Well, with all the recent prickly religious threads these days going along without dissolving into flames, I thought maybe we could try politics.

Not so much "where do you stand," but more "how did you get there?"

Take Obama's lapel pin.

Since 9/11, pretty much every American politician has worn a little American flag lapel pin. It started off as a symbol of solidarity and patriotism, but now it's pretty much just added as a matter of course.

A symbol only has as much meaning as you give to it. For some, the pin is still a symbol of true patriotism. For others, it's a fashion accessory, something you have to wear if you want to be taken seriously, just like a tie. Doing that only serves to devalue the symbol.

Obama stopped wearing the pin , feeling that there were better ways to show patriotism than with a token gesture. And if you search the internet for "Obama lapel pin," you'll see the results. Or you can read this article about the media reaction to the "missing" pin.

It's not an isolated issue, either. This article from the AP today is what caught my eye in the first place. It talks about how stray remarks, token gestures, and unsubstantiated rumors (in this case, about Obama) are made into issues and could well become talking points in the general election.

Comedian Lewis Black discusses these non-issue issues , including the lapel pin, and makes his point better than I could.

To some degree, it's the media. Focusing on superficialities in general. Making things into issues that really shouldn't be, for whatever reason. Maybe because they don't have anything better to talk about, or because they don't know how to talk about more important things, or because they're afraid that if they do, they'll bore people and lose viewers.

I don't think that's all there is to it, though. People actually do care about these things. They hear about it enough, and it sways them. They listen, and they accept what they're told without taking the time to really think about it or look into it any further.

Meantime, it's a lot harder than it should be to find things like this simple chart , which compares the major candidates' stands on key issues.

I've used Obama as an example here, because that's what the article I saw was talking about. But I'm more interested in the more general view.

Is it like this in other countries?

How much is the media, and how much of the election is actually going to come down to trivialities and hearsay?

Or should these things matter, after all? How much does presentation count? Are issues like this really superficial?

What do you guys think?

Probably not, but they should be. I'm embarrassed to admit this, but I (and I'm probably in good company here) would rather read an article/watch a show about what someone was or wasn't wearing, than bore myself with 'issues' and campaign promises that probably aren't going to be kept anyway. Can you say 'no new taxes'? But then politics doesn't really interest me.

But I agree about these things swaying voters - well maybe not in all cases(see below). If you hear something often enough about someone's personal life for example, that's what'll stick in your mind, not the important stuff. And chances are, unless you're a politically aware voter, that's what'll pop into your head when you're deciding where to put your X.

Maybe you should count yourselves lucky that one of few things about Obama the media can find to latch on to is a missing lapel pin. My country's next president (he was recently voted in as ANC party leader) was on trial for rape two years ago and is currently awaiting trial on charges of corruption!

Gotta love Africa! :rolleyes:

I posted recently on my LiveJournal (I have a 'politics filter' consisting only of people who asked to join) about a similar issue: the topic of patriotism and how it seems to be such an important issue in the US and barely at all in other countries I've lived in. It was inspired by Michelle Obama's (admittedly carelessly-worded) comment to the effect that 'for the first time in my adult life I'm really proud of my country'.

Now, let's leave aside the fact that a more sensible comment would have been along the lines of 'never been prouder of my country'. The idea that one must express pride in one's country, that one wouldn't feel at all weird describing oneself as 'a proud American', that one would fly the flag at your house/back garden/bumper of your car/wherever, that one would describe America as 'the best country in the world'... all that is completely alien to me relative to the countries I've lived in. Now, maybe people in the UK and Ireland should show a little more national pride, but we'd just feel embarrassed to say those sort of things. And claiming one country as 'the best in the world' comes across as kind of... well, rubbishing every other country. Unless you assume that citizens of every other country make the same claim about their country too. (And we don't all do that).

The prevalent attitude in some circles seems to be that of my country, right or wrong. I was curious enough to look that quote up, and here's its origin, from a speech by Sen. Carl Schurz:
Now, before anyone takes offence, I'm not trying to criticise anyone. It's just that this difference in attitudes between the US and countries I've lived in (and while Canadians seem more likely to talk about pride in their country than Brits or Irish, they will also criticise their country more openly when decisions are made that they don't agree with) intrigues me. Why is patriotism something to be incredibly proud of in the US (and any hint of being unpatriotic almost a hanging offence ) while in some other countries it's almost a dirty word? And is there a happy medium?


Wendy

As many of you may or may not know, I'm Canadian. I've spent over half of my adult life living in the US (brought here by my husband's profession), but have also lived a number of years in Canada and Germany. There are wonderful things that I have loved about living in all three of these countries, and other areas where I feel there is definitely room for improvement. I'm proud to be a Canadian, but have never felt the urge to proclaim my citizenship from the rooftop to make sure that I'm not mistaken for an American.

I remember when we moved here when my son was a toddler. We were completing the final paperwork for our visas at US Immigration at the airport in Toronto. It was taking a while - as all government paperwork does. At one point one of the border agents turned to me (I think my son was a bit restless) and apologized that everything wasn't all done yet, but that I should remember that I was applying to live in the greatest country in the world.

I said nothing in retort - I don't even think my jaw dropped in actuality the way it dropped it in my head - but I was caught completely off guard by this remark. Neither my husband nor I had been showing any impatience by the length of time the procedure was taking - heck, we had lived in Germany before that, we learned all about paperwork while there. Yes, my son might have been fussing, but he was a toddler who had been confined for longer than he wanted...enough said.

I could understand this agent making a comment about the time-consuming paperwork, whether jokingly or seriously. I could picture an agent from any other country making a similar comment. But to need to be reminded - for what I felt was no reason - that all this paperwork was necessary because we were moving to the greatest country in the world? All governments require time-consuming paperwork when you are preparing to move there for any length of time, the US is not unique there.

I'm not criticizing this border agent, although I did find her "reminder" unnecessary and, for me personally, a little offensive. I think it's also likely that a strong sense of patriotism is encouraged in US border representatives, not surprisingly. But I also would be surprised if a border official from any other country in the world would make a similar comment.

Kathy

Yes, that's just it, Kathy: the feeling I get is that it's an instinctive reaction in the US. Again, I am not intending to criticise anyone, but I have heard that kind of statement - the greatest country in the world - many, many times. Also, when going through the border into the US, which we do from time to time to visit, we get the feeling that the guards believe everyone who's passing through to visit actually wants to stay.

Now, there are many reasons why I don't want to live in the US (the healthcare system is just one), though I do enjoy visiting because the country has a lot to offer and I love my American friends. But it's just, again, getting that sense of 'we believe we're superior'. And, since I know people in the countries I've lived in don't in general have that instinctive belief, I wonder how common it is elsewhere in the world. Do Australians, for example, believe that their country is 'the best in the world'? Jordanians? Brazilians?


Wendy

Wendy, this could be part of the issue right there. Because so many people do want to stay. And there are many who do stay - both legally and illegally - for weeks, months, years. America has been held up in the world's eye as the "land of opportunity" for so many and so long, and there are so many people who lead desperately poverty-stricken or oppressed lives in other countries who would do almost anything to find "the end of the rainbow" in the US. This would certainly influence the thoughts and practices of US Immigration officials, but would have less effect on the thoughts of the average American citizen.

Kathy

Oh, very true - but the same is also true of Canada, which (as you know) has very high immigration rates. And which, also, has easier and more straightforward paths to legal citizenship. In my job, I meet many clients who first fled from their countries of origin to the US, are denied asylum there (in some cases after living and working there legally for many years) and come to Canada, to be granted Convention refugee status within a couple of years of arrival.

It is swings and roundabouts; for many immigrants, it's easier to get work in the US, though most of those I meet did survival jobs. Typically, engineers or accountants or even doctors worked as cleaners or line-workers in factories. It's not quite as easy to get survival jobs, at least in London (Toronto's a very different story), though also by the time they come to me they're fed up with minimum-wage work and want to get back into their professions, which is another uphill climb altogether.

But this is going off onto a tangent.

/thread-drift


Wendy

That lapel pin controversy got me hopping mad. I agree with Obama - don't show me a pin, show me what you're going to do!

Yes, a lot of it is the media, but I can't get upset with them for showing things that get people watching. Because politics can certainly be boring, and the networks are in the business to make money. It's up to the people watching to take in that information with discernment, and it's sad that more people don't.

I don't know that they care, exactly - that implies that they took the subject to heart. I think it's more a case of people relying on the headlines of whatever news channel is showing over the bar in their favorite restaurant. And, just like you said, they listen and accept without question.

The end result is people think like one of my best girlfriends - when I asked her what she thought of Obama, her reply was that she could never vote for a man who was educated at an Al-Queda elementary school. After staring at her in shock for ten solid seconds thinking, 'are you kidding me?', I had to spend several minutes re-educating her. (Gently, because I do love her, but damn, girl!)

And the kicker is that politics can be interesting if you bring it down to a one-on-one level. Everybody cares about something - and if they can find the candidate that supports that, then they'll be interested. But the process as a whole can seem very daunting and people don't know where to begin looking for that information, so they just give up and vote however their parent or spouse or boss is voting. I know because I've done it myself.

I can't address the second part of your question, having never lived in another country. But as for US patriotism, I do have an opinion and a comment:

The opinion: I am patriotic, but for me that emotion has zero to do with the current policies of the nation. I am patriotic because of the ideals that the United States was founded upon. When I fly our flag, I am supporting the Declaration on Independence and the Constitution. I have no qualms about saying, "I love America, but I have major problems with the Bush administration." I realize that's a fine line. In fact, some people may say the line doesn't exist at all - you either love your country or you don't. But there are shades of gray in patriotism just like in everything else.

The comment: lack of patriotism is a hanging offense in the media. And since we learn about our politicians through that outlet, most of them fall into line because they don't want to be figuratively disemboweled on Fox News. But in real life, there are lots of people who patriotic in the same way I am or who aren't patriotic at all. And for the most part, as long as they can talk about their opinions in rational way and don't start hatching plans to blow things up, they aren't looked on as outcasts or nutcases.

I'm sure I've heard this myself, but I'm struggling to remember under what circumstances. I've got a Norman Rockwell type image in my head of a teacher teaching that to a row of bright faced kids. And that might be it - maybe it's just a matter of being told again and again as children that we're lucky to live in a free country. Also, Americans in general aren't very worldly. Only about 20% of us have passports, so it's not like a lot of our citizens have been to other countries to see what it's like for themselves. And to top it off, a scary percentage of people are more interested Britney Spears than world affairs, and when they do watch the news, there's constant talk of illegal immigrants - people who want to be here so badly that they broke the law to accomplish it. So when you're told over and over that we're great, you don't know anything about the rest of the world and you see that people are fighting to come here, assuming that America is the Best Country Ever is a natural conclusion.

My impression is that the current climate (especially given 9/11) and the successive issue of immigration has tossed "patriotism" into the fore maybe more than it has been before. Look into histories of other nations and I'm sure patriotism will show up at different moments depending on what was happening. Maybe a recognition of "been through that, didn't work so well" in other places has a lot to do with a possible repudiation (for instance in Japan, its only recently that there's been a growth of explicit patriotism and the reason has a lot to do with North Korea...).

Where I come from the patriotism is demonstrated similarly to that in the US (maybe even more explicitly), so the rhetoric here doesn't surprise me, even if it does make me uncomfortable. Patriotism and nationalism are close if not straight up interchangeable and just as irrational. It's just a matter of degree. What I mean by this is that there's nothing logical about love for one's country. So the greatest country in the world makes as much sense as the best mom in the world or the best dad in the world. It strikes me as a naive statement and given the rampagnt anti-intellectualism in the US, I'm not surprised at its currency.

Naivete can be brushed off easily, but when you're using that label "patriotism" to coerce people into agreeing because if not you somehow "don't belong," then it becomes a powerful tool for manipulation. I'm not a fan of that "us versus them" mentality.

ETA: Now I'm feeling guilty for the thread drift--so to give my .02

I've spent a substantial amount of time in two countries apart from the States and in those two countries I've noticed a somewhat similar popularity contest based on trivial matter, mudslinging and corruption.

I can't speak from anything but my experience witnessing elections when I say that superficial things seem to matter in that they connect the candidate to the people and increase that person's overall likeability. I've seen dislike quickly turn into mistrust and that translates into less votes.

It's just hard to think of how people relate in a mass to what is essentially a constructed image of someone (b/c we don't *really* know the candidates right? It's all politics).

alcyone
(whose brain hurts from all that rambling)

Lisa, I loved your post. And I definitely agree with you in the role that the media plays.

Now, I don't see that as a fine line at all. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if just about every adult American has said (or at least thought) something like that at one time or another. After all, Democrats may have said that with Reagan and Bush Sr. from 1980-1992, but then it would have been Republicans for the next 8 years with Clinton. I would think it is totally possible to love your country without being supportive of some/many of the policies of the government in power at the moment.

Kathy

Yes, exactly! You said it perfectly, Alcyone. I was thinking something along that vein but couldn't put it into words. And of course what the person who says any of these things really means is the best mom/dad/country for me. They just assume that what is best for them is best for everybody.

Interesting topic. And I think I have a slightly different perspective than a lot of people. As a member of the media, I think that we (as a body) have a large influence. Take, for example, the fact that I work at a newspaper in Washington, and we have had all of the major primaries on A1. Never mind that some of the states are nowhere near here, or that we had our own primary this week.

I think one reason why the media is all over it is because it's a more novel election. We have:

• A Republican senator/former POW who is clearly in favor of the war;
• A female Democratic senator who is very much against the war;
• And a black male Democratic senator who is against the war, but not as much so as his opponent.

McCain, Clinton and Obama, as people, never mind their stances on anything, are uncommon. A POW. A woman. A black man.

If one of the Democrats wins, history will be made. It already has been made by them being the two front-runners. Geraldine Ferraro and Jesse Jackson couldn't get it done. Obama or Clinton very well may.

And that's news.

I started here in the spring of 2004, when Bush was running against Kerry, and it wasn't this big of a deal. I know it's different circumstances, but seriously, the attention that the media is giving this election is unfounded.

Obama, Clinton and McCain were all in Seattle two weeks ago, and you'd think that the earth exploded in terms of not only the media response, but also the public interest. I swear, half of the newsroom was out covering these events. Thousands of people had to be turned away from KeyArena, where Obama was speaking, because the entire arena was full. And to give prospective, it's a NBA arena, so we're talking big deal here.

I have never seen an election that has drawn so much media coverage -- or public interest, for that matter. Yes, you could make the argument that everyone knew Bush would run for a second term and Kerry was an easy pick for the Democrats in 2004, but there is just something that feels different this time. Like I said in the first election post we had on here, in January, we ran a box with the top 16 candidates in it on A1, and I said at the time that it blew my mind that there were even 16 people that were considered top candidates.

And because of its fixation on coverage of this election -- and the public's seemingly insatiable thirst for information -- I think the result largely will be decided by the media's influence. Because there is SO much coverage (especially if you factor in online news and news blogs), I think the trivialities and hearsay are getting fleshed out and addressed faster than usual.

As for me as a person who ALSO is a member of the media, it's an odd place to be. We are encouraged to not attend things like rallies and caucuses, or to have bumper stickers or signs on our desks. And we are definitely not allowed to show political bias in the paper (other than Editorial).

But people obviously have their views and affiliations. And most media members, not surprisingly, are Democrats. (Add in the fact that Seattle is pretty liberal and it's really no surprise.) Those of us that, uh, aren't, are pretty quiet about it. I didn't vote in our primary because we had to mark political affiliation. And if anyone could uncover their colleagues' choices, it would be reporters.

That being said, I wasn't surprised one bit when a ton of my co-workers came to into the newsroom two weeks ago saying they had been at Obama's rally.

Wendy, Could you explain this to me? I don't argue, after 10 years on the boards together you can see that. But let me tell you how I have seen it. And I might be wrong.
I have a son with brain cancer. I am on many cancer message boards with people from all over the world. I see people from Canada that can't get MRI's, there is such a long wait time. I see people who can't get the medicine they need. The government tells you can only have this one medicine for a certain amount of time for the type of tumor you have. Not everything works for everyone. These people are scared.

I heard on a talk show the other day about the snowbirds from Canada going to Florida every year with their own money to get the medical care they can't get in their own country.

I know there are many people in the US that don't have health insurance. We have just always been one of the lucky ones that have good coverage. But it scares the heck out of me that my son might not be able to get the care he needs if we go to a National Health Care.
Sue

Sue, I'm so sorry to hear about your son. I can't imagine the worry you face for him on a daily basis.

Although I'm not Wendy, I'm going to jump in with a response.

There are undeniable problems with the Canadian health care system. My father had several misdiagnoses by his family doctor (obviously possible under any system), but then a very long wait to see a specialist once the doctor was finally willing to refer him...bottom line was that his lower leg had to be amputated. Perhaps if he had been living in the US, they would have been able to solve the problem more quickly.

There are advantages too. Everyone is insured. It doesn't matter if you're working or who you work for. And although medical costs are high there, of course, when my son was born they kept me in the hospital for 6 days after my C-section to ensure no complications from the surgery, etc. My understanding is that US health plans would have wanted me kicked out after 2-3 days.

Living here in the US, I've had no complaints with any of our insurance coverage. My husband is a professor, and universities typically offer good benefit plans for their employees. But since it is all linked to employment, what happens if you work for a company too small to be required to offer a health plan. I don't know how affordable self-purchased coverage is. A lot of low wage-earners who don't have coverage don't visit doctors at all, or overfill the emergency rooms when their children are sick because they can't afford an office visit. That's my main complaint about the US system - the lucky ones are fine, but if you're not covered...you're in a lot of trouble.

So there are advantages and disadvantages to each system. There are strong proponents of socialized health care in the US, who want to develop a universal plan, as well as strong opponents to the system in Canada who want to move closer to the US system.

Everyone has their personal preferences, and hopefully as many as possible are able to live within their system without too many problems.

ETA: I forgot to talk about the snowbirds. They're going to head south anyway for the weather. I don't know how much coverage that the provinces offer for medical care outside of Canada, and for how long. Do some of them "save up" to get procedures in the States because they can't get them in Canada? Perhaps...

Kathy

I can only speak as a Canadian looking in from the outside but there does seem to be more attention paid to what we might consider trivial matters when it comes to politics in the U.S. I do think that (at least from my POV) there is more attention paid to politics and political parties than we get up here in the media...a fair amount of my family and friends tend to be very skeptical of politicians across all party lines and are less concerned about what such individuals do voting wise versus what they say. Of course the fact that we have a much broader spectrum of parties at both the provincial and federal levels compared to the U.S. also means that it's sometimes easier to find a candidate who seems to fit the bill when it comes to voting in representatives and in fact there have been times when I've voted for someone who may represent a political party I am not always in agreement with but find that the individual is a better candidate than the rest of them, simply because the lines between the parties are more fluid and he/she may have some views that I can agree with.

Kathy, I know where you are coming from. When Brian took sick I was divorced from his father. But we were friends. I couldn't work because I had to take care of Brian and take him to all his appointments. We remarried so I could get back on his health plan (and have the bills paid). He moved back into the house into his own bedroom. It has worked out OK. But yes, a lot of people in this country do not have health care.

Yes, the talk show said the snowbirds go to Florida to get care they can't get in Canada and pay with their own money. Until the cancer National Health Care wouldn't have bothered me too much, now it scares the heck out of me!
Sue

Kathy responded on the healthcare issue, and I agree with what she said, but I'll just add a few points.

What I hate about insurance-based systems is that you get healthcare based on (1) whether you have insurance, (2) what your insurance will cover and (3) how much it will cover. I hear so many times about decisions being made by administrators in insurance companies, not by doctors. Insurance also doesn't cover everything; I have a friend who needs physiotherapy, but the $40/visit co-pays makes it too expensive for her. And then I was absolutely shocked the other week to discover that you have to PAY to go to an emergency room, and insurance might not refund the cost. In Canada (in the UK, and in most European countries) you walk straight into an ER and are seen based on clinical need. No paperwork, no credit cards. Give your name and address, or show your health card, and that's all.

Then there's the situation in the US for those who can't afford health insurance: the unemployed, the elderly, those in low-income jobs where health insurance isn't offered or is too expensive. I'm not just interested in health coverage for myself; I believe that it's a right, a fundamental of survival, and should be free at the point of use. That's the ethical/political principle that I grew up with, so it's what I'm used to. I was utterly shocked when I first discovered that health care isn't free in the US.

Under comprensive state-provided healthcare systems, people get care based on clinical need. Yes, you may have to wait for non-urgent treatment. Yes, some investigatory procedures, such as MRIs, may take a little longer if there are fewer MRI centres. But no-one is denied treatment based on inability to pay. (The one thing I dislike about the British healthcare system is that there's a private system alongside the National Health Service, so those who can afford to pay get treatment ahead of those reliant on the NHS, regardless of whose clinical need is greatest).

I'm very sorry to hear about your son, Sue. And my best wishes for his recovery. But, you know, I do also hear stories about insurance companies in the US denying people access to particular drugs (too expensive). I also hear about surgeons refusing to do particular types of elective treatment (afraid of being sued) - a friend of mine had elective surgery a couple of years ago and had to go to a hospital over a hundred miles from her home because the surgeon at her local hospital stopped doing that procedure due to fear of lawsuits.

As for Canadians going to the US and paying for treatment themselves, I don't know about that, but what I do know is how the Ontario health system responds to unreasonable delays in treatment (I don't know what part of Canada Kathy's from, but each province has their own system). In Ontario, if delays for a particular type of treatment are considered unreasonable, OHIP will pay for that treatment to be performed outside the province or even outside the country - as a stopgap, though ideally they want the province to improve on its service provision - which is already very good. My own city, by no means a Toronto or Vancouver, is a regional centre of excellence in a number of specialisms. And my own and my husband's experience of health care here has been absolutely excellent - speedy, efficient, excellent quality of care and barely any wait for appointments even when he had to see the top specialist in southern Ontario for a particular branch of opthamology.

So... yeah. I'm totally opposed to insurance-based healthcare because of the number of people left without coverage and the high costs when you do have to pay, even with insurance. There you go - that's my social democrat principles for you


Wendy

First off, for the record... I don't mind thread drift. I think free-flowing conversations are much more interesting. (As long as they stay reasonably civil, of course.)

That's the thing. There are better things they could be talking about. Obama is inexperienced. Clinton has taken more money from lobbyists than any other candidate (in this election, and possibly in US history). McCain's mixed voting record leaves something to be desired from just about everyone, and his "straight talk" is far from diplomatic. (It completely derailed his campaign in '04.)

On the other side of things, Obama won't take money from lobbyists, but is pulling in record-breaking amounts of money. Mostly from small-to-medium internet donations from nearly a million people. Clinton spent 8 years helping to run things when her husband was in office. McCain is a war hero with years of experience in congress.

And, too, there are the differences between the candidates on the issues. Different takes, different policies. Details to be examined. Details that still need to be filled in...

But I guess that only gets you so far. With news running 24/7, they're in constant need of filler. Which seems to take over more and more of the airtime...

As for patriotism in the US... There is a sort of background atmosphere that we're the best. But I don't think it's fair to say that all (or perhaps even most) of us feel that way, especially not to the degree you're talking about. (It's also become an issue between liberals and conservatives.) But, as with any belief, the ones who hold it most firmly are the loudest, and therefore get the most attention.

As to health care... Our system is messed up. Insurance companies have way too much power and control. Over patients. Over doctors. Over even drug companies (who used to be the major players). It's gone beyond ridiculous. As both a chronic patient and the son of a doctor, I've seen more screwed-up things than I care to think about.

Of course, no system is perfect. There are, as mentioned, issues with more socialized medicine.

I should mention, though, that ERs treat you whether or not you can pay. The hospitals will charge for services rendered, but they can't and won't turn you away for lack of money and/or insurance. Which is actually a problem in and of itself. The ERs have become clogged with non-emergency cases - people who don't need immediate or even serious care, but don't want to have to pay to see a doctor.

Moving on...

EditorJax said:

This jumped out at me. Obama opposed the war from the start, and has stated that, if elected, he'd work to withdraw our troops within a year. Clinton voted for the war initially, and has yet to make a clear comment about what she'd do if elected. So what makes you say that Clinton is more against the war than Obama?

(I agree, though, that this is looking to be an exciting and historic election.)

Other than that...

Ditto to pretty much everything Lisa said.

And best wishes to you and your son, Sue.

Paul

I think I want to say pretty much ditto to all of that, Paul. (I too thought Lisa's post was excellent and meant to say so earlier).

Oh, I'm absolutely sure you're right about that. It's just one of those messages which does get shouted about a lot: not just this week with the Michelle Obama thing, but it comes across a lot with some people (politicians, government employees, ordinary Americans, whoever) when they're talking to or about people from other countries. So it naturally gets noticed and, because of its underlying offensiveness, gets remembered.

Pride in one's own country shouldn't mean putting down others. Most of the time, even in the American context, it doesn't. As you say, it's those few strident voices.

The election generally: I'm fascinated by it this year, precisely because it's historic. McCain's not a textbook Republican candidate by any means (and I also found it interesting that he trounced his main opponents, both religious conservatives, even if Romney wasn't really standing on his religious convictions). Then Clinton and Obama, who will make history whichever of them is the nominee. I would like to see a lot more scrunity of Obama's record as opposed to his choice in accessories I would like to see more scrutiny of Clinton's funding. And of McCain's policy proposals. But, as EditorJax said, that's the media for you.

Finally, on healthcare, I take your point that ERs are supposed to accept people regardless of ability to pay. Looking in from the outside, of course, all we hear are the horror-stories, much as Americans only tend to hear the bad stuff about state-funded free-at-the-point-of-use healthcare (typically, waiting lists). We hear about ambulances being sent from hospital to hospital with critically-ill patients inside, as hospitals refuse to accept them because they're uninsured. I have no idea how often that happens - probably very rarely - but that tends to stick in people's minds when we read about it.

I would definitely like to see real scrutiny of the candidates' plans for healthcare reform. It's my impression that Edwards had the best-thought-out plan, but he's out of the running. That's politics for you.


Wendy

Several people have commented on this:
By state law (in every state) and by Federal court decision, a hospital emergency room in the US CANNOT withhold medical treatment from anyone based on race, color, creed, national origin, or ability to pay. You will be asked to provide either proof of insurance or contact information so you can receive your bill, but no one is supposed to be turned away due to lack of money or lack of insurance. If that happens, someone has broken the law.

And why is medical insurance a right? When did that slide into the Constitution? Remember, insurance won't treat your illness. Doctors and nurses do that. Just having insurance won't make anyone better. The quality of health care depends on the quality of the people taking care of you. I care more about how good my doctor is than I care about getting national health care (which I'm not convinced is a good thing).

What happens in any national health care system is that the people in that country pay for everyone's medical care. Having a national plan doesn't lower costs, it just spreads the impact to everyone. And if we're griping about the high cost of medical care in the US, we should mention one of the reasons for it: malpractice insurance.

Trial attorneys in the US have made suing doctors and hospitals into a cottage industry. One of the former Presidential candidates made his millions as a trial attorney, and in one of his cases he claimed in his summation to be channeling the unborn baby who allegedly died due to a doctor's malpractice. Anyone who's dealt with a lawyer and a lawsuit knows that the winning attorney is the one who makes out like a bandit, not the winning client. And if you're unfortunate to be sued, your attorney will put lots of your money in his/her pocket before the case is over whether your defense is successful or not.

I'm not bashing lawyers here. We need them. We need attorneys who will stick their necks out and defend those who need competent legal representation, and blaming lawyers for all (or even most) of society's ills is not valid. But I also believe that we should restrain frivolous lawsuits and cap awards for the nebulous "pain and suffering" of the allegedly injured party.

My two cents.

Yes. Even the ones who say "We're #1!" aren't necessarily putting anyone else down. The implication is there, but I'm not sure it's actually meant that way, if that makes sense. (Sometimes, yes, but not every time you hear it.)

As for McCain, I was surprised to see him take such a clear lead. He's split with the party on some major issues, and he didn't really get too far in his '04 bid. I'd have expected more competition from Romney or someone. I'm curious about how and why it turned out the way it did, but I wonder if anyone really knows.

As has been said, that's illegal. There can be issues with overcrowding, but even then hospitals are often reluctant to give up patients.

Around here, we actually have the opposite problem. We have two major competing hospitals. Each runs its own ambulance service, and an ambulance from one hospital will not take you to the other. Emergency services is required to give you the option. So every time there's a call for an ambulance, you get two at the door.

Funny you should say that. Edwards is the candidate Terry was referring to, the lawyer who made much of his money suing doctors. It is, as Terry said, a practice which has really gotten out of hand in this country, and which has led to impossibly high malpractice insurance rates. There are a lot of doctors (particularly in higher risk specialties such as obstetrics) who can no longer afford to practice medicine because they can't squeeze enough out of the patients' insurance companies (who often pay at or even below cost) to pay the premiums for their own insurance.

A friend of mine was telling me a while back about a beloved local doctor who was getting ready for retirement. He still wanted to practice, but wanted to cut down on his workload. He was considering going to half days, but then realized that the money he'd make wouldn't be enough to cover his malpractice premiums, let alone any of his other expenses.

It's insane. (And, while the health care system was badly broken during the 90s, Hillary Clinton's attempts at reform played a big role in making things much worse...)

Well, quickly:

The chart I linked above has summaries of the candidates' stands on major issues, including health care.

The candidates' websites also have their stated positions on the issue. In alphabetical order:

Clinton

McCain

Obama

It's not in depth analysis (with pros and cons) by a media pundit, if that's what you meant. But if you're interested in what they're saying about the issue, it's a good start.

Medical insurance is not a right. However...

Health care is.

Food, clothing, shelter, education, health care... These are basic human needs, and everyone on the planet should have a right to them. It's a tragedy and an injustice that many don't. But in a modern, developed country, it's a source of shame that we as a society can't live up to that responsibility to our fellow citizens.

It doesn't have to be about insurance. But, however you organize it, a large part of making that care available comes down to paying the bills. Doctors need to be compensated for their services, so they can pay their own bills. Equipment needs to be paid for. Medications (production, distribution, R&D, etc) need to be paid for. The money has to come from somewhere. And it's going to be beyond the means of a lot of patients.

Of course, there's a lot more that needs to be fixed about the system.

But first, we need to fix the system that makes the system. As it is, the insurance companies are a powerful lobby. They pay congress to write the laws to benefit them. It's outrageous what they've gotten away with. The health care system isn't going to be fixed until lobbying is outlawed, until the lawmakers are writing laws to benefit the people instead of the highest bidder.

I'll weigh in myself on some of these political issues.

While I don't support Obama in the least, politically, I don't have a problem with his not wearing of a flag pin. It's everyone's right to choose how to display or not display his or her patriotism. And yes, people in this country have always been patriotic far more than other countries as long as I've lived here, and I've lived here since I was two. It always surprises me when people in other countries DON'T think their country is the best, so that's the perspective from the other side of things. Why live there when you don't think it's the best, I always wonder (excepting those who live in tyrannical nations and can't get out).

When it comes to displays of patriotism, it's the suppression of the right to wear lapel pins that usually generates the biggest arguments. News anchors and other people in the media were sometimes forced to not wear them, supposedly in a show of impartiality, following the devastation of September 11. This dismays lots of people who remember the days of World War II when newsmen wore Allied uniforms and had no trouble speaking of "We" when reporting on the battlefield. First and foremost, those people are Americans (in American media, of course), owing their ability to accurately report the news without fear of sanction by the government to their country's freedom. In this day and age, that's no longer the case where so many in the media don't think of themselves as Americans anymore, often unable to even utter the word, "terrorist," when talking of those who deliberately set out to kill innocents.

As to why lapel pins are news, I believe that news has become sensationalized. With many more than three outlets in the broadcast news (not just ABC, CBS, and NBC anymore), there is the natural competition that comes out of that. And with the advent of 24-hour a day news, what is there to report on to fill all those hours? So instead of reporting on what's important, the news goes out of the way to tell us sob stories of Brittany Spears, Paris Hilton, and other useless fluff. Newspapers are forced to do the same with the rise of the Internet. I rarely go to news sites anymore since you find out more about what's going on in the world from alternative sources.

On the issue of health care, Wendy knows I'm diametrically the opposite of her when it comes to political opinions. I couldn't stand to live in a place where health care is "free." Those who have seen me write of these types of things know that I do not believe that anything is free, especially health care. I noticed the judicious use of the words, "at the point of use." What's the difference between the bill being sent to an insurance company or a bill being sent to the government? To me, none. Any co-pay is trivial compared to the actual cost of services. And if you don't have money nor insurance, you still don't pay anything at the point of use and can't be turned away.

Everybody pays the price, whether it's a bill to the doctor or huge taxes paid to the government. Anyone wonder why the average Swedish citizen pays 2/3 of their income in taxes, income and VAT, and even then, many small townspeople have to drive to major cities to even get to a hospital? The town I visit in southern Sweden on an annual basis (my wife is Swedish) has had its hospital threaten to shut down repeatedly for many years because it can't afford to stay in business. It's common knowledge that when the person who consumes the services doesn't have to foot the bill directly, there is no incentive on either side to minimize costs. That's why single-payer, i.e. socialized medicine, is so costly even when compared to individual insurance-based systems. Many people use services unnecessarily, making it more expensive for those who really need the help. Waiting lists are months or years long. Shielding the consumers from the cost is not the way to make health care affordable and widely available.

I ditto all of Terry's comments. He's right on about the cost of medical malpractice insurance. There are whole counties where there are no OB/GYN's because nobody can afford the malpractice insurance. How many can afford $150,000-250,000 a year in malpractice premiums? That's as much as some people make in five to ten years before taxes. And the only way for doctors to make up the costs is to pass it along to their patients in the form of higher bills. The trial lawyers have cost the economy billions in the health care industry where the smallest scratch earns someone millions. And of course, it's not the hospitals or doctors that really pay. it's the people who get the care in the form of higher bills. Without that, insurance might actually become affordable for everyone. Not all trial lawyers are to blame because many cases justify large award payouts. It's the huge numbers of frivolous lawsuits and abnormally large payouts for just about everything (smoking lawsuits come to mind).

Another thing that's ALWAYS in the way is government. Health care in the US is a trillion dollar business. It's been reported that government regulations, mostly paperwork, cost the medical profession upwards of $200 billion. That's a lot of money that can go towards the care of patients. And people want to trust government with socialized medicine? The same people who have $800 toilet seats and $1,200 stool caps that cost 3 cents to make? Anyone who believes costs will go down with government in charge is sorely mistaken.

Unfortunately the same politicians in this country who advocate single payer health care systems are also in the pockets of the big trial lawyers, John Edwards being the biggest of the trial lawyers who's also a politician. He's famous for his crying in court over the victims he represents, tugging at the heartstrings of the juries and winning millions of dollars for his clients and also playing fast and loose with the facts in order to win. He's one of the biggest problems, not a solution. Those same politicians oppose strongly the proposal of medical savings accounts (MSA). If people like that get their way in health care in this country with single-payer AND unrestricted lawsuits, our health care system will become worse than any third world system, and more costly to boot. There's a reason why Hillary Clinton's health care plans were thrown out in 1994 and why Democrats lost 52 House seats and control of both houses of Congress back then. We saw the byzantine system of bureaucracies she proposed and laughingly rejected it. Doctors had to apply to the government for approval to specialize?!?!? That's just one of the many absurdities, plus other inanities like making fee-for-service illegal, i.e. you can't pay a doctor out of your own pocket but must go through the government.

Back to MSA's, since a large portion of medical costs are unnecessary expenditures for those who aren't that sick, the idea of a medical savings account is that people have a pool of money at their disposal as part of an insurance plan that covers their basic medical expenses. With that annual pool, people can keep whatever they don't use. If they go over, it's still covered but they won't get any money back at the end of the year. So not only do people have an incentive to not go to the doctor for every sniffle but they become very cost conscious and may actually shop around for a different doctor who may not charge as much. Hey, it's competition. Medical facilities not only have to get better in order to compete but they have to charge less for their services. Can anyone actually tell us what their medical services cost today? I certainly can't and I've got the insurance statements that itemize the costs that I've completely ignored because I couldn't care less what the cost is since insurance covers it. If MSA's came into effect, I can guarantee people will know exactly what their costs are. And that can't be a bad thing. it's when people don't know or don't care that costs explode and people complain about why no one can afford insurance.

Those who say that people might not go when they really are sick are those who believe in the cradle-to-grave nanny state where people should have no control over their own lives. Is there no such thing as personal responsibility anymore? People can't be trusted to know when they're really sick? Can people not be trusted to go to their annual or biannual checkups?

The other piece of medical care is catastrophic care. That's something that's out of the control of patients. Any insurance plan that bundles an MSA would also include a catastrophic component. Catastrophic is not the problem in American health care so it's not the driving force behind high cost of medicine. It's my belief that MSA's plus restrictions on frivolous lawsuits can not only make the health care system better but also more affordable for all. Pilot programs for MSA's in various cities around the country have proven fairly successful.

For those who have no income or can't afford insurance, government has so many existing programs that no one can possibly list them all. The law also says that no one can be turned down for medical needs regardless of ability to pay. That's one of the reasons the state of California is near bankruptcy and why many in the public have turned against illegal immigration. All of those illegal immigrants use free medical services because the law grants them that right. It's the rest of the people who do have insurance that are forced to pay for them.

Paul, you've made some excellent points. I didn't think we'd ever agree on anything political.

On your question about McCain versus Romney, a lot of people remember the run Romney made against Ted Kennedy for Senate way back when. Romney was actually quite competitive and had a very good chance of unseating Kennedy when in the final debate he did an about face and started sounding like Kennedy, Jr.

Whenever you have Kennedy Jr. running against Kennedy Sr., who would you rather have? The people of Massachusetts then overwhelmingly re-elected Ted Kennedy.

Republicans have a long memory of these things. Many don't trust Romney as far as they could throw him.

While I'm not a big fan of John McCain, if there's one thing you can be sure of him is that he's consistent and will tell you what he believes. He is not thought of fondly by the supply siders nor the anti- illegal immigration forces, but he is what he says he is. He's got a long record to show for it, too.

As someone who lives in Oregon, he spared me from making a very hard choice of who to support. The GOP race will be long decided before there is ever a vote here.

It's been very interesting to read everyone's posts.

Being me, however, I think I should refrain, from now at least, from commenting on things in the United States. Let me say something about how the media has portrayed politicians and important public persons here in Sweden, and how that has influenced voters and our country in general.

This is Per Albin Hansson:



He was Prime Minister in Sweden from 1932 up to 1946, when he died. He was a highly successful Prime Minister, who during his long political career (which had started as early as 1901) not only fought to give all Swedes the same right to vote, but who also presided over Sweden's rise from a poor agricultural society to a well-to-do industrialized nation with a remarkable degree of general welfare. He also encouraged and fortified his nation, both the mood of the people and the country's military strength, during the Second World War.

But would you believe that this guy had two families? That he was - I'm not kidding you - actually married to two different women? At the same time? Okay, he had married one in a civil ceremony and the other one in church. And back then, there were still some vestiges left of a centuries-old pre-Christian marriage form, so maybe he had that kind of marriage with one of his wives, and a church-sanctioned marriage with the other.

Was bigamy allowed in Sweden in the first half of the twentieth century? Oh no no no!!! It wasn't. I don't think that it has ever been allowed here for as long as we have had written documents to describe our history, which would be going down to about 600 AD.

But, you know, Per Albin Hansson. Everybody's Per Albin. Our nation's strength and pride. Would the media of his time inform the general public of the Prime Minister's unusual marriage arrangements? No! That would have scandalized him, wouldn't it? It would just cause a lot of anger and upheaval. And Sweden as a country might have been weakened, and it may have looked bad in the eyes of other countries. Better leave the Prime Minister and his wives alone, no?

My point is that back then, the media were soooo polite. Another little scandal that they didn't write about, but which has been acknowledged afterwards, is that the person who was King of Sweden while Per Albin was our Prime Minister, Gustaf V, was gay.



Gustaf V was a moderately good King, and probably an even better Crown Prince. In 1905, when Norway refused to be united with Sweden any longer, there was a good chance that Sweden might declare war on Norway. Gustaf, then Crown Prince, showed a lot of diplomatic skill when he helped avert that war between two Scandinavian nations.

My point is that these two men could so easily have been undone if the media had published sordid details about their private lives. Thanks to the fact that the media kept mum, Sweden could have this Prime Minister and this King, and was probably strenghtened because of it.

Ann

Not to sound too wordy (oops, too late), I should point out that our system of employer-paid health insurance came out of the days when people tended to work for the same company all their lives. It was not uncommon just a few decades ago when someone would celebrate their 40'th anniversary at a company.

Today that's almost unheard of. Unfortunately our insurance system has not kept up with those changes. You may hear of a lot of proposals to make health insurance portable. That means that when someone leaves a company, if they like a policy with one company, they can take that policy with them when they go to their next employer. COBRA is a short term law that allows people to continue on with a company's insurance policies when they leave, but that lasts only for a short time. Portability would essentially be a permanent COBRA.

But that's only part of the solution since that policy would no longer enjoy the group discounts that employers get on their insurance premiums. A long term solution to that would be to allow group discounts that are not company-related. Anyone should be able to gather a group together, whether it be families in a community or just someone who advertises for strangers to join their group. If insurance were portable and could still enjoy group discounts, then that would go a long way towards cheaper, affordable insurance.

That would still need to be coupled with the other reforms I mentioned above.

According to this Wikipedia entry, the United states is the only industrialized nation that does not provide universal health care to its citizens.

I must protest against what Roger said that Swedes pay two thirds of their income in tax. That is simply not true of the average citizen at all. It is true, nevertheless, that the taxes we pay are defintely among the highest in the world.

Our taxes go to paying for free health care, free schooling (including free college tuition), infrastructure maintenance and various forms of welfare and contributions to people who are in need of assistance. Also, accepting rather huge numbers of refugees also costs a bit of money. Since 2003, Sweden has accepted at least 100,000 refugees from Iraq and granted most of them citizenship. I think the United States may have accepted about a thousand Iraqi refugees during the same time.

My best friend's sister met and married an American in the late 1970s, and she has been living in the United States ever since. When I compare what I think I can see of the two sisters' economic status, I can't see much of a difference. Both sisters regularly travel across the Atlantic to visit one another. However, it seems to me that the sister who lives in Sweden (and who is divorced, by the way) travels abroad more. Apart from regularly going to America to visit her sister, she usually travels abroad at least a couple of times each year. Mostly she visits countries in Europe, like Germany, Holland, Croatia, France and the Czech Republic. Two years ago she took both of her children to Ecuador for a month. She pays for all of this with the money she earns from working as a teacher. She lives in her own house, which she bought when she divorced her husband. She doesn't have to worry about her children's college tuition, because, as I said, that is free here.

Ann

As a congressman in Illinois, O. opposed the war, although it must be added that it is not the states who make these decisions. While in the federal Congress, Obama's voting record with respect to Iraq has been similar to Clinton's.

For example:
May 24, 2007 - he voted against a US$120-billion funding package for the Iraq war that contained no troop-withdrawal deadline. Obama was one of only 10 Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, who were opposed. ( Both parties supported the bill.)

As well O. has said in a press interview that he would not leave Iraq if the conditions were "not right". But that could mean a lot of things. In other interviews he's said he would aim to have the troops in a year and a half "if conditions were right".

Remember, too, that late last fall he said that he would unilaterally invade Pakistan if he received Intelligence that Osama were there.

It's been interesting thread to thread through. Some observations on Paul's questions in his opening post.

Patriotism -An anecdote, some years old now:
I've met a lot of Americans while travelling . The most patriotic person I ever met was a middle-aged Republican, and he was genuinely upset, worrying around the issue of how a Republican president could so betray the underlying principles of both the constitutiion and personal integrity. He never said 'my country is the best' or some variation of that, but it was clear to me that he loved his country deeply.

btw, for the most enthusiastic patriotism ever, anywhere, check soccer fans.

Was it Samuel Johnson who said that "patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel"?

And a word on symbols:
Napoleon on the creation of the Legion of Honour:
"Men are led by toys".

Is there a link between income level and the degree of overt expression of patriotism? Or does it vary with region? or...?

rambling early morning thoughts....

c.

I can very well imagine what Kathy said about German paperwork. It's sometimes bad enough for Germans. It must be even worse for people with foreign nationality.

When I visited New York I was taken aback by all the flags I saw there. Of course I knew that it's a lot easier to be proud of the USA than to be proud of Germany. But I had never before seen so many flags. Apart from official buildings I can't think of a place where the German flag would be hauled up. I didn't even know that my school had a German flag before 9/11. The days after this tragedy the flag was at half-mast to indicate our sympathy.

I doubt that any German border agent would have said anything like the American Kathy named. Until recently few people would have dared say "I'm proud to be German", either because it just wasn't true or because they were afraid that anyone would think they were Nazis.

I mean, its quite obvious that the German patriotism is almost non-existing when the Goverment starts a promotion: "You are Germany"

Anyway, Hatman was talking about politics, wasn't he? Election campaigns in Germany are a bit different, I guess. After all we can't elect certain people, apart from the representative of our district. But that man or woman is hardly going to be a famous politician. We don't elect our chancellor or presidentm we're just voting for the party that should represent us in the parliament.

Of course each of the two largest parties names a person who is supposed to be chancellor. And of course this may influence our dicision, if we're not already sure which party to chose.

The candidate for being the chancellor of the next four years may be very popular, but in the end it's important how popular the whole party is. Maybe other memebers did something to seriously weaken people's trust in the party and then the party including their candidate won't stand a chance.

Since there are almost constantly elections in some part of Germany it's rather easy for members of the parties to make unpopular decisions and I don't guess it would do much good to underline how great a certain candidate is, because there are so many others who can easily mess with their reputation.

Of course the media watches every step of the famous German politicians. They are curious which kind of life they lead, if they sleep with woman other than their wifes and so on. But there are just no celebrities like Obama. I guess it's due to German history that people around here are very careful to proclaim a certain man or woman as a national savior.

Wow, this thread really has grown in such a short time.

Patriotism: My family really is an example of what patriotism means to different people. Now, just so you know, I spent my 8 years 10 months in the Army Reserves, getting out of the service in the beginning years of Iraq. My unit was on alert at the time, and I spent an extra 10 months in because of the stop-loss. My brother is also in the Army Reserves, spending a year in Iraq, and he just re-upped for another 6 years. My sister-in-law was also in the Reserves, in the same unit as my brother, before a medical discharge.

I voted for the first time in the last presidential election. I was one of the people who said "anyone but Bush," not agreeing with the Iraq issue, and proudly voted for Kerry. My mother did the same. My brother and sister-in-law called my mother out on her vote, saying that voting against Bush was voting against the troops, if not calling her unpatriotic then coming very close to it. My mother now refuses to talk politics with them.

Patriotism is probably more rampant in the US because all through school, we're taught that we've fought for our independence. We were built on ideas and ideals of freedom, and that we should be proud of our country and what it stands for. One of the first things that kids are taught in schools, and the first thing every day, is "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America." It's stronger after 9/11, because for the first time since Pearl Harbor, we were actually successfully attacked on our home ground by outside forces. Something like that is enough to rouse the spirit of anyone.

I can't put too much stock into what any candidate says about Iraq. We would need a really strong plan to get the troops out, which I really don't see happening. Thanks to taking down their governmental infrastructure, pulling out will drastically weaken what's in place now. And heck, we're still in Korea, Afghanistan, and Bosnia. What makes them think we're leaving Iraq any time soon?

It's not quite as easy as all that. I suggest checking out this story of a family trying to get insurance for their daughter.

Yes, but I don't think the law says you don't have to pay for it at all (nor should it; I believe doctors, etc, have the right to be paid for their services). So at some point, a patient without insurance is going to have to pay for it. Do you have any idea how overwhelming a $25,000 bill for surgery is? At $100 a month - and even that small amount is beyond the ability of some families to pay - it would take almost 21 years to pay off. Then throw in all the other bills that go along with a major surgery - home health during the recovery, bills from all the various doctors that attended you - and perhaps you can see why medical bills lead so many people into bankruptcy. A person shouldn't have to choose between surgery that will save their life and knowing that their long-term future is going to be hell paying for said surgery.

Also, all insurance is not created equal. Some employers offer fantastic coverage. Some employers offer crap coverage. Some employers don't offer coverage at all. If you're unlucky enough to work for a company with bad coverage, you might end up in the above situation anyway even with your insurance by the time you pay 20% for this, 20% for that. 20% of $25,000 is still $5,000 - not an amount to sneeze at. And of course if your employer doesn't offer it at all, you're right back where you started.

So, yes, I think national health coverage is at least worth discussing. At the very least we need something that isn't tied to our employers. What you do for a living shouldn't have anything to do with your quality of medical care.

Also - and talk about going out on an unpatriotic limb - I'm actually jealous of Ann's stories of Sweden. If a teacher (a profession that gets paid not-so-great in the US, at least not down here), as a single person, makes enough money to own her home, travel, raise her children and have health care and college tuition thrown into the bargain, then there is something to be said for that system, despite the high taxes. Because I just don't see a lot of people living that quality of life here.

I didn't know either, but I know that at least in my part of Germany half-mast was ordered by the higher ups, otherwise nobody would be have been hanging up any flags (which might have been due to the fact that my part of Germany was quite often ordered to hang up flags for fifty years, whether anyone wanted to or not, and it was carefully noted who put out flags and who didn't).

The most flags up were actually during the last football WM in Germany (no, not the version with the egg). It also sparked some debate about patriotism and pride in ones country.

Otherwise, many elections over here are actually won by the faces the party puts up. Yes, the party can reflect badly and break a candidate, but it works the other way around, too. More and more the candidates are put in the foreground and less and the actual party programmes. Not that there is much difference in the programmes, many of them read very much alike and few of them actually tell you how they want to achieve their goals and where the money for those goals comes from.

I usually don't vote for the party that will repesent me and my wishes (because there aren't any), but for the party I think will do the least harm. I also vote to make sure that the ones I don't want get anywhere near decision making.

The US has two primary parties, usually one ore the other has the majority. Germany has two major parties and two to three smaller ones. It is very usual that two or more parties have to cooperate (making compromises your voters voted you not to make, but who is counting after an election) to get a majority. And that's the national level on a local level there is always a big row when one the right wing parties jumps the fifth percent hurdle (you need at least five percent of all votes to get seats).

This thread is really growing, and it's really interesting. I love that. Can you imagine what it would have looked like on just about any other message board on the internet?

Anyway, wish I had something more thoughtful to add, but I did want to take a sec to talk about the size of the US.

The size of the continental US is roughly the size of the entire "continent" of Europe. It's divided into 48 states, just as Europe is (according to a quick glance at Wiki) divided into 48 countries. Some bigger than others in both cases, of course.

I think that affects us. We've got all this geography to learn about our own country before we can really look beyond our borders to the rest of the world. Similarly, we have a lot to explore within our own borders before we look to traveling abroad. And when you talk about traveling abroad in Europe, you're talking about a trip that, to us, is the equivalent of going from state to state (in terms of distance traveled, effort to get there, etc).

It gives us a lot of variety. Different climates, different cultures, different communities. Especially when you factor in the diverse sources of our population.

But it also makes us more insular. We've only got two neighbors. And Canadian culture isn't so different from our own. There are quite a few of us who never actually manage to set foot in another country. Even the ones who do don't necessarily do it very much. You have to go pretty far. It's expensive and tiring. And, like I said, there's so much to see here. And the news stations cover local, state, and national events... doesn't leave so much room for global news.

Those people chanting that we're the best? A lot of them don't even have a solid concept of what a foreign country is. They know those other countries are there, but, in a way, they don't seem... real. They're more like vague concepts. And exotic vacation destinations. Average Joe on the street here couldn't even tell you where Iraq is, let alone Afghanistan.

It kind of changes what patriotism is, too. I think it can often be more about being proud of your own country than having an actual basis for comparison to any other.

You misquoted me. I said the average Swede pays 2/3 of their income in taxes in combined income AND VAT. The VAT alone is 25%. Sorry if the wording was confusing. That is an insane amount of tax to pay for "FREE" services. Like I said, there's no such thing as free. Swedes pay an enormous amount to get these free services. K-12 schools here are "free" as well, paid through huge taxes, bond issues (eventually paid by taxes), and other large taxes tacked onto our property taxes. When I lived in San Diego, the education taxes paid on my property taxes were actually higher than the property taxes by themselves. Anytime someone offers you something for free, hold onto your wallet with both hands.

Taxes make up 50% of the GDP of Sweden. Payroll taxes as of 2006 averaged 40% plus an additional 25% VAT, the highest in Europe.

Note, I'm not even including the 32% paid by employers as part of the employee compensation that employees don't see on their income tax returns. Don't be fooled that the company pays it. Since it's based on an employee's gross wages, it's part of the employee's tax. The only difference is that the employer handles all the paperwork and signs over the check.

In the US, the equivalent is the employer paid portion of Social Security and Medicare which adds up to an additional 7.65% on top of the 7.65% paid directly by the employee.

I've always said that income tax withholding should be outlawed and every taxpayer should be forced to write a monthly check to the government for their taxes. I think if that were to ever happen, you'd have a tax revolution in every industrialized nation in the world as people finally realized just how much they're paying. Just like Las Vegas makes you use chips rather than money, withholding is a way to abstract how much money you're actually dealing with, making it seem unreal somehow. Since you never actually see the money, somehow it doesn't feel like you're paying all that much.

Sweden is a lovely place to visit, which I go to every year including this July, but I wouldn't want to live there.

I should say, before anybody jumps on me for that last statement, that I love Sweden. The people are the nicest in the world and the climate is lovely. My wife and I even built a little one-room house with loft for the kids on my mother-in-law's property as a place for us to stay.

While I sympathize with this person, there are equivalent horror stories you can easily find with victims of socialized medicine. I should point out that several of those options are GOVERNMENT options. And people want government to run health care?

Here's one article:
Really sicko

The telling quote I saw from this article is this: "Those are both stories from within my immediate circle of friends, and together with the stories publicly reported they indicate that no matter how great socialized medicine may sound, the best that it achieves is dishing up very poor care for all, as opposed to good care for all, or even most."

There are tons more that I found just on a single page of a google search.

No health care system is perfect. Ours is far from perfect but many things can be done to fix it.

The 46 million uninsured is a figure thrown out a lot by those advocating socialized medicine. It's a very misleading figure. How many of them are 20-30 year olds who simply choose not to have health insurance and don't want it? Nobody's ever been able to answer that question. Rather that monolithic figure is always thrown out there as some tell-all statistic implying that 46 million CAN'T get health insurance. It also tells nothing about those who can't get care with or without insurance.

I'm ditto-ing Paul on this one. Let's face it, the US is a huge country.

I grew up overseas and only moved here for the university, and the in-your-face patriotism really startled me at first. True, the Brits and the French will criticise their governments--but, on the other hand, their governments have existed for a LONG time. The US is much younger, its "independence" much newer and generally, it's just young. Canada is a somewhat different case since it was a protectorate of the British Empire and therefore grew up under its wing.

In part, I think US citizens are so patriotic because they KNOW they have a huge role in the world. When you can go anywhere overseas and see your president on the news nightly, you might fall victim to a superiority complex.

Also, I think it might be fair to say that many US citizens feel attacked in debates on politics, especially when they are in groups of "foreigners". I know I do as one of the only North Americans in my program. I often find myself the hapless victim of random conversations wherein people throw national policy at me as if I invented it. I notice they take a different tone with people from other countries, but with me they just assume that I am propriatorially responsible for any and all actions by the government. This makes me a whole lot more defensive than I ever was before!

Wow, compared to many other political discussions this has been a heavenly thread to read and obviously to discuss as well. There are so many things I am thinking about after I read all your posts but for a lack of background information on American politics I'll stick to one topic for now.

For the record: I don't agree with John McCain's motivations at all (and the only thing about him that I'm grateful about is his 'victory' over Huckabee) but not only is his estimate more realistic, it's also more likely to become true. The '100 years in Iraq' may have been a throwaway comment but it always takes time to cool down a boiling pot.
Obama on the other hand was talking about pulling troops out by 2009 and he wants the UN Security Councel to take over in Iraq but where do you think those peacekeeping troops would come from? Take Germany as a significant example because it's one of Europe's largest countries with 80m people - and only about 80k military members in total (cp. 1.5m in the US). Judging by those numbers it would be impossible to have any kind of military presence strong enough to keep control of the region. It looks like George Bush has condemned America to an unforseeable period of time to this situation and even now that the Iraq topic is not the most important one anymore to American citizens (think economy, health care instead) it won't stop knocking at your doors for a long time; the daily expenses of 720 million dollars will guarantee that.

This thread started with a topic of patriotism and symbols thereof. Maybe this whole discussion about flag pins had its effect, now Obama is wearing a wristband given to him by the mother of a fallen soldier in Iraq. I don't believe that an item like this will portray more (or less) patriotism than any flag but a personal item with an emotional story to gossip about will always be more successful (to lure voters), don't you think so?

Not that this is on topic at all, but the existing forms of British and French governments aren't that old:

The Brits have had a constitutional monarchy since the Glorious Revolution in 1688, less than one hundred years before the US Revolution.

The French revolution was in 1789, after ours, and that wasn't the end of it - they still had to go through Napoleon and Napoleon III, among other things. The constitution they are using currently dates to 1958 - 171 years after the US Constitution.

Hopefully, American voters are more sophisticated than that. But, on the other hand, as every kid knows, it good to have a prop for "Show and Tell"

As I said above, Napoleon, who had a few drops of charisma in his blood, was on the money with his "Men are led by toys" comment.

Your comment about the UN makes a lot of sense. Here, in Canada we committed to the UN decision to invade Afghanistan. That decision was turned over to NATO for implementation and the Canadians have found themselves doing a disproportionate share of the "heavy lifting" so to speak. Public opinion here now wants that to change, right now! if possible. But how to do so respsonsibly has been hugely contentious. At any rate, handing over to the UN, as you point out, doesn't seem to really alter the basic issue.

Lisa, very nice to see a ref to the English and French revolutions.

A different thought: Maybe the reason why Canadians seem less overtly patriotic is the historical division between French and English Canada. We've kind of evolved into a grandmotherly stance: "We just would rather not talk about it. It might frighten the children." Seriously.

Unless of course, we're talking hockey and then everything changes. I believe our border guys say to incomers, "Don't be upset about the delay, you are about to enter the land of the best hockey in the universe!"

c.

Oh, definitely Then they apologise for keeping you waiting and wave you on politely - Canadians are so polite

(and, in case anyone's wondering, that's NOT a slight on any other nationality; it's a national stereotype and a standing joke that Canadians are the politest people on Earth. If you stand on a Canadian's foot, s/he will apologise to you!)


Wendy

I don't know whether Germany is a good military example. Germany is historically compelled to avoid military conflict.
Getting troups into Afghanistan was big enough a political row, asking our troups from the North to the South is not something many understand.
And regarding Iraq in particular, there's also a bit of a sentiment of why Germany should clean up the mess the USA made.

Yes, since the World War II experience, that's understandable, Chaos. But our hope is still to find some relief for our combat troops in the South.

Think your perception of Germany's probable reaction to a UN request for military aid in Iraq to form sort of International peacekeeping force would probably be the reaction in most other countries, as well. I think it would be here too - public opinion wouldn't buy it. Regardless, we're a small country, about 40% the size of Germany for example, and our military is even smaller, as a proportion of population than those of Europe. So we just wouldn't have the resources to say yes.

I'm not meaning to overlook or minimise here the casualties that other nations' troops have suffered in Afghanistan. Nor the extreme horrors that the Afghanistanis continue to experience.

c.

In regards to the original comment about Obama’s pin I have to blame the media. Actually, that’s probably not entirely accurate. I have to blame the 24-hour media. 30 or 40 years ago the news media had a very limited window by which to disseminate information and make an impact or even make a point to the public. At best they had 30 minutes to an hour nightly with which to cover local, national and global events on television or radio and newspapers were limited to daily or perhaps twice daily printings to do the same.

Because of this limited “window” they had to be a bit more thoughtful when they chose their stories. A story for instance about Obama ceasing to wear a patriotic symbol for whatever reasons might by necessity have to take backseat to a story about his policies on a given issue such as healthcare or national defense. However, with the advent of 24-hour networks the question was no longer “which story to run with?” but rather, “what other stories can we run?”

In today’s media the struggle to fill programming hours makes even the most minute moments worthy of extensive commentary. In the 70’s there was a much run clip of President Ford slipping and falling down the steps while disembarking from a plane. Had that happened today we would see stories covering such topics as his mindset prior to and following the incident, what he may have eaten earlier that day that may have affected his balance, in-depth investigations into the manufacturers of the steps and the planes, as well as a retrospective of other great falls in history while disembarking from transportation conveyances.

All of this coverage or “pseudo-coverage” has an impact on viewers as this level of scrutiny has an unfortunate tendency toward “nit-picking”. I think we see just from the internet community how what were once simply enjoyable television shows are now fodder to be dissected and analyzed as to scene lighting, plot points, and continuity. Of course, we can argue that these things are important from a story-telling perspective, but if we’re honest would we really have even wondered about some of this stuff if someone else hadn’t pointed out that a season 5, episode 6 of “Smallville” directly contradicted a statement made by an extra in season 2 episode 9?

Personally, when a major news story happens I will turn to the big chains to see the coverage and get as much information that I can. However, my rule of thumb is that the moment one news personality begins to interview another news personality about the incident it’s time to switch off the TV as that is a sure sign that all relevant information has been exhausted.

I remember giving an interview to a news station shortly after 9/11 and being asked what advice I would give to individuals in our country who had been traumatized by those events. I’m sure my answer gave my interviewer a start because it was, “turn off the TV”. It’s reasonable to watch and gain information about a traumatizing event because we all seek to make sense of even that which will never make sense, but it’s foolish to subject yourself to re-traumatization every half-hour as the same story runs over and over again.

I think politics falls into this same realm. Before the days of YouTube and the internet would Hillary even have known that Obama borrowed a line from another politician’s speech? And then would we have been subjected to numerous postings and examples of Hillary having done the exact same thing herself?

Look at the recent McCain controversy. 40 years ago would The New York Times have gone to print with a story that made such serious charges without further and more detailed investigation? And then would they while not retracted the article then have published another by a different reporter criticizing the paper for having done just that? I’m all for a little open debate, but when it’s with myself I feel a little foolish. Would this decision have been so hastily made had they not feared that half a dozen bloggers and 3 gossip news programs would have ran with even less than that had they caught wind of it first?

I think instant access to information has been a wonderful thing in some instances and created some positive effects such as accountability in certain situations. Unfortunately, like most super powers though the same idiom of “With great power comes great responsibility” applies and not every possessor exercises “great responsibility”.

As for the broader topic of “patriotism” I found this quote from Mark Twain to be apt:

Wow, I, too, am impressed by how calm and reasonable a political discussion has been! Great job, guys!

I have to say that I agree with Roger almost straight down the line. He's written, far more eloquently than I could, just about exactly what I'd write, in terms of health care, government bureaucracy never makes for better, cheaper service, etc.

In general, I think we have this idea that people are "entitled" to health care, which has just never really been the case in history. That's not to say that I believe we should just let sick people who don't have the money for health care die, but we do have to keep in mind that doctors and medicine are *expensive*, and that money has to come from somewhere. Doctors have some of the most intense and lengthy training of any profession, and medicines take many, many, many years to develop, test (think of Thalidomide) and make sure they're safe, and then market. We can't expect everything to be free, there's always a hidden cost. And when the costs are hidden, it's more likely that things won't be done the cheapest or most efficient way, because what's the incentive to improve?

I think it was Paul who seems to be saying that things like shelter, food, clothing, education, and health care are rights. I disagree. If I do nothing my entire life, contribute to the community in no way, make no effort to earn anything at all, why should these things be taken away from other people and given to me? I'm breaking that down to the most extreme example, I know, but just to point out that we don't "deserve" all of these things ourselves... we work to earn them. That's what this country is supposed to be about. We have the right to life, liberty, and the *pursuit* of happiness, not having happiness delivered to our doorstep. Now, I was speaking of what *I* deserve. But, on the other hand, as a compassionate individual who has the basic things she needs, my responsibility is to share, to show compassion for those who need help getting food, shelter, health care, etc. I personally think it's a mistake for the government to be involved, I think that we should donate voluntarily to charities who would provide help, rather than government bureaucracy, but since the government already does and I don't think it's likely to go back, I'll deal with it. But I don't think the government should be *adding* to the responsibilities that it takes on itself. Each bit of liberty that we cede to the government is just one more bit of freedom we'll never get back. The government only takes on duties and grows bigger, never smaller.

Also, the government was not meant to tax us so that it could provide things we could provide ourselves for cheaper. If you look at what the Constitution says that the government can collect taxes for, it's a very limited list, mostly thing like building and maintaining roads, the postal service, defense, etc. Not providing "free" health care to all individuals. They actually had to amend the Constitution to give the government the right to collect an income tax.

Somebody also said that it wasn't that easy to get health care if you don't have money. Well, my husband is currently unemployed, so we lost the health insurance we'd had through his work. It took about a month to get our daughter on a state health program provided free or low-cost (depending on income). That's with already-existing health programs available (this one is through the state government, although I couldn't say if it gets federal funds or not). And in an emergency, a hospital is not going to turn away a sick person. You can also get health insurance even if your employer doesn't cover it. It's more expensive, sure, but not as much as you'd think, and considering that when you have a job you get paid less because they're paying for your health insurance (that's why they call them "benefits"), it's really not a bad deal. We would have done that if this opportunity hadn't come up.

I liked the idea of the FairTax. Sure, changing tax plans in mid-stream is complicated. Since it changes income tax to sales tax, people who already have significant savings would be taxed twice--one when they earned it, and once when they spent it--unless something is done to work around this problem. But I do think our tax-and-spend, taking money away from people who earn it (and for all people complain about CEOs and sports players, they wouldn't get so much money if what they were doing wasn't worth a great amount of money to the people paying for their services) to give to people who haven't, is just wrong, and it wasn't the way that the founders of our country intended it.

Anyway, this post has gone on long enough and I'm not sure I'm still being coherent, so I'll end now and wait to see what others are saying!

There's a difference between needs and luxuries.

I believe that we, as a society, have a responsibility to see to the basic needs of our fellow citizens. A roof over your head, clothes to wear, food to live on, etc. Simply because we owe that to each other as human beings.

It's all well and good to say that people should give to charity. But they don't. Not enough, anyway. And, even if you see to the basics, there's still a lot more to be done, a lot more charities to give to.

Now, once the basics are covered - enough for a person to survive and be reasonably healthy - if a person wants better, that you have to work for. A nicer place to live, better clothes, better food, etc. A higher standard of living than subsistence-level.

The government is in a position to do that. To look out for all of its citizens. To make sure that at least the minimum gets done. And it's the government's job because the government is there to represent the collective will of the people. To represent us as a society.

And yes, health care is expensive. I don't know what the right answer is there. But the system we have is broken. And it's the government's role to fix it. Because it's the government that played a big role in getting us into this mess.

As it stands... Insurance companies have all the power. They decide what they charge their customers (except in some states, like NJ), they decide what they want to pay for, they decide what they're willing to pay for it, and they can make the process of paying as complicated and error-prone as they want (except in some states, like NJ).

On the surface, that seems reasonable. The same is true of just about any other business. And you'd hope that competition would set some limits.

But the companies are too powerful. They can decide to pay a doctor whatever they want, even if it's at or below cost (never mind overhead and at least a little profit). And if the doctor doesn't like it, his only choice is to refuse to accept that insurance... and thus lose all the patients who have it.

On the other side of things, the doctors can't even talk to each other. Thanks to lobbyists, it has become illegal for doctors to unionize. Not just unionize, but even to discuss the subject. If two doctors go out to lunch and one asks the other how much Company X pays him for giving a flu shot and the other answers, they are breaking federal law.

Laws and regulations like that are destroying the system, and they need to be fixed. We need to give patients and doctors more power and put some restrictions on insurance companies.

As for drug companies... they used to have all the power. There are still regulations to prevent the government from negotiating drug prices (getting essentially bulk discounts for things like Medicare). But the insurance companies have really cut into them, too.

NJ put some caps on things. Here, whatever an insurance company collects in premiums, they have to pay out 80% in benefits. And if they take more than 30 days to pay a claim, they become subject to fines (which get paid directly to the patient whose claim they delayed). And things like diabetic supplies have to be covered as prescription items.

And the state writes the policies (that may be going a little too far, but it does help a lot on the patient's side of things). There's Plan A, Plan B, Plan C, etc. Each company can decide which of the available plans they want to offer (and which they don't), and, within limits, how much they want to charge for each. The patients don't have to go wandering through a maze of alternative plans, trying to understand the rules and the wording and the subclauses and everything else just to figure out what's covered and what isn't.

The result, of course, is that there are relatively few companies who offer plans in NJ. But those companies do still make a profit, and there are limits to how much they can jerk patients around.

(Now, if only there was something the state could do for the doctors...)

So... even if you don't believe in universal health care, the government does play a role in how the system works. And it needs to do a better job of it.

And we need to close the gap between Medicaid and similar programs(government insurance for those who make less than a certain amount) and the point where medical insurance actually becomes affordable.

Like I said, I don't know what the best answer is, but I know we can do a lot better than we're doing now.

One question for the US posters-who does end up paying the bill when emergency care is done for people who don't have insurance coverage and can't afford the bill? Do hospitals have insurance against this or does the goverment help cover costs? Or does the cost of treating those who don't have coverage get passed on to those who are paying for coverage in the form of higher premiums? Okay, I realise it's more than one question but what it boils down to is trying to figure out how walk-ins to emergency rooms can get treated and who covers it in the long run.

On another note, a good online pal from a midwestern state is now in a chronic-care nursing home down there, quite possibly for the rest of his life. Considering he's in his mid-50's, it's a pretty bleak situation to say the least. As a small-time soybean farmer who has had chronic health problems since his 30's when he developed testicular cancer, he's been stuck with less-than-adequate health care since he and his elderly mother could not afford more than the state subsidised health insurance and finally he totally collapsed and nearly died a few months ago. Now I'm wondering who ends up paying the bill for the years and years of care he may need-he may never walk again and has no family to help look after him so he's stuck in the nursing home. I'm not sure he'd be any better off up here in Canada but I'd like to think he might have had access to see a wider range of specialists than seemed to be available to him down there over the past while, the docs he saw seemed to just hand him pain-killers and point him to the door when he probably should have been referred to a larger center for a much more extensive work-up. Aside from selling off the small farm he has no assets to speak of and once that money is gone, he's penniless and I'm guessing the goverment steps in since there is no family to send bills to other than his mother and she's now in a different nursing home after having a stroke. Even if he did get well enough to leave the home at some point, he'll have nothing left to go to...

No time for an in-depth answer, but if the patient really can't or won't pay it, the hospital has to write it off. But this isn't good for the patient, either - the charge-off will show on their credit report, and since everyone from creditors to employers to insurance companies to landlords pulls a person's credit these days, that's a serious problem.

I was trying to figure out how hospitals and other health care providers get around the losses from patients who default on bills when I stumbled over this site-

Disputing a bill?

Reading it over, it becomes clear that some hospitals are charging high enough markups on items that they must be making back some of those fees they cannot collect on. I used to purchase all of the inventory for the vet hospital I worked at (same medical companies supplying us that supply human hospitals) and I can tell you that at that time, (2002) suture material costs would have been something like $3.75/individual suture package (wholesale) and the hospital here is charging $49.00 while the saline solution and irrigation unit would have maybe been $6.00 wholesale price tops while the hospital charged them $100.00 for exactly the same thing.

So yes, hospitals do take a loss when patients can't pay their bills but when you are going for a markup like this with materials, I can see where profits are still possible in the long run. As for having a bad credit history, I suppose if it comes down to paying the rent and putting food on the table versus the bill for that emergency room visit, you just give up on getting a credit card, financing a vehicle or anything else that would mean a credit check. Though there seem to be enough car dealers and rent-to-own furniture places,etc that boast about "No credit? Not an issue!" around that it's not impossible to live with bad credit, just harder is all.

You can live with lousy credit, but you're going to pay through the nose on interest. A bad credit score can cost you the chance to buy a better house or rent a nicer apartment. It can force you to buy things either on a cash-only basis, too, because no one will loan you money. Which also cuts into your opportunities to have credit cards with reasonable interest rates, reduces your chance to carry a Visa or Mastercard debit card from your financial institution (which deducts the purchase from your checking or savings account but is presented at the point of sale like a credit card), and might even cost you the opportunity to either be promoted in your current job or get hired to a better job. Employers don't want people who don't pay their bills to be responsible for important business decisions.

So pay your medical bills, people!

Kidding. Like Paul already said, this is a complicated issue with no single clear-cut simple answer. But I'm not convinced that the Federal government can run the system any better. New Jersey's successes shouldn't be used as fuel for Federal control because their system won't scale up to a national level, if for no other reason than the sheer size of such a system. And any system put in place will grow like mold in a flooded basement because that's what government agencies do.

Some cynic once said that the function of government is to perpetuate itself, and that's what I see nearly every government agency on any level doing. The people in the agency start out wanting to do their jobs, and because they're charged with carrying out this responsibility, they do it. Then some genius figures out that by adding this task or that process, they can get more money the next budget year, and their jobs will be that much safer from being eliminated. Before long, the sincere and hard-working and honest are displaced and overwhelmed by the opportunists because the oversight functions and agencies react so slowly. Before long, this bright new agency which began with so promising a future becomes bogged down in red tape and attention to process replace attention to people.

Do you doubt me? Look what happened in Louisiana and Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina, how slowly the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) reacted to the crisis. It wasn't President Bush's fault that the agency couldn't get their collective butts off their cushioned chairs, it was the institutional inertia and reluctance to actually make a controversial decision which cause so much trouble. And that's the fate of nearly every government agency ever introduced in the United States.

I'm concerned that a federal health care system would very quickly become a deeper morass than the current system, bent and damaged as it is.

Well, since I pay for everything on a cash-only basis already (despite a good credit rating), that really wouldn't bother me too much. I do have a credit card (which I've used perhaps four times in the past six years) but aside from our mortgage, we just don't want to add anymore stress to our lives when it comes to bill paying. I think buying on credit is a financial morass that has led a lot people to more grief than they ever could have imagined as they signed the back of that little piece of plastic just before they stuck it in their wallet. I've tried to stress to my kids that paying cash instead of using credit cards can be done and if they are smart, they won't get into the system and over their heads like so many people seem to do these days.

I don't think any one system of health-care and health-care funding is perfect. I do think that the current US system has flaws as seen in my previous post since it's obvious that those who can afford to pay are paying rates that are probably adjusted to help cover the costs of those who cannot afford to pay...hospitals are getting supplies at costs just as low (if not lower because of bulk buying) as the vet hospital I worked at but our markups never went over 150% and that was only on specialty items we paid extra shipping on.

I think Canadians would be shocked if every time they saw the doctor or were hospitalised, a copy of the costs the government covers was sent to them. I've had four ER visits since college, my husband has had two and my son two as well, plus the two births of my kids (an emergency C-section and a normal delivery with complications on my end) and of course the childhood visits to the doctor for my kids as well. Not to mention tests,etc for when I was diagnosed with Crohn's disease a while back and to this day I could not begin to tell you what any of this costs since my husband is a municipal director and we have extended health benefits from his employer so we don't even pay the nominal provincial health insurance fee.

I have to say I don't think I'd want the headache of dealing with health insurance carriers but I do think it would be nice to see what things cost so when the next big mouth starts complaining about his federal taxes, I could pull up his family's bills and show him where some of it went.

Hmmmm. Rights. It's very interesting to contemplate this concept. Really, what are rights?

I don't think rights exist as independent entities. I think that rights are something we create ourselves and give to each other.

Sometimes people will try to grab rights for themselves that others have not granted them. We call such right-grabbers criminals. Just the other day I read about such a right-grabber in Denmark. This man, eighty years old, had just recently moved to a home for old people. In order to spiff his room up he had spent more than he could afford on painting the walls, getting new curtains etcetera. He had overdrawn his account. He soon got a letter from his bank ordering him to pay the money back right away. The bank would not allow him to pay off his debt in monthly instalments. In response, the man bought himself a toy gun and walked - or rather limped, supported on a cane - into a branch of his bank and threatened a female cashier with his gun. "Don't be afraid, I won't shoot you," he told her, but he nevertheless managed to make her give him 32,000 Danish krone, about 6,000 dollars.

Now the eighty-year-old man will go to jail. Of course. We could argue, however, that the bank might be held partly responsible. If it had allowed the old man to pay off his debt in instalments, nothing may have happened. By enforcing the rights that it had been given under the system in which it was operating, the bank put the (irresponsible) man in a position where he might be evicted. But the bank had the right to act the way it did, because the Danish government, law, tradition etcetera gave it the right to ask its money back right away and to levy execution on the man's possessions if he did not pay up. The man, however, was not given the right to act the way he did by any significant force or actor in the Danish society.

Hmmmm. I'm reminded of a case in Sweden about a year ago. Sorry I don't remember the details. A man was leaving Sweden for a year to travel around the world. Meanwhile, he allowed another man to move into his rented apartment to live there while he himself, the owner of the lease, was away. But when the man returned, he found that the other guy refused to leave his apartment! And because the law had not really foreseen this situation, it turned out that there was no way that the police or anyone else could evict the guy! In the end it became necessary for the man who had the right to live there to give up his right to the lease, so that the owners of the apartment house could give the lease to someone else! And because these owners had the right to turn down anyone they found unsuitable, they could easily argue that the squatter's refusal to evacuate the apartment constituted a very good reason not to let him have the lease. And finally, this guy could be evicted. It had taken almost a year. But the guy who originally owned the lease could not move back.

My point is that societies will protect some people's rights in some situations, but they will not protect other people's rights in other situations. I think "rights" are pretty much unpredictable and erratic. And I really think that the members of a society bestow rights on one another, but they bestow these rights on different people in unequal amounts. We don't all have the same rights. If your father is rich, you will almost inevitbly be born to greater rights than if your father is poor.

I live in a society where you have to pay very high taxes. I trust that most of the taxes I pay will go to good causes. I trust that most of it will end up paying for doctors, nurses, teachers, hospitals, schools, old people's homes, day care centers, subsidized housing, unemployment compensation, disability and sickness pensions and the like. I don't think that I or anyone else has the right to such things, but it is important to me to live in a country where people are willing to contribute to the welfare of others by paying tax, so that the government gets the money it needs to distribute among us according to our needs.

In the latest election in Sweden, in 2006, a right-wing alliance won. The alliance had promised to give unemployed people jobs, and its campaign had been very inspiring and successful. When it won the election, it lowered the taxes for everyone who had a job, and the more money people made, the more their taxes were lowered. At the same time, the government cut down on the support for unemployed, sick and disabled people. Well, sigh. No, unemployed, sick and disabled people don't have the right to ask for money and support. I just want to live in a society where people feel responsible for one another and want to pay for everyone's welfare through their income taxes.

Ann

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.

Don't have much to add just now, but just came across this story about a debate a little less civil than this one...

"Montgomery County authorities say a man stabbed his brother-in-law during an argument over who should get the Democratic nomination for president. What's more, Jose Ortiz, 28, who's charged with felony assault, is a registered Republican..."