[Grovenet] Genesis 4:9

[Gary Duncan-Gates]

Walt - 




>Ah, but there is an alternative. It's to institute a national 
>insurance "pool" that would give the insurers reasonable, but not 
>extortionate, profits, in exchange for allowing the "uninsurable" to 
>be covered along with the more fortunate. Plain dumb bad luck, not 
>laziness or a "cavalier" attitude, creates many or even most health 
>emergencies. 

I haven't seen the stats, so I cannot say definitively how much dumb luck is to blame for medical treatments.  However,
I would say that there are a lot of medical conditions that we, as a society, feel good about paying for (for others).  Then, there
are cosmetic surgeries, stupid behaviors, activities that some might find immoral, that all result in medical bills that most of us
would balk at.  Your choice: Spend $5000 on innoculations for hundreds of kids, or to fix the broken arm of one yahoo who got 
drunk and crashed his jet ski?  

Judgmental?  Yeah.  When you have finite resources, you must be judgmental.

Taken at a more holistic level, we have a number of people in this country that truly need our help.  The elderly, disabled, children.  
When capable people jump on the cart instead of helping pull it, they make it more difficult to care for others.  Raising taxes merely
weakens those that pull the cart, and creates resentment among the classes.


>"Follies?" sounds a bit judgmental there, bunkie.  Is it "folly" to 
>have your decent-paying job shipped overseas, or your income halved 
>when a spouse gets sick or has a baby? One problem with this sort of 
>discussion, as Carol has pointed out, is that either side demonizes 
>the other. I seem to see that sort of knee-jerk anempathic (invented 
>word) reaction operating here. The world is only as nasty as we allow 
>it to be.

Is it folly to get cancer?  Is it folly to be too short to play in the NBA?  Is it folly to not be attractive or wealthy enough to 
attract a cheerleader for the prom?

That's life in the food chain.  We all have disasters. Why expect the rest of the country to fix them for you?

Gary