I am certain that the US economy is already in the beginning of a depression and not just a recession. Not that I'm saying we will see the same horrible life as in the Great Depression, but relatively speaking what is going on now is quite serious and is not going to improve for quite some time. As all the "experts" are saying, it will likely get worse before it gets better. That is about the only thing they're saying that I do agree with. (forgive my laziness about ending sentences with "with")
The intelligence of our "leaders" seems to have declined considerably in the last few decades. Maybe it is because of the birth control pill? Messing with Nature usually doesn't end well, but maybe no one ever reads Frankenstein anymore? Anyway, the whole lot of them* are total idiots, regardless of whatever degrees and so-called education they've had. Well, look at it this way. How intelligent is it to continue doing the things that consistently fail? That's exactly what they do.
Incidentally, and this is just my own insecurity and need for validation, whether it comes extrinsically or intrinsically, I have evidence that I really am smarter than about 95% of my peers. It's not an "IQ" score, but there are some other standardized test results that consistently place me in about the 95th percentile. If you don't believe me I can scan and post them, godddammit. So all the dumbfucks who try to call me stupid are only being dumbfucks. Okay? Thank you. I just had to get that out of my system. *sigh* :-)
Now back to the economy. And healthcare specifically. While everyone is hand-wringing over the mortgage meltdown that is the result of lots of people being really stupid and making really bad decisions, there is another bubble that will burst soon enough. Too many people are expecting the government to pay for their healthcare. But what they don't realize is that it is completely unrealistic and will be disastrous when/if that happens. Some people seem to think that free healthcare is a basic human right, but you know, nothing is really free, although recently it looks like 95% of the people have forgotten that, if they ever knew it in the first place.
Sure, access to healthcare is a "right" but how can anyone really think that any vital service can be free of cost? Someone has to pay for it, and until recently it wasn't common practice for the government to just make up billions of dollars to pay for every little thing that people asked for.
There are some ways to make the healthcare system more "fair" and accessible to everyone, but they require some big, serious changes to the way that business has been done for the last few decades. Just like the auto industry. Nothing will improve until they drastically adjust their way of doing business. Sometimes successful evolution takes really big steps.
Well, let me ask some questions. Who is really making the most money from the healthcare system today without actually doing much? The doctors? Not really, though most do make plenty enough, they do work for it usually. The drug companies? Meh, they make a lot but they also contribute a lot with their research and development, as well as advertising that helps pay for our entertainment. The hospitals? Some make money and some lose money but they are vital to the system. What does that leave? Ah, yeah, the insurance companies. What do they really do anyway? They are just an extra, very costly and very profitable, step in the process of delivering healthcare. They are not really vital. Basically they are middlemen who get paid to negotiate between the medical services and the patients. Why can't the patients deal directly with the medical services themselves? Cut out the fat, the wastefulness, the unnecessary.
Anyone who promotes a "universal healthcare" that trusts those same insurance companies to administer it efficiently is a total idiot, or at least seriously deluded. Although the government isn't exactly good at efficient administration of services it would be preferable to make the medical service providers actual government employees instead of keeping a wasteful third party in the system. Make it more like the military if necessary, where the doctors are enlisted and trained by the government and rise through the ranks according to ability and accomplishment. Yeah, maybe this is a radical idea, but it has got to be better than what all the other dummies are suggesting. I'm just saying let's look at this thing from a new perspective instead of always trying to fit square pegs into round holes.
No, there are no perfect plans or ideas for solving the big, serious issues that our country is facing now. But come on, let's stop it with thinking that throwing money at ill-designed and poorly functioning things is actually going to change anything for the better. It won't. It never has. And it never will. Why is it so hard for people to understand this simple fact? I really don't believe it is so difficult that one has to be in the 95th percentile to get it.
*correction: My own Tennessee Senator Bob Corker was just giving hell to the stupid auto bosses, thank God. I guess he's one in the top 5%. ;-)
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