Dueling Realities On Health Coverage

WHAT DOES our nation need on health care? Or rather, what should we force other people to pay for? That is what we are talking about when we talk about health care plans and presidential candidate.

Columnist Roger Simon went to listen to the Democratic candidates talk about it. Here is what John Edwards promised.

I would cover all Americans. There would be shared responsibilities: Employers must cover their employees or pay into a fund. The government would create health care markets, and you could choose your health care provider. Some would be private and some would be Medicare-plus � kind of single-payer (i.e., government-run) plan. Everyone in America will be required by law to be covered by a health care plan.

It would cost, he said, �$90 billion to $120 billion per year in government costs.�

Hillary Clinton, she of HillaryCare fame, was more circumspect.

A lot of people like what they have now. We don�t want people feeling that government will come in and tell me what to do and what doctor I want to go to. We will give people a choice. We have to look at that as a framework.

So although she was all in favor of a universal system she put its implementation out into the future.

I want universal health care coverage by the end of my second term

On another planet is Robert J. Cihak, retired physician.

Look for �disruptive innovation� in your health-care future, he advises.

About a year after his diabetes diagnosis, he started using his own handheld blood glucose meter. He used it to observe how his blood sugar responded to... food... exercise... and other life activities... He then knew much more about his body�s response to his diabetes than his doctors ever could.

But of course, he�s not allowed to get his own �HbA1c test (glycosylated hemoglobin)� test. For that he has to go into hospital for a three-hour procedure. And then the results are reported to his doctor, not to him, the expert.

But then a new company offered a $16 do-it-yourself test kit. He "put two drops of blood on a strip, mailed it back to them, and three days later, they sent me my HbA1c score."

Do you get the feeling that the Democrats will have their universal health care just about put in place by the time that medical advances make it completely obsolete?

Kinda like their government pension scheme, and their government education scheme?

Let�s see now. Let�s get the current government spending numbers on all that, before we get universal health care.

United States Federal, State,
and Local Government Spending
Fiscal Year 2007
Amounts in billions of dollars

Pensions: $872.7
Health Care: $844.4
Education: $744.8
source: usgovernmentspending.com

Hey. What�s another $100 billion on top of that?

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Hugo on Genius

“Tear down theory, poetic systems� No more rules, no more models� Genius conjures up rather than learns� ” —Victor Hugo
C�sar Gra�a, Bohemian versus Bourgeois

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Postmodernism

A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ’merely relative’, is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.
Roger Scruton, Modern Philosophy

Faith and Politics

As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the principal focus of her interventions in the public arena is the protection and promotion of the dignity of the person, and she is thereby consciously drawing particular attention to principles which are not negotiable... [1.] protection of life in all its stages, from the first moment of conception until natural death; [2.] recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family... [3.] the protection of the right of parents to educate their children.
Pope Benedict XVI, Speech to European Peoples Party, 2006

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Religion, Property, and Family

But the only religions that have survived are those which support property and the family. Thus the outlook for communism, which is both anti-property and anti-family, (and also anti-religion), is not promising.
F.A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

US Life in 1842

Families helped each other putting up homes and barns. Together, they built churches, schools, and common civic buildings. They collaborated to build roads and bridges. They took pride in being free persons, independent, and self-reliant; but the texture of their lives was cooperative and fraternal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

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