Health Care options

[babe]

I'd almost enroll you on my approved health-care provider for just having the guts it takes to work with any community hospital or "FQHC" whatever that is. If I remember correctly you have some high-needs kids you're probably putting a lot out to care for. That cinches you for my list.

But it's almost maddening to try to talk to you about people. I would never force people to participate in a "private co-op", let alone a public or government one. And I totally lost you on ideas about how to get people to stop being dependent on the government. It's like you've never seen any other game in town.

One of my first memores of the LDS church was my fourth birthday when my mother celebrated by taking me to LDS Primary. She gave me four pennies. That was long enough ago that four pennies was real money that could be directly equated with a vast amount of candy at the corner grocery one block from my house. In fact, another of my early memories was sneaking into that store and stealing a penny sort of "sweet tart straw" with maybe four tiny sweet tarts' worth of tangy flavored sugar inside. I ran out the door and across the street and stood there in broad daylight enjoying my stolen treat. The man came out and across the street and confronted me about what I had done, but I dissed him by a stout denial of the deed, and watched his amazed face just crumble in disgust, disbelief, and dismay. Little kids in Mormonland are thought to be innocent. Ha ha. But anyway, back to Primary. I was called up to the front, "the stand" and introduced as now being Four Years Old. I put my four pennies in a jar labeled "Primary Children's Pennies" and was asked to help hold a big picture of Primary Children's Hospital up in front of everybody. I felt like a Very Significant Benefactor. I was so honored that when I was told I could go to my class, I thought that meant I could go right to the classroom and didn't have to sit through the torture of opening exercises with the other kids. It was always my idea of glory to be able to just leave torture chambers when I pleased. So I just took off, headed for the furthermost classroom in the chapel like a gazelle. Boy was I pissed when the teacher came running after me and hauled me back to help sing "I Am a Child of God".

But at any rate, in my estimation, people don't need a government to manage anything. Not even a military. People will find some purely virtuous way of taking care of themselves if they have to. At least Mormons will. At least old-time Mormons who were a sort of volunteer society of free socialists who believed in God, and took care of themselves and one another. Brigham Young, speaking about how everybody was saying Mormons grew horns, had cloven feet and pointed tails and carried trident pitchforks and were all going to Hell, used to say "Well, if we do all go to Hell, we're going to run the devil out, irrigate the place, and grow our own food and cotton, and turn it into something even better than Heaven."

I don't like "Government" or any other cartel I can't opt out of when I see it's not being run right. Not even a Church cartel claiming absolute jurisdiction. I can do better than anybody's done yet, because fisrt of all I have the benefit of everybody else's mistakes to scrutinize, and I have access to even more understanding, technology and in fact everything that's been invented yet. Why can't people just do better, now better than yesterday, tomorrow better than today.

People talking like hopeless victims of life and circumstances just need a kick in the pants and a few really stinging insults. Well, maybe just the obvious fact that they need to. And the power to do what they need to do. I think the word for that is" Freedom", not "Government".

 

[One Brow]

I'd almost enroll you on my approved health-care provider for just having the guts it takes to work with any community hospital or "FQHC" whatever that is. If I remember correctly you have some high-needs kids you're probably putting a lot out to care for. That cinches you for my list.

But it's almost maddening to try to talk to you about people. I would never force people to participate in a "private co-op", let alone a public or government one. And I totally lost you on ideas about how to get people to stop being dependent on the government. It's like you've never seen any other game in town.

Thank you for the kind words, but my kids are largely self-sufficient. There are many that had it worse.

I'm just trying to ask about what should be done in this particular situation. You can talk about making people not depend upon government, but some people will make foolish choices and/or take calculated risks, and those choices/risks will occasionally backfire. When that happens, what's the option? In this case, as far as I can tell, either the hospital passes the cost of care onto people not volunterring for it, the child is refused treatment, or the government prevents it by stepping in (either before or after the situation arises). All of your options have proposed some combination of government action and passing on the cost of care.

I never thought this was supposed to be an easy choice. My vote was for requiring health insurance, but I could see any choice except the first being thought of as the correct choice. What I don't see as correct is making long position statements that disavow the choices ather than address them, especially when the distilled version amount to one of those choices anyhow.

 

[babe]

Thank you for the kind words, but my kids are largely self-sufficient. There are many that had it worse.

I'm just trying to ask about what should be done in this particular situation. You can talk about making people not depend upon government, but some people will make foolish choices and/or take calculated risks, and those choices/risks will occasionally backfire. When that happens, what's the option? In this case, as far as I can tell, either the hospital passes the cost of care onto people not volunterring for it, the child is refused treatment, or the government prevents it by stepping in (either before or after the situation arises). All of your options have proposed some combination of government action and passing on the cost of care.

I never thought this was supposed to be an easy choice. My vote was for requiring health insurance, but I could see any choice except the first being thought of as the correct choice. What I don't see as correct is making long position statements that disavow the choices ather than address them, especially when the distilled version amount to one of those choices anyhow.

Yet again, it is a question of how we define "government" inside our skulls. Your definition is "we", my definition is "they". We are dealing with illusions of dependence on somebody else, or somehow doing it ourselves. I don't include the cartel lobbyists at the negotiating table, you do. I don't include bought out phony representatives who lie compulsively to the ignorant smucks who just let them do whatever they want at that table either.

I don't mind having people I know in an attitude of trying to help one another out at that table. I don't mind some actually working program supported by the caring Americans being administered by public servants, perhaps, either. There are a lot things "we" could do better.

I want to dump the idea that "they" ought to take care of us, or "they" should solve our problem. I don't think our government is a "we" proposition anymore. It has been taken over by people with the concept of managing a herd the way they know best.

 

[One Brow]

Yet again, it is a question of how we define "government" inside our skulls. Your definition is "we", my definition is "they".

All government exists by the consent of the governed (although this consent can exist by intimidation or trickery).

I don't think our government is a "we" proposition anymore. It has been taken over by people with the concept of managing a herd the way they know best.

All government are composed of such people, and always have been.

I notice you still didn't make a choice on the original question.

 

[Scat]

...some people will make foolish choices and/or take calculated risks, and those choices/risks will occasionally backfire.

Thank you for helping me decide.

 

[One Brow]

Thank you for helping me decide.

Thank you for voting.