Subscribe to TIB's RSS FeedThe Fair Healthcare Solution
Sep 18th, 2009 | By CJ | Category: Gov't and PoliticsWith all of the “debate”…with all of the money that’s necessary…when you sit down and crunch the numbers, there are few sensible solutions and only one that is fair.
Some Number Crunching
There are a lot of figures to handle when dealing with healthcare. As with most large systems, they are frequently employed to obfuscate the big picture. With that in mind, will keep it simple and look at as few of the main numbers necessary in order to keep the big picture in focus.
You start with the two numbers that mean anything (I’m mostly relying on the 2009 Statistical Abstract of the United States for the figures):
Total national personal earned and unearned income (2007): $11.66 trillion
Total national healthcare costs (2007 proj): $2.246 trillion
You can also add in GDP as a sort of baseline:
GDP (2007): $13.841 trillion
The thing is that there are some bookkeeping items that cause the GDP to be a little higher than reality, and tends to be adjusted to a national income figure which is $12.221 trillion–which is sufficiently close to the personal income total that we might as well go with the personal income figure as the practical bank from which healthcare will be paid.
Through simple math we find that the percentage of total personal income that is paid to healthcare is 2.246 trillion/11.66 trillion ≈ 19.3%
Wow. That’s a lot. And it’s considerably more than that 15.3% of GDP that has been thrown around for a while (if you do the math with the GDP figures, you get 2.246 trillion/13.841 trillion ≈ 16.2%)
The number we are looking at is the 19.3% of total national personal income. That’s how much we, as the American population, pay for healthcare (at least as of 2007…it’s higher, now).
OK. So, we are paying about $2.246 trillion on healthcare. $1.207 trillion is paid either out-of-pocket or via private insurance companies. $1.039 trillion is paid for publicly (Medicare, Medicaid, VA, etc.). Of the overall total, $1.531 trillion goes to pay for: hospital care; physician and clinical services; prescription drugs; and nursing home care. That leaves a total of $715 billion (or 31.8%) to pay for whatever is left…of which the overwhelming majority is administrative costs, the rest being research and other ancillary items.
If we start with the $2.246 trillion and then subtract out 20% of the non-public total (to take care of the 20-25% difference of administrative costs between the public and private options so often quoted), we reduce the private cost to: $0.966 trillion, which when added to the public costs gives us a total adjusted healthcare cost of about $2 trillion even–which is a nice round figure. If we divide that into national personal income, we end up with a percent of 17.2%.
That’s pretty much the lowest, reasonably accurate, national healthcare figure you are going to see and is the key to what I propose.
The Fair Healthcare Solution
The solution is very simple. All healthcare is paid for from an off-budget, otherwise untouchable, trust of money that is the result of a flat 18% tax on all earned and unearned personal income. There is no poverty line. There is no ceiling. If you make $10,000 a year, then $1,800 of that will go into the national health trust. If you make $200 million, then $36 million will go into the trust. If you make $3,000 a year, then $540 goes into the trust. It’s an automatic tax. You never see it…which isn’t really any different than when your insurance costs are deducted from your paycheck.
As this is a flat tax on all income, everyone is proportionally hit fairly. No ladders. No hiding of money in savings or investments. If you get income, a percentage goes to the pool. If it isn’t this way, then the lower an middle classes are subsidizing the wealthy. The only way to make this fair is for everyone to take the hit.
Is it socialism? A little bit. But when you’re working on a farm and have your hand cut off by a baler, or if you are a working mom with three young children and discover you have breast cancer, or if you are a CEO and are injured when your limo is sideswiped… well, that’s when the socialism works for you. Most of the time, just like now, you’re just paying out money to “the system”. Whether you call it a paycheck deduction, an insurance premium, or a tax is really just semantics.
From this trust there is a tier of payment. Doctors, care units, and emergency/crisis needs get paid first. Labs get paid next. Researchers next. The last to be paid will be the drug manufacturers–this to give them an incentive to balance the costs of their products.
Obviously there will need to be torte reform so that medical care can procede without fear of unfair lawsuits while also allowing the public a method for those cases when deliberate, possibly systemic, negligence occurs.
But that’s it. That’s the solution. The eighteen-percent solution. It’s a fixed rate changeable only with this formula: for every percent or fraction of a percent change to the rate, up or down, Congressional pay will be frozen and reduced by 10 times that percentage for a period of three years (e.g., a 1% change in the trust results in a 10% reduction of pay for all Representatives and Senators for three years). Should there be excess funds, they will remain in the trust for contingency use.
Obviously there will need to be oversight to reduce the players from gaming the system, but that’s the case in any bureaucracy. It’s part of the administrative costs.
But…Some Will Complain
But…some will complain: what of the private insurers? I answer: what of the private insurers? What, exactly, to they contribute to healthcare? What do they do other than collect fees and needlessly complicate the lives of medical professionals? What lives are they saving? How is what they do, and how they do it, better than what I propose?
But…some will complain: why isn’t business paying? That was one of the reasons why I wanted to show you that most of the GDP, and almost all of the useful GDP, is pretty much derived from personal income. Besides, shifting this to business tends to beget a lot of corruption. That’s simply reality. Better to get it in the most direct manner possible. It’ll effect businesses indirectly soon enough.
But…some will complain: doesn’t this hurt the poor most of all? No, not really. If anything, the chronically unemployed and unbenefitted maybe the biggest beneficiaries, it’s not going to be that big of a hit. If it is, then we have bigger problems than healthcare. Also, there was the problem of managing a poverty cut-off. Then you have to calculate people in a household, and then there is the problem if say, the cutoff is $16,000. Your neighbor makes $15,995 and you make $16,500. That means that your neighbor, who is below the cutoff, would pay nothing while you would pay $2970. Your circumstances are only $505 dollars different, but your neighbor actually come out $2465 ahead of you. Hardly seems fair. Better if it’s just the same for all.
But…some will complain (again): it’s socialized medicine. What, exactly, bothers you with that? It isn’t any different than now. The doctors will still see you. The pharmacist will still give you drugs. It isn’t about restricting care. The only thing it is about is who you pay, and who pays who helps you. No medical committees in Congress.
But…some will complain: they’ll perform abortions with MY MONEY! No…they’ll perform abortions with MY MONEY. I’m OK with it. If you aren’t…then don’t you get a frakkin’ abortion. Seriously, people, why does what YOU want have to be all that others get to have? Have a little charity for human frailty and the variety of viewpoints, why don’t you?
But…some will complain: that flat tax is way more than I pay in a year. Yeah, it probably is, but it reflects the actual cost of healthcare. It isn’t being foisted in employer-paid premiums, or Medicare taxes, or the medical part of employee compensation deductions. That’s stuff that’s been paid without you seeing much of it, but the costs have been passed down into higher prices, lower wages, etc. So, you’ve actually been paying it, you just didn’t know it. Even with the co-pays and the deductibles and all of that, you’ve been paying it. With the medical-bill-caused bankruptcies you pay for it because the ceditors are going to recoup their money some way…and it’s via higher costs to you. So, you’ve been paying it.
But…some will complain: it will bankrupt the country! No. It won’t. You know the taxes that pay for Medicare and VA? They are cancelled because this pays for them as well. Those premiums you (and your employer) have been paying…goes into this system. That’s it. Same amount of money just paid to one place in a clear and direct way instead of being paid to thousands of places and distributed in ways few if any understand.
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CJ,
Sounds like you would be a fan of the Fair Tax, too. A few questions come to mind. Who sets the level of compensation for doctors in your new system? Will more skilled surgeons and researchers earn more money than their less skilled counterparts? In every field of human endeavor there will be exceptional people with amazing skills; the majority will be technically proficient but not necessarily gifted. Will your system reward those with exceptional skills? If there are doctors of differing skill levels, who then, will decide which patients receive care from those physicians? Will politicians, celebrities, and the friends of well connected bureaucrats get to see the best and brightest, or will it be us regular schlubs? If your system of compensation does not reflect an individuals true abilities, then it will fail as every other form of socialism has, because in our hearts, we humans are almost exclusively motivated by our own self interests.
It would be grand if mankind was made up of saints, but if that were the case, there would be no “crisis” in health care. Nor would we humans suffer from hunger, poverty and war. The true genius of our founding fathers is that they designed a system of government that recognized the principals of natural law. Their system of limited government does not promise equal outcomes – instead we are all to be treated as equals in our own god given right to create, own and dispose of property according to our own whims, as free men. Of course their system has been perverted in the past eighty years to the point where things are just about upside down. Since the time of the ancient Egyptians and the earliest civilizations, mankind has organized itself with various forms of government in order to regulate society, and for 5,000 years we have seen a host of “mighty” cultures flower and perish. Great civilizations have been decimated by drought, famine, disease and pestilence – all while technology has improved at a snail’s pace. Two thousand years ago men were plowing the ground behind beasts of burden and killing each other with sticks and spears. A thousand years later things had not changed appreciably. Why? What set of circumstances had to occur in order to unleash the flood of technology that’s taken us from horse drawn plows to giant mechanized machinery, and in turn, allowed civilized man to almost completely eradicate famine, pestilence and disease? What set of human conditions created the atmosphere which permitted the industrial revolution and the torrent of technological innovation that have followed? Could it be that the founding fathers recognized that a system which permitted a free man to create and hold property (including intellectual and physical property) was the catalyst for the 5,000 year leap we have made in the past 200 years?
After reading the book “The 5,000 Year Leap”, by W. Cleon Skousen, I am convinced that the sooner we return to our founding principles, the sooner we will be able to address all of our societal ills. We Americans can solve any problem. We have produced many of medicines technological miracles in the past five decades, in large part because of that one word which has become utterly demonized by the “progressive” movement. That word is PROFIT. Without individual effort being rewarded by profit (another way of saying property), human beings can only be motivated through fear and brute force. History is written in the blood of those who “worked freely” for emperors, king and monarchs, all presiding over various forms of tyrannical government.
Sorry to be so long winded. I will give you my ideal health care system: I will pay for the doctors and care of my own choosing. You may do the same. If, of your own free will, you wish to donate your time or property to help those less fortunate among us, you may do so without limit, in whatever form (church, synagogue, social soup kitchen) you choose. To do otherwise infringes on my liberty, because it requires confiscation of my property, and the right to property is the key to my freedom.
No, I’m very much NOT a proponent of the “Fair Tax”. I spent a couple of months crunching the numbers and they just didn’t add up. PLUS, they complicated the system. Mostly, it was just smoke and mirrors. (Overall, I’m not a big fan of general consumption taxes.) I don’t mind progressive taxes. I do mind the menagerie of deductions that swell what could be a simple tax code into a ridiculously incomprehensible and sometimes self-contradictory tax code. (When you hear a politician talk about “tax breaks” you’re now talking more complications to the tax code.) I could live with the flat tax. It’s not ideal, especially if you start tossing in a lot of exceptions.
I’m a proponent of salaried professionals with quality of care performances based on both objective data (patients seen, outcomes vs prognosis, etc.) and subjective data (bedside manner, treating the patient not the disease, etc…). Basically, you reward increasing competence. Who judges this? I advocate a para-medical board of persons with enough academic and observational knowledge to judge medical issues but who aren’t directly part of the system (i.e. not doctors, nurses, etc).
From your conclusion, I’m sort of reading it as your interpretation of “natural law” basically being “law of the jungle”. The best at looting the treasury (or larder…whatever) are the ones who get the greatest rewards. So…let’s give this scenario: Mama went off to war and was killed. Papa is left to raise two kids and he’s able to provide them food, shelter, clothes, and maybe even some gifts for Christmas and birthdays, but not a lot more. He words not only full-time, but overtime. Papa then gets the news that he has a moderate-speed cancer. He can’t afford not to work. To keep working, he can’t get treatment. If he doesn’t get treatment, he likely will be dead in two-three years. It’s an awful dilemma, but dilemmas like this are all too common.
I love it when people bring up many of the topics you have. These are often paper tigers. If you look at recent archaeological findings, it becomes very clear that our technological prowess is nothing new. We are very arrogant about how much smarter we are than the ancients, but they weren’t slouches. They had advanced mathematics. They had computers (mechanical, not electronic, but they worked). They had electricity. They had plumbing. I often wonder where we’d be if the Library in Alexandria hadn’t been destroyed and the ancient texts erased from our collective knowledge because they were “heretical”. We lost almost two thousand years of human advancement because passions overcame reason.
I also shake my head when people look longingly back to agrarian post-colonial America. An America with 3.9 million people (a tally which included 700,000 slaves). The trouble is that the well-meaning philosophy doesn’t scale to 307 million. For example: you can have a pure democracy in a small group such as a family, maybe even a neighborhood or very small town. You get much larger than 100-200 people, you start needing to assign representatives. You’ve now shifted from a democracy to a republican (i.e., representative) government. As population or empire grows, so too does government have to change itself to accommodate the problems you don’t have on smaller scales. Either you adapt or the government is (eventually) replaced. That is human history.
It comes down to this: everyone (or near enough to everyone) has to buy into the larger system. It doesn’t matter what the system is.
(Personally, I think if the human population was decreased by about 5.5 billion across the board, things would smooth out quite a lot. But that’s a subject for another blog.)
Thanks for writing (and reading).
“From your conclusion, I’m sort of reading it as your interpretation of “natural law” basically being “law of the jungle”. The best at looting the treasury (or larder…whatever) are the ones who get the greatest rewards.”
Not at all what I meant. I think we can both agree that those who seek to loot the treasury via influence peddling (hello congressmen and your lobbyist friends?) are below pond scum. Natural law is the antithesis of the “law of the jungle”. When I speak of natural law, I am speaking of the ideas professed by Cicero, Locke and a host of other great thinkers. Many of those ideas were adapted/implemented by the authors of the constitution.
I have read your other posts regarding the topic of health care, and there is much we can agree on. We must have torte reform to bring down costs and I believe that task is within the purview of the federal government.
If we are to add millions of new patients to the system, we will need sufficient facilities, doctors, nurses and other skilled care givers to provide services in a prompt manner. I recall your prior lament that under the current care system you have been the victim of long waits and distant travels to receive care. I don’t see how this problem gets fixed by adding millions to an already overloaded system, without having a commensurate increase in care givers. I think that we must find a way of encouraging people to take up the field of medicine. Our current system saddles new doctors with a mountain of debt, a labyrinth of bureaucracy, and the possibility of financial ruin due to human error, all in return for the title of MD. Perhaps we could entice new practitioners by allowing them to “pay off” their tuition debt by providing care to indigents in municipal or state sponsored clinics and learning or teaching hospitals. This would be a win-win because people who cannot afford care could receive it for free; another benefit would be realized by lowering the number of uninsured people who clog up ER’s, because that is currently the only game in town if you need treatment and have no insurance. Such a system would provide incentives to enter medicine for both altruistic and personal interests, and a doctor could reasonably expect to begin practicing medicine and making a profit, —– oops, sorry, making a living and supporting a family while they are still in their late twenties or early thirties.
The fundamental problem I have with any program that puts people between you and your doctor involves motive. You are absolutely correct that insurers are continually limiting benefits and procedures in order to reach a desired “bottom line”. But if the federal government becomes your insurer/provider, then all you will have accomplished is to trade in your private sector bean counter for a public sector one. What’s worse is that the government will probably try to push any plan as being “constitutional” by invoking the interstate commerce clause. Oddly, health care insurers do not enjoy the protections of that clause when they seek to offer insurance to people in other states (Thanks Congress!). We can purchase a DVD of Terminator from any state and have it shipped to any state with no trouble, and many of us use the interweb to seek the best possible deal for our own situation. Why can’t we do that with private health insurance? Before we start any new government program, maybe we should get the current ones working, without amassing trillions of debt that amounts to generational theft. I have a ten year old son, and I don’t think he should be paying for our generation’s problems.
“If you look at recent archaeological findings, it becomes very clear that our technological prowess is nothing new.”
Where are the ancient MRI’s, laproscopes, stents, and artificial hips and knees? How about the ambulances and life flight helicopters to take trauma victims for life saving care? What about the miracle medicines that ease pain and suffering, curb infections, and extend patients lives for decades? Why did the enlightened ancients suffer from polio, plague, scurvy, and malnutrition? Why did they rarely live beyond fifty? I sure would like to rediscover the ancient cure for cancer. I guess that back in those enlightened times they had figured out the C section, but it wasn’t such a good thing for the mom now was it?
“I also shake my head when people look longingly back to agrarian post-colonial America. An America with 3.9 million people (a tally which included 700,000 slaves). The trouble is that the well-meaning philosophy doesn’t scale to 307 million.”
No, I don’t look back longingly to agrarian post-colonial America when it comes to health care. I DO look back longingly for the times when Americans had a healthy respect for rugged individualism and self reliance, and an intrinsic distrust of a bloated meddlesome government. We have managed to end the practice of one man owning another (Thank you, Constitution), but we are replacing that with a system where all men shall be owned by an over-reaching government (Bye, Bye, Constitution).
And that “well-meaning” philosophy WILL scale to any size civilization, if the philosophy exists only to protect freedoms and not provide things. The founders did not promise things to people, rather, they promised that people could be secure in possessing things (property). That is all I seek from the government – to protect my god given right to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness (ownership of property). I think Justice Sutherland said it best in an address to the NY State Bar association: “It is not the right OF property which is protected, but the right TO property. Property, per se, has no rights; but the individual – the man – has three great rights, equally sacred from arbitrary interference: the right to his LIFE, the right to his LIBERTY, the right to his PROPERTY……
the three rights are so bound together as to be essentially one right. TO GIVE A MAN HIS LIFE BUT DENY HIM HIS LIBERTY, IS TO TAKE FROM HIM ALL THAT MAKES HIS LIFE WORTH LIVING. TO GIVE HIM HIS LIBERTY BUT TAKE FROM HIM THE PROPERTY WHICH IS THE FRUIT AND BADGE OF HIS LIBERTY, IS TO STILL LEAVE HIM A SLAVE.”
I want all Americans to enjoy a peaceful, prosperous, and fruitful time here on earth. Hopefully most of us will use our time and talents to leave things in a better state for the next generation. Building an indebted colossus via “feel good” government giveaway programs is not the answer. Too many Americans want to shirk their duty to their fellow man, and love the idea of, “Well, the government will take care of it, so I can live guilt free as I abrogate all responsibility for my fellow human beings.” Communism and Socialism do just that – you have no allegiance to your fellow man, only to the state – you have no need or right to property, because the state will provide for all of your needs. And the idea that “a little socialism” is OK is just pure BS. “Any fool willing to trade his liberty and property for the promise of security shall enjoy equal measures of neither.”
“(Personally, I think if the human population was decreased by about 5.5 billion across the board, things would smooth out quite a lot. But that’s a subject for another blog.)”
Embrace socialism here in America, and as we wither on the vine, those desperate, impotent jackasses in DC will get us involved in WW III, as cover for their own treachery. You may get your wish, yet. God help us all.
I’m not red or blue, right or left, conservative or liberal – those are just labels used by the jackels in the big media/government complex used to divide us all. I am an American who is proud of my country, ashamed of my government, and afraid for the future of my countrymen. That is why I have sought the truth about the constitution, and the more I have learned, the greater my anger and fear have grown. That is why I seek honest discourse with my countrymen – the answers to our problems are not in the halls of Washington, DC – they are in the hearts and minds of average folks like us. I would love to send you a copy of Mr. Skousen’s book, it’s the least I can do to repay you for the hours of enjoyment I have gotten reading “The Connor Wars”, not to mention your efforts for creating that property. I’m guessing that you are no more afraid of “indoctrination” than I am – I have read communist and socialist doctrine, Alinsky, Marx and the like, and I’m still able to make up my own mind. I hope you will take me up on that offer, CJ. It is a sincere, heartfelt one.
Kind Regards,
Bill Volk
Goose Creek, SC
“Natural law” is one of those tricky things that so depends on who is doing the defining and in what context.
You wonder where the resources are going to come from with health care reform as new patients are added to the system. A lot depends on what that system is. I know A LOT of doctors and they complain about the time that is wasted with the paperwork and calls to providers. A drastic simplification of the administration alone would free up considerable physician resources. Even so, you are right, we will need to do something about how we go about training and distributing our doctors. If we are serious about prevention, that means we will need to look carefully at training more general practitioners.
In terms of resources…we need more bed space and lab facilities now, so adding more patients will definitely mean an up-scaling of those areas. We’ve slowly been doing to healthcare what we’ve done to the airline industry and embraced the concept of hubs. The problem is that hubs are built where the economies of scale are (patients as commodities) and not where they will best serve patients. In my state, for example, too many dialysis patients have to be driven for nearly two hours (each way) to receive their thrice-weekly treatments despite the fact that their town have sufficient populations to keep a modest dialysis center filled. So, I agree that distributing doctors to places of need in exchange for paying off their medical education is a needed accommodation.
As a small note: sometimes ERs are the only game in town even if you DO have insurance. My HMO/PPO provider used to have urgent care clinics all over town to handle those things that wouldn’t wait for the month or so for you to see your primary physician. These existed to avoid burdening local emergency rooms with the small stuff. A few years ago they closed them all down and directed those patients to one of the ERs of their hospitals. As a result, getting a couple of stitches for a deep cut changed from 1-to-1 1/2 hours to 6-to-12.
But I digress.
So…people between yourself and your doctor. I think it depends on how healthy you expect to be as to how necessary this might be on a cost/benefit basis. Yeah…that cost thing. Isn’t it amazing that you only find out the cost of most medical procedures after you get the bill? Then again, it’s not like you are going to have much of a chance to do much shopping around after your 50 mph head-on auto accident. If you don’t know how much it’s going to cost at the outset, how do you know how much to stash in your mattress for when you need it?
Most people know that they aren’t going to have a few hundred thousand tucked away in the event they’ll need to pay their doctor. Even if they had savings, odds are that they will need to get more money from somewhere else. And voila…you have a healthcare bank. That’s what health insurance used to be, a more-or-less specialized bank. But then they exerted increasing influence on medical treatments and practices…and so we have what we have now.
The overall goal is to simplify the system. Why would I rather have one government system instead of a thousand insurers? Simplicity. There are only one set of scoundrels to have to keep track of. Would allowing interstate insurers make a difference? I doubt it. Many of the largest of the insurance conglomerates are regionally interstate. If anything, they’ve been touted as being the most corrupt.
I do wonder to what degree all of this medicine actually benefits us. Historically, if you managed to survive childhood and make it to puberty, odds were that you’d live about as long as we do today. We have an overpopulated planet. Has decreasing natural childhood mortality helped us? What about all of those years afterward, without modern medical care? If you were a menial worker, it pretty much sucked. If you were more genteel, you were still active and you probably ate more healthfully than we in many countries do now. Just by doing that, you were probably going to be in better health than most people in America today. You didn’t need a doctor to the degree that we think we do now.
As a result, there wasn’t a pressing need for medical hi-tech. You used the nature around you whose properties had been painstakingly learned over the generations (just be careful not to burn these herbalists as witches…might not go so well during outbreaks).
In terms of government… well, we’ve managed to screw things up good. Starting with the Great Depression things have been a FUBARed string of good intentions. The New Deal got people out of desperate times. But while its legacy has been problematic, at wasn’t as big of a problem as most people like to attribute to it. No, the first big problem was WWII. Unlike anything before, that exploded government because of the machine necessary to wage global war. Trouble was, once the war was over, the machine persisted and continued feeding itself.
Nixon screwed up health insurance…and then his cronies did a damn stupid thing (which included getting caught). That stumble started a domino effect that has increasingly poisoned the political well as each side has taken turns to “get back” at what the others did during their stint as the majority.
Then came Reaganomics. The grandest Ponzi scheme ever. At that point, the government ceased the pretention that it was about the people, but was instead about industry. So, since the early-to-mid 80s, I don’t really consider us as having a government as conceived by our founders. Our federal republic has turned into a corporatocracy with other elements also fighting for a seat at the table (theocrats, socialists, fascists, etc.).
All governments evolve. Often, this is for the worse, but sometimes a balance is reached. We had a government instituted by men illuminated by the light of the age of reason. We now have a country where fewer than 11% of American can pass a basic 33-question civics test (with politicians scoring even worse). They say you get the government you deserve. I fear “they” are right.
I do try to be careful to make the distinction that socialism is an economic model, not a political one. As with most things, if everyone is willing to buy into the system, it works. If the system has checks for the inevitable corruptions, it works. When the checks break down, when faith in the system is lost, it doesn’t matter what system you have–it becomes deleterious to economic order. It’s true of capitalism. It’s true of socialism. I feel that mixed systems are the most healthy. Unfortunately, with them there is a constant struggle to find a balance point that is constantly shifting.
Then we get to the idea of Life, Liberty and (more to the point) the pursuit of happiness/property. That last bit is always a slippery sucker. I interpret as being that you have the right to pursue a course to better yourself–just because you are a box-boy today doesn’t mean you can’t try to eventually own the store. The parameters you may employ to that end…well, that’s the role of government. Most would agree that murdering the store owner and his heirs and them assuming the now ex-store-owner’s property would be outside the bounds of what would be acceptable. If you (the box-boy) didn’t, then you’d cry about oppression and the inappropriate use of government power and whatnot as the police hauled you away. Perception matters.
I’m not certain that we have to wait for WWIII. I suspect we have been in the middle of it for a while (15-20). It’s just been more subtle than the previous two, from our viewpoint.
I appreciate the offer of the book, but honestly, I don’t have the time to read much of anything. If I’m not tending to familial/household duties, then I’m writing. (I don’t get how writers have the time to read…shouldn’t they be writing?) I’ve got novels from good friends of mine that have been on the shelf for a few years now because I just haven’t gotten around to finding the block of time necessary to sit down and read them.
Honestly, I’d rather they were in the hearts and minds of way-above-average folks. Most of our founders were hardly “average” after all.
Thank you so much for your well-considered comment. This is what civil discourse is all about. Sharing of views. Tossing out opposing views. It’s in this way that the people involved are able to evolve their opinions. It’s something that, if more would practice it, could accomplish great things.
Thank you for your responses. If I must choose between your writing or reading, I’ll go with the writing. I suspect that if we could get more folks to have their own informal “beer summits” to discuss these pressing issues, we would all be much better off for it. As I look back at the formative days of our country, it amazes me how many of the fundamental issues were sorted out in pubs by the common people who were most invested in the outcome. Had we lost the war with England, there would have been many patriots swinging from the crown’s gallows. I hope more Americans will put down their remotes and take up discussing issues which will affect future generations. As long as we remain “sheeple”, we will continue to be shorn and slaughtered by the government which is supposed to be working for us, rather than the other way around. My spidey senses tell me that there is an awakening happening in the electorate. I really believe that we could finally be at the point where people will start voting for the bottom line, instead of the party line. I’m sorry the health care options where you live are so crappy. My wife’s state BCBS plan isn’t so good (expensive copays), and my private HMO insurer kicks ass on it in deductibles, allowable procedures, and copays, which is why I chose that plan over getting on the missus more expensive family plan. Oddly, we have a glut of “urgent care” quickie clinics in our state. There are four of them within biking distance of my home, and they are equipped with x ray and EKG machines (found that out the hard way!). As backwards as South Carolina is, we seem to have that going for us. I wonder if any state or federal policies are accountable for the drastic differences in our two states with regard to these facilities? Two of those four clinics are owned by the doctors that provide care within. I wonder how they were able to do that? Next time I see one of those doc’s, I’ll be sure to probe them on what regulatory measures have helped and hindered their efforts. This will be my last comment on this issue – I don’t want you to get behind on your writing project! I will continue to lurk beyond the Connor Wars when I visit just to get your current points of view. I think it is essential to understand where the other fellow is coming from when you try to engage him in reasoned, healthy debate. I think most all of us want the same things out of life and there are many opinions about how to get there – rational discourse should make the journey shorter, and hopefully less bumpy. Take care.