Category Archives: Society

Mar 24 2010
Personal, Politics, Society

Thoughts on Healthcare

These are just some of my random thoughts about the current healthcare stink. I make no guarantees of accuracy or even sound judgment.

Is healthcare a right?

The rights in the constitution are things that do not impose on another person’s rights, and these are rights to action, not property or some sort of service. The right to free speech, to bear arms, to assemble… to do things. Life, Liberty, the Pursuit of Happiness. These are not rights to have things that must be provided but the right to do things.

Government provided healthcare, by definition, has to be provided at someone else’s cost and with someone else’s expertise and equipment. The fact that these services are provided by someone else makes them a privilege, not a right.

OK… not a right. But as a nation can we decide to provide this as a public service? A benefit of paying taxes?

Sure. We, as citizens, can decide to offer these services.

But, isn’t that socialism?
Yes.

OK… but is socialism so bad? We offer other public services too. Are all public services, like Police, Fire, Libraries, Streets, Water/Sewer socialism?

Not really. True… these are programs agreed upon by the population as services to be provided at taxpayer cost, but they are civic services put in place at a local level. Socialism is a system of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy. These civic services work best at a local level. They are limited in size, and this keeps waste and bureaucracy limited in scope.

So, if nationalized healthcare is not a right, but a social program, the question becomes… is it a good idea?

We can only look at examples from other countries that are already offering nationalized healthcare.

These programs are going bankrupt or in serious financial trouble everywhere they have been established, and the tax rates in some of those countries are topping out at around 60% if you add the upper income tax rate and other taxes, like property taxes and the VAT tax, which so popular in Europe. Depending on how much money you make, that’s OVER HALF of your paycheck to the government. Wow.

The law that was passed last week will drive our national debt to over 90% of our governmental budget by 2020. Ninety percent of government spending will go to debt. Let me say that again… NINETY PERCENT.

The long and short is that, while this may be a compassionate and nice thing, our country simply cannot afford it. These programs actually cost money. This is not “free healthcare” by any stretch.

Also, by most accounts the actual medical service suffers from the same waste and inefficiencies as other public services. Long wait times to see a doctor or to have a medical procedure performed (years in some cases). The quality of the care starts to suffer from the bloated system. Case in point… the Prime Minister of Canada recently had heart surgery in Miami, Florida because he could not get the procedure under the nationalized Canadian system… The Prime Minister! There are countless stories of Canadians heading south of the border and paying for treatment that they cannot get in Canada.

My conclusion

I’d rather reform a free market system to provide safeguards for people who need help than begin down a road to public system. The devil in the current system is the mega insurance company. The devil in the other scenario is the government. You can’t find another provider if the government doesn’t do its job. You just live with it… or die with it.

Mar 21 2010
Politics, Society

The Keepers and The Kept

Alexis de Tocqueville once postulated that despotism could only take seed in American democracy through a kind of soft tyranny. He said that this tyranny would “degrade men without tormenting them.” He spoke of something that did not yet exist in his world. It was the idea of this tyrant appearing not as an oppressor, but rather a “guardian.” The day that Tocqueville envisioned so long ago may be closer than we think here in America.

Today congress will vote (loosely termed if you account for all of the parliamentary gymnastics that has been going on in the past months) on a “Healthcare Reform” bill. This bill could set the wheels in motion for the growth of a permanent nanny state in America. The details of the bill are largely a mystery at this point. Nancy Pelosi said that we’d need to vote for it in order to find out what’s in it. It is so convoluted and lengthy that I can imagine that not one member of congress has fully read or understood this bill, much less the implications of it becoming law.

Every indication is that this bill will 1) eventually force private health insurance out of business from government competition that is subsidized by taxpayer money, 2) create a government bureaucracy to dictate the level of care that each person receives, 3) ration access to health care due to the limited supply of doctors and increased demand of patients, 4) drive this country into bankruptcy.

Sounds like good plan to me.

This is obviously a very polarizing issue, and support is divided today at about 48% opposing and 38% supporting, depending on your polling source.

At the core of this conflict is a differing worldview. While too complicated to fully explore now, I’ll try to explore the basic idea in future posts.

Basically, the leftist Washington elite have a small window of opportunity to make sweeping changes in our laws, and they have decided that they are the ones to make life decisions for the poor, unwashed masses. The plain folk that inhabit ‘flyover country’ need someone to watch out for them because of their basic ignorance and inability to navigate their own health care options.

Because of the tremendous need for clear thinking, these Washington intellectuals will become the Keepers and ‘we the people’ will become The Kept.

We are now experiencing a small realization of the left’s humanistic priesthood coming to power in America. I hope that this can be reversed in the Fall.

The root cause here goes back thousands of years. In future posts we’ll explore modern-day Nicolaitans of American secular culture.

Aug 27 2009
Personal, Society

School Supplies

A few days ago, when I arrived home from work, my kiddos were all buzzing with excitement about what they’d done that day. Turns out that they had gone shopping for school supplies, and they could not wait to show me what they were going to be taking to class this fall. Jonah and Grace both felt so big because it was their first time to get school supplies. Jonah was mostly proud of his little backpack. He wore it around the house for hours… until he had forgotten that he even had it on. Grace loved everything that she pulled out of her new princess backpack. She had princess pencils, and princess notebooks, and princess everything. Gracie is a princess… and a mermaid.

Then we got to Andy’s supplies. In a way, the things you pick out for your school supplies reveal a window to your heart. OK… that’s a bit dramatic, but in this case I think it’s true, and it made me glad that we are choosing to educate our kids through Classical Conversations. Andy had picked an eclectic mix that I would know as his if I had to pick it out of a line up. He had chosen some Star Wars pencils and a Star Wars notebook. He also had a Transformers folder, but just after that he had chosen a folder with the picture of a cute little fuzzy kitten. After that there was a folder with a cute little brown puppy.

This was the mix that is Andy. He loves science fiction and ‘cool’ little boy stuff like Transformers, but he also loves kittens and puppies. Had he shown up in public school with this mix he would have been made fun of by other little boys. He would be forced to conform to the image that the culture forces onto many little boys, or pay the price. These boys are forced to abandon a gentle side at a young age… a side that likes kittens and puppies. Even as early as the 2nd grade this begins.

I observed the source of some of this pressure first-hand when we lived in Texas. The source was an insecure father that lived down the street. If you looked closely, under the bleached hair and suntanned skin you could still see an insecure little nerd with a lifetime of hurt that he was trying to hide. As an adult, this man tried his best to cover up his former shame, but it always showed through just a little, and much of this was because of the macho over-compensation.

The saddest part of the story to me was the way that he tried to ‘spare’ his little boy from the hurts that he had endured as a child. This boy could quote the team roster of many NFL teams, and knew which school teams were playing on Saturday. When he would volunteer this information to me he always seemed to trying to impress me with his knowledge. His dad often took him into the street to ‘play ball’. The soundtrack to this playtime usually involved a lot of yelling. “Hustle! Go get the ball! You have to move faster! Concentrate!” This was the sound of their play time, and it always made me sad.

The curious thing was how much this little boy enjoyed being at our house. Andy loves to build with Legos, and he loves to play out the little scenes he creates. When we first got these boys together Andy would try to get this boy to play Legos and use his imagination. After a little time this neighbor boy had dropped this man-ish attitude and was playing like a 7-year-old boy. He seemed free when he was at our house, but it always took him a few minutes to drop the facade.

Anyway, I say all of this to convey the fact that I am glad that Andy feels free to be himself. He feels free to enjoy what he truly enjoys. I don’t want that to be taken from him, especially not by me.

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