Outlay: A healthcare parable

[purplkat]

There's been a lot of talk recently about Obama's healthcare plan. Is it necessary? Is there going to be some kind of bureaucrat standing between me and my doctor who is worse than the profit-motivated HMO bureaucrat who currently stands between me and my doctor? But mostly, people are asking: Will it cost too much? How can we afford it

Comments

[morlith]

Hi there! I found you via miintikwa's LJ! =) You've been friended because you're an interesting person and I'd like to get to know you better

[purplkat]

I -completely- agree with you, re: California. The thing that started driving our state downhill was Prop 13, which denied local communities the property taxes that they should have been getting. As they had less money to pay for services, the state had to pay for them which not only drained money from the state, but also meant that the money was wasted more often, since it couldn't be tailor-spent by the community itself to address its specific problems

[morlith]

As they had less money to pay for services, the state had to pay for them which not only drained money from the state, but also meant that the money was wasted more often, since it couldn't be tailor-spent by the community itself to address its specific problems.

The underlying problem here is that people expect the State and Federal Governments to take care of them while completely ignoring their City and County Governments. That's not how it's supposed to work.

Well, give it ten years, and I think people are going to start looking on taxes with a slightly kinder eye, at least in California.

I'd say the same thing about reform, but that means I'd trust politicians to do that properly and not bungle it up too.

I just hope that it doesn't go too much to shit before things turn around.

Or they fuck things up more by trying to "fix" things.

[purplkat]

I just keep thinking that there -has- to be a bottom, a point where there is no further down that things can go, and they must begin to go up somehow.

I know this isn't really true, except in the sense that we could bottom out by sinking the whole state into the ocean like the crazy earthquake people keep saying is going to happen. But part of me keeps thinking that eventually things will get so awful that monkeys banging on typewriters could make laws that would make it better.

... It's just that I look at how bad things are likely to get in this state, and I know that when things get -that- bad, they're liable to get worse just because people go apeshit when certain basic units of civilization start breaking down, and part of me's like 'It's got to stop somewhere, right? RIGHT?!'