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Friday, March 26, 2010

My thoughts on health-care reform.

Thursday night I watched Stossel and I watched him convince a young child that he was going to pay for his future entitlements. The healthcare and the social security.

We know from watching John Stossel over the years from ABC & FOX that he's got some unconventional solutions to many of our common problems. It seemed appropriate that he takes aim at the recently signed into law health care reform.

Watching this program it hits me why some of the people we saw in Andrew Marcus' video are woefully ignorant of what health care reform means. I mean we heard economists discuss this issue in terms of economics and I can imagine there are people who would fall asleep at such a presentation. It can certainly be dry to talk about all the numbers in the health care reform as signed into law.

Surely, numbers have been used to justify either support or opposition. It just seems that many argue for it philosophically. Many who oppose it argue that this mandate is unconstitutional no one should be forced to have health insurance and that perhaps the federal government has overstepped their bounds on this particular law.

On the other hand, like those two ladies in the Marcus video, this law can be justified by saying that in those nations with universal healthcare the citizens are much happier. However, they came to that conclusion. Let's go further though.

In this debate which may well have raged for years before Obama and Congress got together on this issue in 2009-10 I'm sure many have argued that health care should boil down to dollars & cents. It should be provided for and at that it shouldn't take dollars & cents to gain access to it. Also to make this possible, it should be run by the government besides it's done in Canada, Britain, and France.

In the long run, I don't believe forcing people to buy insurance or otherwise a government control of our healthcare system is in our nation's best interest. Competition as far as health insurance is key and for those who don't have health insurace hopefully there will be a solution for them. Perhaps more clinics operated by private entities is an answer.

Don't look here for the answer because I can't say I have done enough research into this issue. What I will say is that if government runs everything then it won't be run very well. At that it may cost more than it's worth.

Of course I say this knowing that a person's health should not be subject to dollars and cents, but I recognize that it is a reality. At the same time I know that health care can not be treated as a free resource.

3 comments:

Jim Baxter said...

Consider: The missing element in every human 'solution' is an accurate definition of the creature.

Human is earth's Choicemaker. Psalm 25:12 He is by nature and nature's God a
creature of Choice - and of Criteria. Psalm 119:30,173 His unique and
definitive characteristic is, and of Right ought to be, the natural
foundation of his environments, institutions, and respectful relations to
his fellow-man. Thus, he is oriented to a Freedom whose roots are in the
Order of the universe. selah

That human institution which is structured on the principle, "...all men are
endowed by their Creator with...Liberty...," is a system with its roots in
the natural Order of the universe. The opponents of such a system are
necessarily engaged in a losing contest with nature and nature's God.
Biblical principles are still today the foundation under Western
Civilization and the American way of life. To the advent of a new season we
commend the present generation and the "multitudes in the valley of
decision."

Let us proclaim it. Behold!
2010 AD: The Season of Generation-Choicemaker Joel 3:14

No one is smarter than their criteria.

semper fidelis

Jim Baxter said...

Each individual human being possesses a unique, highly developed, and
sensitive perception of variety. Thus aware, man is endowed with a natural
capability for enacting internal mental and external physical selectivity.
Quantitative and qualitative choice-making thus lends itself as the superior
basis of an active intelligence.

Human is earth's Choicemaker. His title describes his definitive and
typifying characteristic. Recall that his other features are but vehicles of
experience intent on the development of perceptive awareness and the
following acts of decision and choice. Note that the products of man cannot
define him for they are the fruit of the discerning choicemaking process and
include the cognition of self, the utility of experience, the development of
value measuring systems and language, and the acculturation of
civilization.

The arts and the sciences of man, as with his habits, customs, and
traditions, are the creative harvest of his perceptive and selective powers.
Creativity, the creative process, is a choice-making process. His articles,
constructs, and commodities, however marvelous to behold, deserve neither
awe nor idolatry, for man, not his contrivance, is earth's own highest
expression of the creative process.

Human is earth's Choicemaker. The sublime and significant act of choosing
is, itself, the Archimedean fulcrum upon which man levers and redirects the
forces of cause and effect to an elected level of quality and diversity.
Further, it orients him toward a natural environmental opportunity, freedom,
and bestows earth's title, The Choicemaker, on his singular and plural brow.

No one is smarter than their crteria.

semper fidelis

Jim Baxter said...

Deterministic systems, ideological symbols of abdication by man from his
natural role as earth's Choicemaker, inevitably degenerate into
collectivism; the negation of singularity, they become a conglomerate
plural-based system of measuring human value. Blunting an awareness of
diversity, blurring alternatives, and limiting the selective creative
process, they are self-relegated to a passive and circular regression.

Tampering with man's selective nature endangers his survival for it would
render him impotent and obsolete by denying the tools of variety,
individuality, perception, criteria, selectivity, and progress. Coercive
attempts produce revulsion, for such acts are contrary to an indeterminate
nature and nature's indeterminate off-spring, man the Choicemaker.

Until the oppressors discover that wisdom only just begins with a respectful
acknowledgment of The Creator, The Creation, and The Choicemaker, they will
be ever learning but never coming to a knowledge of the truth. The rejection of
Creator-initiated standards relegates the mind of man to its own primitive,
empirical, and delimited devices. It is thus that the human intellect cannot
ascend and function at any level higher than the criteria by which it
perceives and measures values.

Additionally, such rejection of transcendent criteria self-denies man the
vision and foresight essential to decision-making for survival and
progression. He is left, instead, with the redundant wreckage of expensive
hind sight, including human institutions characterized by averages,
mediocrity, and regression.

Humanism, mired in the circular and mundane egocentric predicament, is
ill-equipped to produce transcendent criteria. Evidenced by those who do not
perceive superiority and thus find themselves beset by the shifting winds of
the carnal-ego; i.e., moods, feelings, desires, appetites, etc., the mind
becomes subordinate: a mere device for excuse-making and rationalizing
self-justification.

The carnal-ego rejects criteria and self-discipline for such instruments are
tools of the mind and the attitude. The appetites of the flesh have no need
of standards for at the point of contention standards are perceived as
alien, restrictive, and inhibiting. Yet, the very survival of our physical
nature itself depends upon a maintained sovereignty of the mind and of the
spirit.

No one is smarter than their criteria.

semper fidelis

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