“We don’t work for the citizens, we work for the government!”
Michele e-filed our tax return on Monday, February 15th (is there a more patriotic way to spend President’s Day?). We’re expecting a chunk back, so we’ve been watching for the refund. When she e-filed, the system told her that turnaround time was 3 to 7 business days.
Earlier this week, she checked at the IRS website and saw the projection that we should receive something back by March 2nd.
Today, the same site told her that we’d been bumped to March 9th.
Apparently, the fact that people were filing their returns this year, just like they have every year previous, took the IRS entirely by surprise.
Is it surprising that a goodly number of Americans are leery of installing a federal bureaucracy for healthcare?
> (is there a more patriotic way to spend President’s Day?)
I spent the day criticizing the president, myself. Does that count?
You don’t want the government running health care.
Trust me on this one.
Psy:
You should be doing that every day. Dissent is the highest form of patriotism! (Or did that expire at the end of the Bush years?)
Rocket:
See, this is what I tell people: Aside from any Constitutional issues, I don’t have a philosophical problem with a hypothetical government running a hypothetical healthcare plan. But I can’t see how this government could run one. To have a government-administered healthcare plan of this magnitude that ran smoothly, we’d essentially have to wipe the slate of government culture and medical culture (and the culture of how private citizens relate to the government and to healthcare) clean. In other words, if we were bombed back to the Stone Age, we might be able to come up with a working scheme on the way back up to civilization.
Nathan: It never expires. And you’re right: Britain would never have gotten a National Health Service if they hadn’t been bombed halfway back to the stone age.
Rocket: You’re right as well. But I don’t want for-profit health care, either. So, as usual, I’m in the bind more and more of your American cousins find ourselves: out in the cold with no options and even less representation.
So it goes.
Psy, I wasn’t really thinking of Britain’s National Health Service as an example of a well-run government health plan.
Rocket,
I’ll trade places with you any day. I’ll draw up the paperwork.
I’ll let you off the hook by offering you the opportunity to pay taxes over 50% of your gross income for a couple years.
THEN you can make the choice.
We had the premier of Newfoundland and Labrador (that’s like the governor of a state to my US friends) fly to Florida for heart surgery this month. Does that indicate Canada’s health care is the best?
In spite of what some people declare, Canada is not the model to follow, and does not have world class health care. More importantly, it’s certainly not “FREE”.
Neither is the US’s, but I’m afraid I can’t speak intelligently about a health care system I’m not a part of…
I had to pay $600 upfront (which is fun to pay off on a Teaching Assistant’s salary, let me tell you) – and that was just the co-payment for an insurance plan that still doesn’t cover most dental work and certain procedures like x-rays. So, yeah, 50 percent tax rate? Bring it on! A 17-84 percent tax bracket was good enough for my grandfather (who lived back when, by some odd coincidence, the United States’ infrastructure actually wasn’t crumbling), it’s good enough for me.
“We had the premier of Newfoundland and Labrador (that’s like the governor of a state to my US friends) fly to Florida for heart surgery this month. Does that indicate Canada’s health care is the best?”
It indicates that the US’ is the best…if you’re rich.
If you’re like me, on the other hand, then you go to Mexico for root canals and Canada for prescription drugs.
Also, my car costs too much! And paying for food? What’s up with that? It’s a human right!
Well, I do happen to quite strongly believe that access to health care is a human right. Not simply out of abstract ethical reasons, but because this is what has gradually been determined by the vast majority of the post-industrial world outside of the United States who have found that having health care as a public serve also makes a great deal of economic sense. But, aside from all that, let me just point out a couple of minor things…
“Also, my car costs too much!”
Public transportation (which, granted, we are charged double for, in taxes and in fares, but still…).
“And paying for food? What’s up with that?”
Food stamps, etc.
That’s all I’ve got to say.
Which would be a sufficient argument if public assistance for medical care, comparable to subsidized transportation and food stamps, didn’t already exist.
(And I guess we’ll leave aside discussing any definition of “human right” which somehow puts the onus on one human to provide a service for another human…)
“Which would be a sufficient argument if public assistance for medical care, comparable to subsidized transportation and food stamps, didn’t already exist.”
They do exist, but are woefully inadequate if even middle class folks have to go to neighboring countries for care.
“(And I guess we’ll leave aside discussing any definition of “human right” which somehow puts the onus on one human to provide a service for another human…)”
Sorry, but that’s part of being in a society.
Says who?
I mean, seriously — how can something be a “human right” which didn’t exist more than a century ago in most countries? The concept of “human right” is nebulous, but one of the main hallmarks of it, in my mind, is something you are free to do, not something that someone is obligated to do for you. Social obligations are something separate; as societies can be organized along different frameworks and (especially to someone on the side of the multicultural left) are not to be judged hierarchically for their differences, it’s very hard to pin down authoritatively a universal social obligation, even harder to characterize such as a “human right,” and even harder to pin such a thing down without it being a social covenant –i.e., expressed in terms of the individual’s debt to society in return for society’s service to him.
Honestly I think you’re nitpicking. To draw some more from history, when the Constitution was formed, the type of medical care available in a present-day industrialized nation was inconceivable. It was only with the rise of the centralized state, vast improvements in medicine and the efficiency of the distribution of medical care, and the decline of social safety nets formally provided by churches and extended kinship networks that the concept of state-provided health care surfaced. And long before that, the right to some sort of police protection and the right not to be a slave were just as non-existent. I mean, people aren’t “obligated” to protect me from my home being robbed or being enslaved and sold, or to pay the salaries of the people who provide such protection, and yet here we are.
It’s not like the idea of communal obligation is something invented by us socialists. Contrary to popular belief, pre-modern cities in Europe had very elaborate social safety nets designed to provide food and monetary assistance to all citizens (which is why the same cities were also so careful not to let peasants just come in and settle as they pleased).
(I do kind of wonder if “multiculturalism” could be at the heart of our disagreement. After all, your Church fulfills pretty much the same role the Catholic and Orthodox Churches had in the pre-modern era by providing people with the safety net the State now provides whereas I come from a largely “churchless” background. Maybe it’s just the PhD student in me talking…).
To draw some more from history, when the Constitution was formed, the type of medical care available in a present-day industrialized nation was inconceivable.
Which is why I ask, How can we discover a “new” human right?
I mean, people aren’t “obligated” to protect me from my home being robbed or being enslaved and sold, or to pay the salaries of the people who provide such protection, and yet here we are.
Which, I think, is a mischaracterization of what law enforcement agencies do (they’re not there to prevent an individual’s harm, per se, they’re there to enforce the laws which other legislative bodies have enacted with the people’s will — and no, the distinction isn’t trivial in this conversation).
It’s not like the idea of communal obligation is something invented by us socialists. Contrary to popular belief, pre-modern cities in Europe had very elaborate social safety nets designed to provide food and monetary assistance to all citizens (which is why the same cities were also so careful not to let peasants just come in and settle as they pleased).
And I did acknowledge above the existence of social obligations, which are specific to the society which forms them. I just don’t see how you can leap from “certain societies include certain communal obligations” to “therefore, a specific service which has only become available in the recent past is a human right.”
I think you may have hit close to the mark in your last comment, after a fashion, though I don’t attribute it to my religious background. To my way of thinking, government != community, and monolithic federal government !!!= community. (That’s my way of saying “REALLY REALLY REALLY doesn’t equal”). Government is a framework for providing certain universally needed services: defense, law enforcement, etc. Just because, for example, a charitable safety net is desirable for indigent citizenry does not therefore make it a function of government, or even a function that government is best suited for.
As I said before, I don’t have a philosophical problem with a hypothetical government-administered health care plan; I think it makes sense for a governmental agency to serve a function if it can to it better than a private entity, and vice versa, and I can imagine that an efficient, serviceable government-administered health plan could exist. What I object to is:
(a) the discovery of a new “human right” to health care, completely unlike previously generally-recognized human rights in that such established rights are best phrased as “freedom from/to” and do not need a governmental agency to provide them for us;
(b) the phrasing of the debate in absolutist moral terms (the “It is immoral to withhold…” bumper sticker logic);
(c) the incredible logical leap between “There are systemic problems in the current health care schema in America which need to be addressed” and “Therefore you MUST be behind this particular formulation of a government-administered health plan.”
This is truly fascinating.
In answer to (a) and (b): I’d agree that the championing of health care as a new human right, and the absolutist moral language that goes with it, are acts of rhetorical desperation. They are designed to appeal to a kind of universal moral sentiment that supposedly exists in this country, though I’ve rarely seen its like. If these last ten years have taught me anything, it’s that we everyday citizens have no “rights” as they are generally defined, either negatively or positively. We have, at best, temporary privileges subject to revocation at any time, for any reason. I’ve come around to the idea that an awareness of this (even if only at a near-unconscious level) goes a long way toward fueling the anti-government sentiments that rumble under, and occasionally break through, the floor of our national consciousness. As you said, government does not equal community, no mater how many of us believe that it should. That belief, and the hope (if I may take back a word certain people’s campaigns stole form us and proceeded to debase utterly) that, through concerted action and a stirring of moral sentiment, the two entities can be brought closer together, drives some of us to frame the debate in moralistic terms.
Or (since I shouldn’t speak for Chad) at the very least, it’s what drove me to waste most of last year attempting to make such a case.
Nowadays, I don’t even try that road. A year of watching Washington’s danse macabre around all this has made it clear that the whole debate over “government-run health care” is a hollow sham, meant to distract and obscure whatever’s actually going on over ther, behind closed doors. There’s not need to fear “government-run health care” because, at this point, that’s not even an issue. The nebulous complex of ideas called “the public option” is dead four times over by now, and may have never been more than a bargaining chip to begin with. A carrot, held out to wolves who bit the hand that offered it the first chance they got and haven’t let go since. Members of Physicians for a National Health Program (the only real advocates of a single payer system with any professional stones) were not invited to that so-called bipartisan summit last week, and were reduced to standing outside Blair House waving signs. Inside, the bought-and-paid-for representatives of Humana, Kaiser, and WellPoint did nothing but posture for the cameras and talked past each other. They know their jobs, and did them well.
So I say, rejoice and being exceeding glad. There’ll be no “government-run health care” in this country. The “systemic problems in the current health care schema in America” will only be addressed once “our” leaders find a way to do so that will provide their true constituents with the greatest possible return on what, since 2005, has been a $46.6 million investment (counting publicly-disclosed campaign contributions…who knows how much more cash changes hands away from the cameras).
How many Charles Band movies is that, anyway?
Good discussion folks. I tend to agree with Nathan(Who has been subjected to the litany of taxes in Canada) in that health care is not a human right.
Not to be tortured? Sure!
So practice my religion without fear of government interference? Absolutely!
Not to have my property and material things taken away for no reason? Certainly!
Having grown up in Canada, and knowing the percentage of what I pay in taxes vs. an American making the same amount as me, and I am quite certain I would rather be taxed as Americans in my tax bracket are taxed, and pay for my own insurance coverage. Seriously, I would.
Because I would still be ahead, and I would be paying for me and my family, not every Tom, Dick, and Harry who decided to fake sick to get a hot meal at a hospital. It happens all the time in Canada. Taxpayers pay for it.
Plus don’t even get me started about the bureaucracy in order to administer this nightmare of a program. Yet we are still short Drs. and nurses all across this great land. Why? Because they are overworked and underpaid.
Chad, the “paperwork” to get the opportunity to contribute to an example of socialist beliefs gone haywire is simply to become a Canadian citizen. Feel free to join up and help pay for this mess.
Knowing what I know about the US economy, you guys can’t even come close to paying for this without incorporating the mother of all taxes. I’m sure everyone would love to be taxed 40% of their gross every pay period.
To mirror what Canada is doing is a mistake, even if you were able to achieve accountability with the folks implementing the program (which you couldn’t)
If I were able to pay for me and my family’s healthcare, I would be a happy man. As it is, I must pay for many, many more than my family. When you start to see the abuse of the “free” system by people not contributing to it, you truly do lose the feeling that it’s all for the greater good.
I know enough Americans to know that people who are dying are not routinely turned away from getting treatment in the ER. I don’t doubt its happened, but I believe it to be the exception.
I believe in helping my fellow man. I believe in helping those who are unable to help themselves. I believe in lending a helping hand.
What I cannot and will not ever believe in is enabling people to abuse a system funded by well meaning, honest, hard working people. Sadly, that is the case with Canadian health care.
The US could do better, for sure, but so could Canada. Don’t think it’s the answer to America’s health care crisis.
So I guess we disagree.
Bit late to the party here, but this is a good little discussion, so I figured I’d chime in. First off, I agree that framing health care as a “human right” is a bit dodgy, but the whole concept of “rights” is a societal construct anyway, so really it comes down to what your priorities are, I expect. I’m on the “not a right but there’s probably a moral obligation in there somewhere” side of the fence. (Can a fence have more than two sides? Well, this one does.)
Also, as a Canadian I’d just like to say I’m pretty happy with my national health care. And it seems like most of us up here are as well, since we’ve had recent elections decided almost entirely on the question of whether we should move more towards an American system. (Answer: no.) Of course, we seem to be on the low end of the scale of quality as far as countries with national health care go, and there are, of course, plenty of things that could be fixed or improved, as with any actual system that exists.
And this is where I have an issue with Nathan’s “I’m fine with a theoretical national health care system”; it seems too much like an excuse rather than an argument. If you want a national health care system that works, you can have one. It’s not like this is a radical, untried notion; plenty of other countries have them. But it requires involvement in the process, rather than a cynical “drop out in despair” pose, which frankly is what the American right seems to have been peddling for some time now. Distrust of authority and resistance to bureaucracy are rational, healthy attitudes, but this seems to have evolved into a rather knee-jerk embrace of Reagan’s “government should be small enough to drown it in a bathtub” philosophy. The problem is that “smaller” government isn’t inherently less corrupt, less wasteful, more efficient or even less intrusive. I mean, the smallest possible government I can think of is a monarchy.
Like it or not, if a government department or program is going to get things done, it needs a certain amount of money and staff. You can cut these things in the name of smaller government, but at a certain point you start limiting effectiveness. Likewise, if you’re going to provide transparency and protect against corruption, you need more people who are going to provide oversight and accountability. Everyone, no matter where they land on the political spectrum, dislikes bureaucracy and waste, but there’s distinction between bloat and size. Increasingly, Americans seem to be unable to make the distinction and seem to be leaning towards a scorched-earth attitude, something that runs counter to democracy in my opinion.
So this is the context I bring to the discussion of health care in America. Now, there seems to be plenty of criticism of this particular bill (from both sides even), and that’s a separate debate. But I’m having a hard time seeing how even this incredibly flawed arrangement could be worse than the status quo. To flip around Nathan’s theoretical argument, it’s all well and good to talk about the potential incompetence of a government-run health care system, but the current system is pretty rotten as it is. The key point is whether this thing makes it worse or better.
Here is one way in which this incredibly flawed arrangement could be worse than the status quo: There’s no impetus for it to get better. Say what one will about capitalist greed, but a market system with competing entities enforces at least a minimum level of efficiency. There is no such check to a government-mandated, government-enforced system. If you’ve ever seen the contrast between a state agency and a private firm in the same industry, you realize that the security of not having to be competitive allows — in fact, encourages — both the individuals and the bureaucratic system of the state agency to be complacent, slow, and satisfied.
Further, once health care becomes an “entitlement” — i.e., a pseudo-right which involve someone else being obligated to provide something for you — then there is no way to go back if the “experiment” proves disastrous. It’s back-ratcheted.
But Nathan, I live in a country where I get free, nationalized health care, and the standards are pretty high–I just had a family member who was in an accident and received top-notch care, beginning with surgery and a hospital stay and continuing with medicine and physiotherapy. I don’t know if we got lucky or whatever–we do happen to live within driving distance of the best hospital for joint surgery in the province–but clearly high standards can exist within the public system. To say that there’s no impetus to improve is clearly wrong–if the system isn’t working, we can elect politicians who’ll change things, which is more or less exactly what happened when the conservative Ontario government was booted out after stripping the provincial health care system. (I guess Canada’s political system is more decentralized than the U.S.’s, and changes on a municipal or provincial level can have more impact, but the principle seems to be the same.)
Even if we’re legitimately concerned about the level of medical care, we also have the option of going elsewhere to, for instance, perform operations (as in Rocket’s example). It’s just that that tends to cost a lot of money–exactly the way it would in the States. But no one is stopping you from getting private care if you can afford it. The issue here is that people who CAN’T afford it at least have a certain level of care available to them–and based on my experience, that level of care really is pretty decent.
Of course this all seems to be moot, since as far as I can tell the American HCR bill that just passed has little or nothing to do with public care, it just opens the private-sector rolls to a lot of people who didn’t previously have it. But I’m not aware of all the details. That business about being mandated to buy health care seems a bit dodgy, but again, I defer to someone who knows more about it.
I’m told that there are 3 million Canadians who can’t get to see a specialist, because the only way to get to one is through a GP, and there aren’t enough GPs to go around.
And I think the contrast between a Canadian provincial system and a federal U.S. system is right on the money. For one thing, I can’t for the life of me find any constitutional justification for the federal government to step in with a national health plan, much less to mandate it. And for another, I think that any health plan will work better with the smaller population/voter blocks available in individual state. There’s a big difference between a plan tailored to meet the needs of the (at most) 11,000,000 residents of a single province, and a monolithic structure designed to meet the needs of the 310,000,000 U.S. residents.
Remember – this health care reform bill has been never been about anything except REVENUE. The federal government is desperate to find another source of revenue in the face of collapsing tax receipts and the trillions being spent to prop up the equity markets and Wall Street. They know that the leech class must continue to receive its government handouts at all costs or there will be rioting in the streets. Ironically though, their efforts at doing so (like with this health bill) only serve to destroy the people that actually still produce in this country. This bill is a job killer and the additional tax burden will just push those of us barely getting by completely underwater. Nothing is free. Obama isn’t paying for anything – we are. Either directly through additional taxes, fees, fines, assessments or indirectly through lower wages or lost jobs. How many of you can afford that? Honestly though, I don’t think this buys them nearly as much time as they think it will. We’re in the middle of a depression and they just passed a bill that will only intensify it. The inevitable collapse will be breathtaking. And if we haven’t already passed the event horizon, we’re getting damn close. Buckle up…
“I’m told that there are 3 million Canadians who can’t get to see a specialist, because the only way to get to one is through a GP”
Not strictly true–there are referral clinics, but admittedly there aren’t a ton of them. As for the GP shortage (by the way, it’s 3 million Canadians who don’t have a GP for whatever reason, not 3 million who can’t get to a specialist), it seems to be a combination of factors–the lack of doctors in remote rural communities, for instance, and the fact that apparently a lot of the new generation of doctors just aren’t finding GP sexy enough. Whatever the case, it’s a relatively recent problem and America seems to be going through something similar, so it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with our specific health care system.
Prankster, it’s more true than not.
The “relatively recent problem” was first identified in the mid 90′s. A decade & a half ain’t recent unless you are a tree or a rock.
I will say this only one more time, for those that seem to not really get it.
IT’S NOT FREE!
Nor is there the level of service which competition creates.