At 02:10 AM 3/07/00 +0100, Mr Bones wrote:
>Medical help is not free in Europe. The people pay for it here as
>well. Our system for paying is different to America's but we pay.
Of course, exactly, and this is true everywhere. My `free' medical costs me
1.5% of my tax bill. If I'm sufficiently out of luck that I don't *have* a
tax bill, not having earned as much as about $6000 in a given year, then
people who earn more than I do are forced to subsidise my medical fees. (If
they were sufficiently outraged at this interpretation of the social
contract, they could *vote in a new team* who wiped out this provision.
Although there has been a small current in that direction, I perceive a
backlash against it in Oz right now, back toward an egalitarian tendency.)
If I start to earn well, I pay `more than my fair share'. I suspect it
tends to even out over the course of a lifetime, except for the hopeless
and the leeches. Providing for the hopeless in this way seems likely to be
efficient, if the paperwork is kept to a minimum (as I think it is in Oz).
Letting some leeches get a free ride is part of the wastage expectable and
allowable in accounting for any large industrial system, since it would
cost more to track them down or force them into petty crime.
Max was offended (on an adjacent thread, I think) that I spoke of extrope
kneejerk responses to such claims as this. Sorry if that seemed uncalled
for. I meant `reflex', `automatic shorthand', not `brainless', of course.
We all use such shortcuts in discourse, and hence my qualms about venturing
into `the basics' again. Let sacred cows lie. :)
Damien Broderick
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 02 2000 - 17:33:52 MDT