"To allow private insurance companies to let private profit maximizing decisions get in between a patient and a doctor is close to unethical for us."
A Real Socialist State
As a Norwegian, looking at the U.S. health care debate from the outside, I cannot help but laugh sometimes. It seems like the word “socialism” has become a swear word. In Norway, we just re-elected a “socialist” government. That does not mean that we live in a communist state. We have full-fledged capitalism over here, and we are just about the richest country in the world, per capita. But we have chosen to let the state supply world class health care to all inhabitants.
To allow private insurance companies to let private profit maximizing decisions get in between a patient and a doctor is close to unethical for us. In Norway, you get the same care no matter if you are a homeless drunk or the C.E.O. of one of the biggest companies. And that’s how it should be. They say that the measure of a country’s success lies in how it treats its most unfortunate citizens.
— Gjert Myrestrand
Socialism has not become a swear word here, Gjert; it is and always has been a swear word.
ReplyDeleteWe Americans are proud of the fact that we don't take care of homeless drunks. If they want health care, let them sober up, get a place to live and get a good job with health insurance. Unrealistic? They should have thought of that before they became homeless drunks.
There are various reasons why we have so little empathy for the less fortunate among us, but primarily it's due the the heterogeneous nature of our population.
The U.S. has been called a melting pot, but it's more like a stew, with all these discrete hunks of potato and meat and vegetable boiling around and bumping into each other, never actually blending.
In Norway, when the average citizen thinks of taking care of the less fortunate, he envisions someone not all that different from him or herself. In the US, we think of a darkie or a spic with different (inferior) values then ourselves.
That's of course by no means an accurate or complete picture of who needs help, but it's convenient and allows us to be selfish pigs with a clear conscience.
The quote at the top of the post says it all - for all the braying about "government getting between you and your doctor", I don't know anyone on Medicare (remember, a government run, socialist single payer system) who has been denied care they needed based on some functionaries denial. But I know, have experienced personally, and everyone in the country knows someone who has had care denied on the say-so of a non-medical private insurance for-profit functionary.
ReplyDeleteZenCane