eumelia | I Don't Get It

I don't get it.

Really, I don't.

I've been to the States and I didn't get it then. I've been reading up on the subject because the Interwebs are busting with the "health care" discussion.

My country has socialised medicine, we get the choice of four different HMO's, they compete with each other and have supervision and controlling rights over different hospitals.
There is a Health Basket that includes various kinds of medications that would have been unattainable for many people, but through prescription you can get your Insulin, your Xanax, your (practically) whatever you need for an affordable price.

We pay for this service along as well as for national security (so that in case we are unable to work we will still be able to afford health care) through our pay cheques or certificates if one is an independent.

Is it perfect? Hell, no. Most of the time, it is more aggravating than not.

However, this year due to an actual medical necessity I saw the health care system work and we actually got money back after the treatments my mother had to go through were done.

I understand that this sounds like luxury for some and it is. In Third World counties (not all) and in the United States.

That's really fucked up.

Also? Crazy Americans comparing Universal Healthcare to Nazi Policy, WHAT?!

Barney Frank says it better than me (via

mizzpyx)

I mock.

That's what I have to say about this really, really redundant debate (it's a debate!!!).

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The interesting thing though is that we already have government funded health insurance coverage (called Medicare) for people over the age of 65. From the news, I gather that that's actually the group most loudly protesting the idea of "socialized" medicine for everyone else. There's a dearth of compassion in my country.

Edited 2009-08-19 12:36 (UTC)

You suspect the over-65s are concerned they won't get as much on medicare if the program is expanded to cover more people?

I wonder where the Nazi stuff is coming from.

Can you imagine if anybody had ever referred to Bush as a Nazi? They'd probably have been arrested by Homeland Security.

HAHAHAHA!

*cough cough* ahem, sorry, I'll just get my self a nice cup of cool Gestapo, uuuuh, I meant Gespaco.

People said worse things about Bush, true or not, so if you're being serious, I'd say that I doubt it. But under the Bush Administration, people opposing Bush's policies were arrested and barred from admittance to speeches and marches, and people of color were targeted by Homeland Security even when they were minding their own damn business, so yours isn't too much an exaggeration.

You suspect the over-65s are concerned they won't get as much on medicare if the program is expanded to cover more people?

I do. Something I've noticed here is that we advocate independence and "go your own way" so much that we seem to have lost a sense of community and watching out for our neighbor. We also like to hoard - the US is the land of opportunity, right? Therefore, if you get something, I must lose. But as I mentioned to Mel above, I do believe racism has much to do with it. There's a lot of distrust about a black man in power.

I think for most people, when they think of the height of evil, they think of Nazism (understandable). The problem of course is that the Nazi comparison has been so overdone and often so inappropriately that it's become a joke, so even discussions where a Nazi comparison is appropriate aren't taken seriously. Equating a man of color with Hitler kills me for the irony and the fact that these people don't get it, but we've been lamenting that our education system is lacking, so what can I expect?

Edited 2009-08-19 12:52 (UTC)

Yeah, it did seem like a lot of people who criticised Bush were labelled unpatriotic very quickly. I'm thinking here specifically of all the Democratic elected representatives who leapt on the 'we must support everything Bush does even when it is illegal' bandwagon, out of fear of being labelled traitors.

Apparently that fear doesn't affect Republicans.

I wonder if over 65 year olds tend to be the most racist age group too... that's certainly the case here, the older people are, the more likely they are to be racist.

Does make you wonder about education doesn't it. There was a study done over here recently that said something like 80% of 16 year old girls in british schools didn't know who Hitler was.

There was a study done over here recently that said something like 80% of 16 year old girls in british schools didn't know who Hitler was.

Noooooo. No way. They're not even familiar with the Blitz or who caused it? Really?

I wonder if over 65 year olds tend to be the most racist age group too... that's certainly the case here, the older people are, the more likely they are to be racist.

I'd wager that us young white people are racist as well and just express it in different ways. We still have to unpack our privilege and I'm not seeing a lot of that being done by and large.

Edited 2009-08-19 15:27 (UTC)

The story in the newspaper didn't go into where this study was conducted, or how many students they asked. (It was something like 30% of boys didn't know. I assume because boys are more likely to have played at war/soldiers and watched the movies and suchlike.)

But yep, this was their conclusion. They also found that a very small percentage thought Churchill was a real historical figure. And that terrifyingly more students thought Sherlock Holmes was a real person than Winston Churchill.

History stopped being a required subject at many schools... oh, 15 years ago I think? I suspect we're now seeing the effects of that decision.

Is public education regulated at the federal level in England? Here it's done by state, so New Jersey (where I live) may have different requirements than Texas. Here it's compulsory to study history, English, math and gym for four years. Other subjects, like foreign language and science, are mandatory as well but you don't have to take them all four years.

Yeah, public education is determined by a set state curriculum. But in recent years the educational system has been so fiddled around with by politicians, who have really pushed for a Ticking Boxes style education system which is designed to show how well every student is doing so that politicians can say 'look! The system is working! everybody passes!'

And of course the problem with ticking boxes style education is that nobody actually gets educated. And teachers spend ever more of their time doing paperwork.

They're supposed to study basic things though. Like everybody in UK schools does like, The Vikings and The Romans. And I think WW1 is still on the syllabus.

Honestly I thought WW2 was on the curriculum still as well, but according to that study, apparently not.

Oh! Similar stuff has been happening here. How odd.

I would have loved to have studied Vikings. Hell, I would have been impressed if we'd gotten up to WWI. Every year for 8 years, we seemed to study European conquest of the Americas, the colonies thumbing their noses at you guys, and hopefully get up to the Civil War before we ran out of time.

Yep, its one of the (sadly many) ways in which the UK has followed the US lead. The other big and damaging example that springs to mind is the banking system.

(And there are continued rumblings that they want us to follow the US health system too. But, I hope to hell there is bloody revolution in the streets before we the people will allow our political masters to dismantle the NHS.)

Studying history in Scotland always annoyed me a bit, because they insisted on doing scottish history. So we got the scottish bit of the vikings. The scottish bit of the romans. The scottish contribution to the Great War. How the industrial revolution impacted Scotland. It was all terribly parochial sometimes. But I think all nations do this in schools, teach kids their own nations history.

Particularly those nations that are fundementally insecure. As Scotland is.

That's the issue with teaching our children history, isn't it? It's biased based on geography but also by the victor, so we end up actually teaching politics.

Yes, very much so. And it must be difficult for history teachers because they must be aware what they are doing. (Mind you, many of my scottish history teachers were quite devout scottish nationalists, so they really enjoyed teaching their particular version of scottish history where the English were consistantly painted as barbaric homicidal thugs who constantly came up here to oppress us.)

Its always been true hasn't it - they who control the past, control the present.

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