Curiosity Over Pride (FYI: To comment, send an e-mail to scifidink@gmail.com)

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Old prejudices

Reading Thai's comments and data about the difference between American and French health care, welfare, etc., I MUST ask you to question your... prejudices about how we're living in Europe.
A while back there in the jungle, I mentioned to Edwardo that if you paid your nickel to a private insurance company in order to get your health care, or if you paid you nickel into the state social security system in France, YOU WERE STILL ASSISTED, because essentially, you were paying your nickel IN THE EXPECTATION that paying it would get you taken care of, in one way or another. Don't let the ideology fool you, my friends.
Some 10 years ago, I remember receiving an American college student in psychotherapy for a period of around three months. What I remember was how overwhelming the insurance paperwork was. How... intrusive the questions were. How the answers I was supposed to stick down were immediately available for my patient (some would say necessary transparency, but being obliged to stick down a psychiatric "diagnosis" after one consultation is a little bit like being asked to pull a rabbit out of a hat. A psychiatric diagnosis takes time, and observation, and handing it out to your patient is like taking a red felt pen, and marking the diagnosis on his forehead, for him and all the world to see. In psychiatry, this is totally counterproductive.).
All of this to "justify" those $$$$$ spent.
At the same time, our system was (and still is) not intrusive this way.
I feel as though you guys are operating under major prejudices about just what life in Europe (in France) is like.
Like, you think that we are all ASSISTED.
This is a big fat lie.
Life in France is light years away from life under the Communist regimes, and always has been.
As a matter of fact, I keep griping about the fact that this country is much more individualist than the U.S. There is LESS solidarity than in the U.S. More conformism, to a certain extent, but the conformism does not make this society an assisted one.
And as for the civil servants, the fonctionnaires, as they are known here...
That is ONE way to solve the employment problem.
So... are YOU going to dump on the Europeans because they have JOBS ??
Let me laugh a little bit.
JUST BECAUSE THOSE JOBS ARE GOVERNMENT JOBS, and not PRIVATE sector jobs, you are going to shit on them for ideological reasons ??
Let me laugh a little bit.
American chest beating tires me out.
At a time when the private sector banks are taking the planet down, YOU ARE GOING TO GO ALL OUT ROOTING FOR THE PRIVATE SECTOR, and give lessons to the Europeans about the welfare state ??
Count me out.
What REALLY gets me frantic is that France, for the last ten years, has been blithely destroying its excellent health care, in order to have care that resembles American care.
Whereas I left the U.S. 30 years ago to get away from the place, and find life, liberty and the right to pursue happiness ELSEWHERE.

10 comments:

Dink said...

"YOU ARE GOING TO GO ALL OUT ROOTING FOR THE PRIVATE SECTOR"

Hmmmm. My take on the conversation was different. My impression was that Thai (correct me if I'm wrong) and I are of the opinion that neither system is ideal (or even viable), while you are of the opinion that France's system is/was ideal and viable.

You sure do use a lot of CAPITALIZATION and "pauses to laugh" for someone who isn't angry ;)

Debra said...

France's health care system was doing ok for a while there.
No longer.
Like French TV was ok for a while, too. (At least, ten million times better than American TV at the same time.) No longer.
Don't mistake my rhetoric for my emotions, dink.
That would be a bad idea...

Thai said...

Deb, perhpas the analogy of flexibility vs. rigidity might help.

I have absolutely 0 interest in the cat vs. dog fight which is public vs. private.

Yet I use exactly that working all the time!

... So what is the inconsistency?

#1 at some level this is a zero sum issue like all others and I readily admit that. Remember, I accept the limitations of the conservation of energy and the fact that hubs are at as much risk as peripheral nodes.

#2 This issue is most definitely one of those:"a rose by any other name does not smell as sweet issues"- I readily admit this.

#3 I prefer flexibility to rigidity (perhaps it is because I am somewhat rigid myself and yet selfishly I do see my blunt abrasive style is best suited to a environment where diversity is encouraged- who knows).

#4 I do not think monopoly is ever as flexible as a system comprised by a great many players that are allowed to make multiple changes yet must also suffer the consequences.

In the end, I am an American and I do embrace our diversity. I simply prefer flexibility.

Thai said...

Keep going ;-)

Debra said...

Thanks for the link, Thai. Interesting.
These men are both older men.
Good news. In France they would be... retired.
LOL

Thai said...

Oops! I accidentally gave you the wrong link. I had several tabs up on my browser and I clearly posted the wrong one. My bad.

However, I was trying to comment on the following statement you made:

"A while back there in the jungle, I mentioned to Edwardo that if you paid your nickel to a private insurance company in order to get your health care, or if you paid you nickel into the state social security system in France, YOU WERE STILL ASSISTED, because essentially, you were paying your nickel IN THE EXPECTATION that paying it would get you taken care of, in one way or another."

I have some questions for you on this comment and they center around my old friend ASPECT.

When things look very big to someone, they can have the appearance of stability/solidity/persistence/security. Yet you and I both know the idea that size is security can be an illusion.

Purchasing insurance (protection) still always requires an evaluation of the stability of your insurer and I suspect (though I could be wrong) that there is often a belief that governmentis more secure than private insurers.

And while I agree this belief is probably generally true, yet it is not always so.

And getting the issue of whether you should have trust in your insurer wrong obviously might have disastrous outcomes.

Again, at some level there is no difference between 100% pure free market vs. 100% command economy vs. any hybrid between these two extremes.

And yet I do know there is often a big difference between what people say and what people do.

Debra said...

Perhaps we might say that....
What IS trust, exactly, when you don't have the FACE of the PERSON you trust in front of you ?
This brings us back to the question of abstraction again.
Is it different to BELIEVE in the government, or to believe in the insurance company, if, in your MIND, both of them are abstractions ?
Does believing in one more than the other change the absolute nature of belief, once you have gone past the individual into the abstract ?
If you tell me that Americans, when they purchase their insurance, are constantly evaluating whether their insurer will go bust or not, I think that I will not believe you, Thai.
If you tell me that I, and/or others think that the government's desire to PROTECT ME (a major responsibility of government, that has nothing to do with size, but with mission) and to have my welfare at heart (lol) is superior to the desire of a private insurance company, maybe I might believe that (without, of course necessarily taking into account all the DISADVANTAGES of government's desire to protect...).
(Easy to lose sight of the fact, right, that the government is PEOPLE, and that its abstract identity is lended to it by the substantive form...)
What I am telling you is that I think that most Americans have prejudices about the effect that the so called European welfare state has on its members.
I think that the "assistance" phenomenon is visible in American AND European society these days.
And that means that it CANNOT come from the structure that Americans have labeled the "welfare" state.

Debra said...

I have left a couple of important, related comments on the Letters from Westerbork post.
I did not spend hours dissecting your link from the economist commenting on the unemployment situation in the EU, Thai, as this info is way too general for it to be a good source.
It seems to be coloured by... rose coloured glasses, too.
What IS true, however, is that the American economy is going to start looking a lot more like the European one, with respect to those UNEMPLOYMENT figures.
That is definitely true.
Is the U.S. joining the... OLD WORLD team ?

Dink said...

"These men are both older men.
Good news. In France they would be... retired."

Maniac scientists like these never retire regardless of the economic system.

They're lucky to have such longevity because the Nobel isn't granted posthumously. Which at least two female professors let me know was complete bullshit in the case of Rosalind Franklin.

Debra said...

You're right, dinky, maniac scientists like that NEVER retire, they die on the job.
I know at least one maniac scientists like that, a really nice autist working on bee communication.
Now, if you were a shrink that would get you kind of suspicious about the... RELIGIOUS possibilities of scientific materialism, but I say...
You gotta get through this life somehow, occupy those hours, and find meaning, you better clutch at every straw that presents itself.
No single one is more... solid or respectable than another, in my book.

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