It's not a charity though. It's about providing a minimum service for people. Even with "free" health care in the UK, it's not free (it's paid for via National Insurance taxes and many facets still have additional costs (prescriptions, regular dressings, dentistry, etc) albeit often highly subsidised.
Surely it's better to have a subsidised minimum service than to rely on charities?
And more over, if your objection is purely because you don't want to be told that you should look after your fellow Americans, then that's either a really sad representation of how little respect Americans have for their kin, or the facet of a childish mentality where kids deliberately disobey their parents because they like to test their boundaries. Either way, it's just a terrible attitude to have.
Government-sponsored monopolies produce economy-wrecking effects. National health systems are that.
How to fix the American health system in several easy steps, from a governmental perspective:
* Stop all current governmental subsidies
* Outlaw medical insurance
* Purchase expensive medical equipment, and most importantly the means of production of such equipment, and resell to new medical enterprises at a reasonable price (most likely resulting in a severe loss)
* Provide a matching program on qualifying doctors' medical school debt
* Radically reform and/or remove medical licensing programs to focus on apprenticeship more than academics
* Reform pharmaceutical patent protections to allow drugs to proliferate freely
This will get us to a ground-up, self-sustainable medical system that is based on ordinary rules of supply and demand, without giving a blank check to the administrators of the current system, which is already irrevocably corrupted by paper-pushers. The whole thing just has to be torn down and started over.
In an ideal world I'd probably agree with you. But what you're proposing is even less likely to happen (particularly the pharmaceutical patent reform) that a national health system.
> Surely it's better to have a subsidised minimum service than to rely on charities?
No. Charities have to maintain efficiency because they are not subsidized, if they want to continue to operate they need to prove to contributors that their contribution is going to the cause to the extent that a market critical mass of contributors cares to know.
> if your objection is purely because you don't want to be told that you should look after your fellow Americans, then that's either a really sad representation of how little respect Americans have for their kin, or the facet of a childish mentality where kids deliberately disobey their parents because they like to test their boundaries. Either way, it's just a terrible attitude to have.
Effigies should only be burned in street protests when there are teeming masses to rile up. They are less effective in print.
> No. Charities have to maintain efficiency because they are not subsidized, if they want to continue to operate they need to prove to contributors that their contribution is going to the cause to the extent that a market critical mass of contributors cares to know.
Having worked for a number of charities, I can promise you that not all charities are efficient. In fact some are even worse for wasting money than government bodies.
What's more, most people pay even less attention to just how efficiently their money is put to use in charities because: 1) it's considered bad etiquette to question charitable organisations, 2) it's assumed that charities are full of volunteers working for free on a shoe string budget out of the goodness of their hearts.
The reality is, many charities are run as businesses - with high paid salaries and paid expenses just like any other business. Obviously I don't want to tar all charities with the same brush, however my experiences certainly call BS to your generalisations.
> Effigies should only be burned in street protests when there are teeming masses to rile up. They are less effective in print.
That doesn't make the slightest bit of sense. I'm assuming you're objecting to my comment, but given the brevity of your previous post and the context of my comment that preceded it; it's hardly surprising that I took your reply to mean what I suggested it may have meant.
However with you now expanding on your point, I now realise that your lack of comradeship is based on blissful ignorance rather than pure selfishness (though I suspect there's an element of selfishness driving the lack of motivation to investigate this topic otherwise you'd be advocating people giving up their free time caring for the less fortunate rather than complaining about who gets your money)
> Surely it's better to have a subsidised minimum service than to rely on charities?
See, it depends on who you are. If you are a well-connected member of the political class you prever to give charity because it's you who directs the flow of money. If you are part of the unwashed masses you prefer a subsidy, because there is the democratic process involved, and experts in public policy and the general public might have influence what is done with the funds.
Surely it's better to have a subsidised minimum service than to rely on charities?
And more over, if your objection is purely because you don't want to be told that you should look after your fellow Americans, then that's either a really sad representation of how little respect Americans have for their kin, or the facet of a childish mentality where kids deliberately disobey their parents because they like to test their boundaries. Either way, it's just a terrible attitude to have.