We’re Like Your Parents

Norway’s wonderful “universal” socialized healthcare system is having some problems with elder care. Apparently, they are having to ration nursing home space so severely that only those over 90 and very sick can get in. But what struck me is this:

Even if more private alternatives were available, most Norwegians have paid high taxes all their lives and come to expect that they’ll be cared for in their twilight years.

This is the thing that scares me most about socialized medicine—a generation of Americans growing up who expect the government to take care of them and, after it inevitably fails, not knowing what the hell to do with themselves.

Society has to be, to some extent, self-organizing. And it is: witness the hundreds of millions of Americans working hard, obeying the law and doing what’s right without any government agents looking over their shoulders. Moreover, the individual (eek, the “I word”!) must, to some extent, take care of himself. One of the proudest days of my life was when I realized that I was paying all of my own expenses—that my parents were not shelling out a single thin dime to cover my cost of living.

I’m not talking about a “go it alone” society, to quote Mrs. Clinton. I’m not talking about abandoning family or community or even government. I’m talking about a “be an adult” society, where the citizen’s first instinct is to solve problems for himself and his last instinct is to beg the government to provide.

The creeping Nanny State is trying to give more and more people the impression that they can be children for their entire lives. And socialized medicine universal healthcare is yet one more step in turning Americans into perpetual infants. In fact, if you look at the issues Michael Moore supports and/or has made movies on, they all have the unifying theme about how someone need to take care of the poor helpless “peepul”.

But, as we’re seeing in Norway, the government not only can’t be your perpetual parent, it’s likely to be an abject absolute failure when it tries.