I think we have to consider sacrificing Maryland.
Some of my best friends are Marylanders. Nothing personal, guys, but this healthcare thing is important, and there’s only one way to break the impasse: hard scientific experimenting.
Here is the plan. We isolate Maryland and turn it into a giant test case. We send in a crack team of government healthcare administrators to run the place. We give them some billions of dollars and a free hand. And we leave the rest of the country alone (especially Illinois).
And after five years we’ll know one way or the other: Maryland the shining exemplar of robust health. Or not.
Why Maryland in particular? Fair question.
Population-wise it’s ranked 19th so it’s not too big and not too small.
It’s got diversity — Beltway huggers and suburban commuters, big city Baltimorons and rural westerners across the Gap.
It has Pennsylvania to the north and Virginia to the south to provide excellent contrast data for the social scientists.
It’s one of those blue states, so the citizenry will be sporting about it.
It’s win-win. It’s scientific. It’s perfect. Cast your votes below.
Thank you.
I’m not usually in favor of sacrifices, but … . The only flaw I see here is that proponents of government run healthcare aren’t likely to let something like a failed experiment put a dent in their ideology. Canada, Britain, France, etc. have all been sacrificed on this altar and yet we don’t seem to see any lessons learned here.
You don’t think everyone in this debate is a strict empiricist?
Hah hah. Well, if they were strict empiricists in the Humean tradition, they’d be unable to extrapolate from all the past failures and form an abstract causal lesson. Seriously, you’re more familar with this than I, but the Pragmatic influences in this country seem to pretty much rule out any principled thinking on the matter by most of those involved in the decision making. I’d still vote in favor of your proposal though … I quite like the idea of containing the damage elsewhere! Unfortunately, I thought we *were* doing that with Canada. Maybe we should be building a fence at that border instead?
Susan beat me to the punch. If the massive failures of government care in Canada, the U.K., and all those other countries is not enough, then no experiment will provide enough evidence. Since the proponents of government health care are working on the philosophical premise that healthcare is a “right”, no failure can deter them. If it is a “right”, then it must be done no matter what the cost.
Walter Donway just did an article on this.
http://www.objectivistcenter.org/cth-43-2217-road_to_rationing.aspx
Here is a quote:
“In fact, however, the “right to health care” was revolutionary, in the precise sense of that word. It turned the concept of rights in the Declaration of Independence on its head. The rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness [or property, in another formulation] were rights to freedom of action—to live as one chooses, act as one chooses, and keep the results of one’s work. The “right to health care” had nothing to do with liberty or freedom of action. It implied that anyone and everyone was morally entitled to the services of doctors and nurses, the care provided by hospitals, the drugs developed and sold by drug companies, the services of a nursing home—all without concern for whose work made these possible, at what cost. The “right to health care” made irrelevant who would provide the services, who would pay.”
Bob Marks
Can I have my own guard, I mean observation tower, on the Virginia side of the Potomac?
You want Marylanders to believe in science? hahahahahaha Never happen. Next thing you’ll want Derrida and Foucault to think that they really exist even if we don’t chose to believe it; and fundamentalist Christians to believe in that stupid evolution nonsense. You are going soft, pal. Besides all of that scientific evidence would be for the “greater good” at the expense of the “individual” state. Oh wait…. It’s Maryland…. Sacrifice ’em.
Or we could look to an already failed experiment on U.S. soil: Massachusetts.
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=10268