Whose Needs

Whenever we hear the case for a government program, we hear sad stories of individuals in distress.  The argument goes that a new government program would be the answer to the person’s problems.  In reality though, there never is a program or a system that fits everyone.  There are always exceptions.  The other reality is that in a country where the government has a program for nearly every problem, the individual hard cases are still hard cases.  They are hard on the program, on the government and on the taxpayers.  Therefore in some European countries, caregivers are being taught they have a responsibility to the society as a whole that is greater than their responsibility to their patient or client.  This really sets professions on their ears when their very reason for existence is healing and helping.  Its creating an identity crisis of mammoth proportions when the healers are told that healing may not be in society’s best interests.  The great irony is that individual hard cases which supposedly justified massive governmental intervention have been the same cases that governments now don’t want to treat, pleading hardship to the society.  There will always be a conflict between individual needs and societal needs.  You can’t balance on the knife edge between them.  It always requires facing up to the society’s ultimate values: the sacred value of each individual life, or the sacred value of the society not to overstretch its economy.

What Socialism Does to Hospitals

In all the healthcare debates, my prayer is that whatever we end up with, we will have something that glorifies God in our treatment of His children.  All humans need to be treated with respect as God’s much loved children.  They need kindness, dignity, compassion, and to be served with excellence.  In America I have volunteered and worked in several nonprofit hospitals.  Most of them were faith based organizations.  I saw a lot of people get first rate, compassionate care, and I know they never paid a cent for their care.  Thats how non-profit hospitals work.  They charge for the care they provide, but at the end of the day those who have no insurance or inadequate insurance end up paying according to what they can afford.  Many times that is nothing.  The hospitals write off the difference as part of their non-profit status.  What keeps them in business is the full pay patients who either have “good” insurance or pay a portion of their bills themselves because they can afford to do so.  What is likely to happen if we have a single payer system like England had for years, is these hospitals will be driven out of business and taken over by the government.  If they are government run, everything will be done with cost savings in mind.  And thats what is wrong with socialized healthcare, such as I lived with for years.  The care given is the minimum mandated by the national government.  The care is not based on values of love, compassion, kindness, dignity and respect, but on budgets and mandates. 

In this country some non-profit healthcare institutions rely on large donations for some of their revenue.   In a socialized system, the high, high taxes leave much less left over for donation.  After having more than half one’s income paid out in taxes, people tend to be in a less generous mood, even if they can still afford some additional generosity.  And lastly, since things are run by a government bureaucracy, its all about the good of the masses, not the good of the individual.  Read about the debates in England right now.  Doctors are being encouraged to consider first the good of society over the good of their patients.

Whereas some insurance companies treat people like statistics, at least the hospitals have maintained the ability to be more personal.  A good bit of that is lost if the hospital is a government hospital.  There is always a lot more mandate than money, and the stresses on the hospital show in the treatment of patients.  So, whatever the United States decides it wants to do, my prayer is the outcome will be something pleasing to our Heavenly Father, who is so concerned for persons, He knows the number of hairs on our heads and every tear we shed.  May we as a society be compassionate and kind, not a further coarsened culture.

A Prayer About Healthcare

Lord, we know you are in control, and you influence kings and governors for your purposes.  We approach you at this significant time in our nation’s history and ask you to impress your thoughts on our congress as they make decisions about healthcare reform.  Open the eyes of our lawmakers to writings of our forefathers.  Let them consider the things that made this country great.  Please let their decisions be compassionate, let them honor and dignify all human life, let them give dignity to all persons and let them honor our human rights.  Don’t allow them to make government so strong over us that it becomes our god, for whenever government has taken the place of God, it has always become a cruel tyranny.

Health Care Retort

I am just amazed at the media feeding frenzy over the health care town hall meetings.  People ARE angry.  But instead of analyzing why people might be angry, as the media usually analyzes the “why” of everything, they are in lockstep with insulting the people who are protesting.  Can you imagine the media insulting people who protested the war in Iraq, or anything else?

 

I think people at these meetings are afraid, because in the past,  the president has favored a single payer system similar to the NHS in England. Perhaps these bills aren’t yet a single payer system, but will possibly be leading to one if the private sector has to support yet more government underfunding and it bankrupts them. Our local hospitals are today in serious financial crisis because of medicare and medicaid cuts. They keep seeing patients, but are running out of funds to make up the difference between what the government pays and what it costs to treat these patients.

I lived with the NHS for six years, and could tell first person stories of what I saw and experienced in our local community. Yes, care is much more scarce and of lower quality. Taxes are much higher. Eventually, a two-tiered system developed because the NHS basically broke down. Its on the verge of breakdown again. It is this kind of a system people fear.

 

Instead of looking at these issues, the media is labeling and insulting the protesters.  Its a media retort instead of a report

Vermont’s “Gay Marriage”

What I really never hear anymore is a discussion on the reasons why the government got involved in marriage in the first place.  After all, we see that marriage historically was usually a religious and family ceremony.  The state’s interest has always been in its future.  It is concerned with the generation to come and the continuation of the society and culture.  The state’s interest has been protection for children by binding fathers to their responsibility to them, and protection for mothers who do make economic sacrifices in order to have children.  Since homosexuals cannot bear children TOGETHER, the state has no interest in their marriage beyond some kind of recognition and a sharing of whatever financial advantages the state confers on married couples.  Considering the financial advantages are supposed to result in offspring who become citizens of the state, the financial advantages which go to homosexual couples result in nothing for the state at all.

Homosexual couples can and do adopt children.  However, they adopt children who will consequently never know what it is to have both a mother and a father.  We already have a couple generation’s experience with what happens when children are raised without fathers.  The societal breakdown is so great that if anything, the state might consider even greater incentives to heterosexual marriage in these communities.  But to grant the incentives of marriage to a couple who can neither produce children nor provide mother and father or even grandmother and grandfather to children, is simply an investment with no return on the part of the state, however “fair” it may appear.

Cultural Disintegration

I haven’t written a blog in weeks.  I’ve just been the literary equivalent of “struck speechless”.  I was summoned for jury duty early this month, and selected for a jury to hear a murder trial.  The defendant was charged with second degree murder in the death of a girlfriend’s 22 month old son.  It was the most eye-opening, horrible, horrific case I’ve ever heard, and I’m still having dreams about it.  Its one thing to read about our society’s pathology and quite another to see it up close and personal.

The defendant was a 28 year old man who has four illegitimate children by four different mothers.  He hasn’t been the ideal father.  His oldest daughter has been raised by his mother because the baby’s mother was only 14 at the time she gave birth.  That child is now with her natural mother, who has finished school and is able to support her.  His second child has been raised partly by his mother and partly by the baby’s natural mother.  The third child is with its natural mother.  The fourth child is being raised by relatives because its mother is in jail.  According to the defendant, “I don’t pay bills, I don’t do housework, I don’t take care of kids.  Its not my responsibility.”

The defendant really lives everywhere and nowhere.  He has usually had more than one girlfriend at a time, friends, and always the fallback of his mother’s home.  He might show up at a girlfriend’s house at midnight and stay the night, or stay over with a friend, or sleep at his mother’s house.  He truly has no address.  Sometimes he has a job, and sometimes he doesn’t.  He has been arrested several times for assault against a girlfriend.

The child who was murdered belonged to one of his girlfriends.  The baby had been reported to Child Protective Services twice before, and the cases were closed for “invalid report.”  There is currently a lawsuit against CPS, who truly let this baby down.  By the time of the second report, the child had broken ribs, cigarette burns, numerous bruises and welt marks.  At the time of the second report, the defendant was “in a relationship” with the baby’s mother…whatever that meant, as his relationships were clearly not monogamous.  It was reported, however, that he disciplined the baby by hitting it with a belt–as young as 18 months!!

The baby’s mother hasn’t exactly a stellar record, either.  She was involved in slugging matches with the baby’s natural father when the baby was newborn, and he moved out by the time the baby was a couple months old.  Mom worked at various times and at various jobs, and whenever she was at work she had multiple backup babysitters–neighbors of all ages and backgrounds, relatives, numerous cousins, friends, etc.  Some of the homes appeared ok, some were “trap houses” where various illegal activities were taking place.  The only stability was the paternal grandma who took the baby for 48-72 hours whenever she had days off from her job.  She kept the baby with her overnight during those times.  She was one of the reporters of the child abuse.   It appeared that the baby’s mom took him off milk at 5 months of age and he had rickets, as well as all the evidences of overt abuse noted above.

The morning the baby’s mom left her baby with the defendant, she was going to a doctor’s appointment because she believed she was pregnant with the defendant’s baby.  According to the medical examiner, the baby died of either a massive blow or crushing injury to the abdomen, a couple of hours after the mother left.  What the jury couldn’t know was whether the defendant was simply angry at being left with the baby and manhandled it, or if he was engaged in deliberate child abuse.  The baby had all the usual marks seen before as well as some recent head traums and cerebral edema.  There was confusion about who was abusing the baby, exactly when the abuse took place  and the possibility that  more than one person had been abusing it.  Anyway, the defendant was convicted of manslaughter, the baby’s mom was convicted earlier of child abuse and serving a five year sentence, and the baby, of course, is dead.

What still haunts my dreams is the unconcern expressed by both the baby’s mother, and the defendant.  They were like hollow, unfeeling people.  As a fellow juror noted, she had also grown up in poverty, but this was a culture shock to her, because in her day poor people loved their kids.

Both the defendant and the baby’s mother grew up without knowing their father, and indeed lived in homes where the male influence was either absent or revolving.  In the case of the baby’s mother, she didn’t know either of her parents, and was very much the same kind of  “village child” her dead baby had been.

When I was in college I studied sociology, psychology and criminal justice.  What we learned over and over was that children need stability and two parents.  The face of poverty is most often a female headed household.  Children with no dad are lower achievers, and children who grow up in homes with revolving men are more likely to experience violence, and be violent themselves.  I doubt this information is any less true today.

Soon after the trial was over, I saw a headline stating for the first time the majority of babies born in America are born to unwed mothers.  God help us!!!!

Prayer for the Nation

I came across something I think is very appropriate for this time in history.  Peter Marshall was chaplain of the U.S. Senate at the end of World War II.  It was a very difficult time for the economy, with many people out of work, a huge national debt, and the nation trying to rebuild the destruction in Europe.  This could have been written today.  I hope our president is a man of prayer although I don’t see an indication of it.  I hope he is praying for the wisdom and character he needs to lead this nation.  Surely, we need to pray for him and for the country.

Prayers for the Nation by Senate chaplain Peter Marshall  1947-1949

Our Father, when we long for life without trials and work, without difficulties, remind us that oaks grow strong in contrary winds and diamonds are made under pressure.  With stout hearts may we see in every calamity an opportunity and not give way to the pessimist that sees in every opportunity a calamity.

Lord, when we are wrong, make us willing to change.  And when we are right, make us easy to live with.

Let us not be frightened by the problems that confront us, but rather give thee thanks that thou hast matched us with this hour.  May we resolve, God helping us, to be part of the answer, and not part of the problem.

Save us from hotheads that would lead us to act foolishly, and from cold feet that would keep us from acting at all.

Help us, our Father, to show other nations an America to imitate–not the America of loud music, self-seeking indulgence, and love of money, but the America that loves fair play, honest dealing, straight talk, real freedom, and faith in God.  Make us to see that it cannot be done as long as we are content to be coupon clippers on the original investment made by our forefathers.  Give us faith in God and love for our fellow men, that we may have something to deposit on which the young people of today can draw interest tomorrow.

Help us, O Lord, when we want to do the right thing, but know not what it is.  But help us most when we know perfectly well what we ought to do, and do not want to do it.

Lord Jesus, thou who art the way, the truth and the life, hear us as we pray for the truth that shall make men free.  Teach us that liberty is not only to be loved, but also to be lived.  Liberty is too precious a thing to be buried in books.  It costs too much to be hoarded.  Make us to see that our liberty is not the right to do as we please, but the opportunity to please to do what is right.

Deliver us, we pray thee, from the tyranny of trifles.  Teach us how to listen to the prompting of thy Spirit, and thus save us from floundering in indecision that wastes time, subtracts from our peace, divides our efficiency, and multiplies our troubles.”

The Fox is in charge of the Henhouse

During the great depression a lot of legislation was created which provided government oversight for banks, Wall street, the insurance industry, employee benefits etc.  It provided balance.  Government was watching the capitalist system and preventing excesses from ruining the economy.  However, no one was watching the government, whether it was over interfering, or not doing its job at all.  Rather than make the government into a better watchdog,  Mr. Obama now seems to want the government to just take over all these things outright.  This little old grandma is wondering, who will provide oversight of the government to prevent its excesses from ruining the economy?  Its just growing into a huge, bungling behemoth. Instead of a watchdog protecting the henhouse from the fox, we just put the fox in charge of the henhouse, and there is no longer anyone able to be in charge of the fox.

Getting Sick in Europe

One wonderful thing about getting older is I get to write about history that I actually saw and experienced.  As I look at our country, the United States, rushing in certain directions, I am both amazed and amused to find such ignorance of lessons already learned.

In the rush to “universal healthcare”, including the new federal electronic surveillance of medical records, we are truly seeing “change” of a magnitude Americans have never before experienced.  I know where we are going, both as a national economy and as a nationalized health system.  Within a few years we will be where Britain was in the 1980s.  I actually lived in Britain in the 1980s, and while I could quote lots of statistics, they are available other places online.  Because I lived it, I can tell you stories of what the reality looked like.

My first experience was touring the local hospital on a public information day.  We toured the Obstetrics unit, and as the ward sister (nurse) enthusiastically spoke of mothers being able to labor on the floor if they wished, I looked at the floor.  It looked as if it had not been mopped in weeks.  It was literally muddy.  Next came the emergency room.  It wasn’t full, with an overflowing waiting room, which I found interesting.  Later on I would learn why it was so relatively quiet.

I made friends with an elderly neighbor.  She had cataracts, and could barely get around.  I decided to help her with her grocery shopping.  Turns out she was on a two year waiting list for cataract surgery.  Once her cataracts became “ripe”,she went on the list.  Trouble is, she was quite blind before her name came up.  After her first cataract surgery was complete, she waited another two years to have the second eye done.  She eventually found a lump in her breast.  She was put on a list to see a surgeon and waited several months for an appointment.  She eventually had a radical mastectomy, but died of her cancer shortly afterward.  I will never know whether seeing the surgeon earlier would have made a difference, but the attitude of her caregivers was she was elderly and had a good life, so what.

I lived across from a children’s playground.  One day a child fell out of the equipment and obviously had a broken arm.  She was in shock and vomiting from the pain.  I convinced her mother to take her to the local emergency room, where they waited all night without being seen.  In the morning they were scolded for coming, and told to go to their g.p. (general practitioner).   Having lived in America, I thought it was unconscionable to let a child suffer in pain that long unattended, but this was how it was done.

A friend was in a motor vehicle accident and it was thought he had a fractured cervical vertebra.  They kept him on a gurney, and put on a cervical collar, but he was unattended for 24 hours–just lying in the hall, not being treated.  After 24 hours with no fluids, no food, and in pain, he convulsed and eventually died.

Another friend, in his 50s, had a heart attack and died in that same emergency room.  He had never had blood pressure medication or statins, although that kind of medication was already standard in t he U.S.  I actually heard a physician say it was a waste to give such medication just to prolong life a couple of years and have a person become senile instead of just dying.

So, look out when the government becomes your doctor.  You had better have good genes, good luck and good knowledge of whatever alternative care you can find for yourself. 

Britain now has a two-tiered health system.  The national health service couldn’t take care of everybody, so working people finally had the option of a system similar to Blue Cross/Blue Shield, and many are now using it.  Remember that the “Hilary Healthcare Plan” wasn’t going to give us that option.  A “single payer system” doesn’t have any other options.

Spreading the Wealth Around

Lately it seems I’ve been hearing more and more about the idea of spreading the wealth.  More and more people are complaining that there is too great a disparity in this country between the top “quintile” (20%) and the bottom “quintile”.  I wondered if there is anything more to this argument than fairness, and the reflex reaction that it must somehow be wrong that the top 20% of people in this country control over half of the wealth.  I read and read.  While I haven’t yet reached a conclusion, I found out a whole lot of interesting things. 

There is an actual measurement called Gini, which is an indicator of the wealth disparity within a country.  If a country has a high Gini, the top quintile owns a larger share of the wealth than if the country has a low Gini.  The countries with the highest Gini’s in the world change every year, but usually are poor, third-world countries.  This would tend to favor the argument that a larger wealth disparity creates a poor country, or keeps it poor.

However, as I read and read about the various  countries on the Gini scale, I found out a lot of other interesting things.  Among the countries that have a very low Gini (meaning they are “good” and share their wealth more equitably), they are about equally divided among rich and poor countries.  The Scandinavian countries are quite wealthy, but other countries with similar Gini scores include Ethiopia and Pakistan.  Clearly some other things must be operating here.  Gini alone doesn’t create wealth.

Countries I would expect to have a low Gini score would be countries which have had communism for 2 or more generations.  I was surprised to find out their Gini scores were higher than ours (Russia and China).  Some of the old Soviet satellites had low Gini scores, but remain very poor, i.e., Slovakia.

In a country with a low Gini (remember, this is good and means more equitable sharing of the wealth), you may have a very high cost of living—or not.  You may have a very high Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita—or not.  We have a higher GDP per capita compared to Sweden and Denmark, while their Gini score is lower than ours.  One thing you will likely have with a low Gini score is much higher taxes and a lot more government intervention into people’s personal finance i.e., the Scandinavian countries.  After all, the top quintile isn’t likely to give away its wealth to the lower quintiles voluntarily, so the government must coerce it to do so with its tax laws.  I wondered if the high tax rate on the wealthy and the sharing of the wealth would increase growth.  After all, sharing the wealth is supposed to put more consumer spending into the economy.  However, while some of the more equitable (low Gini) economies have higher growth rates than ours, most do not.  Denmark has a very low growth rate right now.  Interestingly enough, in those wealthier economies which have established a more equitable distribution of wealth, the birthrate has plummeted, and now the country is in deep trouble as it tries to provide social services for an aging population which isn’t producing as much wealth.

I wondered if there is a cut-off on how much you can tax the top quintile.  I looked at the top hundred wealthiest people in the world, and they are generally owners of big business.  People who want to spread the wealth around tend to see big business as the enemy, yet it truly is the goose that lays the golden egg in terms of producing wealth and jobs for the country.  We don’t want to kill our golden goose for spite.  Yet, if we take money from the “rich” that would have been used for more business creation and gave it to people who would buy more consumer goods, which is better for the country, for how long, and where is the tipping point?  Kind of important to know, I would think.

Two points in closing.  As the mom of adult kids, I can see the envy of an eighth grader toward her high school senior sibling, who through hard work and a couple of awards managed to amass several thousand dollars to be used toward college.  The eighth grader would love to have some of that money for a new laptop.  The eighth grader isn’t currently able to earn or save any such amount of money.  What would be the wisdom of taking some of the senior’s college money and giving it to the eighth grader to be fair?  I don’t know.  You answer that one.

The second thought is that the countries with the highest Gini, where the wealth is spread around pretty well, the standard of living remains high and the government provides a pretty wide and strong safety net, the suicide rates are among the highest in the world.  Spreading the wealth doesn’t answer that question either.