Posted on 03/12/2006 4:58:03 PM PST by Ultra Sonic 007
Greetings. I have a piece of text I'd like to copy and paste from a topic on another forum (known as Marble Garden, which is where political, philosophical, and sociological threads and debates are posted). I had started a topic (username: Ultra Sonic 007) about health care, asking which system would be better; socialized or private?
One of the forumers there is TheCycle, a Canadian. He just recently posted a long post on the universal health-care system and why it would be a good idea for the US to make the switch to such a system. It was in response to snippets from Michael Savage's book 'The Enemy Within' that regarded health-care. Snippets I posted.
This is where I ask for help.
| The U.S. mortality ratio for breast cancer is 25%, but with single payer health care systems it's worse. In Canada and Australia it is 28%, in Germany it is 31%, in France it is 35%, and in New Zealand and the United Kingdom it is 46%. For prostate cancer, the U.S. mortality ratio is 19%. In Canada it is 25%, in New Zealand it is 30%, in Australia it is 35%, in Germany it is 44%, in France it is 49%, and in the United Kingdom it is 57%. In 1997, an estimated 20 to 30 percent of all patients on Canadian waiting lists died before even getting care. Check it out HERE. |
You've never lived in Ottawa. LOL!
The statistics on the U.S. and France are consistent with what I would have expected -- both nations being on the high side, with the U.S. higher simply because the quality of treatments, advances in cancer research, and quality of medication are superior in the U.S.
The best evidence of this comes in the form of foreign heads of state and wealthy people from around the world who have the ability to get their medical care anywhere in the world. When people like the late King Hussein of Jordan are facing major life-threatening medical issues, they don't hesitate to hop on a jet and fly to the U.S. for treatment at places like Sloan-Kettering, the Mayo Clinic, the DeBakey Institute, etc.
Yes, I agree. I think that the heads of state/rich people visitation rate is telling.
I observe that when unsavory heads of state don't dare tread in the US, they always go to Paris for treatment (Arafat, the Shah, Idi Amin, etc.).
That is another good marker for comparisons of systems, although again not perfect because there is a "cachet" factor too which is difficult to weight for.
I should like to see the same statistics with the top 10% economic class planed off. I would expect that if the aristocracy were removed, the French system would begin to look better and better.
What France has striven to do is to provide the top care to all...at very great expense (the tradeoff). This is a different thing than Canada and Britain, who have attempted to give affordable care to everybody...at the cost of top-end quality. The Secu is very expensive, but it's good. British Health Service is not very expenseive, but it's mediocre. One of the alarming things about American health care is the wide disparity in it depending on social class.
I suspect you are correct. My Dad taught me that taking a handout was the greatest sin, welfare especially. Government taking from me to give to someone else or my accepting something from the government is to horrible to contemplate.
Put us on a single payer system and whose border do we then cross to seek care when the system bogs down? The Canucks get to come down here. Do we go to Mexico?
bookmark
"My Dad taught me that taking a handout was the greatest sin, welfare especially. Government taking from me to give to someone else or my accepting something from the government is to horrible to contemplate."
A French Catholic view on this would be that the King, too, is a Christian and is obliged to care for the weak, poor, orphan, widow, sick and crippled just as Jesus required. In a democracy, we are collectively the King, and therefore, to fulfill our duty, we must not only give charity in our private function, but when wearing the collective crown we must fulfill the role of the Christian magistrate. Rulers are in no sense exempt from Christian duties when exercising their power - each Christian is required to be Christian in all of the things which are within his purview. The power of the King is over the whole state, and he must exercise all of that power with Christianity. By our own hands we have made ourselves King, and we cannot evade the public burden of using the power of the King in Christian charity, nor will it suffice to merely be privately charitable, because our power does not end at the private, but also extends to the public, and our Christianity is a commitment that extends to every facet of life and cannot be checked at the door in any endeavor. Indeed, if it must be by the nature of something, then that something must not be done. Again that is a very Catholic view of life and duty, and it is not surprising, to me anyway, that Catholic Europe has comparable social structures and social states, while Protestant Europe and America have followed different paths.
I am curious about what you said about accepting something from the government being horrible. Will you not, then, cash the social security check when you retire, or have your doctors bill the American Medicare system? If you are unemployed, will you not take unemployment benefits?
xxxx
What you're arguing (consolidating entire industries and making everyone goverment workers) is called Communism and it has failed in every instance that it has been tried.
Not that I agree that public healthcare is communism, and not that I'm endorsing communism, but I want you to do something. Get a stopwatch, start it, click here, and see how long it takes you to spot the obscenely large hole in your statement. We're talking like nine and a half million square kilometres here.
xxxx
Naturally, I had to reply to THAT.
xxxx
...and you're actually saying that Communist China is a better place to live than Canada or the US? Am I hearing you right?
I'm sorry, but if given the choice (and the chance), which system of government would the Chinese rather live under? Humor me.
Communism may be a form of government, but in terms of serving the people that live under it, it falls far short of democracies and republics.
I'm saying that communism can hardly be described as having failed when, economically, China is basically poised to overtake the US within 20 years. Their standard of living is up every time someone checks on it, the economy is highly market-oriented but still within the political framework provided by the Communist Party, and the government is being more lenient with artists and journalists than ever. If you go to the middle of Beijing, you can hardly tell it apart from any urban center in the West -- office towers, people in suits, crowded streets, shopping centres, big reader boards. All my Chinese contacts' Internet connetions are like 20 times faster than mine. And for God's sake, they own half of IBM.
xxxx
I'm tempted to bring up Clinton's Open Door policy, but would that be going off-topic?
(goes off to find a list of how many political prisoners have been killed in Communist China)
xxxx
...and you're actually saying that Communist China is a better place to live than Canada or the US? Am I hearing you right?
I'm sorry, but if given the choice (and the chance), which system of government would the Chinese rather live under? Humor me.
Communism may be a form of government, but in terms of serving the people that live under it, it falls far short of democracies and republics.
I'm saying that communism can hardly be described as having failed when, economically, China is basically poised to overtake the US within 20 years. Their standard of living is up every time someone checks on it, the economy is highly market-oriented but still within the political framework provided by the Communist Party, and the government is being more lenient with artists and journalists than ever. If you go to the middle of Beijing, you can hardly tell it apart from any urban center in the West -- office towers, people in suits, crowded streets, shopping centres, big reader boards. All my Chinese contacts' Internet connetions are like 20 times faster than mine. And for God's sake, they own half of IBM.
In our Republic we are each individually a king.
The responsibility is to my own home as my castle.
The only charity is in my private function as you say.
As for Social Security, Medicare or Unemployment, I will cash those checks because that is the system that I am compelled to tolerate until I can change it. I am against withholding tax and several other taxes also but I will still pay them.
That's also why Southern Moonshiners were so against revenuers.
It was an illegal tax on private production.
Just as a hypothetical question, can the government tax you on private property (as in, property you bought and OWN). If so, why?
"In our Republic we are each individually a king.
The responsibility is to my own home as my castle.
The only charity is in my private function as you say."
Oh, clearly not.
The King has the power of the sword, not just to make rules, but to use violence in order to force those who do not want to obey the rules to obey. That is the fundamental difference between the King and a private citizen in his home. Yes, you may exclude other people from entering your property (to an extent), but no, you may not kill anybody on your property even if he does break your rules there, except to defend your own or others' life and limb. The King's Peace and the King's Law runs onto your private property everywhere. Always has.
We are not individually kings in any sense. We may be noble lords on our own property, but we are still subject to the laws of the King.
The public and private function is separate.
Sure you have a responsibility to your own home as your castle. But you are also responsible for the collective defense of the whole nation, for paying taxes and serving if necessary, even against your will. Because you're not individually a King at all, but a subject of a nation. A Lord of the Manor? Yes. But a King? No. The national power is the King. In a democracy, we each have a hundred-millionth part or so of the power of the Crown. Collectively, we exert it, and are responsible for it.
We can't shirk that duty, rightly, for a Christian duty it is, just like our duty to our own families. It's a more diffuse and less all-encompassing burden, but it's a burden. Taxes are an inevitable part of it. And there's a separate obligation to charity in the individual and in the King. We have to do both, if we are a Christian state anyway.
We also have the freedom not to be a "Christian State".
The Founding Fathers believed that the government had the power to tax, in your own home, and that all the laws the government passed applied, in your own home. They believed that the government could enter your own home and conduct investigations there, provided that the government had a warrant, which was issued not by you but by the government itself. Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, et al were not libertarians in the modern American sense. They believed in limited government, but within its sphere, government was sovereign. And the things you've said should not be within the province of government were well within the founders concepts of government.
The power of the government to tax you is in the Constitution. So's the power of the government to take your land, and to enter your premises, and to put you to death.
The sort of government you dream of isn't the American one. I don't think it's ever existed.
A King can put people to death. The Bill of Rights, as envisioned by the Founders, did not envision that anybody could put anybody else to death in his own "castle" or anywhere else. If THAT'S libertarianism, they were statists.
I'm not against Taxation. I'm just against some taxes of the types and in the way they are collected today.
I know Our Constitution provides for warranted searches and seizures but that is abused today in a great many ways.
Washington and Adams did advocate a stronger central government but Jefferson and Madison advocated a less stronger one and all four would be appalled to see what ours has become. The Ninth and Tenth Amendments have been ignored for almost a hundred years. The Seventeenth has caused democracy to destroy the objectivity of the Senate.
The sort of government we have now isn't the American one. I wish it would go back to the Liberty it started with.
Now, tell me whether you are in support of or opposed to government controlled health care, in Canada or in any other place in the world.
Government ownership of the means or delivery of a good or service is Socialism. Private ownership but government control of the same is Fascism.
I oppose both.
I am personally uninterested in debating either of two classes of people on this subject,,,namely, those who already agree with me or those who disagree with me. Understand?
I have long ago given up trying to convert leftists. I pity them, but owe them nothing. Certainly not my precious time.
That happens the other way around, too.
There are some treatments approved in the States that aren't approved up here.
The next time you're up here, buy some Ombrelle suntan lotion. You can't get it in the US, and it's the best available.
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