Nor does having a universal health system mean you’re a bunch of communists, or even socialists - Australia’s medical system means everyone has access to hospitals when they need them, and yet - strange as this may seem - we’re not a bunch of pinkos. Last week, my partner was rushed to hospital with a problem with his heart. He doesn’t have any insurance. He spent four days in the cardiac ward, and when he came home on Saturday, we didn’t get a bill. You know what? That’s a good thing. Why on earth should someone only be treated if they can pay? Is a poor person’s life somehow intrinsically worth less than a rich person’s life? Seems to me money isn’t a very good way of working out someone’s value as a human being.

Yes, sometimes you might have to wait for an operation - if it’s an *elective* procedure. If you have a life-threatening condition - something wrong with your heart, or a burst appendix or something like that, you’re whisked straight into hospital and operated on straight away. Without being presented with a giant bill at the end of it.

I fail to see why Americans keep arguing against universal health care, when it works so well elsewhere in the world.

what’d ya think? probably I’ll wait to have this conversation with her until after the state mandated sex education she’ll have forced on her two years before puberty.

I do not think that “collectivism” is the way to go, but humans are social primates, and like other great apes, they will probably be happier if they live among a group of people who seem to care whether they live or die. Also, if Randian sociopathic individualism is combined with a legal and economic system that makes it very easy for the rich man to get richer while the poor man bears the burdens, you cannot expect the poor man to be thrilled about it forever. The Filipinos did eventually stand up and kick Imelda and her shoe collection out.

Probably all of us have ancestors who had ten kids. Yes, maybe if your wife’s mother had had access to birth control she would not have existed, but so what? Every time a woman chooses not to have one more child, some potential person does not come into existence. Are you arguing that women should feel morally required to produce as many children as possible? Unless you think the rapture is coming real soon, or have plans to return the death rate to historically high norms, you apparently don’t understand how fast the planet would fill up with human beings. And if you are teaching your daughter to “hate and fear” people who simply want to place decisions on women’s fecundity into women’s hands… well, I feel sorry for the girl, but you may be surprised to find that she doesn’t hold to that ideology when she’s old enough to decide for herself.

But putting the abhorrences of corn fed rednecks falling for pretty Asian girls from big families aside for a moment; this discussion seems to be spurned on by the idea of what would be fair for people like my family-in-law in third world countries. Fair is that they had a daughter who could go to where things are better and support them by sending money home. It’s that simple, it sucks there and they can’t change that; and they can’t all get up and leave, but if one of them can make a better life for herself in the USA or Hong Kong or as a merchant marine, and everyone back home is a little better off, then they feel that they’ve been given a fair shake. This is from people who lost their homes and everything but their lives after Mt. Pinatubo blew and had to live as refugees for the better part of two years with 4 children to feed and no one but their family helping them out. Maybe you can continue to project your communal sensitivities onto their situation and perpetuate the myth that collectivism is what they’d find “Fair” but that’s not reality. These are proud people who have been through a lot, they’re a little better off than most of their neighbors but nowhere near as well off as rich people. if some government took from the rich and redistributed to the poor they’d worry that they were next and find the whole thing very unfair. And, if their poorer neighbors saw that the opportunity to have children who who could go and live a better life elsewere being taken from them, they too would find that unfair.

So, I do care that my little brother-in-law and sister-in-law in a third world country get adequate health care and education for a better life, and I go to work and send them some of my earnings to make that very thing happen. But the question remains why should we care about some kid in Africa ? Why isn’t someone in her family doing the same for her ? You’re right that everyone on earth can’t live like rich Americans, but you’re wrong to assume that they’d only be happy if every last one of them was.

I plan on contributing to society, building or creating value, and buying or trading for health care, medicines and doctor’s care.

sitting back and hoping that the minimal health care given for free to everyone in some non-existing, crash resistant, entitlement program is good enough to keep my first two children alive so they can support me in 40 years when I finally can’t work anymore.

Is that really what you’re advocating ?

Ok, that is funny. You mean there are people out there who hadn’t noticed I was a pinko justice advocate?!?!?! Are you kidding me? Y’all should read back through my archives. I haven’t changed - you just weren’t paying attention. Wow, that really is pretty funny!

As for the question of why should other people care about extending basic public health resources - well, assuming that justice doesn’t interest you, there’s the practical issue of population. The one consistent, solid way we know to reduce birth rates is to make sure that people’s first couple of children live to grow up. That is, most of the research out there shows that women make fairly rational choices in their short-term interests - in the poor world, children are the only kind of security there is. A woman in India has to have five kids to ensure that one of them will still be alive when she’s 60 years old - and there isn’t any social security there.

The only way we know to stabilize birthrates - and it works all over the world (for example, there are several poor world nations with better TFRs than China) - is to make sure that women’s first and second babies live to grow up.

There’s another reason - peak oil means most of us get very poor. So whatever minimal level of health care we’re talking about now may well be what most of us get - if you are ok with the idea that you might die because you can’t afford an antibiotic (happens all the time to the world’s poor), that’s ok with me. In Russia, life spans for men fell into the mid-50s after the crash - that sound good to y’all? Personally, I think we can do better than that as a minimum.

Sharon

You could cover a lot of ground just by making basic anti-inflammatories, heart medicines (wafarin etc), insulin and basic antibiotics. Gas chromatography could be used for analysis (first built in the 50s) though with well-known products this shouldn’t be a problem.

I work in x-ray physics and while most of what I do would not be possible (for long at least) in a drastically localised world I believe x-ray technology could be kept going on a localised basis (eg for medical applications - again assuming access to power). You would need the ability in the long run to manufacture x-ray tubes and photographic film, neither of which are especially high-tech (both were available in the late 1800s). I suspect high-value, low volume products will be available from further-field in any case.

Sharon, you used to be much much more on-message. these little digs on how un-equal and un-fair things are really tunes out a lot of people.