yesterday, my insurance denied coverage for a new medication my doctor prescribed ... because I'm a useless eater, a non-producer.
Just a step or two above me are low-end blue collar workers and semi-skilled office workers -- they work for a living but are easily replaced. Big Business (who really runs the country, not the government) isn't going to spend a lot of money on people that are easily replaced. They're not even a dime a dozen. You can get a few thousand of them for a dime. If one dies, who cares? Hell, you can lose millions of them and not notice a labor shortage so, yeah, Big Business isn't going to put a lot of effort into keeping those people alive. They just don't produce enough or infuse the economy with enough money to matter.
Then there are the higher end blue collar workers -- steel workers, those who work in car factories, those who have jobs in all fields that have training but not necessarily an education. They're not as easy to replace and produce more than the tier below them, thus they have access to better health care plans via their higher wages and what is offered through their companies.
And this tiered system continues upward to the filthy rich who believe they are entitled to the best health care money can buy -- which is why our immoral system exists in the first place. If not for the entitlement mentality of the rich believing that they should have an exclusive tier of health care that is better than everyone else's health care, perhaps by now we would have universal health care.
But for some reason, despite all of the flowery rhetoric in our country about equality for everyone, we have the most unequal and discriminatory health care system in the industrialized world, one taken right out of a camp commandant's handbook.
Now, having said all of that, I fail to see how anyone can honestly justify our for-profit health care system knowing full well that what our system actually does is discriminate based on socioeconomic class.
Worse still, our system essentially says that, by virtue of having money, and ONLY because you have money, you have some special right to enjoy a longer, healthier and, presumably, happier life than those without money.
Worse still, our system even says that the children of those without money are equally as worthless so that were I to have children, they would be as vulnerable as I am to denied medications and denied procedures. Lord help me if one of my children actually had a long-term serious condition. In our country, though, parents must resort to passing out Pringles cans to convenience stores with labels taped to their sides that say, "Please help 9 year-old Cyndi receive a kidney transplant." It is utterly despicable that any parent should have to rely on the nickels and dimes of strangers to save their daughter.
I would be very curious to know just where you received your moral instruction should anyone actually defend our system of health care unless it was for purely greedy, pro-business, soulless, corporatist reasons. "It's too expensive" isn't a good enough reason because it's NOT too expensive.
Or it wouldn't be if our system wasn't so poorly designed as it stands now with everyone milking everyone else ... insurance companies milking hospitals and hospitals milking patients, individual doctors milking their patients' insurance companies which drives up premiums, hospitals charging insane amounts of money for stupid things ($50 for a 4 oz. container of orange juice, 3 band-aids, and an ice pack not including the actual doctor fee ... no joke here) just because they know insurance will cover it, and this kind of crap. If the milk-fest stopped, health care wouldn't be so expensive and universal health care would be do-able.
But I find nothing justifiable or moral about a system whereby rich people by virtue of simply being rich get to have a better chance of living a longer, healthier life. I fail to understand why every other nation but ours has universal health care. The average family of four now pays over $25,000 per year on their health insurance -- EVERY YEAR. That's like buying a brand new car every single year and paying the entire balance in only 12 months, not 4 or 5 years. That kills our economy because people aren't out there buying things ... which is kinda-sorta important in a consumer-driven economy.
And most of all, how can a system like ours be justified by anyone claiming to be a Christian? THAT I would just LOVE to hear.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mysticaltyger
Everyone thinks America would be great if everyone would just do things their way.
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It has very little to do with "what I want" or "what they want." It has everything to do with what is demonstrably good for the human condition and what is demonstrably bad.
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