Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic Let's talk politics for a sec...

Saffron wrote:
That's an excellent way to live, but not everyone can do that. Most young people in the US, in fact, can't live on a cash-only basis, due to educational expenses or low income levels or trying to live to the limit of their means (which Saffron is properly trying to teach her own kids not to do). Besides, if Saffron lived in the US and had gotten into medical debt before buying her house, that's when the problems I described before would have kicked in.

So many people here in the US get in those situations that the law has actually addressed it. In most states, if you make a regular monthly payment on your medical bill, the account holder can't sue you for non-payment, even if you're paying $25 a month on a $10,000 bill. You might get some phone calls or stern letters urging you to increase your payments, but as long as you pay regularly, you won't be sued and it won't go on your credit report.

Of course, if you miss one month, all bets are off.

It's also possible that hospitals charge insurance companies such outlandish sums for cheap items (like suture material) to make up for the people whose debts they will never collect. If you go to any emergency room in the southwestern United States at nearly any hour of the day or night, you'll see people there who speak little or no English, only Spanish, waiting for treatment for their colds or minor injuries which don't require hospital care, but for which they will never pay because they're in this country illegally and won't be found when the bill comes due. They don't have to pay when treatment is rendered by the emergency room staff, but they would have to pay if they went to a private doctor or clinic.

And they get their treatment, which costs the hospitals thousands of dollars each month and which takes time and resources away from the people who truly need emergency medical treatment. This is yet another facet of this complex issue, one which so far has defeated the best efforts of men and women who are sincerely trying to solve the problem.

We cannot get past the fact that high-quality medical care costs money. Researching new drugs is expensive (AIDS and all kinds of cancer treatments), producing current drugs is expensive, building and maintaining health-care facilities is expensive, paying doctors and nurses (especially the nurses!) what they should be paid is expensive, training new health care professionals is expensive, and so on. Someone has to pay for all that, and whether it comes directly out of your pocket or you send it to a government agency first, you pay the bills in one way or another.

While discussing this issue, Ann wrote:
That's a very interesting statement. If an American political candidate had written that, he or she would be torn apart by the conservative commentators. Here's a short list of what we'd hear (not a comprehensive list, I promise).

"Don't you think people are responsible for themselves?"
"Why is it the job of the government to take care of people?"
"Why do you want to be everyone's nanny?"
"Communist!"
"You're abdicating your responsibility to your fellow man to some faceless government agency! You don't really care about people!"

And I don't for a moment think that any of those comments apply to Ann or to Swedes in general, so please don't bust me for them! I assure you, I put those in for illustration purposes, not to obliquely call anyone any names or cast aspersions upon anyone.

I do, however, want to point out that Ann's coming from what most Americans would call a socialist-leaning viewpoint (if not something stronger), and I believe that she truly believes that it's the best way to take care of people who can't (or won't) take care of themselves. And maybe for Sweden that's the optimum system.

But just because it might be best for Sweden doesn't mean it's the best system for every society in every nation. Psychologists and therapists tell us that if one gives money to a person (like to a child or to a friend) for any reason, one tends to be more interested in both the use of that money and the effectiveness of the help given than if one gives the money to an agency (welfare tax, church, United Way) for distribution to the needy. The natural tendency of human beings is that we pay attention to our own pocketbooks, be that right or wrong or neutral. Because Swedes are just like Americans in this regard, I would predict that most Swedes who support this kind of system would have less personal involvement in the use of that money than those who feel otherwise, just like most Americans would. And that's just because everybody's human, not because I think that America is better than any other country. Any nation is only as good as its people and its leaders, and no one has a monopoly on those qualities.