The gimp wonders how things got to moving so fast that she just couldn't keep up with them.
As at least one of my two faithful readers knows, I've been having some health issues, and have pretty much just let things race on past me. It really is too much to keep up with, so, I'm pretty much wimping out until I get back up to speed. This could very well be my last post for a long time.
It's painful to watch America being dismantled at break neck speed by someone who managed to get elected in spite of having said many times that he intended to do just that.
And now there's this grab for ultimate power diguised as health care. The other day I saw an Israeli prancing around telling people that Universal compulsory health care is nothing to be scared of. Israel has it and it's just fine.
Yeah, well, we do have it over here, and it does work for the most part. Among the major differences is that we have working the wrinkles in our system out for around 100 years.
You see, back in the early 1900s lots of Russian Jews came here and brought the socialist/communist influences of The Revolution with them. They had the foresight to organize a system that would give them a lot of autonomy under the British Mandate. They formed a Union-The Histadrut that owned and ran just about every aspect of life in the Jewish community. They started a health clinic chain, banks, building companies, merchandising outlets, a public transportation cooperative, and pretty much ran the whole show. When in 1948 independence was declared, they were right there to form a government and hit the ground running at full speed. There were also two other health clinic chains started at around the same time. All were connected to political parties. The Histadrut plan was the largest, and still is. Thing is that as a Jewish State, Jewish family values were very strong. No one ever dared talk about rationing care. Jewish teaching would never allow that. It was also against their somewhat pure socialist roots. Life is sacred.
In the 1990s it was decided that changes had to be made in health care. It was to become compulsary for every one living here and administered over all by our Social Security and a Knesset committee as well as the Health Ministry. The motive was never control or to save money by rationing care. Not in a Jewish State! It was to make sure that everyone had medical coverage, treatment and that no one would go without care. There is also a thriving 'private' option where we can buy supplemental coverage through the various clinics, or, even just pay a private practise doctor. People were a bit nervous about the new plan, but, as it really didn't change much, went along with it. Like I said, we'd been fine tuning it for around 100 years, and it worked quite well.
Things do get a little sticky when new treatments or medicines come on the scene, but haven't yet been included in the 'Health Basket'. Often times these new expensive things are denied until the commitee that decides these adds them to the Basket. Never ever is care or treatment denied on the basis of a person's quality of life or longevity expectations. It's a Jewish thing. Life is valued above all.
Unfortunately, America has elected a President and Congress that only really values their own lives and wants to control everyone elses. Basic Judeo Christian values have fallen by the wayside, which is part of 'their' plan to take over every aspect of your life they can. They have spent years secularizing American society to the point where Christianity is a dirty word and the new social morals are worthless, and lead to things like 'Death Panels' abortion on demand, and other very nasty things.
I wish I was more embarrassed to say that I thank G-d every day that I came here when I did. I get great care at my clinic. Of course it took me a few years to train them up to speed, but in the end I do get what I need. And I need a lot, being a severly didabled gimp with a long list of health issues. These days I just roll into my clinic, tell the doc what I want, and roll back out with it.
You won't be so lucky because they want to start a whole system. At least we've been working on ours for 100 years. It ain't perfect, but it's better than most.