First, the important stuff. A new, updated oilpatch dives list for your enjoyment...
http://openchoke.blogs.com/oilpatchdiners/
Second, you'll be happy to know that I have figured out how to solve the US healthcare crisis. STEP 1. We force all doctors and nurses to work for free under threat of prison, STEP 2. We force all US pharmaceutical companies to give us free drugs, and we force them to continue doing expensive research, again, under threat of prison for its officers, and STEP 3. We force random citizens to give their homes to use as health care hospices. This policy stuff isn't difficult at all! The hard part is marketing the plan to make it appear more palatable to the American voter. Of course, that, in a nutshell, is the plan being marketed right now, except instead of forcing doctors to work for free, they propose making all rich people pay for it by spreading the "work for free" part over more rich folks other than doctors in Step 1. In Step 2, well, it is about what it is. Nobody likes corporations, so we can force them to do anything. Step 3, well, instead of random people, again, those that make more money, or people that provide jobs to others are targeted preferentially... maybe not to give up their house, but forced to give up part of their house payment so that we can build really expensive "hospices".
I was having a conversation with a lawyer friend of mine about his belief that everyone has a "right to healthcare". I begged to disgree, although clearly he is in the majority in this belief. I have this peculiar notion that a "right" is not something to be bought or sold, or can depend on someone else to provide. I do not have a "right" to your money, your spouse, your goods, your services, your working interest, or your time. If you want to give freely of these things to me, it seems to me that you either are performing an act of charity or grace. Why do we think healthcare providers are expempt from this logic? Of course, I have also learned recently that people feel they have a right to "low cost gasoline". A right to not be subject to the vagaries of "supply and demand". If only the pesky Chinese and that Mother Nature bitch would just listen! What do you consider a "right"? What have you been taught constitutes a "right" in our advanced, highly educated and thoughtful society?
Certainly, we can ask healthcare providers to provide these things for free, thus privileging us with their charity or grace, or we can ask the more well off to pay for the less well off, thus having them perform selfless acts of charity or grace, or we can force any one group to provide it to any other group we so choose at the point of a gun, or a court, thus performing... what? Certainly not charity or grace... maybe... a selfish act of....theft? Charity and Grace have a way of disappearing when we begin forcing, or socializing the solutions to problems. An example is the level of individual giving compared to our more socialistic European brethren...
http://engram-backtalk.blogspot.com/2007/06/charitable-giving-by-americans.html
I sure would like to see a market solution... some Henry Ford for healthcare, except healthcare is so munged up with regulation that a groundbreaker would be so tangled in good intentioned red tape they couldn't even get started.
Of course, being a human being, I want something for nothing... nothing meaning the someone else pays for it. Here is an excellent discussion of the dangers of "something for nothing"...
http://www.intellectualconservative.com/2006/12/26/charity-vs-the-welfare-state/
Since Roosevelt, the Democratic Party has built its platform on the foundation of Force Someone Else To Pay.
Q. What do you call a mugger? A. A free market democrat!
Another Free Market Democrat idea... Privatize income redistribution, known also by that feel good euphemism "economic justice" (see, this is the marketing part of policy programs I talked about in the beginning of this post...) by decriminalizing theft and kidnapping! Hell, if we get a gang together to mug the poor victim, we can vote on whether to take her purse. Then we have a victory for democracy to boot! Yeehaw! If she resists, remember she is just being a hateful, bigoted bitch. Or a republican.
That's what's fun about bein' a democrat... take a dollar from the rich, give a nickle to the poor, and keep 95 cents to grow "this thing of ours". The thrill of the mug. Amazing how many of the ideals and platforms of todays democratic party are embodied in the practices of the "criminally disenfranchised". No wonder a recent study showed that 77+% of all felons are democrats!
http://dwb.thenewstribune.com/news/local/story/4850294p-4452879c.html
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