Top of the morning

A comment I wrote recently to the “do nothing” crowd, in a discussion about healthcare, poverty, and access to water

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Left to the free markets, millions (if not billions) of people will find themselves unable to ante up for clean water. Their lack of access will become our collective problem. In my view, we can either plan ahead and develop a wise approach to the issue, or react to the inevitable disparity with what you have so aptly called “water wars.”

We can disagree on the proper course of action, but we cannot disagree on the philosophical underpinning. Your view appears grounded in laissez faire Darwinism. Society as a collective whole has no inherent responsibility for those among us who can’t care for themselves. Government should not play a role in helping those who cannot help themselves. If a person happens to be physically handicapped, mentally handicapped, or just plain unlucky, the LFD response is “tough shit.” If a family doesn’t have the resources to pay the water-piper, the LFD response is “let them die of thirst.” If a whole race happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong century and becomes effectively pressed into economic slavery, well, that’s okay too. In short, LFD argues that the fittest get to survive, even if they survive on the backs of those who are either too stupid or too unlucky to be in the right place at the right time.

In health care, that has a direct implication for mortality. Poor fat smokers, for example, should suffer and die, whereas rich fat smokers should get to buy whatever care they can afford. The gene pool is purged of the lowest level of poverty, leaving another lowest level in its place. The job of survivalists is to stay one step ahead of the bottom of the food chain.

When a miscreant find himself at the door of the emergency room with self-inflicted illness, the LFD response is “let him die.” It’s not our collective responsibility to care for him. When a poor pregnant woman gets serially impregnated by her poor ignorant husband, the LFD response is “sorry kids … you die too. All the better to purge the pool.”

This is the foundation of libertarian thought, which leads directly to “might makes right.” If one country or one people or one community has enough power to command water resources, either by force or by economic strength, they win. Until the others rise up in violence, as they have in so many revolutions, to claim their own share of the bounty.

I wonder how you’d react to if a few thousand rotting corpses were lying around your town, with no “government” around to clean up the bodies. I wonder how you’d react to being so thirsty you couldn’t think straight, with access to water blocked by mercenaries hired by Bechtel with machine guns.

Welcome to utopia.

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Am I wrong? Isn’t this the inevitable takeaway, the sordid underbelly, of prosperity politics?

James – Unfortunately, you are very correct and perhaps that is what scares us the most, knowing that unless we move quickly and decisively to fix the broken Health Care System then it will get so much worse. We already have thousands dying from lack of health care, it could easily be millions. I have seen photo’s of some of the Free Health Care Events where medical professionals volunteer their services in tents for whoever can get there. I applaud those events and those medical professionals. But when I see those photo’s, it greatly saddens me to see that this is what we have become, a nation where the only access to health care for so many people is what they can find at free events held in tents. It reminds me of the photo’s I have seen of third world countries where medical volunteers are working on the ground in places like Africa to provide basic health care. As much as I applaud those events and those people, it should not be this way, not here in America. It also reinforces my belief that we have to have Health Care Reform with a National Public Health Plan now, or in just a few years we could experience so much worse than what we are experiencing now.

it would be easier and more timely to first expand Medicare to include those 55 and older ONE YEAR FROM NOW. A lot of individuals and small biz canot wait til 2013.

Greetings,

@James
I agree with you.

We consider ourselves “superior” to Neanderthals, yet they took care of those who were unable to fend for themselves.

Can we truly do any less?

@Kimberly
I feel for you and your concerns over your family’s well-being.

This is what happens when politicians are more concerned with the “special-interests’ interest” rather than that of their constituents’.

@Single Payer Action
I’ve wondered why no-one thought to introduce single-payer healthcare for US Veterans? [Free healthcare for (retired) service personnel.]

No-one would dare have questioned such a move without appearing to demean the Veterans’ service and sacrifice.

It would be one way to have tried it out and worked out the kinks before extending it to others.

Given North Carolina’s considerable Veteran population, it would have been the perfect place to start and see how it worked. It could then have been extended from NC Veterans to other North Carolinians who risked their lives – fire service and law enforcement personnel, for example.

In time, depending on how effective it was at maintaining cost-effective healthcare, it could have been rolled-out to all North Carolinians.

Kindest regards,

James Burke

PS: I’m not American – I’m Irish, and, like most in the world, have been following these events with interest.