Canadian Healthcare from a Canadian...

[JWsleep]

Originally Posted by mheisig

Amen to that.

My line of work (street cop) obviously dictates that I interact with a number of poor people, ranging from the homeless, people in government subsidized housing (projects) to just your run-of-the-mill poor people living in trailers or run down houses.

The interesting thing that I've noticed, to an almost overwhelming degree, is that alot of this poverty is quite honestly a choice. How do I know it's a choice? The sheer number of big screen TVs, satellite dishes and other expensive toys that you find in the projects, in low-income neigborhoods, etc. Some of the shittiest houses I've been in have huge flat screen TVs, and the number of DirecTV and DISH Network dishes hanging on the side of tax-payer subsidized housing it's just apalling.

I don't make much money as a cop, and consequently I rent an apartment and I don't even have cable TV. I made the choice to pay my bills, pay my taxes and support my wife and daughter rather than let some other hard working tax payer pick up the slack or go into debt so I can afford a luxury item.

Now I'm not arguing that 100% of the poor choose to be that way, absolutely not. I'm certain that there are people who because of circumstance simply can't get on their feet. I will say that in my experience those people are VERY few and far between.

In my interaction with the homeless I always ask them two questions: 1) Do you have a job? 2) Why not? The answer to the first is, obviously, always "no." The answer to the second is quite often "I don't want to work." They'll flat out tell you most of the time that they just don't want to work. The others will claim it's a disability of some sort.

Bringing this back to healthcare, I personally have a really hard time coughing up more of my hard earned dollars to fund healthcare for people who choose to sit on their ass and watch TV all day long while someone else pays for their needs.

I'm all for helping those who are willing to do a bit for themselves. I think a lot of people, with probably very good intentions, want universal, tax-payer funded healthcare because they're out of touch with the world. I have personally walked the projects, walked the shithole neighborhoods, talked to these people on a daily basis. I suppose all of this can be dismissed as purely anecdotal, but I put a lot more stock in my personal experiences than pure conjecture from an ivory tower. I honestly think sometimes that the people proposing half this stuff must hop in their nice car every day, drive to the office and probably don't have a clue as to what actually goes on out on the street. I don't begrudge that comfortable lifestyle one bit, but let's not pretend that they have any real feel for how most poor people really are. It's not bad intentions, just ignorance.

It's true for some, no doubt--I lived in NYC for 20 years, so I've seen lots of crap there too. But not everyone is like this, and it's not their kids' fault that their parents are doing this--so I think we need to find a way to insure them.

Also, don't think you don't pay for this stuff already--when those people you speak of do get sick, they go the emergency rooms of big, public hospitals. You know who pays for that? We do. One thing to do is find a way to get some preventative medicine going, so people don't wind up in the system when they're already sick and it costs a ton more. Because, as I said, we're already paying for it.

[mheisig]

Originally Posted by JWsleep

It's true for some, no doubt--I lived in NYC for 20 years, so I've seen lots of crap there too. But not everyone is like this, and it's not their kids' fault that their parents are doing this--so I think we need to find a way to insure them.

Also, don't think you don't pay for this stuff already--when those people you speak of do get sick, they go the emergency rooms of big, public hospitals. You know who pays for that? We do. One thing to do is find a way to get some preventative medicine going, so people don't wind up in the system when they're already sick and it costs a ton more. Because, as I said, we're already paying for it.

Oh, I know we already pay for it bigtime. We pay for every lousy drunk I put in jail too. I guess it's the price of "law and order."

The kids are a really sad aspect of this entire thing - breaks my heart some days when I have to see them. It seems like by the age of about 12-14 most of them already don't give a crap and are just fine following in their parent's footsteps. They also are almost beyond intervention or help at that age - not without exception, but I'd argue as a general rule.

The worst part of all of this is watching so many of these screwed up druggies, homeless, poor, whatever the class may be - and they're all having kids. Watching some uneducated, illiterate, strunk out crackhead carrying around a baby is about the worst sight you'll see.