Health Insurance Is Communism With Uncle Joe In Control

How does health insurance work? Well, it's communism. Yes, communism. But it is communism gone badly, as if Stalin were at the helm. A large community of people pool their resources (called premiums), and those premiums are used to pay for the medical care the people in that community need. Insurance companies, to satisfy investors, cull from the community those in the most need, protecting those who statistically need it least (they play the odds like a casino and the house always wins; that's what their number crunchers do for a living) and charging them just as much as they think the market will bear.

I can see an argument being made that health care, to some degree, is a right, albeit not one specifically delineated within our Constitution. But to me it's more about being a good American. We take care of each other. We cut the lawn of the widow next door, repair broken fences, and help those who need help when we can. We live in a civilized, industrialized major world power known as the US of A! What have we let happen with our country's health industry? We've let it buy its way into the halls of power, spending over $1.5 million every day of every year, gaining influence over our law-makers. We've let their multi-million dollar public relations firms scare us into believing that the shareholders of CIGNA and the CEO's of the insurance companies CARE more about our health and well being than we do ourselves. I say that because where the rubber meets the road, WE ARE OUR GOVERNMENT. For goodness sakes, we don't tell they guy down the street, making $9/hour that he's not entitled to the protections granted by soldiers, or judges because he doesn't contribute to the salaries of those soldiers or of judges, so why do some of us have the temerity to tell that same person that they don't have the right to the same kind of health care we have, because they haven't earned it? We damned sure don't take that route with the little old lady who we cut the lawn for out of the kindness of our heart, do we? 

We need a single payer system.  A system that puts the doctors in charge of what is prescribed in the way of medication and medical treatments; one that eliminates the hassles that every doctor and hospital has to deal with in terms of justifying to some desk jockey adjuster what was needed and why, when we all know that the moron at the desk doesn't understand a thing they're being told, but their job is to "adjust" the claim downward, or escalate it to someone who can.

We spend nearly 15% of our country's GDP on health related costs compared to France's 10% (2002 figures), and France is regularly touted as having one of the best health care systems in the world. Note that France has a health care system and we have a health care industry. We all know that there isn't any plan that is perfect, and every country out there, even France, Canada, Sweden and the U.K. have their own unique problems, but their problems pale in comparison to ours when it comes to who gets cared for and how vs. who does not get cared for at all.

The cost for a universal plan is minimal IF it's truly universal...if, unlike the insurance companies who cull the high risk applicants with rescissions or outright denials of coverage, this universal health system accepted everyone, and everyone contributed to the best of their ability (like we do to pay for judges, police, and soldiers), without the need for high priced PR firms, or the need to grease the palms of the power brokers to the tune of over half a billion dollars every year, we'd keep workers healthier and therefore more productive (increasing our GDP even more), and find that it's less expensive than what we currently have.

Our taxes pay for a lot of things: libraries, parks, police, fire, judges, politicians (ugh), soldiers, and more. The list could get pretty long. When was the last time you complained that the legal system was run by the government and not by a for profit corporation? The health of our bosses, the health of our employees, and the health of our neighbors is important, and it's important enough to tell the health insurance mega-corps with their Stalin-like CEO's at the helm, and their shareholders that our health isn't something to be treated like odds at the roulette wheel for their profit, but is necessary for a stronger, more united, happier and LESS STRESSED society. We Are Americans...we need to stop letting ourselves be used as pawns by the powerful, moneyed, amoral, greedy bastards that have been setting us one against the other for over 50 years. We're long overdue for this America. Now do something.

Climate Change: Human Dilemma & Moral Imperative

In order to address global climate change in terms of human population and how said population utilizes the environment and the natural resources that make up that environment, we first must ask ourselves under what principle we are choosing to act or not.  I am of the belief that the most paramount of any ethical consideration relating to the human race as a species is our indefinite survival as a species that continuously evolves and flourishes in terms of our intellectual growth.  Any act that opposes our survival as a species or risks our demise as a species would therefore be unethical, and would warrant swift action by those whose lives are being risked or by those who choose to protect the lives being endangered.  I further believe any principle must account for the fact that we humans are the most important species on the planet by virtue of our sentience, sapience and our evolutionarily advanced stage as it regards our intellectual capabilities.  The maintenance of, or the striving for, an ideal living environment for our species must be the most important aspect of any ethical considerations regarding our environment.  By accounting for an ideal living environment we are compelled to assess how any of our own actions will affect the biosphere in general, as well as more localized ecosystems specifically, and how those changes will in turn affect the human species. 

An ideal environment would be one in which all humans equally benefit from the natural resources of the environment, though not necessarily in the same ways, and one in which the continued survival of the species is optimized.  In order to optimize our continued survival as a species we need to make sure we are able to flourish technologically with an end goal in mind of galactic colonization since science already shows us that at some point the planet will be totally uninhabitable as a result of our sun’s expansion toward the end of its natural life.  I personally know a few people who already hold this ethical principle as their primary principle and I’m sure a lot more people share this belief without even knowing its evolutionary source or that the traditional phrase “women and children first” is evidence of having this belief.  The aforementioned phrase is evolutionarily significant in that it is a statement of relative value where adult males are valued less than either women or children.  Women, being limited in the number of children they can give birth to in a lifetime are more valuable than men when it comes to reproductive abilities. Children are granted a higher value because they have the potential to reproduce and generate more offspring by mere virtue of the longer, yet to be realized, expected lifespan.  Both of these speak to continuance of the species though the phrase has been couched in chivalric terms that romanticize and mask its true meaning.

The above principle requires at least a three part approach.  Part one requires governmental and social priorities on two equally important technologies.  One of these priorities must be the research and development of one or more methods of hyper luminous travel and the research and development of agricultural technologies such as self-sustaining food crops and their mechanized processing.  Part two requires the global distribution of these technologies as they become available.  We already have agricultural technologies that if distributed properly will reduce the need many cultures have of reproducing to gain additional farming assets in the form of field hands for the family.  As a result of these technologies being spread far and wide, the already declining global growth rate will almost immediately start declining precipitously until global population stabilizes substantially lower than the predicted 9.1 billion by 2050 following current trends.  Part three requires action to make it all happen.

The principle has already led to people taking action.  Unfortunately, the ability to affect change at a global level requires more than the relatively tiny number of people working toward the above goals.  The principle is motivating because it agrees with our genetic programming to reproduce and expand within the bounds of our own self-interest and it’s rational.  Problematic right now is that the global south has not reached a post-industrialized stage of development.  Rapid implementation of technologies already possessed by the post-industrial parts of the world within the pre-industrialized and transitional areas of the globe will not only result in a more rapid decline in the population growth rate, it serves the additional purpose of freeing up the people in those societies to start specializing in ways that will promote further technological advances needed to increase the likelihood of expansion to the stars.  The only thing that needs to be done at this point for realization of this plan is to get a few key people into a few key governmental and industrial positions where they have the power to more effectively persuade or coerce others into supporting the policy changes needed for speedy implementation.  It’s already in the works and will eventually happen.

U.S. Foreign Policy and the Liberalization of the Middle East

             Recent events in the Middle-East have brought to light several issues regarding U.S. foreign policy as it relates to the region.  Interestingly enough, the authors of the UN’s 2004 Arab Human Development Report predicted this with what now might be seen as a supernaturally prophetic warning:

If the repressive situation in Arab countries today continues, intensified social conflict is likely to follow. In the absence of peaceful and effective mechanisms to address injustice and achieve political alternation, some might be tempted to embrace violent protest, with the risk of internal disorder. (19)

To look at these issues objectively, there is a need to examine the history of the region and its politics to dispel some myths many westerners believe to be fact.  By putting to rest the myths, and looking at the region in a historical context, it becomes easier to explain the recent uprisings and protests.  It is also imperative to look at how past involvement by the U.S. has helped shape the region into what it is.  After having looked at the aforementioned aspects related to the recent uprisings it will be evident that the direction of U.S. foreign policy regarding the region needs to be one of cautious promotion of democratic ideals, regardless of whether those ideals are exercised by way of a secular or religious regime, through an ethical, consistent, long-term plan of global constructivism, modernization, and diplomatic pressure for more transparent governance, where the focus is on the Middle-East.

            The first myth that needs dispelled is that Islamic cultures are either too young or too based in tribal custom to be successful at democracy.  It will not come as a surprise that one of the major proponents of this myth is Israeli nationalists who are right to be cautious of new, independent, democratic, Islamic nations.  Israel’s claims to be the only true democracy in the region, regardless of its policies toward the Palestinians and the West Bank, raises some eyebrows in the West, and has raised eyebrows, ire, distrust,  and hate in the Arab countries around it.  This myth has even been supported by some of controlling regimes in the region, especially Saudi Arabia.  Forgotten, however, is that in the early twentieth century, there were widespread Islamic movements toward democracy, from the Ottoman Empire, through the Caucasus, and into Asia.  Charles Kurzman, in the Journal of Democracy, April 2010, states “The two most influential Shia scholars of the era sent telegrams calling opposition to constitutionalism un-Islamic” (61).   Kurzman goes on to explain that it was not Arab culture or Islamic religion that caused the democratizing movements to fail, but

…secular authoritarians… Mustafa Kemal in the Ottoman Empire, the Bakhtiyaris and later Reza Khan in Iran, and European colonial authorities elsewhere—who dismissed parliaments, shuttered newspapers, and suppressed prodemocratic Islamic movements (61).  

One belief, however, which may or may not be myth, is that tribal Arab culture is antithetical to democratic processes, not the Islamic faith.   Larry Diamond, also in the Journal of Democracy, January 2010, tells us that of the Arab countries, only Lebanon has ever been democratic and had, “[a] significant records of extending reasonably democratic political rights to their citizens”, and that was “before the civil war that began in 1975” (94).  It might be surprising to note that surveys taken in the region have found that there is extremely strong support for democracy.  According to Mark Tessler and Eleanor Gao in “Gauging Arab Support for Democracy”,

…the percentage of respondents who agree that democracy is a "very good" or "fairly good" way to govern their country is very high…It ranges from 93 percent in Algeria all the way up to 98 percent in Egypt. Among these respondents, a substantial majority in each case rates democracy as a "very good" rather than merely a "fairly good" way to govern their country. (87)

           

If the operable assumption is that tribalism, rentier status, and external geopolitical forces came together in a manner that is delaying democracy to the Arab world, and not that Arab culture itself cannot coexist with democracy, it seems easy to see how those puzzle pieces fit together nicely, and are still entangled in a way that will either continue to delay or even deny democracy to the majority Arab states. 

The most powerful, arguably, are the external geopolitical forces which have served to prop up and support autocratic regimes.  The United States has provided billions of dollars in aid, both for military and humanitarian purposes, to the leaders of the region for two primary reasons.  First, the cold war strategy of both the NATO countries and the Warsaw Pact countries were to develop buffer nations, and develop friendly relations with countries strategically important in terms of access to natural resources: namely oil.  Second, in order to maintain a level of stability required for lower cost access to this natural resource, a balancing act was required to keep the peace between Israel and the surrounding Arab states.  This balancing act was in large part possible with the massive influx of cold, hard cash which was, in large part, a tool used by the authoritarian regimes to exert control, sometimes brutally, over the populace, and maintain power.  The entire process was one that required the U.S. to explicitly acknowledge the legitimacy of the autocratic regimes, which de-legitimized the democratic desires of the people being ruled by the autocrats: a difficult, hypocritical position for a democratic republic to find itself in, even if the justification for it was national security and the utilitarian greater good of saving lives by minimizing the chances for civil wars or mass uprisings in the region.

Recent unrest in the region has been fueled by several factors.  Aladdin Elaasar, in his article “Unsteady Egypt: Is Egypt Stable?”, published in the Middle East Quarterly, attributes a youth-bulge, extreme levels of unemployment, rapidly increasing food prices, the fast growing gap between the rich and poor, increasingly corrupt governments and their brutal responses to dissidents, as the primary causes (69).  It would be a mistake to discount, as mentioned earlier, the majority belief that democracy would be the best form of government.  The subject people of these authoritarian regimes, it would seem, have had enough.  The self-immolation of a long unemployed college graduate in Tunisia was the spark that lit the uprisings.  From Tunisia, the protest movement spread east to other Arab nations, eventually causing problems in Libya, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Jordan, and Syria to name just a few. 

Currently, only Tunisia and Egypt are in the midst of transformation from authoritarian rule toward a more democratic system of governance, their respective rulers having abdicated or resigned their positions of authority.  Libya on the other hand is embroiled in what can only be described at this point as a civil war, with the revolutionaries being provided with a modicum of support by NATO and even Arab League forces, with the approval of both the UN and the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC).  A problem faced by supporters of democratization of the Middle East, especially the citizens of these troubled nations, is that there is a history of rulers doing what they have seen work for other rulers trying to strengthen their positions of authority.  Dominic Dudley in "Encouraging Public Participation" notes

Governments in the region often follow each other's lead. If some countries are able to peel back political reforms and increase their hold on the country and there's no consequences for them, then other authoritarian governments will follow. (28)

For this reason, supporters of Arab democratization cannot afford to allow Muammar Muhammad al-Gaddafi to maintain his autocracy by defeating the rebel opposition being led by his former interior minister, Younis al-Obaidi.

            The case for intervention in Libya was based on a fragile “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine, which received unanimous support at the 2005 World Summit.  Stewart Patrick states in his article for Foreign Affairs Magazine, “A New Lease on Life for Humanitarianism”,

The endorsement of the no-fly zone by the Arab League, Organization of the Islamic Conference, and Gulf Cooperation Council was also crucial. None of these bodies has ever lifted a finger against regional tyrants, but this time their members made a different calculation, presumably reflecting a collective distaste for Qaddafi and their vulnerability to democratic aspirations sweeping the region. (1)

If NATO and the Arab League fumble the mission and Gaddafi retains his power, it will likely crush the prospects of any further democratizing movement in the region.  Bahrain, Syria, Jordan, and every other authoritarian regime will know exactly what needs to be done to maintain power: slaughter the dissident rebels and protesters.

What can the U.S. do to maximize the successful chances for democratizing efforts in the Middle East, while simultaneously maintaining some semblance of stability, access to strategic resources, and meeting its national security needs?  The first problem is one of trust.  The U.S. has a severe trust deficit based on its past actions in the Middle East.  President Barack Obama has admitted the U.S. policies in the past have not been conducive to democracy in a manner consistent with American core values.  What many don’t remember is that President George W. Bush also admitted as much.  Both presidents acknowledged past “wrongs” in an attempt to garner trust.  Unfortunately, it will take much more than words spoken over the past few years to undo decades of interventionist policy and erase the hypocrisy shown by U.S. willingness to implicitly assist autocratic regimes in the subjugation of their citizens, and to secure strategic resources at the expense of human suffering. 

Trust is earned over time and experience, and a good argument can be made for how well the current administration has handled Tunisia and Egypt.  While that is a small start, it is a start nonetheless.  One other item that bears mentioning regarding trust is the unintended benefit of the recent Wikileaks documents of diplomatic correspondence and notes.  The documents show that the U.S. State Department was not nearly as disingenuous or duplicitous as many in the region thought, and thanks to the power of the internet, the people in the region saw just how corrupt their own leaders were.  In comparison, the U.S. looked relatively beneficent.  

Regardless of the outcome in Libya, it can also be argued that as far as building trust with the global community, the U.S. once again did the right thing.  It is not acting unilaterally, which has been one reason the U.S. has historically been seen by many as imperialistic and exploitative.  By acting in accord with UN agreements and by gaining common cause with the Arab League, the U.S. is, in this case, not likely to be seen as the primary instigator in a military action against a smaller and substantially weaker nation.  It helps that strategically, the E.U. has a more vested interest in the Libya conflict than the U.S. does.  The U.S. needs to continue on the path of joint operations, in support roles as much as possible, to continue to garner trust that its actions are consistent with its stated ideology of liberal democratic rule. 

While trust is necessary if U.S. actions are to be seen by the world, and especially the Arab people, as a force for democracy, more is needed.  Iraq needs to be highly visible as an Arab democracy that works effectively, without disenfranchising any sectarian or tribal groups.  Libya needs to be successful in that, at the very least, Gaddafi needs to be deposed, killed, or otherwise removed from power.  Tunis and Egypt need diplomatic pressure placed on the transitional powers to incorporate into their constitutions those things that will help secure freedom and security for their citizens, again, like Iraq, without disenfranchising any sectarian or tribal groups.  The U.S. needs to step away from a policy of non-conditionality, and explicitly state that the long-term policy goals are consistent with the balanced goals of security and self-determination for all people, and use both positive and negative conditions as part of the diplomatic arsenal openly, while admitting the ability to do so is dependent on the military and economic strength of a nation that prides itself on being able to do so much to help so many. 

In the hopeful event that Iraq becomes a successful democracy, the U.S. can and should avoid if at all possible, for as long as possible, an official acknowledgement that the ends have justified the means regarding Operation Iraqi Freedom.  Fully embracing the World Summit’s Responsibility to Protect doctrine in conjunction with a doctrine of non-unilateral intervention, except in cases of imminent threat to national security, will also serve to allay fears of U.S. imperialism while giving credibility to the new foreign policy objectives.  By being a much more vocal proponent for the U.S. ideology within the UN and other international governing bodies, and showing that the U.S. is not patronizing enough to see itself as the father of an unruly family, represented by the other nations, but is instead a brother, working for common goals, while not ceding or sacrificing its own national security, the U.S. will become, over time, not merely the de facto hegemon, but the de facto hegemon that is supported in its position by a global majority.