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Thoughts on Health,
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The USA has a unique approach to providing medical services, compared to most other developed countries around the world.
Friends of mine have suggested that we adopt the so-called "Health Care System" already in use in various other countries. I believe that the unique characteristics of the United States make that extremely unlikely.
Here are some of those characteristics:
- we are the 3rd most populous country on the planet (after China and India)
- we are the last remaining world 'superpower' (in terms of military and economic power)
- we have an increasingly diverse population and we seem to be shifting power away from our central government into more local hands
- we have grown up, so to speak, as a country on a large swath of land rich with resources. (It's taken us longer to start running out of space and resources than almost anywhere else on the planet.)
- we have evolved a culture based on the idea that bigger is better, and that individual success is paramount and should be rewarded almost without limit.
- we occupy the better part of an entire continent. We live in many different climates (fires in California, floods in the plains, hurricanes in the east, for examples), we have many different regional cultures, we speak many different languages, are devoted to many different religions or devoted to no religion at all. We are incredibly diverse.
I don't define any of these factors as either 'good' or 'bad.' However, these factors, and others, put us in a position where a 'one size fits all' medical services plan, nation wide, is extremely unlikely to be successful. I do not blame the Republicans or the Democrats for this. I strongly believe that our challenges are much bigger and vastly different in nature from what many of us, engaged in partisan rhetoric, claim them to be.
We do not have only two choices (keep what there is vs. some kind of "single payer" plan). We must open our minds to imagine, explore, and develop other options, options distinctly different from either of those two. We must consider not only how to finance medical care in this country, but the entire foundation of how our medical industry was conceived, is structured, and what its purpose is now. We must turn out priorities to health, the concept of health that includes how we live, treat our own bodies and minds, and how we relate to and treat each other, before any medical services might be needed.
Friends of mine have suggested that we adopt the so-called "Health Care System" already in use in various other countries. I believe that the unique characteristics of the United States make that extremely unlikely.
Here are some of those characteristics:
- we are the 3rd most populous country on the planet (after China and India)
- we are the last remaining world 'superpower' (in terms of military and economic power)
- we have an increasingly diverse population and we seem to be shifting power away from our central government into more local hands
- we have grown up, so to speak, as a country on a large swath of land rich with resources. (It's taken us longer to start running out of space and resources than almost anywhere else on the planet.)
- we have evolved a culture based on the idea that bigger is better, and that individual success is paramount and should be rewarded almost without limit.
- we occupy the better part of an entire continent. We live in many different climates (fires in California, floods in the plains, hurricanes in the east, for examples), we have many different regional cultures, we speak many different languages, are devoted to many different religions or devoted to no religion at all. We are incredibly diverse.
I don't define any of these factors as either 'good' or 'bad.' However, these factors, and others, put us in a position where a 'one size fits all' medical services plan, nation wide, is extremely unlikely to be successful. I do not blame the Republicans or the Democrats for this. I strongly believe that our challenges are much bigger and vastly different in nature from what many of us, engaged in partisan rhetoric, claim them to be.
We do not have only two choices (keep what there is vs. some kind of "single payer" plan). We must open our minds to imagine, explore, and develop other options, options distinctly different from either of those two. We must consider not only how to finance medical care in this country, but the entire foundation of how our medical industry was conceived, is structured, and what its purpose is now. We must turn out priorities to health, the concept of health that includes how we live, treat our own bodies and minds, and how we relate to and treat each other, before any medical services might be needed.
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