News

What does universal health care really mean?

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I think the point of universal health care (at least the government-run variety) is pretty clear. The goal is to equalize life outcomes so that people who work the hardest pay the most into the system, and people who live in risky/immoral lifestyles withdraw the most. The biggest losers in such a system are the productive people who make responsible, moral decisions about their lifestyle – they pay the most and withdraw the least. The biggest winners are people who don’t work at all but who withdraw a lot.

I think that universal health care makes people irresponsible. The driving force behind universal health care is the idea that people should be able to do anything they want to pursue happiness any way they please, and that the natural limits of reality should be circumvented by spending other people’s money to “equalize life outcomes”.

Socialized medicine proponents are funny people. They think that no one should have to deal with the costs of their own decisions as long as they are sincere in their pursuit of happiness – it’s just not possible to predict what decisions will lead to good outcomes and what decisions will lead to bad outcomes. I once had two Canadian women bragging to me in an airport about how great socialized medicine was until I explained to them that at my salary level I would be paying 50% of my salary to the government and I had not been to the doctor for anything other than a check-up in my entire life. They could not see why I might like to opt out of such a system even after I explained it to them. They apparently thought that at any moment I might develop the urge for an abortion or two and then who would pay for it? Life is so unpredictable for a Canadian woman – it’s better not to have to worry about it and just let someone else pay.

So, let’s see what passes for health care in various universal health care systems around the world.

  • Here’s my previous post on taxpayer-funded in vitro fertilization in Ontario, Canada. It’s a human right! And that means it’s FREEEEEE!
  • But there’s more. Sex-changes are also a human right in Ontario, Canada. It’s FREEEEEE! The taxpayer has loads of money for that.
  • Do you know what else is FREEEEEE! in socialist countries like the UK? Breast enlargements. Yeah, because it’s a human right!

And of course it goes without saying that abortion is a human right everywhere, and should be taxpayer-funded. It really is about playing on people’s fears, and buying votes with other people’s money. The reason that the socialists don’t want health care to be left to private companies instead of government is because private companies would insist that people pay based on their likelihood of filing a claim – as with car insurance. But that is too “judgmental” for the universal health care proponents – they think that no one should feel obligated to behave responsibly just because of petty things like money.

I wonder what my readers think about this.

Is it OK for some citizens to make decisions that are costly and risky as they pursue happiness in non-standard ways, and then assign blame and costs for the inevitable failures and expenses to their neighbors? Is there a right to pursue happiness at the expense of others? Is life predictable enough that people should be able to rationally assess the costs and risks of their own decisions? Would private insurers do a better job of holding people accountable to make good decisions about their own lifestyles? Should people choose how much health care they want based on the coverages they want and the risks they want to incur? Should a person be able to say that they don’t want to be covered for sex changes and have the amount they pay into the system reduced? Should a person be able to opt out of government health care entirely and just buy a medical insurance policy privately, based on their own needs?

News

Canada waking up to the threat of Islamic terrorism

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Political Map of Canada

Check out this column from the Ottawa Citizen. (H/T The Binks)

Excerpt:

This is your future. That was my wretched thought on behalf of Canadians as I watched Thursday’s Project Samossa news conference.

Samossa was the major national security investigation that erupted this week in counterterrorism raids and the arrest of four Muslim-Canadians. The government’s charges against three of them imply a wealth of evidence that will shock the conscience of Canadians.

These charges and limited revelations suggest that we could be front-row witnesses to the most vile of manifestations of the Islamist jihad in this country. The allegation is that people living among us and enjoying the immense privileges of Canadian citizenship, are siding with enemy forces aiming to kill and maim our boys and girls serving in Afghanistan — and maybe residents of Ottawa and other Canadian centres, too.

[…]To understand this in the context of Islamic radicalism is to account properly for the main sources of Canada’s escalating extremism. These sources are immigration and refugee influxes, and the homegrown extremist phenomenon.

Liberal politicians long ago turned immigration and refugee streams into vote-importing mechanisms. Conservatives continue to do so at the expense of Canadians’ safety and tens of billions in net per annum immigration costs, plus attendant and overwhelming security costs. So pronounced is the pathology that not even a terrible recession could prevent Immigration Minister Jason Kenney from hiking immigration and refugee levels from what were already roughly the highest per capita in the world. These levels are too great to allow for reliable vetting in a world where war and ideological struggles rage, and we are a target.

The cause of all of these problems is the left-wing political parties (Liberals, NDP and Bloc Quebecois). These left-wing parties hope to import “refugees” and unskilled immigrants and give them the right to vote as full citizens, thus ensuring a fresh supply of votes for socialism.

Consider this recent article from Ezra Levant showing 71% of Tamil “refugees” from Sri Lanka return to Sri Lanka for vacations. Muslims  immigrate to Canada and then claim welfare for up to four of their wives. Liberal MP Ruby Dhalla is attempting to buy votes by reducing the residency requirement from 10 years to 3 years for Old Age Security OR Guaranteed Income Supplement money. That means that an immigrant can bring a non-working relative aged 62 into Canada and then let them stay there for 3 years and then they will be eligible for a full pension funded by other working Canadians.

Commentary

Jennifer Roback Morse publishes an excerpt from a new book

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Dr. J the Shorter has a new technique where she weaves statistics into a story to show how bad things happen to people who don’t plan and prepare to have strong marriages. She’s got a new post up on her blog to show it off.

Excerpt:

Rather than regale the reader with statistics, let me tell the story of a hypothetical young woman named Lucy. Not all of the outcomes that happen to Lucy happen to each and every unmarried mother. Lucy’s story is a composite of the outcomes that are systematically more likely to happen to unmarried women, or to cohabiting women, than to married women. (I have omitted the hazards associated with drugs and alcohol, so as not to cloud the marriage issue.) Telling Lucy’s story illustrates what multiple partner fertility looks like in the lives of ordinary people of modest means.

Lucy has graduated from high school, has a job as a dental assistant, and lives with her boyfriend, Izzy. Lucy becomes pregnant. It isn’t entirely clear whether this is an “accidental” pregnancy. She has been on the Pill, but she missed one or two. (The failure rate for the Pill for low-income, cohabitating women younger than twenty is 48 percent.)44

Lucy is glad to be pregnant. She has always wanted to be a mother. Izzy isn’t so happy. He isn’t ready to be a father. Pregnancy was not part of the deal. He feels cheated. They quarrel frequently, and he sometimes hits her. (Domestic violence is more common in cohabiting couples than in married couples.)45

As her pregnancy proceeds, Lucy becomes less and less interested in sex, and Izzy becomes less and less interested in her. He has sex with a former girlfriend. (Cohabiting couples are more likely to have “secondary sex partners.”)46 He feels entitled, since he isn’t “getting any” from Lucy, and after all, she cheated him by becoming pregnant in the first place. They quarrel some more, and he moves out for a while. By the time baby Anna is born, Izzy has moved back in with Lucy.

Now Lucy isn’t so happy. In fact, she becomes depressed. (The presence of children increases a cohabiting woman’s probability of depression. Children do not affect a married woman’s probability of becoming depressed.)47 Izzy is caught up in the excitement for a while. But the combination of sleep deprivation, a needy infant, and a preoccupied and depressed Lucy are more than Izzy can handle. He moves out for good when Anna is six months old. (Cohabiting relationships are less stable than married relationships.)48 He never offers to contribute support to the care of Anna. (Never-married fathers are much less likely to pay child support than fathers who were once married to the child’s mother.)49 Lucy finds that she can’t handle the demands of her job and the care of her baby by herself. She goes to court to try to get Izzy to pay child support.

Then the stepfather Tom enters the picture so things get even more interesting, and it goes on like that with more bad things that happen to Lucy. I’ve never seen this story/statistics technique done before – I think it’s a really winsome way to make the point to people who are skeptical about statistics. I am so going to steal this technique when I talk about these things to young women who don’t understand what marriage is for, what a man does in a marriage, and what decisions a man makes all along his life in order to take on the man’s roles in a marriage.

If I told you what young women look for in men and what they think that men do in marriage, you would laugh your head off. Women today think that men are best if they are handsome and fun – and that’s all men are good for! No wonder the out-of-wedlock birth rate is 40% and the divorce rate is 50%! But I have confidence in Dr. J – she can fix all of these problems. She knows everything there is to know about men and marriage and children. Every time I read anything she has written about marriage, it gets me really enthusiastic about getting married.