This is a great group of articles outlining ways that America can quit being a bullying empire our to grab resources at the expense of people and instead become a responsible and respected member of a global community. I have been blogging about some of these same ideas, but in less detail.
I pledge to vote because it is my civic duty to be, in Thomas Jefferson’s word, a ‘participator’ in our democratic society, and because the power brokers, the big boys, would rather I not vote at all. I pledge never to vote for any elected official or candidate who has regularly voted against me, my family, my community and the health, safety and well-being of my fellow Americans. I pledge to spend sufficient time learning about the records of the candidates and about the subjects that I want them to seriously campaign for until Election Day. I pledge to strive to meet the candidates or at least urge that they meet with citizens in real time, as in a local auditorium, for two way questions and answers. I pledge to urge my circle of friends, relatives and co-workers to vote, and in so doing, engage them in conversations about the improvement of our society for us and our descendants. Finally, I pledge to urge appropriate people to run for elective office, especially at the local level, where they are capable of advancing the public interest.
I pledge to vote because it is my civic duty to be, in Thomas Jefferson’s word, a ‘participator’ in our democratic society, and because the power brokers, the big boys, would rather I not vote at all. I pledge never to vote for any elected official or candidate who has regularly voted against me, my family, my community and the health, safety and well-being of my fellow Americans. I pledge to spend sufficient time learning about the records of the candidates and about the subjects that I want them to seriously campaign for until Election Day. I pledge to strive to meet the candidates or at least urge that they meet with citizens in real time, as in a local auditorium, for two way questions and answers. I pledge to urge my circle of friends, relatives and co-workers to vote, and in so doing, engage them in conversations about the improvement of our society for us and our descendants. Finally, I pledge to urge appropriate people to run for elective office, especially at the local level, where they are capable of advancing the public interest.
This site is awesome! It’s a parody of the talk to your kids about drugs or sex sites, but it’s a site asking kids to talk to their parents about their McCain/Palin addiction. http://www.mccainfreewhitehouse.org
In Sick Around the World, FRONTLINE teams up with veteran Washington Post foreign correspondent T.R. Reid to find out how five other capitalist democracies — the United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, Taiwan and Switzerland — deliver health care, and what the United States might learn from their successes and their failures.
Watch the entire program online here.
Synopsis from [ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/etc/synopsis.html ] :
Reid’s first stop is the U.K., where the government-run National Health Service (NHS) is funded through taxes. “Every single person who’s born in the U.K. will use the NHS,” says Whittington Hospital CEO David Sloman, “and none of them will be presented a bill at any point during that time.” Often dismissed in America as “socialized medicine,” the NHS is now trying some free-market tactics like “pay-for-performance,” where doctors are paid more if they get good results controlling chronic diseases like diabetes. And now patients can choose where they go for medical procedures, forcing hospitals to compete head to head.
While such initiatives have helped reduce waiting times for elective surgeries, Times of London health editor Nigel Hawkes thinks the NHS hasn’t made enough progress. “We’re now in a world in which people are much more demanding, and I think that the NHS is not very effective at delivering in that modern, market-orientated world.”
Reid reports next from Japan, which boasts the second largest economy and the best health statistics in the world. The Japanese go to the doctor three times as often as Americans, have more than twice as many MRI scans, use more drugs, and spend more days in the hospital. Yet Japan spends about half as much on health care per capita as the United States.
One secret to Japan’s success? By law, everyone must buy health insurance — either through an employer or a community plan — and, unlike in the U.S., insurers cannot turn down a patient for a pre-existing illness, nor are they allowed to make a profit.
Reid’s journey then takes him to Germany, the country that invented the concept of a national health care system. For its 80 million people, Germany offers universal health care, including medical, dental, mental health, homeopathy and spa treatment. Professor Karl Lauterbach, a member of the German parliament, describes it as “a system where the rich pay for the poor and where the ill are covered by the healthy.” As they do in Japan, medical providers must charge standard prices. This keeps costs down, but it also means physicians in Germany earn between half and two-thirds as much as their U.S. counterparts.
In the 1990s, Taiwan researched many health care systems before settling on one where the government collects the money and pays providers. But the delivery of health care is left to the market. Every person in Taiwan has a “smart card” containing all of his or her relevant health information, and bills are paid automatically. But the Taiwanese are spending too little to sustain their health care system, according to Princeton’s Tsung-mei Cheng, who advised the Taiwanese government. “As we speak, the government is borrowing from banks to pay what there isn’t enough to pay the providers,” she told FRONTLINE.
Reid’s last stop is Switzerland, a country which, like Taiwan, set out to reform a system that did not cover all its citizens. In 1994, a national referendum approved a law called LAMal (“the sickness”), which set up a universal health care system that, among other things, restricted insurance companies from making a profit on basic medical care. The Swiss example shows health care reform is possible, even in a highly capitalist country with powerful insurance and pharmaceutical companies.
Today, Swiss politicians from the right and left enthusiastically support universal health care. “Everybody has a right to health care,” says Pascal Couchepin, the current president of Switzerland. “It is a profound need for people to be sure that if they are struck by destiny … they can have a good health system.”
This blog has moved to mark.baland.net/blog.
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