CBS headlines its story “How Technology Won Sadr City Battle”, though the story itself doesn’t say that. Technological innovation was a large component in the victory and CBS describes the role played by it:
60 Minutes learned in a high-level debriefing with the U.S. commander in Iraq, the Americans overpowered the Shiite militias with hi-tech, including the most advanced, sophisticated, whiz bang hardware and software on Earth, like electronics, lasers, and high-resolution cameras that can literally cut through the fog of war.
But organizational innovation and human courage played a major part too. Most military history shows that technology unharnessed to the human element can contribute to defeat rather than help in victory. Technology in Sadr City for example, was held back by politics. In fact strategy itself was the handmaiden of politics. Only after the politicians acted decisively could the battle for Sadr city even begin.
The U.S. military had wanted to mount an attack in Sadr City, but Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki balked for a year because the militias are Shiites like him, and that made a decision to fight them politically risky. … Once Maliki gave the go-ahead, a U.S. Stryker battalion went in, but they confronted a steady stream of militia reinforcements. “I mean every day, it was 20, 30, 40 new guys that were coming down to fight,” Hort recalled.
Nor was the “technology” used always advanced. One of the key elements to winning Sadr City was building concrete walls to limit the maneuver of militias. Building that wall couldn’t be done from 10,000 feet; thus it required something machines could not provide: human physical courage. For example, despite all the whiz-bang electronics someone had forgotten to invent the crane self-unhooker. That required a man to go out and dodge bullets.
“It was literally concrete barrier by concrete barrier. We just wasn’t goin’ out there puttin’ up some barriers. I mean, it was a fight every inch of the way,” he said.
“Guys would climb the ladders to unhook the crane chains from the wall unarmed, while people are firin’ at ‘em. So it was high adventure,” Lt. Col. Brian Eifler remembered, whose team laid down cover fire while some soldiers, wide open and exposed, unhooked the chains from the crane.
Cloak and dagger also played its part. CBS also hints at the exploits of behind-the-lines teams who were targeting militia leaders on their home turf and Iraqi undercover operatives played a large role in this effort. “So the battle of Sadr City was won with a combination of hi-tech and no tech, lasers and electronic eyes in the sky, and cement.”
Technology unguided by strategy, intellectual integrity and purpose doesn’t guarantee anything but the faster eventuation of stupidity. The financial sector’s meltdown is a prime example. It employed the latest information technology; used highly developed statistical systems; was advised by PhDs, mathematicians, lawyers and MBAs. It disposed of trillions of dollars of resources working within the safe and quiet confines of high-rise, airconditioned towers. Certain parts of the financial sector didn’t even produce brotherly love, nor even the cuckoo-clock, as Harry Lime would put it. It’s not always the case that the Barney Franks are smarter than the David Petraeuses. But the politician is always right.
Tip Jar
Wretchard, tip jar URL is _showing_ the location of it. Thought you’d like to know!?
“Guys would climb the ladders to unhook the crane chains from the wall unarmed, while people are firin’ at ‘em. So it was high adventure,” Lt. Col. Brian Eifler remembered, whose team laid down cover fire while some soldiers, wide open and exposed, unhooked the chains from the crane.
That makes me proud. From Little Round Top, through Belleau Wood, through D-Day and Iwo Jima through Mogadishu and right up through today, no one comes close to the courage and dedication and sheer grit of the American Fighting Man.
Yes, the bottom line in history is always the ethical: people have to have trust in this system, or that one, or things won’t work; but of course that doesn’t guarantee one’s system will not fail in competition with another. And something can work for a time, until people lose faith in it, but that loss of faith may not be itself proof of technological, as opposed to ethical, failure.
We often think of technology as the leading edge of history, but do we ever develop and adopt a technology without having some reasonable basis to imagine how it is going to improve our systems? in other words, the ethical vision comes first.
The politician may think he is always right, but that’s only because he is not really the leader in proposing something new, but the last to sign off after there is some consensus on what needs to be done. He is the last step before institutionalization.
Did the military tell Lesley Stahl to wear that bright red outfit on the street to make her a better target? Or to prove that it was safe? Hmm. I thought the intro overemphasized the gadget angle, while the story was more even-handed about the mix of gadgets and guts (showing our guys in firefights and talking about the crane un-hooker). Sure would be a shame to come this far with such a strategic “game changer” opportunity and throw it away with a sudden cut & run withdrawal. Let’s hope the Obamessiah drinks a nice big cup of “wake the @#$% up” at his inaugural ball and throws his lefty Kosbat backers under the bus by deciding to actually cruise to a win in Iraq.
Either way, the US military, particularly the Army, can be proud of the fact that even the Marxists at 60 Minutes had to give them their props. Nice job ladies & gentlemen. We’re proud of you.
Slightly off-comment, but not entirely:
I voted for Jimmy Carter in 1976 because I was all for hope and change. I liked the idea that foreign policy and intelligence would be ‘transparent’ and that nothing would be hid from the citizens. Etc.
I should have been sent off to a re-education camp and forced to confess my crimes and earn lenient treatment.
Now, nearly two generations later, the appeal of the non-military, soft-power approach to the world is exerting its attractiveness once again.
Once, tragedy; twice, farce.
When the Clintons came into office, I remember reading that their new 20-30 something staffers scorned the military, seeing the uniforms and their wearers as unfortunate hold-overs of a former world order, an embarrassment to progressive ideals.
Could the success of the Iraq surge—depending on talent, technology, treasure, and executive support—ever have occurred in an anti-military environment?
On his final two days in office, I hope the President will take a tour of the major bases, thanking the troops for the great work they’ve done for the American people and our allies.
Wretchard:
“Technology unguided by strategy, intellectual integrity and purpose doesn’t guarantee anything but the faster eventuation of stupidity. ”
A good line, and if you substitute the word “government” for “technology” then you’re getting dangerously close to John Dewey.
Wretchard, don’t you live in Australia under the tyranny of the social democratic Labor Party? Maybe you can do a post that tells us Americans what its like to live under a creeping socialist system w/ universal health care, Dep’t of Human Sevices, etc. It might let us know what to expect if the Obamessiah wins.
Coyotl:
My boss had a heart event; chest pains, shortness of breath. He went to the doctor, they did a stress test, gave him some pills and told him to wait till he could see a specialist for a diagnosis.
In the US, he would have had his surgery and be done within a week or two. Guess how long it took in the paradise of socialized medicine of Canada.
Derek (who will be back later to see if he has the guts to answer)
Coyotl:
I did some work for an Orthopedic surgeon who grew up and works in Edmonton AB. He does hips, knees, etc. He worked for a few years in a hospital in the US.
Alberta, with all their vile petro dollars makes people wait 5 months for a hip replacement. In BC, the province next door, it is a two year wait.
When he worked at the US hospital, people would come to see him. They would ask when can he do the surgery. He would say, oh, next thursday. They would say that the other guy will do it wednesday.
Derek
I have a friend who had a kidney stone floating around somewhere in the plumbing. He was in intermittent excruciating pain, so he went to his GP, then a specialist. They did a temporary surgery that shunted the pipes, and he would have to come back to get the whole thing repiped appropriately. He was told he can’t work since he could tear things and do real damage.
Pretty simple basic surgery.
8 months later he still hadn’t gotten the thing fixed. He screamed and yelled and they finally did what they should have done the first time they opened him up.
Derek
A gentleman that I worked with had a heart event. He too had the stress test and was given pills. An appointment was made to get things sorted out some 7 months away.
He was found dead at his workplace 3 months later.
Derek
Anecdotal evidence? I could go on if you want.
Derek
Any time anyone talks about the health care system up here, the devil, evil personified is the US system.
A few elections back, the long serving prime minister was asked about waiting lists. He said that anyone who was complaining too much could take his money across the border and get it done.
Sorta like paying taxes is patriotic, but different.
Derek
Hey, T, now that you’ve made a red white and blue comment, you’re cleared to make 5 leftist ones!
“…voted for Jimmy Carter in 1976″
Vividly reminds me of how during my morning commute to work, a local radio jock came on and said he was going to vote for Jimmy Carter because “he sounds so sincere” and “deserves a chance.”
And then he played Willie Nelson’s “Blue Eyes Cryin’ in the Rain.”
Lovely music. Lousy politics.
“60 Minutes learned in a high-level debriefing with the U.S. commander in Iraq, the Americans overpowered the Shiite militias with hi-tech, including the most advanced, sophisticated, whiz bang hardware and software on Earth, like electronics, lasers, and high-resolution cameras that can literally cut through the fog of war.”
How can you literally cut through a metaphor?
Derek,
Knew a sweet lady from Canada. Lost both elderly parents while they were waiting for “elective” surgery for conditions that killed them both.
A couple years later, she came to work wearing an Uncle Sam striped red, white and blue hat. She had applied for and had received her American citizenship. Never looked back towards Canada.
As a Canadian, I am a bit puzzled by all the outrage over waiting times among advocates of socialized health care.
It’s pretty evident that once you have a population inclined to look for medical solutions to every problem, you can’t provide free health care (after taxes), especially in a world of ever new science and technology, without rationing it in all kinds of ways. People should at least be honest about the choice; what does it say that our politicians don’t dare make that plain?
Derek, you are completely right of course. Provided, of course, that in the US case you have money. A hell of a lot of it. If you haven’t got it, then the waiting time in that case is infinite.
I have thought, for a very long time, that the real problem with national health care is that it becomes a typical civil-service operation; plenty of bureaucrats, no choice, and a general attitude among those actually providing the service that you are getting something for nothing – which of course you aren’t; in the UK at least, and probably in Canada, it costs plenty through taxes one way or another.
Also for a long time, I have thought that a useful compromise might be for contributions to health insurance to be mandatory, with the government stepping in to make the payments if your are unemployed or otherwise can’t afford it. Why is this better than the current UK system? Simple. At the moment the patient is a supplicant; under such a system, he is a customer, who can take his business elsewhere.
Derek, for the sake of argument (and so as not to have this blog be an echo chamber), let me give you an argument.
First let agree with you: these examples you cite all sound like examples of the Canadian health care system failing individuals. They’re terrible, no doubt.
But what about in the aggregate. Check out the “List of Countries by Infant Mortality” on Wikipedia. Then check out the “List of countries by life expectancy.” How many countries with socialized medicine (e.g. Sweden, Australia, Spain, Japan, etc., etc.) beat the US?
Why?
Also, not that I agree with it, but Randall Hoven, a conservative engineer from Ill. has made a pretty interesting argument in The American Thinker last year, so let me know what you think:
December 12, 2007
A Conservative Case for Universal Health Coverage
By Randall Hoven
I am a small-government conservative/libertarian and have hated the concept of socialized medicine almost all my life. But now, I could live with universal health coverage in the U.S.. Here’s why.
We now have the worst of both worlds: we are paying for universal health coverage, but not getting it. In fact, we pay more for health care in taxes than countries that provide universal coverage. Then we pay more than that amount again in private coverage. Additionally, what we have now in the U.S. is nowhere near a free market in health care. Defending the status quo is not defending a free market. And if socialized medicine is your fear, we already have it.
I’ve heard no one, on either side of the political spectrum, play up the fact that the government in the U.S. already spends more on health care than almost every other country on earth. I’m talking government spending, not private spending. According to the U.S. Statistical Abstract, government spending on health care in the U.S was $2,168 per person in 2001 (the last year for which comparison data are available). Here were the top 10 government spenders on health care in 2001.
Norway: $2,550
U.S.: $2,168
Denmark: $2,098
Iceland: $2,025
Sweden: $1,832
Germany: $1,803
France: $1,599
Canada: $1,531
UK: $1,518
Belgium: $1,417.
If we add in private spending as well, it’s not even close.
U.S.: $4,887
Switzerland: $3,690
Norway: $2,982
Denmark: $2,545
Iceland: $2,441
Germany: $2,407
Canada: $2,161
Sweden: $2,149
Netherlands: $2,134
France: $2,104.
What about the private side, the “free market” side? There, government regulates the health industry and mandates what health insurance must cover.
While the U.S. does not have universal health coverage, it has had universal health care since 1986. Any person who goes to an emergency room in virtually any hospital in the country must be examined and then either treated or transferred to another hospital for treatment if the condition requires immediate care.
Derek, nice try, but your aprocryphal horror stories of delays, delays!! has not been sufficient, it seems to galvanize voters from Canada to Europe to Asia to abandon universal health care for the “good ‘ol US of A” program of health care Freedom!
Perhaps because the US of A model costs up to 50% more, has resulted in a lower average life expectancy, results in a million medical bankruptcies a year (a unique American phenomena), and leaves up to 1/6th of our workforce uncovered on medical, 25% with no dental coverage.
The problem isn’t universal health care, but how it is implemented. Continental systems and Asian ones work better than the UK or Canadian models, much to the latter’s justified shame.
The imperative appears to be there, as we are uncompetive if we continue to add health care costs onto each product we sell.
If we get universal health care and we allow our “pre-existing condition uninsurables” and working poor a fair deal – we should go with the better and more efficient Japanese, French, or German models and invite top people from whichever model we choose to come to the US and help set it up. Not the Canadians, and definitely not the entrenched Brit PHS bureaucrats and medical establishment.
Medicine is more complex than that. The US doctor who did hip replacements in a week has no stories about the patients who never came to see him.
The weak spot in US coverage right now is the working poor. The very poor have a system, and the middle class and up have a system. But in the US, if you work some shifts waitressing, and part time retail, you or your kid could die waiting.
I think we could fix it without introducing serfdom. The US has “Socialized highways” without serfdom. The political obstacle is that if you make a system more efficient, somebody gets less money!
Germany has only had mandatory health insurance since 2007. You either buy it from the gov’t, and it’s a limited coverage, or you buy it from a private insurer. It’s a similar arrangement to here, where the employer splits the cost with the employee (usually 50/50). I’m not an expert, but it appears they limit/ration care extensively with the state plan, but it’s basic coverage.
“Guys would climb the ladders to unhook the crane chains from the wall unarmed, while people are firin’ at ‘em.”
Note that it took not only innovation, technical competence, and guts – but also a key feature of the American way of war – compassion.
We could have stopped those snipers, easy a pie. Lay down a barrage of MRLS with 844 bomblets per round in the affected area and then take your time setting up those barricades. Of course there would be not much of Sadar City left by the time you were done, but what the hey, it would have worked.
And it works the other way, too. When U.S. forces encountered their first fortified city after D-Day, Brest, they refused to play by the Germans’ rules and did not proceed down the streets through the defender’s overlapping fields of fire. Instead they went through the houses one by one, blowing a hole in the wall and cleaning them out from the inside. No doubt it kinda made a mess of Brest, but hey, it worked. And in that case we did not have to convince the French that we really were on their side.
I live in Australia and they seem to have hit a happy medium with healthcare.
Everybody is on basic healthcare and if you are working a small deduction is made from your pay.
I go to a local privately owned clinic that “bulk bills” the government to cover the cost of my appointments.
If I go to see medical specialists they are part paid by MediBank and I pay the difference.
Elective surgery can have a bit of a delay but I have found very little waiting time for something that really needs to get done.
It so happens that I have a complimentary private hospital cover that allows me to select the doctor I want to carry out any medical procedure and covers all in-hospital expenses.
I had squamous cell carinoma in my throat and did not pay a cent throughout the whole 7 weeks of radiation and chemotherapy at Australia’s outstanding Peter MacCallum Cancer Institute. And I had a very nice apartment in the building next to the hospital for $10 per day because I live in the bush, too far to commute.
The professor I chose to handle my case told me that she was on a fixed wage and got the same amount whether I had private cover or not. She said she would have likely got me even if I had no private cover.
I cannot fault the treatment I got or the short time between diagnosis and treatment.
It’s not perfect here but it may well be better than what happens in the US. Basic public healthcare sounds like a prudent workforce investment to me if it is run right.
The fancy stuff should, in my estimation, remain self funded.
BTW I had to have a minor operation on my felinus domesticus shortly after my treatment finished. I paid more for her operation that my treatment cost me.
One medical caveat. There is no basic public health cover for dental treatment here.
BTW I did have to pay for subsidised medicines (about $5 per scrip) and I took plenty. But when it hit a certain amount it went to a free basis. That was the only cash up front cost.
The German state plan you describe is actually a sytem of different Krankenkasse, which a controlled but separately managed insurance funds that charge based on income. These have existed for a long time but were not open to the self-employed before the latest reform, so some people were uncovered. Civil servants have a special plan, and then there are totally private. The latter two get more service because doctors make more from them. One frequently hears about two-class medicine, but I think it has more to do with waits in the doctors office, multi-bed hospital rooms, and some restriction on expensive medicines.
The Health Ministry has just talked about a rate hike, and there are finacial problems for the hospitals. Doctors are also complaining about wages and working conditions.
Ever improving medical care for an aging population costs. No one has a perfect answer.
“Either way, the US military, particularly the Army, can be proud of the fact that even the Marxists at 60 Minutes had to give them their props.”
What?!…What?!!…no props for the Jars!!!!! We’re so hurt!
One aspect I think some people forget when talking about other countries with nationalized healthcare is population size. Both Australia and Canada, as well as most countries in Europe, are nations with relatively small numbers of people and a much more homogenous populace than here in the United States. Implementing a similar type of system for 300+ million American citizens from diverse backgrounds would be a staggeringly enormous project and create a massive bureacracy which would no doubt seriously limit its efficiency and effectiveness.
Statistics comparing the USA and other countries on Health Care, Life Expectancy or Literacy are never adjusted to take in the impacts of:
1. Emergency care, if you need a complicated and high risk procedure you travel to America for it.
2. 13 million illegal immigrants who are generally speaking less educated, less literate and less healthy than the legal population.
While Europe and Canada have an illegal immigration problem the situation is vastly more serious in the USA. All statistics should be adjusted to take these factors into account.
If the American economy does go into a serious recession I would predict a serious outflow of the working illegal population. The elderly poor dependant on social welfare and food stamps will probably remain as will the Mothers with anchor babies. The net result should be a noticeable but not overwhelming improvement in the vital statistics I mentioned above, while the economy is contracting and for a short period after it enters recovery.
Given that the ability of Mexico and other contributing countries to absorb repatriated illegal aliens is limited some may resist self deportation and the probability of catastrophic collapse in Mexico must be prepared for.
There is simply no way to have the government providing Health Care and not have it rationed to only the most politically powerful (the Kennedys, the Obamas) or politically correct (minorities).
If you like Affirmative Action in education, and hiring (Whites first fired, last hired) you’ll love it in Health Care.
That is the inevitable downside of “free” Health care — it is restricted to only a few select, plus PC protected minorities. Everyone else does without.
You can’t have single-payer health care and illegal immigration. Otherwise US taxpayers subsidize the Health Care for Mexicans. In a Recession? Please.
Single payer health care can be done, requires rationing, and massive political battles over who gets what. It’s never been a happy experience. Combined with multiculturalism it is a nightmare.
The US should be open about the fact that we gather information about every human habitation on the planet with over a thousand souls in it. Mapping, gathering communications records, observing transport, letting the really big computers draw the links. Now for any of thousands of locations we have the basic template of a plan that can be replicated if we ever have to go in to anyplace from Laredo to Tehran. Twenty years ago McCain opposed sending our Marines into Beirut to be targets. Fifteen years ago we went into Mogadishu and pulled out after we got caught in a grinder. The next time we will have a model to work off of.
Sorry double post — Pajamasmedia wonky today.
Back OT — technology always imposes massive social changes. One of the things that allowed Desegregation to take place and kill, finally, the odious regime of Jim Crow was Henry Ford. Cheap, affordable individual autos led to the suburbs. Where people, who communed mostly with Television, could both see the brutality of Jim Crow (preachers being beaten, hosed, set on with dogs) and could escape the likely consequences of Black Majority rule in the urban core: i.e. political retaliation and marginalization by the Black majority.
No one foresaw this, even at the time. There were numerous writings, contemporaneously, of King and other critical figures in the Civil Rights Movement. They all seemed to believe a higher consciousness, a new morality, had been reached by their appeals and their commitment to both a Christian doctrine and Patriotic morality. I don’t believe so — rather Television bringing the cost directly to people (Segregation required a remarkably ugly brutality) while the costs of letting it go (suburbs were self segregated and distant) was non-existent.
I just don’t see how Whites in 1940, fixated on maintaining Jim Crow, magically let his odious regime die by 1964 (Voting Rights Act) through appeals to morality. Deep changes in social behavior pushed by technology? Yes.
Iraq’s society is likely to be hugely changed by biometric-based databases, where people can no longer shed past identities, and behave anonymously or get sheltered from past atrocities by tribe and kin. Up against the cheap and available IED and AK-47 is the lists of who did what, to whom, in redundant databases that can read fingerprints and/or DNA and tell who is a villain and who is not.
Literally, no place to hide.
My neighbor went in for a stress test on Friday. They saw something and wanted to do the angioplasty today but the ORs were totally booked so it will be tomorrow morning instead. They were quite apologetic about the wait. Under Barry, who will need surgery? Better to die and get out of the way for those behind you.
Interesting thing I discovered about Great Britan and health care. A neighbor had a mom who lived over there and she came down with cancer. She wanted to come visit her son one last time, but it proved to be too expensive. It seems that the British Govt has an interesting policy. The person wanting to travel while ill has to buy a special health insurance policy for the trip that is equal to twice what the airline ticket costs. Now why do you suppose they do that? Obviously, it is because people try to go on vacation and then have the British heath care system pick up the tab for American health care.
whiskey:
There is simply no way to have the government providing Health Care and not have it rationed to only the most politically powerful (the Kennedys, the Obamas) or politically correct (minorities).
Yah, sure, Whiskey!
Why that is the pattern!
In all the other advanced nations, only the few elites and the guest workers & immigrants get health care.
Yah, sure!
Bound to happen here!
Next up…Whiskey explains why any nation that has health coverage for the working poor or those with “pre-existing medical conditions” – are bound to become Nazis or Communists..
Because Cedarford, money is limited. Money spent on healthcare can not be spent on other things, such as welfare payments, or corporate pork, or what have you.
However high you tax people, there is at the end a limit. So you end up with rationing, since there is unlimited demand for healthcare and limited resources.
This is simple, basic math.
“Provided, of course, that in the US case you have money. A hell of a lot of it. If you haven’t got it, then the waiting time in that case is infinite.”
Actually not, Fletcher. If you present yourself to an emergency room by law they have to take you. Which means that emergency rooms are really over-burdened because all the illegal Mexicans use them for their health care, which means that the wait in an emergency room can be more than a day to see a doctor.
But you will be seen and sooner than a month or 3 or 7 out. Many hospitals in Los Angeles have closed their emergency rooms because it was so expensive treating the Mexicans for free. And yes, as Life of the Mind noted, Mexicans are a VERY sickly bunch with extremely high rates of diabetes, high blood pressure, and mental illness (they’re depressed — I wonder why).
Hospitals all have charity funds, too, which they don’t advertise but which can be used to provide care beyond setting a broken arm.
There are lots of clinics that provide low-cost and/or free care regardless of citizenship. It’s eyebrow-raising to have a grizzled Mexican laborer come in with a tooth ache, and requesting dental implants, thank you very much, and not just an extraction. Or the aunt of a South Korean immigrant flying in from Seoul and requesting a liver transplant while claiming that she livs with her relative here in Los Angeles so why shouldn’t she get the health care.
Health care is fucked up in America but then I think it is all over the world. It’s just not as bad (or as expensive) as not-Americans like to think it is to make themselves feel better.
INcidently, regarding the actual theme of this particular thread, I didn’t see the CBS “60 Minutes” show but I can’t believe they would do something good without once divulging some secret or other, a new tactic or new technology that maybe the enemy (or Russia/CHina) didn’t know about before. I mean, isn’t that what “60 Minutes” DOES?
Rather than “False but Accurate” CBS gives us “Outdated but Accurate” in describing what they think is news in this article.
Bing West, in “The Strongest Tribe” described the most effective tech as conducting a census (name/address) of all combat capable men in the area, and tracking them in Excel spreadsheets with links to photos.
This article reminds me of Thomas Friedman’s “The World is Flat” which is heralded as new to everyone except those of us who had been conducting offshore business ops for the previous 15 years.
A lot of this CBS article actually reads like Time magazine articles about the high tech that was winning the war for us in Vietnam in the Sixties.
Cedarford: apocryphal?
Are you saying I’m lying? These are people I know and have watched their situations unfold.
You want another one? My employer’s son, in a major Canadian city, was 26 hours waiting in the emergency room with his daughter with complications a few days after a minor surgery. Both parents took shifts.
Another? A fellow who I worked with for two years moved from here to a major canadian city. His wife got pregnant soon after moving there. The wait for her to see a GP was 18 months. Luckily she was able to come back here, stay with her parents, and have her baby with the doctor and midwife who delivered their first. I wonder if it would have been cheaper for the family to pay a doctor as opposed to the travel (day’s drive) back and forth, missed work, etc for the consultations and delivery.
Call me a liar. Don’t care. Just dream on. Think nice thoughts.
Coyotl: And so? You list costs. You know how many hip replacements they DON’T NEED TO DO with two year waiting lists? Now why would that be? You asked how it was under a socialized system, and you quote statistics. Waiting lists here don’t start counting until you see a specialist and get a decision on the procedure. It can take years before you see a specialist. Any health numbers from this country are in my opinion as valuable as the risk models in the mortgage security business. Socialized health care is the canadian religion.
The US system has it’s issues, I’m sure. But to suggest that a government run system is the solution, a promise of universal health care will magically produce such a thing is just plain stupid.
Oh, another one. A lady I worked with was clipped by a car, her knee trashed. 4 years later she finally had surgery.
The reality we face here is if I’m injured or need treatment, in a way that is non life threatening but debilitating, it is cheaper for me to borrow the money to get the treatment elsewhere than to miss work, sit around and wait for the procedure here.
Oh, Coyotl, you didn’t venture a guess to my query. It was beginning of October to the end of March.
And Cedarford, you ask why voter don’t complain? It’s simple. The system we have now is cheap. The only people with complaints are those who are sick. They make up a very small proportion of the voting public. And many of them die before the next election. So no problem.
And another important issue, probably the most important. Almost all drugs, improvements in treatment and medical organisation comes from the semi free market system of the US. In other words, all other systems all over the world benefit from the worst medical system in the world. Just like they benefit from the worst military. And the worst economic system.
Derek
I would be interested in seeing a breakdown of how that money was spent per capita in each country. The average was probably in no way “average”. As has often been said, the most expensive years (medically) in anyone’s life are the first and the last.
So I would guess that “heroic” medical methods to save the very sick and old greatly skew the results and raise the “average cost” for the US. Some of those sorts of heroic (and sometimes meaningless) procedures are probably discouraged ‘socially’ by the culture of the respective countries listed.
One ‘heroic’ set of procedures could easily cost $150K to $200K per person, for someone whose mortality was close to being certain, under other circumstances
I would also guess that if you were to plot the average costs per annum for a population of normal health and normal demographics for each country (excepting exceptional costs for people at the far edge of the normal), the costs would be in line within a close percentage range of the average per capita income.
I would also guess that Canada benefits greatly from the US being next door as a trading partner, and could not afford its present health care system if they did not enjoy a trade surplus with the US.
Which is a long roundabout way of saying that we still have big problems in this country (the US) with:
1) insuring/covering the working poor
2) health care costs growing faster than the rate of inflation
What this has to do with Wretchard’s original topic is surely a puzzle, but then I guess this is all part of a thread hijack.
Fred: Actually he did have something to say about that.
Not what you expect either.
He said that anyone who showed up got treatment. In fact, those without insurance were sent to his hospital for some reason or other to get top notch care. Insured patients were operated on in the smaller hospitals with less specialized staff and equipment, with sometimes more complications or less quality workmanship. Seems the insurance companies didn’t want to pay the travel expenses. Non insured got the best care.
The question here isn’t about patients anymore. It is about having the people around who can do the procedures. There is a serious shortage of doctors and nurses. This wonderful system that is so cheap to the taxpayers makes it impossible for a GP to make a living. Around half the canadian trained doctors go elsewhere, either for more money, or even the space available for training.
You watch. Within a short time of implementing some kind of socialized system in the US, doctors will be demonized as greedy, the source of cost overruns, even that their numbers are driving demand for services, and that less doctors should be trained.
Politicians are stupid. To suggest such stupid people could implement a system that would work is as stupid as they are.
Derek
Lucy: That is exactly what you wait for 6 months for up here.
Maybe two months wait is reasonable? Lets form a commission to define acceptable waiting periods.
I don’t think you folks know how good you have it. I suspect you will find out.
Derek
Foul Harold: Your point applies particularly to Canada. Our population is half in one large metropolitan area in Ontario, the other half spread across a band 200 miles from the US-Canada border.
Anyone in Canada who lives outside of a large center expects to travel long distances for the most basic procedures. If you get old, you expect to have to sell your home and move to a city to avoid driving hours to doctor’s appointments.
Europe and Asia have very dense populations, which allow for centralized service provision, or at least economies of scale in service provision.
The politician who wrote the last report on how to save Canadian health care made his name in health care by closing small hospitals all over his province, making it necessary for thousands of older people who were comfortably retired in paid for homes in these small places to sell out and move to the cities. I talked to some of these folks. They had no choice, or rather they had the choice of driving for two or more hours each way to see a doctor, or selling out.
Derek
Sorry for hijacking the thread. Coyotl asked a question, I answered it.
The report Wretchard refers to illustrates a tendency to look for magic bullets. If only we had universal health care. If only we had technology so we didn’t have to send guys to get shot at. If only we had a big enough printing press, or perfect models for our money trading systems.
It all comes down to people either doing heroic and amazing things, or people doing utterly idiotic things. The machines and technology only increase their reach.
Derek
Having lived in both the UK and Canada and used both health care systems there is no doubt the Canadian (actually, provincial) one works better.
The main problem is shortage of doctors, especially specialists, in rural areas and even not so rural areas. I can only go by my own experiences and those of my friends and relatives and we’re mostly happy with the quality of treatment in Canada.
Just as Canadian supporters of universal healthcare often exaggerate how bad things are in the US American conservatives exaggerate how bad things are in Canada. On the other hand the NHS (UK) really stinks but they do have more expensive private options than do Canadians.
We do not have a health care problem in the US. We have a monetary problem. How to pay for all this wonderful stuff.
Never will be a super good answer, simply because getting well costs lots of money. Always has and always will.
And the more things you can do, the more money it will cost. In 1956, they could not put a sleeve over the aorta artery and keep it from rupturing. Nor were stints, bypasses
etc available. Thus, the only thing my Mother had to pay for was my Dad’s funeral. Today the family would be out a few jillion dollars keeping him around for an additional 20 years. Over in England, still just the funeral. Sorta the same in Canada unless the USA is handy. I’ll take the American system, thank you. I also have 1911 A1 reasons why nobody should mess with my freedom of choice.
Do have a suggestion though. In addition to medicare, veterans and military expenditures, the feds manage to poop off quite a few dollars doing nothing realistic.
For round about the same amount of money, I estimate they could buy everybody in the USA
a policy that gave 100% coverage with a $75,000 annual deductible. (Milton Friedmann suggested $25G but I am a pessimist, so I tripled his figure.)
Insurance cariers would simply bid for the business blind. It would be premiums per 100,000 population. Once a person reported to a Doctors office or ER , name would be submitted to insurance central and that person would be randomly assigned to one carrier or the other.
What would this accomplish? First of all, it would provide a loss limitation to all other coverage. This should keep those rates affordable and even make lifetime rates available.
In addition to which, if an unisured person gets into a car wreck or otherwise incurs monumental bills, at least some money will be paid to the provider(s) so they do not have to make up all the losses by raising bills to those who pay.
This should cover the bases as well as the central government can do. State and local governments can continue to have county hospitals, subsidized clinics etc, if they choose to do so.
That is my brainstorm for the evening? What do the rest of you think?
BTW, Wretchard, sorry for this late response to your column from the other day, but aircraft carriers are NOT ugly.
Wait, wait, wait!
Anyone here fancy they can accurately measure “health,” let alone, “national health?” WHO has commented, in those very reports oft referenced where US healthcare is supposedly trashed that measurement is difficult, let alone thinking you understand the “intervention” of the health care “system” itself.
And THEN to make the leap that, oh ok, lets let politicians decide who gets to design, implement, maintain that “national-level-intervention?”
National health! What a wonderful concept!
Why, I bet only national-level ministers can solve a problem like that. Thank goodness we’ve no shortage, citizens!
Wait, wait, wait-
Anyone here fancy they can accurately measure “health,” let alone, “national health?” WHO has commented, in those very reports oft referenced where US healthcare is supposedly trashed that measurement is difficult, let alone thinking you understand the “intervention” of the health care “system” itself. Let’s all where our O-Bama Biomonitors, maybe. Time for my patriotic jog!
And THEN to make the leap that, oh ok, lets let politicians decide who gets to design, implement, maintain that “national-level-intervention?”
National health! What a wonderful concept!
Why, I bet only national-level ministers can solve a problem like that. Thank goodness we’ve no shortage, citizens!
Oh nice – double post & the public display of my self-conscious de-capitalization…and the decision to throw in an Obama joke
:/
Biggie, Obama is a joke. Not a very funny one but a joke nonetheless.
Tax cuts for 95% of the population? Why sure, the only ones that will have to pay taxes will be those who own the plantations.
The rest of us will just have to pick their cotton.
This blog will be allowed to continue. But it will have to be re-named “Uncle Wretchard’s
Cabin”. Can’t you just see Little Teresita running across the ice with her babe in arms with the coyotls after her?
Maybe, just MAYBE national health care could be discussed sans personal anecdotes?
This goes against a point Derek raised early, that of the plea to fund the deus ex machina…
If you could accurately measure health, and the affects of healthcare, you could also help design software that could track the performance of whatever is delegated to a public or private authority. This isn’t that unreasonable to think of – but I don’t think anyone quite even has the knowledge on how to do that yet…a Health AI?
Derek, I think you missed a question or three. First, why do so many countries with universal health care have higher life expectancy ages and lower rates of infant mortality than the US?
Second, you missed the central point of the AMERICAN THINKER piece I posted, a conservative argument for universal health care. Here in the US, we ALREADY have universal coverage under the
Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, which requires hospitals and ambulance services to provide emergency care to anyone regardless of citizenship, legal status or ability to pay.
The question is whether this mixed system is working for us or whether too many people are going uncovered while we end up paying alot more. Check out the article I poster which makes an intereting argument.
The Saudis can fund all our Palliative care. Convert to Islam on the way out. Rob the Americans of their souls while they sleep, those sorcerers.
Do you think UBL fancies it was more the magic of Islam that swept him away at Tora Bora, more so than our technological scarcity (sorry, heavy lift is in Kuwait)?
Perhaps the heirs of Obama will finally lose their fear of guns as a counterwieght to their total control of the citizen. If the Palace Guards of our future have that technology which now controls fanatical militias, what’s to worry?
–change of subject–
I’ve been thinking it would be interesting if there were a commercial featuring “The Great Schlep”. A Jewish grandson dresses up and travels to see the grandfather he hasn’t seen for years to try and convince him to vote for Obama. The grandfather welcomes his grandson, yet he is also educated and prepared for this. He listens to his grandson’s spiel and then asks his grandson questions about Barack Obama and tells him shocking truths about Obama’s policy positions that his grandson doesn’t know. At the end of the one to two minute ad, the grandson takes off his Obama button and finally agrees with his grandfather that he should really be voting for John McCain.
Elsewhere in Baghdad, the walls are coming down: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/10/world/middleeast/10walls.html
Yes, they’ll lose their fear of guns and maybe Michelle will spank every racist.
LOL, yeah Ol’ Maverick. God we’re effed.
How best to get out a call to vote 3rd party? Make THAT cool! An unexpected third party vote could be commercialized and marketed nationally rapidly. I’m from IL, so I will be voting for another candidate. If you consider the weak political sauce (c’mon 9/11 conspiracies!) that can get broadcast across culture, you can’t think a powerful “reform” vote aggregating is impossible.
How do you get THAT vote out? We need the option to torpedo their whole effing system and elect some nutjob like Ron Paul. That’ll be leverage they can’t beat with just dead voters, gay marriage, or women who love ultraviolence inside them.
I could imagine the following dialogue…
Masochist: I’m a racist and I’ve been a bad boy. Spank me! Spank me!
Sadist: No.
I find it remarkable that the same people who are so unhappy with the large HMOs, large hospitals, large insurance companies, large drug companies, etc. – because they are large, and unresponsive – think it will all be much better with a single government system that aggregates all of these into one huge FedCare organization.
Health care spending in the US is about 15% of GDP – or around $2.2 Trillion dollars in 2007. I’d guess overall aggregate profits probably run 5-10%. (Fortune shows the top 20 pharma companies at about $50 billion in 2007,top 16 medical facilities ~ $2 billion, top 15 insurance ~ $15 billion.) If you took out ALL the profits, you get 5-10% savings – i.e. about 1 year standstill in cost escalation.
After that, the options are rationing service and forcing providers to work for less than free market rates.
Making health care a “right” means that you are forcing someone else to provide it against their will – I think they used to call that involuntary servitude.
Why do countries with socialized medicine all
have better-looking health and mortality statistics than does the USA?
Those countries all have well-doctored statistics. They do not have well-doctored populations.
Not going to take the time (all night) just to relate the examples I have come across.
However, it should be clear to all that those who oppose our current system all have involuntary alternatives. They have to pass laws to get their way. If their proposals are so great, why does it take coercion to implement them?
Coisty, the other point Wretchard only briefly touched on was that magic bullets, regardless if they are magic, tend to change how people live and work.
The change in Baghdad is simply amazing, the effects of the surge, lessened violence and increased stability were needed to prove to the Iraqi Government and many Iraqis that Jam was part of the problem and no longer, if ever it were, to be considered part of the solution. These are the effects the surge sought to bring about, things that the french attained in Algiers before Public Opinion and lack of Political will in France overtook the military and political gains in N. Africa. Of course there is a major difference in Baghdad and the rest of Iraq from what the French accomplished. Iraq is not a colony. The effects of our involvement, peace, stability and a republic will be harder to toss off.
There is no such a thing as an overnight success.
“Coyotl: Derek, I think you missed a question or three. First, why do so many countries with universal health care have higher life expectancy ages and lower rates of infant mortality than the US?”
Coyotl,
As I recall, in the case of the infant morality rates it’s for the same reason Babe Ruth had more strikeouts in the same season he had both the highest batting average and set a record for most home runs – The US medical system seeks to save babies that the European systems won’t even attempt to help and therefore won’t bother to record. That may be “better” on paper but is hardly as impressive as you would seem to think it.
As for “higher” life expectency…Would you like me to share the story of the time 15,000+ French senior citizens died because their physicians went on vacation when they were in trouble and didn’t want their leisure time to be disturbed? o_O
I suspect a few others who remember back to August 2003 and its aftermath could tell you that story as well!
Given the mess that government intervention has reaked on the mortgage and finance industries I’m having a very hard time understanding how anyone can advocate for a nationalized, socialist healthcare system.
Do you REALLY want to entrust those decisions to politicians and bureaucrats ?
I’m enrolled in a high deductible Health Savings plan pay routine medical expenses from a tax free savings account and the insurance component covers any catastrophic expenses.
Health care is a limited resource and there WILL be health care rationing and triage of some sort. Just as in finance, Mr Market makes those decisions far better then the government ever will.
Be honest with yourselves, Socialized medicine is the problem, not the solution.
I like my Health Savings Account just fine, thank you, so keep your grubby socialist hands off of it.
New 8th Grade English Textbooks Now Contain 15 Page Section on Obama!
I have to agree with exhelo. Aircraft carriers possess exquisite beauty.
Obama funded extremist Afrocentrists who shared Wright’s anti-Americanism
Lets drink to the hard working people
Lets drink to the lowly of birth
Raise your glass to the good and the evil
Lets drink to the salt of the earth
Say a prayer for the common foot soldier
Spare a thought for his back breaking work
Say a prayer for his wife and his children
Who burn the fires and who still till the earth
And when I search a faceless crowd
A swirling mass of gray and
Black and white
They don’t look real to me
In fact, they look so strange
Raise your glass to the hard working people
Lets drink to the uncounted heads
Lets think of the wavering millions
Who need leaders but get gamblers instead
Spare a thought for the stay-at-home voter
His empty eyes gaze at strange beauty shows
And a parade of the gray suited grafters
A choice of cancer or polio
And when I look in the faceless crowd
A swirling mass of grays and
Black and white
They don’t look real to me
Or don’t they look so strange
Salt of the Earth – M. Jagger/K. Richards – emphasis added
starling hunter said…
This is a travesty, (8th Grade Textbook linked above) really. Who can justify such a thing…
Oh wait Maybe it’s the Dallas Independent School District!http://www.dallasisd.org/keynote.htm
Bring Back Rev. Wright
hat tip, Starling
“your aprocryphal horror stories of delays, delays!! has not been sufficient, it seems to galvanize voters from Canada to Europe to Asia to abandon universal health care”
This comment is asinine, and I’m surprised ANYONE reading this blog could make it with a straight face. Let’s not kid ourselves. Once socialized medicine is implemented, it’s never going away. Ever. What politician would ever vote to cut off the “right to health care”? Statism, once entrenched, keeps its death grip, never to be dislodged.
>Maybe, just MAYBE national health care could be discussed sans personal anecdotes?
Yes, it would be so nice wouldn’t it. It’s those damn people who have the temerity to require care. If they all went away, we could make a perfect system.
I’ve heard those arguments up here, almost in those words.
The last gasp of thought put into the system up here is to focus on politically interesting issues; hip replacements, cancer treatment, cardiac care. Resources are moved from other areas to meet some ‘benchmarks’ in those areas. God help you if you have a non life threatening but debilitating illness that falls outside of the targeted areas.
Oddly enough, if you do, you then may become a personal anecdote that by all accounts is unimportant in serious discussions by serious people of the ‘issues’.
Yes. All For The Greater Good.
And if you think the situations I mentioned are outliers, look again.
Derek
No, it’ll be Old Blue taking on that waaaaaay off topic point. (I thought this was about the 60 Minutes story on Sadr City.)
It starts with one simple statement that becomes a meme; “health care in America is a right.”
Once that statement is accepted as fact, the creation of a meme, then as stated elsewhere in this thread, the fruits of many people’s labors become public property. Every bit of education, every scholarship won, tuition paid, every student loan paid off become public property. Every internship served, every residency completed, every sleepless night spent studying or working become public property, like the concrete in the streets we drive on.
It is the sense of entitlement that begins with that meme, for it is like an ink blot that spreads. I don’t care if every other country in the world has socialized medicine. That does not make it right, nor does it make it effective, no matter what they say. I too know a woman who had to flee Canada to save the life of her son who was born with a heart defect.
Part of having liberty is that our lives are complicated and we must manage them. It is hard, and life has never been fair. Surrendering the management of one’s life to the government because we are too busy to manage our own business is the beginning of the end of liberty. It is a long, slow, siren-song laden process… but we are selling out legacy just as surely as if we invited French Socialists to come and remake our government.
Why? Because we want the world to be fair, but we don’t want to get off of our butts and put any work into charities or works that would make a difference. We want to just pay our taxes and trust the government to make it fair. We want to be safe from worry and from having to manage our own affairs or be responsible. The article that Wretchard posted by Dr. Rossiter…
http://townhall.com/Columnists/LyleHRossiterJrMD/2006/12/04/the_liberal_mind_the_psychological_causes_of_political_madness
As I read this, I found myself nodding in agreement. It is a mindset, a relief from responsibility, a cry for safety and the announcement that we will willingly trade liberty to obtain it.
Now, if I may address the actual subject of the article; seeing the Army actually manage the incredible amount of intelligence that is gathered and take action on it is heartening.
In Afghanistan, we had a fair capability to gather information, but a much harder time managing it. The platforms can gather tons of information, but so much of it is never really acted upon because it is lost in the huge data stream. The battle for Sadr City is a microcosmic display of what right looks like in such a fight. Now if we could just execute that on an area roughly the size of Texas, we’d be in business.
The ability to utilize technology well does not change a basic tenet of counterinsurgency, though. Security. When there is security in the neighborhood, the citizens are much more likely to point out the troublemakers, because they don’t want them to take the situation back to what it was when there was fighting in the streets. A citizen who doesn’t know which side is going to win will not, unless driven by strong ideology, give up the neighborhood organizer. When he is starting to see some fruit from security, he will do so in order to continue to see those fruits. That tiny part of the story is something that was overlooked.
Another aspect is the low-tech concrete barriers. When the government can control population transfer, they have the ability to prevent the easy movement of men and arms from one area to another. That is a reason why an insurgency would be difficult to manage here in the States.
While we have freedom of movement, it would be relatively simple to identify and apprehend significant groups of men and arms. We have ID cards, and it is a law that you must carry identification. That is a responsibility of government on the public safety side. (Provide for the common defence, provide domestic tranquility.) These are legitimate realms for government.
Providing this capability through movement control points at a concrete wall is the low-tech version of our ability to track population flow here in the United States. It was good counterinsurgency strategy and those walls can be removed as the government of Iraq is able to provide effective community policing.
Biggie,
You’re onto something here: the word “health” is too open-ended and subjective to define, much less construct a governmental system to advance.
Which, in the end, may be the reason why “health” is a political football to the Progressive movement. They deliberately search for semantic categories that are vague and complicated and then try to commoditize the vague, undefineable something in the political marketplace.
The “environment” is an old, ready example, “stem-cell research” was another (SCR’s unfathomables served only to mask a Leftist appeal to federalize “health-related” research). The “economy,” and “race” are two others. Each category shares complexity and a technicality that exempts common folk from knowing the folds and curls of each one, and, therefore, from confidently ignoring appeals from the political classes to market their “solutions” to us.
In a ruling, governmentalist culture that requires ever new problems in order to win the next election, any societal complexity that can be popularized into a “national issue” will be.
Hence the overt alliance between propagandistic media and the modern Prog. movement: they desperately need each other.
Old Blue: After my grunt days got ended, I switched over to the Two Shop. Was 96C on third VN tour.
I cannot describe the frustration I felt at seeing useful information take weeks to get to the end users.
At times, I resorted to handwritten summaries
given to Black Cat pilots to hand deliver to
fire bases. A dangerous procedure as it meant I was passing on info that nobody had reviewed for errors on my part. (I so stated in those handwritten notes.)
It is heartening to see the kind of improvement described. Even what you had in Afghanistan was much better than what I experienced.
BTW Old Blue: One thing that pursuing the Austrian School of Economics will teach you is that you cannot stop human beings from chasing after what appears to be free money,
health care etc.
That means we have to find ways of finessing this behavior into contained areas where harm is limited.
That is why I came up withj Post 50 above.
Another thing that I found interesting upon following the link to the 60 Minutes story was the comments of enraged posters who were crying out against the “war criminals” and raging about the “children’s bodies” in the streets.
Read those comments, and then consider the article by Dr. Rossiter. If those people were crying out that “W” was under the control of space aliens, it would be easy to spot the insanity. Instead, he is declared a war criminal on a mainstream media website and it is the rarer person who actually calls them on this insanity of conspiracy theories and oil-grabbing imperialist autocracies.
A few years ago, when nearly 90% of the population supported the initial invasion of Iraq, those cries were easily spotted and ignored; but they have become more strident, and others have succumbed to the easy “logic” of “humanitarian” protests and have joined in the baying.
Since returning, I have found a new “political correctness.” It is no longer politically correct to abuse soldiers. My brother, upon his return from Viet Nam, was pelted with dog feces in San Diego by people whose madness had grown, but not to the point of a Bill Ayers madness. Upon my return, I have been greeted with such complex politically correct statements as, “Thank you for serving. I support the troops but I’m against the war. I want to support the troops by bringing them home.”
They find it incomprehensible that I would say, “Not until the job is done.” They also don’t understand what “done” looks like. They don’t understand why leaving nearly 5000 lives on the battlefield and walking away leaving a bigger mess than we found when we got there makes a soldier gag.
Many of these people expect to find me happy about the idea of withdrawal. This is where the facade of “supporting the troops” begins to fray, sometimes to the point that I become a “Bush lackey.”
Interesting.
Hey 3case, if you’re still out there, no disrespect of the Marines intended. I singled out the Army for one simple reason – who’s paid the biggest price in lives. Check out the casualty figures by service at:
http://icasualties.org
Old Blue, thank you for serving.
BTW, I followed the link to your blog, have bookmarked it, and will look it over in the coming day or two. I am American living and working in Doha, Qatar. There are many American servicemen and women here and they are easy to spot in the mall near my apartment. Several times I have walked up and told them just what I told you, “Thank you for serving.” Sometimes I add that “I couldn’t be here doing what I do, if it weren’t for your service.” That’s the word that’s in every sentence- service. So again, thanks for serving.
If you think letting the government administer a national health system is such a good idea, consider this. Back in 1990, the Government seized the Mustang Ranch brothel in Nevada for tax evasion and, as required by law, tried to run it. They failed and it closed. Now we are trusting the economy of our country to a pack of nit-wits who couldn’t make money running a whore house and selling booze?
Old Blue, the problem we face now among normal people is that we are in a sitzkrieg instead of a blitzkrieg.
Read Hanson’s “Carnage and Culture” is you have not already done so. An intrinsical part of Western Civilization/Culture is to raise and army, kick ass and come home. That is because we go to war to eliminate those who threaten us and if the threat recedes without being eliminated, we grow complacent.
What to do? Dunno. But I have had some success with smark-alecky remarks like, “Don’t be a Custer”. Or “You Sit and Bull too much.”
Once you manage to jold their assumptions, you then have a chance to explain why this one will take a while.
Re: Technology inducing change
How much “health” could be gained, per American, for, say, every F-22 we do not buy and maintain?
Its worth asking how many other expensive government-funded enterprises result in something as functional as an F-22. Where is the HHS’s F-22? Or if we were to limit ourselves to the NIH and its $28 Billion budget…what has that gotten us lately?
CS Monitor mentions US total R&D @ $344 Billion –
Wiki says HHS budget ~ $573 Billion
If we were to consider ourselves farmers of technology, how can we prepare for future seasons best?
Hey SiD,
Folks around here for some time would tell you that I am engaged in jest any time I start a post with “What!…What!!”
On the serious side, my daily prayers are for God’s grace and safety for all grunts, be they dogface, zoomie, squid or jar and their families.
Semper Fi
A lot of folks here seem to think that if you’re “poor” in the US you wait like one does in Canada or UK; believe me, that’s not the case where I’m from in NC. I live near several teaching hospitals, and they provide care to all who come in, ability to pay be damned. And yes, they bring patients in from teh surrounding states in the region, and even from overseas.
Anecdotal, huh?
About twenty years ago there was an study published in the WSJ on health care costs.
From memory, I believe the study said:
Costs starting rising rapidly at the advent of Medicare. What Doctors found at that time was that Banks would lend money for new clinics and hospitals because for first time Medicare was providing a steady stream of cash flow in the Health Care business.
What happened was Competition. Hospitals began to compete not on price, but on quality of care. A person doesn’t care about saving money if that person is going to die. In smaller towns, instead of one hospital, there was now two or more. The hospitals to stay in business had to have the latest and greatest technology to save lives. An health care cost spiral ensued and continues today.
As a result, America has the best health care available for a price on the Planet. Those health care systems in other countries so admired by C4 and others don’t have close to the best health care.
America would have to accept lesser health care and rationing if it goes for Universal Health Care. Plain and Simple.
Also not addressed is that our legal system and bureaucrats have demanded that the elderly be given the best health care even when they are terminal, causing a high percentage of the total health care costs to be spent on people who are not going to live. Add to that the fact that Medicare demands treatment from Health Care professionals it no longer fully pays for. The insured non medicare patients pick up the rest of that huge tab.
The health care system has already been mightily messed with by the Democrats. Universal Health care just opens a whole smorgasbord of new opportunities for the left to screw up.
Health care. Yawn. Your all wrong. And I haven’t time to explain.
Indian Health Services, ever heard of it?
That might be the way forward. Of course, there are those who are starting to rattle the cage kindly provided to them via IHS (From Wikipedia):
“She feels IHS is underfunded and necessary services unavailable. Others have concerns that restrictions of the Indian preference policy do not allow for the hiring of the most highly qualified health professionals and administration staff, so quality of care and efficiency of administration suffer.”
Quick! Someone notify a bureaucrat that we’ve shortages and scarcity! Get someone on his payroll on it STAT!
Anecdotal evidence is not valid unless you’re wearing a white lab coat, have, at least a Master, and collect a whole lot: then anecdotal evidence is truly evidence. A short cut to the validity of anecdotal evidence is to be a liberal commentator.
Starling: Thanks! I think I was in that mall a couple of times during a pass I had in Qatar. I was one of those guys who were unmistakably American soldiers.
Funny, huh?
Well, the ice slide was fun, anyway. Watching a Qatari kid learning hockey was really weird, too. Nice mall, though.
Dave: I think that the biggest failure of President Bush has been his failure to communicate. Reagan sold the country on “Star Wars,” for chrsssakes, but Bush can’t articulate his own doctrine of, “If you support terrorism, we will hold you accountable. If you have a government that supports terrorism, then you are accountable for your government.” Sounded pretty simple when he put that out in his State of the Union address; the message was largely lost after that. Then it was twisted by his opponents, because he wasn’t constantly keeping it out there in front of people.
It’s the same with the GWOT. The Armed Forces try to get their message out, but the MSM ignores them. The administration is not working to educate the public on the war, its conduct, goals, successes, failures, and challenges. That leaves an information vacuum. Guess who fills it?
Propaganda works.
We suck at Information Operations, an integral part of counterinsurgency. We are our own worst enemy, and sometimes Al Saheed cannot believe their incredible good fortune at having such an ally.
Old Blue, yes that’s the mall I was referring to. That and “the standing souq” are my favorite hangouts. And yes, it is odd (in a fun sort of way) to see the local kids learning to play hockey when its over 100 degrees outside. But not as funny as seeing guys snowboarding in thaubs at Ski Dubai
In Doha in the winter the US, Canadian, and Northern European expats organize competitive hockey matches, and they draw pretty good crowds.
If you are ever back this way, give me a holler. Coffee’s on me.
Old Blue said:
“I think that the biggest failure of President Bush has been his failure to communicate…. It’s the same with the GWOT. The Armed Forces try to get their message out, but the MSM ignores them. The administration is not working to educate the public on the war, its conduct, goals, successes, failures, and challenges.”
How can the administration get their message out or educate the public on the GWoT if the MSM ignores the message and constantly repeats counter-propaganda? This war has been as much against the MSM as the Islamic fascists.
However I agree with Old Blue that President Bush has not been effective at communicating around the MSM. President Reagan encountered similar opposition from the MSM and dealt with it effectively. Most of us have heard the cliche:
“Fighting with the MSM is like mud wrestling with a pig. You both get dirty but the pig likes it.”
President Reagan LIKED mud wrestling with pigs and was better at it than the pigs. Unfortunately, President Bush had no patience for it even though his job demanded it. President Bush saw himself mainly as a manager rather than as a mouth piece working from the “bully pulpit”. Reagan (who I did not like as President) understood that his main job was to work as a cheer leader.
It’s a bit idiotic when you get down to the bare essence of it. When we vote for President we’re actually voting for a cheer leader who acts as a figure head for a government administration hidden behind him. The Messiah is beating John McCain mainly because the Messiah is better at leading cheers.
I guess the unasked question is:
How do we reform the MSM so our leaders can actually lead rather than function as propaganda ministers?
The answer to that riddle is not obvious.
How did a story about Iraq turn into a discussion over health care?? Well, since we’re on the subject. TennCare, anyone? From the WSJ:
HillaryCare in Tennessee
The disaster that might have been for the entire country.
Monday, December 6, 2004 12:01 A.M. EST
We think it was Justice Brandeis who said the states should be laboratories for reform. Regarding health care, Tennessee tried a decade ago and the price is now coming due. Hillary Rodham Clinton should call her pollster if she plans on carrying the state in 2008.
In 1994, Tennessee passed what was then a very hot New Democrat idea–call it government managed care–a version of the reform the former first lady was also pitching nationwide. TennCare promised the impossible dream of politicians everywhere: Lower health-care costs while covering more of the “uninsured.” They got the impossible, all right. After 10 years of mismanagement and lawsuits, TennCare now eats up one-third of the state’s entire budget and is growing fast. Governor Phil Bredesen, a Democrat, is preparing to pull the plug and return the state to the less lunatic subsidies of Medicaid.
The TennCare concept was for the state to operate like an HMO, providing health insurance to those who needed it and paying the premiums for those who couldn’t afford it. The idea was even sold as a cost savings because it would provide “managed care” (volume discounts, preventative care, etc.). TennCare opened enrollment to hundreds of thousands of people who did not qualify for Medicaid, even to some six-figure earners. Costs quickly exploded, and despite attempts to tighten eligibility rules the program still covers 1.3 million of the state’s 5.8 million people.
The skyrocketing costs led previous Governor Don Sundquist, the Republican who had inherited the program, to try to impose a state income tax. His efforts failed, fortunately, but in 2002 Mr. Bredesen was elected promising to cut TennCare’s costs.
That, too, has been impossible. Left-wing legal activists have sued the state with impunity to underwrite the cost of nearly unlimited care. A Nashville non-profit called the Tennessee Justice Center has hamstrung reforms for years by suing to enforce a series of consent decrees, some of which predate TennCare.
Prescription drug costs alone increased 23% last year, as there are effectively no limits on the number or types of drugs the system will pay for. If a doctor prescribes aspirin, TennCare pays for it. Ditto for antacids for heartburn and other over-the-counter products. If TennCare denies a claim for a drug or any other type of care, an appeal can be filed for next to nothing. Fighting each appeal costs the state as much as $1,600 in legal fees. With 10,000 appeals filed every month, it’s often easier and cheaper to pay a claim, regardless of the merits.
TennCare is now in worse shape than it was a decade ago. Three of the 11 privately run Managed Care Organizations that insured TennCare patients and administered the program have fallen into receivership. Amid the legal wrangling, Blue Cross Blue Shield all but pulled out of the program. Today the state has assumed all the insurance risk and pays most of the premiums.
Mr. Bredesen has proposed numerous reforms to reduce costs by limiting care, and the legislature overwhelmingly endorsed them earlier this year. But they sit in limbo while the Governor negotiates with the Tennessee Justice Center to end its lawsuits. With the talks at an impasse, Mr. Bredesen has instructed state officials to start thinking about dismantling TennCare. “It makes no sense for one facet of our responsibilities–health care–to be able to come to the table first and eat and drink all it wants, and then if there is anything left over, we then can consider our other responsibilities,” he told the Tennessee School Board Association recently.
Good for Mr. Bredesen for recognizing that the entitlement mentality inevitably leads to fiscal perdition. Has he told Mrs. Clinton, not to mention certain Republicans in Washington?
Some nuggets from Wikipedia about TennCare:
In its first year of operation, TennCare enrollment quickly grew close to the federal cap of 1.5 million people, meaning the federal government would not share in the cost of the number above that. In response to the growth in enrollment, in 1995 the state closed eligibility to adults who were uninsured.
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Through the years, problems began to develop related to the operation of the seven managed care organizations (MCOs). A first one simply pulled out of the program, and the state shifted enrollees to the other managed care organizations. But then two other MCOs developed financial problems, and physicians began complaining loudly that they were not being paid. The state was forced to take over one contractor, and attempted to keep the MCO afloat through receivership. Another larger MCO was bailed out by the state before it was finally liquidated. In both cases, health care providers were left with millions in unpaid bills. Though the state tried to pay off the debt, it was never able to fully compensate providers.
By 1999, it was clear that a reform was necessary. Doctors and hospitals lobbied the state to require that a certain percentage of the money paid to the MCOs in the form of monthly capitation payments be routed on to providers. More problems developed, as the MCOs were unable to manage care or costs under the constraint of the new mandate.
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Not only was the program’s budget once again consuming all the state’s new revenues, but despite the more stringent agreement with the federal government, the perception continued across the state that people not eligible for TennCare were finding ways to get on the program illegally.
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By 2005, approximately 160,000 people who were not Medicaid eligible were removed from TennCare. In addition, the program’s benefits were trimmed. At the time, Tennessee was one of less than a half-dozen states in the nation with no limits on pharmacy benefits. The state set the limit at five prescriptions per month for most enrollees, with exclusions for children, pregnant women, nursing homes and emergency care. Limits were also placed on doctor visits and hospital stays, but the greatest expected savings would come from limiting access to prescription drugs. Tennessee had the notoriety of being the top state in the nation for per-capita prescription drug use – and like many of its neighbors, the state had a huge bill for prescription painkillers.
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Where do we sign up? (/sacarsm off) Any BC’ers enjoying the benefits of TennCare want to share their experiences?
I think Bush’s biggest failure has been a failure of his Justice Dept to prosecute cases of public corruption.
…and to allow farces like Libby to procede.
We will be left with “Public Servants” like Boxer, Pelosi, Reid, Wexler, and Obama.
Old Blue,
Americans don’t suck at IO. We have some of the best CNO in the world. They just don’t work for our military or intelligence apparat. Our EW is pretty good. Our OPSEC needs work. We are scared to use much MILDEC for fear of being accused of lying to the American people when we deceive the enemy.
We suck at PSYOP. That’s because domestic oppositional elements within our own polity have convinced most Americans that PSYOP is bad, all propaganda for us is evil, and all propaganda for the enemy is freedom of speech.
Coyotl: You ask about child mortality and life expectancy statistics.
Canada has an identifiable group that has high child mortality rates, low life expectancy and generally all the symptoms of a societal breakdown. Drug abuse, high incidence of AIDS, tuberculosis outbreaks, etc. This is spite of, or maybe because of, very high per capita spending and an almost totalitarian control over the lives of a large proportion of that group.
The US has a group similar to that.
In Canada, the population of that group is quite small in proportion to the population. That isn’t the case in the US. So the pathologies of that group show up in the statistics, where in Canada, Europe and Asia, who no doubt have groups similar, don’t.
I would submit that the needs of these groups are unusual, intensive and urgent. But to apply these same ‘solutions’ to the population as a whole will make it worse for most, marginally better for some.
Derek
drones and uavs… not very much discussion of late about the SEAD mission
remain crated up until needed…interesting
As Old Blue reports, the datastream is already too heavy, the desire to slough off decision-making to machines has never been more tantalizing.
The current “problem” is an over-abundance of flying Surveillance/Recon on platforms ranging from bungee-launched model airplane-size to a telescopically-expanding aircraft S/R suite. Wow, not a bad problem to have.
But most solutions are not scalable, wizardary has its limits. That’s when we fall back on the irreplaceable human action described in books like Imperial Grunts and The Strongest Tribe, First In and Moment of Truth, Carnage and Culture.
Coyotl, et al.
Ref infant mortality. In the US, any infant making out of the birth canal is a live birth, no matter how challenged. If, after heroic efforts, the child dies, that’s infant mortality.
Other countries would count a significant number of the challenged as “stillbirths”, thus reducing infant mortality figures compared to the US.
And, in figuring averages, a child who lives three hours is a heavy negative weight on the average, compared to a stillbirth which does not count at all.
Is there really somebody who doesn’t know this?
Thanks, Wretchard, for numbering the entries. (When did that Start?)
Richard Aubrey, people know how infant mortality stats are collected and/or spin doctored. Some just like to deny it.