Susan the Neon Nurse ([info]neonnurse) wrote,
@ 2007-02-24 18:10:00
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Current mood: impressed

Here comes trouble!
Remember how I was saying recently I felt guilty for not reading enough of actual books? Well, I guess I am not alone. Someone on a bookseller list I belong to shared THIS LINK to a site that lets you choose up to three classic (gone to public domain) or Creative Commons books and receive them in parts via daily email. (Except if you get on a roll you can have them send you the next one right away!)

I've already spotted a bunch of old favorites, plus some of those "always meant to read someday" titles. You can discuss the books with the other people reading them too!

And speaking of great things to read, I saw this quote in [info]supergee's LJ today.

"Giving people the care they need is not socialism, it's Judaism. It's Christianity. It's Buddhism. It's Islam. It's mandated by nearly every religious tradition and moral code, going back to the Code of Hammurabi: "to bring about the rule of righteousness in the land… so that the strong should not harm the weak." There is separation of church and state, but there should never be separation of decency and state, especially in a democracy, where the sovereign IS the people, and the government an expression of their will."

Use the link below to read Nick Dupree's whole post--it's really worth it!

Justice, justice you shall pursue... Deut. 16:20: Any Valid Social Contract Requires Universal Health Care


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[info]deke
2007-02-25 04:12 am UTC (link)
Hooray for Creative Commons! LOL, somehow, I suspected Cory Doctorow would be there. But no Lawrence Lessig?

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[info]neonnurse
2007-02-25 06:52 pm UTC (link)
I wonder if it's a new group just getting started, and hasn't actively gone out hunting modern authors yet? I chose Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom as one of my three, and it's interesting so far!

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[info]threeringedmoon
2007-02-25 04:34 am UTC (link)
Ok, me too. Emma by Jane Austen.

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[info]neonnurse
2007-02-25 06:53 pm UTC (link)
That's an area where I need to read and catch up with the rest of the well-read world. But there are so many interesting books to choose from!

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[info]ciroccoj
2007-02-25 05:03 am UTC (link)
Use the link below to read Nick Dupree's whole post--it's really worth it!
Amen.

Being Canadian, it really, truly baffles me when I see universal health care derided. It baffles me even more when I read the complete crap that people spout off about the pitfalls of our health care system. Like the "fact" that in Canada you're assigned a family doc by the government and can never leave them even if they're completely incompetent, or that no medical research of any worth comes out of our socialist system, or that a staggeringly high proportion of our GNP go to health care, or whatever other complete garbage the press can pick up on and disseminate with little or no regard for, you know, facts.

I'm married to a doctor. I could tell you all sorts of terrible things about our health care system, from underfunding to wait times to abuse of health care professionals. And in the end? I'd still rather put up with all of that then lose universal health care.

It's a human right. It shouldn't be seen as a luxury.

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[info]neonnurse
2007-02-25 06:58 pm UTC (link)
Absolutely.

Here's what peeves me off when people start ragging on how "socialized" medicine is so horrible and doesn't work. One, it works better than NONE AT ALL, which is what way too many people have. Two, they never bring this same dismissive, do-nothing attitude to OTHER fields. Imagine, "Oh, government funded law enforcement is NO GOOD. Look at all the graft and corruption! AND they make mistakes, and even worse, sometimes they don't solve the crimes and arrest the criminals! Why should we waste our money funding THAT!?"

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[info]toraks
2007-02-25 08:27 pm UTC (link)

Argh! You've hooked me! I'm subscribed to three books. We'll see how it goes! ;-p

Not that I don't read enough as it is...

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Universal Health Care
[info]ndrosen
2007-02-26 04:25 am UTC (link)
If any valid social contract requires universal health care, then there can be no valid social contract, because a government-run system, like a private system, must fall short of universality somehow.

With a government health care system, the government will necessarily say No. No, you can't have treatment right away, but must wait months for surgery, even if you die in the meantime, or your cancer grows beyond what surgeons can hope to entirely remove. No, we don't cover acupuncture, or chiropractic, or psychological counselling, or birth control, or whatver it is you think you need. No, we don't provide drug A, only drug B, which is much cheaper, and usually works just as well. If you find that drug B doesn't work for you, or has horrible side effects, and you think drug A might save your life, too bad. Governments have limited resources, too, and will have to balance national health against national defense, law enforcement, protecting the environment, public education, providing various goodies for politically influential people, and so forth. And then there's the problem of keeping taxes low enough that the productive don't all flee to some place with lower burdens.

Inevitably, enacting government health care will make some people worse off, even while saving the lives of others. Not only will the government not pay for something you want, it will make it impossible for you to buy it for yourself, either by nationalizing medical care in toto, or by taxing you so much to pay for other people's medical treatment that you can't afford what you or your family need.

There are tragic choices to be made, and it is not clear to me that government medical care will be more humane in its effects than private medical care.

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