According to the
Oregon Statewide Strategic Plan report, the substance abuse problem in Oregon consumes a whopping 17% of the state budget. Yet the state legalizes harmful addicting drugs with Measure 110, and laments that the problem is expensive and consumes resources. What idiots.
–– 良くない ––Thomas Sowell once said:
"Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three
decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good. In
area after area – crime, education, housing, race relations – the
situation has gotten worse after the bright new theories were put into
operation. The amazing thing is that this history of failure and
disaster has neither discouraged the social engineers nor discredited
them."
To this list, we should add the threat of single-payer healthcare. A single-payer system, like ranked-choice voting, sounds like a good thing, but since money controls much in medicine, it basically makes the physician subservient to whatever some third-party decides is best. Most people can't see this, and only predict that things will be less expensive. Making care less expensive will come at a cost, but limiting your choices. Fast food is cheaper, but it is not a dietary option for everyday eating. It's been said that in healthcare, the three goals are quality, affordability, and accessibility. But you can only choose two. While this may be a simplification, it is not far from the reality. Single-payer plans offer the affordability and accessibility, but quality requires that you have quality physicians, and the availability to receive care that is sometimes expensive. It also means that you don't want to get bogged down with paperwork and administrative hassles that so often accompanies government-sponsored services. But the most telling reason for wanting to avoid government-regulated single-payer care was revealed by SCOTUS when they ruled in favor of the vaccine mandate for healthcare providers, saying:
The court said that the vaccine mandate for health care workers was,
unlike the OSHA regulation, justified as just the kind of detailed
regulations that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has long
imposed as a condition for health care providers getting federal funds.
Well, people over 65 have to take Medicare, and most physicians can not avoid taking older patients. So by the nature of the insurance coverage, the government felt it had a right to determine how a doctor should be vaccinated. Private insurance companies have no such ridiculous power.
Rather than pursue single-payer health, we should allow healthcare systems to compete with each other, and use market forces to lower costs and increase accessibility. Allow interstate competition, for example. Make it so that people can own their own policies, rather than have it be tied to employment. Make prices for care more transparent. Why isn't anyone working on this? Magical thinking indeed.
–– 良くない ––
How do we go from a world where helping
people is cliché to a world where swaths of lawyers are fighting to
defend those doing just the opposite? The people who write that they
want to help people too much on their applications are the same people
three years later working for firms actively fighting for those who have
hurt people.
–– 良くない ––
Here's an interesting article, which I can vouch for. Beware of judging those who seem standoffish - they may be just trying to protect themselves against the pain of anxiety and social interaction.
–– 凄い ––