Jul 07 2007
Sicko: Framing the debate
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By Andrew S. Taylor
7/7/07
The primary means by which any governing power structure controls its populace is by exerting influence over the individual thought-process, influencing how the populace perceives reality. The main channels of control are therefore systems of education and public discourse (i.e., the media), and the primary methods are censorship of ideas, and censorship of facts. If one can accomplish the latter sufficiently, there is little need for the former. Discourse can proceed in the form of ostensibly oppositional debate, while the most crucial questions and realities are hidden in plain view.
Control over what the public knows can be enough to prevent certain ideas from taking root. This method has two advantages. The first is that it provides the illusion, on the part of those controlled, that they have arrived at “their own conclusions” on a particular matter, since they have been presented with two seemingly opposed viewpoints and have been freely allowed to evaluate both critically. The second advantage is a direct consequence of the first - because the audience has inadvertently engaged in what may be a false premise underlying both propositions, they have also internalized and taken as implicit fact a concept which, if stated directly and in the plain light of day, might have been open to question. It naturally follows that such a method of control is wielded most effectively when the visibly state-fashioned controls are at a minimum, and the “voluntary” controls of social self-censorship are at a maximum. This provides in one fell swoop the greatest amount of passively-generated social control with the least-penetrable subterfuge. The greater the number of individuals who unknowingly participate in and propagate the false premise, the more effective the control. As for those who do see past the subterfuge - as long as they are either the direct and guiltless beneficiaries thereof, or are unable, due to social standing or problems of credibility, to effectively alter the overwhelming public bias, the power structure is safe and control is maintained.
As noted by Herbert Marcuse and others, advanced industrial capitalism provides a highly effective vehicle for such a system of control. Its ever-heightening pyramid of merged corporate and government entities, its ever-thinning and increasingly osmotic membrane of separation between “public” and “private” (both as a point of social conduct, and as a point of fiscal practice and law), and its uncanny ability to rapidly adapt to potentially threatening expressions of social rebellion by absorbing them into the mainstream in the form of a sterilized phenotype, result in an environment of discourse that is openly hostile to the unpleasant and discomforting work of rational thought.
This is something to keep in mind, in the weeks and months to come, as we witness what will inevitably be a full-frontal assault on Michael Moore’s new film, Sicko. It is especially important, because many of the attacks will come not only from industry giants and political operatives whose biases and motivations are transparently obvious (though of course such quarters have already attacked, and will continue to do so), but from well-meaning, intelligent, literate, and dedicated citizens who genuinely (and correctly) fear a government whose “helping hand” so often wears a poison glove. We must not forget that when we speak of an ideal government, or an improved government, that we mean something radically different from the government we actually have - a government that both red-state and blue-state despises with equal fervor, and for largely similar reasons (though this may not at first be apparent).
That being said, there is no greater public service than the destruction of a widely-held myth. This form of pointed demolition transcends any specific ideology, amounting as it does to a fundamental assertion of the right of all individuals to think and know. Moore’s latest film is just such a salvo. Its purpose is to nullify oft-repeated American popular myths about health care as it is practiced in other countries, by providing vivid counter-examples.
What his film does not do, which we should acknowledge up front (because these straw men will surely appear, and Moore will be unfairly blamed for being “deceptive”), is to argue that socialized medicine is a panacea, in which our current problems are magically solved, or that Western Europe enjoys hassle-free health care. Sicko is a demonstration of what is possible, not a comprehensive portrait of what is.
This then is as good a place as any to look at the facts as they stand. We have often heard, from critics and pundits of all stripes, that it is very easy to “lie with statistics.” This point is made so often, that we are sometimes loath to admit that we can also tell the truth with them. It is a question of making reasonable comparisons, falsifiable statements, using consistent standards, and then placing them in their proper context.
I refer you now, and hasten anyone who wishes to make an informed commentary on this debate, to visit the official website of the World Health Organization, and click on the tab for “countries.” Here is where any admirer or skeptic of Moore’s essential thesis - that the American Health Care Industry is a sham deal and that other countries of comparable wealth are able to provide more effective coverage at a lower cost - can put his claims to the test. This should be the starting point for any debate on the subject: pro and con should first generally agree upon the facts as they stand, and only then proceed to debate an effective strategy for dealing with them. It must also be understood that the truth of Moore’s thesis depends upon the aggregate of the evidence, and is not disproved by a small minority of exceptional examples.
It will be interesting to see how often this data is mentioned in mainstream debates about Sicko. I seriously doubt that any reputable scientist would actually refute all or most of the WHO data. However, it is quite likely that few major outlets will engage with it directly at all - they will instead complain that Moore’s examples of abused and neglected patients in the Unites States are not “representative.” This is the most common of straw men - Moore does not in fact claim that they are representative, but rather bemoans the fact that they could happen at all - especially as a natural outcome of the system as it operates normally, as opposed to an aberration in a system that is operating abnormally. They are included here not as representative examples but inevitable examples. He is demonstrating that the system, when operating normally, produces a significant minority of such cases. (This is a very important distinction to remember, whenever someone throws up a catastrophic example of health-care negligence from, say, Canada, in an effort to degrade the debate so that it appears to amount to little more than mutual “cherry-picking”).
Such strategies of attack against Moore are also in keeping with the almost surreal stubbornness of American mainstream media in its imposition of a kind of statistical isolationism upon policy discussions of any kind (in essence, a pathological unwillingness to measure our prospects for social problem-solving against similar problems faced in other countries, as well as the possible merits of the solutions proposed for them). This is a dangerously disingenuous tactic for a society so firmly committed to imposing its own social models upon the world beyond its borders. While it occasionally leaks through that European and Asian countries far surpass America in terms of the quality of public education and environmental policy (and now, thanks to Moore, in health care), it is apparently still impermissible to ask, in any public forum, “how do they do it?”. And any suggestion through mainstream channels that we might try to emulate them amounts to public political suicide. It seems that the illusion of American superiority in all things is an illusion still too cherished to be widely challenged. This is perhaps Sicko’s most valuable contribution: it dares to suggest that we, as a society, might benefit from a little more humility.
But let’s return to that WHO data. If you have IE7, you can easily use the “tabs” feature to do side-by-side comparisons of the United States to any other country listed on the WHO website. Let’s look at Moore’s most impressive claims. Do Canadians live 3 years longer? Click along with me…yes, they do. Is their child mortality rate lower? It is. Do they spend less on health care - hold on, we must be careful with this question. We cannot necessarily use dollars, even with the “international $” which lists the per-capita expenditures of each country on health care, because it will not actually provide us the answer to what we are looking for. We want to know how much it costs one country relative to itself to pay for their health-care system. The better figure to use is “% of GDP”. So…do Canadians pay less? Hell yes.
Do the French live longer? Less child mortality? Less a % of GDP? Yes, yes, and yes. The British? Yes, cubed. We are not talking about statistically negligible differences, either, but about longer lives of two or three years. We are taking about 10 to 30% reductions in child mortality (given in numbers-per-thousand). We are noting that while the U.S. spends %15.4 of its GDP on health care, the next-highest expenditure is around 10%, and it goes down from there. At this point it seems as though, since we’re willing to spend so much on health-care, we could easily blast the rest of the world out of the water by spending it correctly, should we chose to do so.
But, does it hold true elsewhere? Indulge me as I do some more tab-clicking. Here goes the backwards-alphabet challenge: Switzerland? Yes. Sweden? Yes. Spain? Yes. Switzerland spends 11.5% of its GDP - quite a bit above the others but still well below the U.S. In all three countries, I’m seeing life-span gains of 3 or 4 years, and child mortality rates that nearly halve the U.S.’s. Sweden does halve them, while spending only 9.1% of its GDP.
Perhaps the S’s are lucky. I continue. Poland? Worse, at a third of the cost. Norway? Yes - better and cheaper. Ditto Netherlands. And Luxembourg. Italy, too, similarly leaves us in the dust. Also Ireland. Iceland, as well, kicks our ass. Hungary, however, does worse, if that makes anyone feel better. Greece - much poorer than the U.S. - does better. Germany does better. This is getting a bit boring….but I press on. Finland is better. Denmark has the same life-expectancy, but far fewer dead children and half the cost. Czech Republic does worse than the U.S. Belgium is better and cheaper.
In almost every case since the S’s, we are looking at drastically reduced rates of child mortality (30-60% lower), longer life-spans by at least 2 years (and more often 3 or 4 years, with the difference especially noteworthy among women), and GDP figures that almost never peak 10%, and are usually about half of what we spend in the United States.
Now, of course, there is much more to Europe than the countries listed above. And, indeed, as we continue East, into regions of significantly less wealth, we do find numerous countries where the public health statistics are quite a bit worse than in the United States. But the fact remains that, not only are we surpassed by every comparable Western economy, we are matched by several poorer countries.
Well, what about our dreaded enemy, Cuba? Surely Mr. Moore was fibbing when he said Cuba has bested us? Let’s look:
CUBA:
Life expectancy at birth m/f (years): 75/79
Healthy life expectancy at birth m/f (years, 2002): 67/70
Probability of dying under five (per 1 000 live births): 7
Probability of dying between 15 and 60 years m/f (per 1 000 population): 128/83
Total expenditure on health per capita (Intl $, 2004): 229
Total expenditure on health as % of GDP (2004): 6.3
UNITED STATES
Life expectancy at birth m/f (years): 75/80
Healthy life expectancy at birth m/f (years, 2002): 67/71
Probability of dying under five (per 1 000 live births): 8
Probability of dying between 15 and 60 years m/f (per 1 000 population): 137/81
Total expenditure on health per capita (Intl $, 2004): 6,096
Total expenditure on health as % of GDP (2004): 15.4
Moore appears to be wrong that Cubans live longer. We live longer, by about six months. But, alas, our child mortality rate is still higher. And we find that, by spending only 6.3% of its GDP, Cuba essentially matches the U.S. in terms of the basic health indicators of it citizens.
These, then, are the facts as they stand. Our health care system is appallingly expensive, and it returns meager results. Any honest debate on the topic must address this data. If it does not, it is not an honest debate, and facts are being withheld for the purpose of controlling the debate. If we hear the charge that socialized medicine is associated with higher taxes, we can now rightly rebut that this is “guilt by association.” Whatever other expenditures exist in these countries, the cost of health care is less.
We must also be on guard against the charge that single-payer health care reduces “choice.” While I have no doubt that this could be the case in some countries, the only relevant question is whether it is necessarily so. There is clearly no reason why it must be so, especially when so many other countries accomplish such remarkable results while spending so much less than we do. We should be able to provide exemplary universal health care to every single American, and make private, “luxury” services available to those wealthier individuals who simply “must have it.”
Take, for example, the French system, as recently lauded in a radically left-wing publication called Business Week:
France relies on a mixture of public and private funding, as does the U.S. But unlike Americans, every French citizen has access to basic health-care coverage through national insurance funds, to which both employers and employees contribute. Some 90% of the population also buys supplementary private insurance to provide benefits that aren’t covered, and the government picks up the tab for those out of work who cannot gain coverage through a family member. “We pay higher taxes in France, but at least we get something for our money,” says Leslie Charbonnel, an American who has lived in Paris for two decades.
The key to France’s success is that its system, like the U.S.’s, values patient choice and physician control over medical decision-making. But France does it for far less, with per capita health-care spending in 2004 at just $3,500, compared with $6,100 in the U.S., according to the World Health Organization. All told, France spends 10.7% of gross domestic product on health care, vs. 16.5% in the U.S.
Keeping Rates Low
“The French model suggests that you can have universal coverage without relying totally on the state, without restricting patient choice, and without abolishing private medical practice and the insurance industry,” says Victor G. Rodwin, a professor of health policy and management at New York University’s Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service.
(The article also notes that the UK’s health care system is problematic mess, a perception which I’m sure many of Moore’s critics will be quick to assert. So be it - at least it is a mess which provides longer lives and healthier children than our mess currently does).
Here is another charge which we must be on guard for - that the higher cost of health care in the U.S. is somehow related to our being on the “forefront” of medical research from which the entire world benefits. That we are at the forefront is an arguable point and worth considering, but, unfortunately for those professional obfuscators wishing to scare the public away from demanding socialized medicine, medical research accounts for only 5.5 cents out of every health care dollar. (Source). Forefront or not, research cannot account for our bloated expenditures on health-care.
Ultimately, the debate about U.S. health-care will bump up against a greater, uncomfortable truth, one which - unless meticulously handled by corporate spin doctors, employing endless smoke and many well-placed mirrors - threatens to undermine edifices aside from those erected by the health care industry. Namely, that even our most basic assumptions about our rights and privileges as Americans in a free society have been bought up and cashed in by a corporate class whose greed is unbounded, whose reach of power has penetrated and assimilated every public institution we deem essential to the democratic process, and which continues to manipulate the very means by which we perceive reality itself. We, as a nation, may soon be approaching a “blue pill vs. red pill” moment of public consciousness.
Andrew S. Taylor is the Associate Editor of Menda City Review, an online journal of literature and political commentary. His own short stories, which veer towards the experimental wing of the speculative fiction/slipstream fantasy genre, have appeared online and in print in various publications. He has also contributed numerous articles and reviews to American Book Review and Ghetto Blaster Magazine.
He holds an M.A. from the Creative Writing Program at The City College of New York, and currently resides in Brooklyn.
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[…] Read more Framing […]
As always “Follow the money”
Letter to Micheal Moore - 07/03/07
http://cafr1.com/MM.html
———————–
even our most basic assumptions about our rights and privileges as Americans in a free society have been bought up and cashed in by a corporate class whose greed is unbounded, whose reach of power has penetrated and assimilated every public institution we deem essential to the democratic process, and which continues to manipulate the very means by which we perceive reality itself. We, as a nation, may soon be approaching a “blue pill vs. red pill” moment of public consciousness.
———————–
Right-wingers ask us “you don’t want the government to make decisions for you, do you?” and we react against this threat to our freedom.
Why are they trying to scare us away from the government?
If Lincoln’s assessment of our nation was true, “…that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth”, then when you put on your anti-b.s. decoder ring, right-wingers are telling us: “you don’t want you to make decisions for you, do you?”
The rich would rather let us make our own decisions as individual, on a field of options that they generate, and farm-us like so many energy pod units, making us run on hamster wheels of debt repayment while they pool the wealth of the collective for their own comfort, power and enjoyment. And yes, they feed our brains with illusion.
Here in Canada they are working hard to emulate the US system. Our costs will increase accordingly and available coverage will shrink as well since the same corporate interests own and operate Kanada as do the US.
The elite do want to use us as energy pods, which is why they would love nothing more than a socialized health care system–it lets them off the hook even more from paying benefits. What Moore’s Sicko film does is frame the debate between two forms of collectivism: either you want a corporate system or a socialist government system. The argument that we shouldn’t fear the government because we are the government is plainly absurd. WE MOST CERTAINLY ARE NOT THE GOVERNMENT, the elite are the governing class as they hold all the cards–they, not we, have the power, the money, the influence, the institutions. If I were my own governor, then I would certainly not need to pay taxes for one thing.
I am against all forms of coerced collectivism and their attendant hierarchies. If each individual really were their own governor, then there would be no hierarchy and no coercion involved be it corporate, governmental, martial, ecclesiastic or otherwise. What absurdity Lincoln’s statement was and continues to be. “By for and of the people” is plainly nonsensical and impossible for government automatically means hierarchy and coercion, which negates the possibility for sovereign self-government.
Corporatism=hierarchical collectivism.
Socialism=hierarchical collectivism.
Theocracy=hierarchical collectivism.
Communism=hierarchical collectivism.
Fascism=hierarchical collectivism.
Democratic Party=hierarchical collectivism.
Republican Party=hierarchical collectivism.
Globalism=hierarchical collectivism.
Democracy=hierarchical collectivism.
Anarhcy=hierarchical collectivism.
Capitalism=hierarchical collectivism.
Don’t be trapped in a false paradigm.
If we had true freedom, there would be no corporations. For corporations (government being the largest) are built so that the individuals which control them can hide behind them and thereby evade responsibility. For example: We heard a lot about Enron as a corporation, and precious little about the actual villains who ran it. That’s the beauty of using a collectivie entity as a shill to hide behind. Hierarchical collectivism is organized crime no matter what you call it. I’m all for an individualist form of government. Each individual out interacting on a voluntary basis with eachother would act as a check against the inherent corruption within the human species. That’s the best form of check and balance system, and it doesn’t mean everyone out for themself in a selfish world of greed, it means everyone out interacting with everyone on a purely voluntary basis, respecting inalienable individual rights; and above all else it would mean true communities and worthwhile families. But alas, the brainwashed collectivist horde is too trapped in the cult to see the light and we are quite doomed! You all want to be ruled, and have deluded yourselves into believing that you can rule yourselves vicariously through representatives. What a sick, sad little farce humanity has become!
If government attains legitimacy through the consent of the governed and one individual doesn’t grant that consent, then the government has no business violating his sovereign, inalienable right to self-government–do whatever you want within your own cult of collectivism but leave the non-consenters alone. As for the WHO statistics, I think it has more to do with diet than their socialized health care systems. WHO being funded by control freaks is intrinsically not to be trusted anyway.
Once you accept socialism (or any other form of hierarchical collectivism), you get culling of the herd, eugenics run by elites in otherwords. It comes down to a cost-benefit analysis of how much will it cost to save this person? Are they too much of a burden on society? Are they too old to bother wasting time with? Maybe they didn’t eat right so they deserve to die. Maybe they drank too much so screw them. Those kinds of views prevail in hierarchical collectivism and the individual is crushed. So once you accept hierarchical collectivism like socialism, it spreads out from anything it touches. It begins with health care and metastasizes into every aspect of individual life. Since every individual then becomes a burden on the collective, every individual is subject to every dictate of the collective. This is in effect what we already have with capitalism. You can change the form of hierarchical collectivism but you will never be able to change the substance. If you want freedom, you must get out from under the lying cult of coercive collectivism.
The elite do want to use us as energy pods, which is why they would love nothing more than a socialized health care system–it lets them off the hook even more from paying benefits. What Moore’s Sicko film does is frame the debate between two forms of collectivism: either you want a corporate system or a socialist government system. The argument that we shouldn’t fear the government because we are the government is plainly absurd. WE MOST CERTAINLY ARE NOT THE GOVERNMENT, the elite are the governing class as they hold all the cards–they, not we, have the power, the money, the influence, the institutions. If I were my own governor, then I would certainly not need to pay taxes for one thing.
I am against all forms of coerced collectivism and their attendant hierarchies. If each individual really were their own governor, then there would be no hierarchy and no coercion involved be it corporate, governmental, martial, ecclesiastic or otherwise. What absurdity Lincoln’s statement was and continues to be. “By for and of the people” is plainly nonsensical and impossible for government automatically means hierarchy and coercion, which negates the possibility for sovereign self-government.
Corporatism=hierarchical collectivism.
Socialism=hierarchical collectivism.
Theocracy=hierarchical collectivism.
Communism=hierarchical collectivism.
Fascism=hierarchical collectivism.
Democratic Party=hierarchical collectivism.
Republican Party=hierarchical collectivism.
Globalism=hierarchical collectivism.
Democracy=hierarchical collectivism.
Anarhcy=hierarchical collectivism.
Capitalism=hierarchical collectivism.
Don’t be trapped in a false paradigm.
If we had true freedom, there would be no corporations. For corporations (government being the largest) are built so that the individuals which control them can hide behind them and thereby evade responsibility. For example: We heard a lot about Enron as a corporation, and precious little about the actual villains who ran it. That’s the beauty of using a collectivie entity as a shill to hide behind. Hierarchical collectivism is organized crime no matter what you call it. I’m all for an individualist form of government. Each individual out interacting on a voluntary basis with eachother would act as a check against the inherent corruption within the human species. That’s the best form of check and balance system, and it doesn’t mean everyone out for themself in a selfish world of greed, it means everyone out interacting with everyone on a purely voluntary basis, respecting inalienable individual rights; and above all else it would mean true communities and worthwhile families. But alas, the brainwashed collectivist horde is too trapped in the cult to see the light and we are quite doomed! You all want to be ruled, and have deluded yourselves into believing that you can rule yourselves vicariously through representatives. What a sick, sad little farce humanity has become!
If government attains legitimacy through the consent of the governed and one individual doesn’t grant that consent, then the government has no business violating his sovereign, inalienable right to self-government–do whatever you want within your own cult of collectivism but leave the non-consenters alone. But of course that would never happen as hierarchical collectivism is a cult of power and it cannot accept the non-consenters. They must be either absorbed or eliminated. This is the Borg mentality of modern humanity.
As for the WHO statistics, I think it has more to do with diet than their socialized health care systems. WHO being funded by control freaks is intrinsically not to be trusted anyway. The waiting lists for vital operations in these countries are horrendous. I suggest everyone read CANCER WARD by Solzhenitsyn. You can’t assembly line health care, which is what both corporatism and socialism attempt to do. The parasite elites will always have better doctors and the concomitant life extension technology.
Once you accept socialism (or any other form of hierarchical collectivism), you get culling of the herd, eugenics run by elites in otherwords. It comes down to a cost-benefit analysis of how much will it cost to save this person? Are they too much of a burden on society? Are they too old to bother wasting time with? Maybe they didn’t eat right so they deserve to die. Maybe they drank too much so screw them. Those kinds of excuses prevail in hierarchical collectivism and the individual is crushed. So once you accept hierarchical collectivism like socialism, it spreads out from anything it touches. It begins with health care and metastasizes into every aspect of individual life. Since every individual then becomes a burden on the collective, every individual is subject to every dictate of the collective. This is in effect what we already have with capitalism. You can change the form of hierarchical collectivism but you will never be able to change the substance. If you want freedom, you must get out from under the lying cult of coercive collectivism.
Sorry about the double post, the second one is the one to read if anyone cares.
Andrew,
Brilliant essay, Sir. Provocative, Factual, and empowering to us that will fight this issue out at the water cooler daily. A salient reminder of some of the pratfalls to avoid, as well as a reminder of useful informations.
Although, as a water cooler warrior myself, I have to admit that in most cases, and on most issues, I have for the most part, retracted, almost to the pint of premeditative avoidance of those water cooler debates. Whether the brainwashing is Bernays in nature, chemically based, or a combination of many factors, the effect on the 30% -ish, the remaining loyalists, is that no amount of data, no amount of proof, even the most hardcore, can even dent the wall of closure of their minds.
As bitterly frustrated, and even enraged as I am to admit it, it is my actual experience that we may have long passed the Red vs. Blue pill Moment.
It’s the same players on the same sides on all relevant issues: Climate change, Invasion of Iraq, Single Payer Health care; those that fight simple reason are loyal to traitor Cheney / Bush. Of course, generally they are the least educated, yet the most arrogant of their “higher” understanding! It truely defies logic, and patience.
I, personally, am loosing the steam to even engage a conversation with these people. Confronted with a valid, provable fact, they fall upon the devil, al qeada, or plain old bogey men references ( the evil Libs! ) that essentially are conversation enders. They’ll cry Liberal Agenda ( read Conspiracy ) but then label me a Tin Foil Hat Wearer when I can give OBVIOUS proof of corporate Conspiracy.
I don’t know where to turn at this point. Needless to say, I am discouraged.
But thank you anyway, for igniting my hope, even if it only takes a few clicks of news, to burn it down again.
O, btw, this is only the second week of “Sicko” release, and I see no reference anywhere on the major media sites about it’s successes or failures at the box? they didn’t squelch it down already, did they?
Don
Dave,
your points are very valid, but , aren’t we as a world, just way way way to far down the rabbit hole to even consider such a fundamental change?
Human nature is predatory; there always has been and will be a subset bent on acquiring their needs by the use of others sweat. Are not the higher levels of the natural food chain such exploiters? The Lions rest, then find and eat a lower form and so on down to the basic herbivore at the lowest level of the chain. The energy the Lion at the top of the chain uses comes from, and began, by the lowest level’s consumption of something basic.
So it goes for the Homo sapien. We are at the top of the food chain, basically.
Regardless, I am not excusing the corruption basic in all governmental or economical systems. But there is an inherent surrender of some rights to participate in the comfort of some collectivism. Like safety; a community of several families will more likely provide some survival from the Lions, they can join forces, erect a wall, build shelter, where an individual, or a small group ( lie a family unit ) is significantly more endangered in the wild vs. the Lions.
These are concepts iirc of Rousseau, Locke, etc, that our founding fathers drew from when they dared established this nation.
Something to think about. but thank you for the thought provocation!
I am not against voluntary relationships. If a group of people voluntarily comes together for self-protection and mutual aid, that is all well and good and none of my business if I don’t wish to participate. Just so long as a group doesn’t FORCE anyone, I am not opposed to it. You’re comments about the lion are interesting as the predatorial and parasitical elite at the top of the human food chain view themselves in that social darwinistic light. They consider themselves as having the divine right to rule and prey on their lessers. They’re the most ruthless. They’ve got the most resources. So they’re the lions, they’re the gods on Olympus and the rest of us are their cattle. That’s their view.
Voluntary social contracts are one thing, however assuming that EVERYONE in a region or on the globe must inherently be parties to a social contract is not logical. In this respect I must say that Locke and Rousseau simply didn’t go far enough in their thinking.
If we had real families again, then that would be the automatic mutual aid unit. The elite have real families, that’s their strength. They’re ruthless and disgusting families, but they are true families at least in the sense that they are united.
The elite families on top of the human heap decimated their lesser competitors’ family units, and so the communities crumbled and corporations triumphed. Now all that is left is a mopping up operation and they’ll be able to completely engineer humanity and the globe into whatever they want. The control grid of the mind and of society is almost complete.
The health care costs puzzle can be answered by driving through the doctor’s parking area of a medical facility. How many Chevys do you see ? If you still wonder what the answer is; it is greed.
Dave…
I completely agree with you. I merely threw that out for consideration; but in the end, we lessers aren’t allowed the freedom to even make the voluntary associations.
So, yes, I completely agree with your hopes, and descriptions of today’s circumstances. We, basically all the world, except for those born into these elite families, have the Inalienable right of choice about our associations, removed. Worse, most likely permanently.
Revolution would be the only hope, but truth be said, pretty damn impossible.
First, a comment on Sicko. While making this film Michael Moore solicited people’s stories. He had over 25,000 of them to pick from, and two were mine. It doesn’t matter if they made it into the movie, just that the movie was made, and it told the story well about greed. When “managed care” came in during the early 90’s, they were robbing everyone: the clients,, employers, and medical/mental health professionals. Early research into their “practice” of denying health care was, in their own words, a gold rush. First they blamed the hospitals and put many out of business, then they attacked the primary care doctors, left them with piles of paperwork and much less money (Those mercedes you see in the parking lot belong to the specialists). In psychology/psychiatry they did a good job of destroying the profession and dropped our fees down to what we made in 1980, and this is still true today. Also, a comment on free choice. Forget it. They all have their networks and if you “play ball” with them they keep you, but realistically so many have retired early or changed professions that most of the networks are phantom. They believe the the new graduate is just as good as the doc with 25 years of experience. Which one would you choose to do your heart surgery?
About the Red pill, if you are reading this blog you have taken the reality pill. And it does not feel good. I feel similarly about those still in denial. I can’t be around them much because their inability to think critically is simply absent. I know some are hanging on to the promised American Dream, but there is also a subset of people who subscribe to the “way”….that is cheating, greed, fraud, anything for a buck. I wonder sometimes if we have spawned a generation of people without heart, conscience, and with no sense of fair play. Maybe they sat in front of too many video games. But they are often, unfortunately in business, or working as the slave crew of the debt masters, and they have no real shame.
I know we are in very deep trouble and I don’t really see a way out. I have been thinking for many years now that the media bears a tremendous responsibility for our collective hypnosis. The quality of my life would surely be enhanced by finding other like minded people, who understand how we really live and want to form a community as outside of the system as possible. When I do find people who know, mostly they are waiting for things to crash. They know but they aren’t taking any action. Well, perhaps they are reducing their carbon footprint. If they can do it in Willits, CA, why not other places? I am working on finding a safer place than Florida (weather and water problems) and buying a piece of land somewhere near western NC, GA or TN. Anyone interested? The more people involved they more land we can
purchase. If we wait for more calamities to happen, by then you won’t be travelling under martial law, or with gas prices as $10 a gallon.
RE: In response to Andrew S. Taylor’s article.
It was obvious to me, the average reader, that Mr. Taylor has the expert training to present a certain viewpoint as emotionally and intellectually viable while hiding the real and most important facts of the health care debate.
What am I talking about? I am talking about the same health care system world-wide using the same old and worn out drug treatments that fail to heal. You notice he doesn’t mention healing anywhere in the article. That is because healing isn’t what the health care industry does. Does anyone think health care today anywhere is anything other than drug care that is long term profit based? We are still on fossil fuels, driving combustion engines in cars, cleaning our clothing with the water washing machine. Why? This is because REAL technology on this planet is suppressed; just like free-speech.
It doesn’t matter if they switch us to Blue Cross Social Care or mandatory insurance or whatever ‘cosmetic’ changes are made on the system. It will just look good and mean NOTHING except more ‘profit’ from human suffering for them. More prescribed drugs for the masses and more laws outlawing non-participation.
I am writing today with mercury in my mouth. Wow! Aren’t I advanced? Guess what now they can use high ozone on cavities and they can self heal. Has anyone seen that treatment being offered at large at their local dentist? No of course not, because too much money in the old fill and charge method. Well, now the fillings are plastic; Let us all go oooooo. Does anyone think Michael Moore or anyone else cares about us and wants to give us socialized medicine because they ‘care’?
We need healing care; not health drug dependant care.
Not progressing with healing care technology is a real problem; social engineering is not the answer and will not change the amount of suffering and money the big Pharma companies will suck from all life on this planet. Any changes like socialized health care will be cosmetic to ‘harmonize’ all systems. It will mean nothing in health only more prescriptions for more profit. Nobody anywhere should have to take drugs for health; but the masses will never understand it or believe it true.
katie
One of the underlying causes of our current poor health care is an attitude: BELIEF IN THE AVERAGE.
‘One size fits all’ is not only available at the clothing rack. It’s just about the only approach used today with prescription drugs.
Almost all drugs are meant to be given in doses based on the body weight of the taker. However, almost all drugs taken today in America are not. The amount of medicine in the pill is based on the weight of some average person, 147 pounds??? and anyone who is above or below that weight is systematically getting overdosed or underdosed.
That’s how you end up with the statistics showing
that more Americans are dying of drugs prescribed by physicians than die of car crashes. (And note that the former usually die in a more drawn-out, painful fashion than the latter, while paying through the nose for the poison which will do them in.)
One solution, widely used in Italy, is drugs packaged
as liquids so that physicians can prescribe the number of drops to take at each dosage, based on
your body weight.
Another, of course, is to pass legislation obliging drug companies to supply every drug in at least a dozen dosages, instead of just a few, so that the doctor can prescribe an amount at least close to the correct one required for effective healing, based on the patient’s weight.
That would add a bit to the cost of packaging and handling (not that much — thanks to automatic packaging equipment) but would immediately make a huge difference in healing and survival rates, and would reduce the high rate of prescription deaths in America considerably.
…………………….
To those who maintain that America cannot and will never have socialized health care, I say, look again.
We already have it. It’s called Medicare. So far
it’s limited to people over 65. It’s not perfect, but
it works, and people under Medicare are not often
denied the basic care they need.
All we really have to do is reduce the minimum age of Medicare to age 1, and PRESTO, we are all covered, just as people are today in Canada and Europe.
Tell me that won’t be done… you may be right. Tell me that it can’t be done, and you’re wrong.
[…] Sicko: Framing the debate […]
Recently released statistics on the infant mortality rate in the Western hemisphere yielded an odd conclusions — Cuba’s infant mortality rate, 16 6.0 per 1,000, is now lower than the U.S. infant mortality rate, at 7.2 per 1,000. Given Cuba’s poverty level, its 6.0 rate is very impressive, but is it accurate to say that Cuba now has an infant mortality rate lower than the United States? No.
The problem is that international statistics on infant mortality are helpful in revealing large differences, but when it comes to small differences such as that between Cuba and the United States, often other factors are really behind the numbers.
The primary reason Cuba has a lower infant mortality rate than the United States is that the United States is a world leader in an odd category — the percentage of infants who die on their birthday. In any given year in the United States anywhere from 30-40 percent of infants die before they are even a day old.
Why? Because the United States also easily has the most intensive system of
emergency intervention to keep low birth weight and premature infants alive
in the world. The United States is, for example, one of only a handful countries that keeps detailed statistics on early fetal mortality — the survival rate of infants who are born as early as the 20th week of gestation.
How does this skew the statistics? Because in the United States if an infant is born weighing only 400 grams and not breathing, a doctor will likely spend lot of time and money trying to revive that infant. If the infant does not survive — and the mortality rate for such infants is in excess of 50 percent — that sequence of events will be recorded as a live birth and then a death.
In many countries, however, (including many European countries) such severe medical intervention would not be attempted and, moreover, regardless of whether or not it was, this would be recorded as a fetal death rather than a live birth. That unfortunate infant would never show up in infant mortality statistics.
This is clearly what is happening in Cuba. In the United States about 1.3 percent of all live births are very low birth weight — less than 1,500 grams. In Cuba, on the other hand, only about 0.4 percent of all births are less than 1,500 grams. This is despite the fact that the United States and Cuba have very similar low birth rates (births where the infant weighs less than 2500g). The United States actually has a much better low birth rate than Cuba if you control for multiple births — i.e. the growing number of multiple births in the United States due to technological interventions has resulted in a marked increase in the number of births under 2,500 g.
It is odd if both Cuba and the U.S. have similar birth weight distributions that the U.S. has more than 3 times the number of births under 1,500g, unless there is a marked discrepancy in the way that very low birth weight births are recorded. Cuba probably does much the same thing that many other countries do and does not register births under 1000g. In fact, this is precisely what the World Health Organization itself recommends that for official record keeping purposes, only live births of greater than 1,000g should be included.
The result is that the statistics make it appear as if Cuba’s infant mortality rate is significantly better than the United States’, but in fact what is really being measured in this difference is that the United States takes far more serious (and expensive) interventions among extremely low birth weight and extremely premature infants than Cuba (or much of the rest of the world for that matter) does.
This does not diminish in any way Cuba’s progress on infant mortality, which is one of the few long term improvements that the Cuban state has made, but infant mortality statistics that are that close to one another are often extremely difficult to compare cross-culturally.
I was curious about this last comment, so I tried to locate this “recent study” since Dave provides no citation.
What I did find was this; the exact text of his post, dated February 2002, and authored by someone named Brian Carnell. The link is here:
http://www.skepticism.net/articles/2002/000022.html
So much for “recently released statistics.”
What I was really looking for was a citation which would back up Dave/Brian’s claim that the discrepency is primarily the result of what Dave/Brian says it is - the attempt to save a newborn who would be left to expire elswhere. I have so far been unable to find a study which shows this to be the sole explanation.
I did find this report on ABC, which notes several factors. Premature births (as a result of increased in-vitro procedures and fertility drugs) are included here, but so is the much higher of infant mortality among African-Americans.
Here is the link to that article:
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/GlobalHealth/story?id=1266515