According to the U.N. figures, life expectancy in the United States is 78 years; in the United Kingdom, it’s 79 — yay, go socialized health care! On the other hand, in Albania, where the entire population chain-smokes and the health-care system involves swimming to Italy, life expectancy is still 71 years — or about where America was a generation or so back. Once you get childhood mortality under control, and observe basic hygiene and lifestyle precautions, the health “system” is relatively marginal. One notes that, even in Somalia, which still has high childhood mortality, not to mention a state of permanent civil war, functioning government has entirely collapsed and yet life expectancy has increased from 49 to 55. Maybe if government were to collapse entirely in Washington, our life expectancy would show equally remarkable gains. Just thinking outside the box here.People's selective blindness on this issue is amazing. Your most committed fan-of-government Obama voter will, like any other person with enough functioning brain cells to guide a fork from plate to mouth, carp endlessly about the ineptness of the DMV, the inefficiencies of the Post Office, the cronyism of the zoning board, and yet they will then turn around and clamor for this same witless behemoth to be placed in charge of their doctor's office too. What was that definition of insanity, again?
(H/T to New Paltz Journal.)
12 comments:
They do such a good job with road construction and maintaining all the other infrastructure, why wouldn't we want them in charge of everything else?
I'm just taking a wild stab at this, but it appears to me that wealth increases the average life span more dramatically than any other factor.
Wealth begins with clean water, plenty of wholesome food, and being able to stay clean inside and out of disease vectors. Those are the first things people buy when they get the ability to.
I always remind "Universal Healthcarers" of the #9 per gallon gasoline in England, none of which is imported.
And then I remind them that the Government runs the Army, the CIA, the DEA, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib...
What bugs me the most is the highly coordinated PR campaign that they've obviously been working for the past few months, maybe even before the election. "These aren't the droids you're looking for ... "
I especially enjoy engaging those who believe that they own their own body and dimly remember that the cornerstone of roe v. wade was privacy, specifically medical privacy.
I ask them what happens to medical privacy when the government takes over the whole medical shebang?
They always.. always drop the thread or change the issue.
Rarely do I ever get to further engage them with the historical fact that they used those "we swear they are private" census records to round up those of Japanese decent during WW2.
Some time ago I remember reading some dipshit piece about how the Nordic peoples are now producing males with an average height of like 6'2" or something. When asked by the pinhead who wrote the story, a doctor couldn't get it out of his mouth fast enough that the reason for the US (the question posed by the pinhead) having a significantly shorter male population was our lack of socialized medicine.
I almost boarded a plane to Scandinavia so that I could personally deliver the news to him that we here aren't all white, blonde and blue-eyed, and that if his people could actually get out and see the sun once in a while, they'd realize that some on this rock are quite short, while others are quite tall, and that selective breeding and environment will eventually produce a certain morphology.
And just think, the stupid sonofabitch is a doctor over there, and he obviously didn't know that. Makes me feel REALLY good about the prospects of getting that shit over here. How 'bout you?
There was a survey taken a few months ago stating that people who smoke cost the insurance companies less money than people who were health-conscious, lived longer and sucked more from the insurance companies' teets.
I keep telling my coworkers ( I work for the city)
"You know the guys who can't get us insulated butt connectors? who run out of light bulbs and air filters? They're gonna be responsible for ordering stints, gauze and thread for your heart attack."
and noting the backstabbing nature of the city.
"you need a liver transplant, if a random group of five people around here were to vote on the issue would you live or die?"
or the management version.
Do you know what it'll take to get you a liver?! we've gotta get a dissident, type him, test him for disease, drag you both to the hospital, shoot him in the head and give you his liver. The bullet alone will cost a buck!"
And did you notice Steyn's comment that the healthcare system is not only the largest single employer in England, it's larger than any other employer in the Eurozone? That's a lot of add-on tax-dollars for salaries.
Much of our present $$$ problems with Medicare comes from the 130,000 pages of regulations. Think of the new bureaucrats to deal with the new paperwork.
Art
It's a good snark. I'm not sure why the Post Office is so maligned though. My experience at least, having used it a lot over the years in business, has been pretty good. They're not quite as good as the private carriers, but they do use UPS and FedEx a lot after all. -- Lyle
This is not the definition of insanity, this is the definition of crimestop.
CRIMESTOP - Orwell's definition: "The faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. In short....protective stupidity."
As per the Moslem peril Steyn quotes, how about the Republican Peril? Google it up, it's real.
Woman most likely to have an abortion? Non-white on welfare.
Demographic group with the highest birth rate in America? College educated, married white women.
Birth rate for Republican women, 2.4 per lady.
Birth rate for Democratic women, 1.4.
Comrades, the only way we can save this great democracy from the bloated (and fertile) plutocrats of the right is to either increase subsidies to welfare women or legalize large numbers of "undocumented workers".
As soon as they have to be paid full American worker's wages and benefits, they'll be displaced by new "undocumenteds", and forced onto welfare, where they will have to vote with the progressive elements of our people's republic.
Serious for a moment. Most married women in this country vote Republican, the great majority of unmarried women Democrat. And JFK was the last Dem to win a majority of the white male vote.
When there is no man in the house, Uncle Sam becomes Daddy, and that's how Mommy votes.
Throw in the anti-Americanism of the big coastal cities, where people are still not assimilated a century after their families arrived. All they know of America is the cliches of Flyover Country and Inbred Hillbillies.
When dealing with Democrats, we're dealing with angry, spoiled, ignorant adolescents who think that Daddy Government will always be there to bail them out.
Basic economics and history are beyond them. At best they think in simplistic soundbites.
The demographics of Demoncrats are frightening. Birth rate one third lower than death rate, virtually all the welfare recipients in the country, lots of upper income people, predominantly from non-manufacturing, non producing jobs, and nobody in the middle except some low level bureaucrats.
There was a survey on MSNBC a few months ago, showing most young Republicans had no problem with the idea of a Democratic roommate. Conversely, most Democrats were enraged at the thought of a Republican sharing their quarters.
Anderson Cooper had a female Democratic operative on his show who said that, although she despised conservative politics, she only slept with Republican men. They got right down to business, did a good job, and left.
The Democratic men were always angry about something, wanted to debate it and achieve some kind of consensus,and, great line, were "usually worried about whether the condoms were biodegradeable".
It is a sick, dying, sociopathic culture, as completely hostile to American style romantic individualism as anything to be found in Europe. It belongs there, and is indistinguishable from what is found there.
Most of the urban oriented groups that immigrated to the U.S. after the closing of the west had large elements that settled in immigrant ghettoes in our larger cities. They never became Americans, they brought urban Europe with them.
I was born in New York City, and I still enjoy the hell out of visiting there for two or three days at a time, two or three times a year.
But it wouldn't bother me one bit if I had to show a passport when I checked in to The Manhattan Club. I enjoy San Francisco when I'm out there too, but it's not America.
These are the people who run the media and the educational system. These are the people we let shape our children's lives.
Shame on us. People, how hard is it to buy selectively, based on content of the shows we see? If Brand A is sponsoring a show we dislike, why not send our Brand B wrappers to the sponsor?
We,not they, generate most of the real wealth in this country. We can strangle the bastards without a shot being fired. All it would take would be a little organization and effort.
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