Hawaii Bye Bye
It’s hard times for the kiddies in Hawaii.
Hawaii is dropping the only state universal child health care program in the country just seven months after it launched.
Gov. Linda Lingle’s administration cited budget shortfalls and other available health care options for eliminating funding for the program. A state official said families were dropping private coverage so their children would be eligible for the subsidized plan.
“People who were already able to afford health care began to stop paying for it so they could get it for free,” said Dr. Kenny Fink, the administrator for Med-QUEST at the Department of Human Services. “I don’t believe that was the intent of the program.”
What? How can this be? You mean that when the government provides something for free it provides an incentive for people to take advantage of the system? My God, who could have ever dreamed of such a thing!
State health officials argued that most of the children enrolled in the universal child care program previously had private health insurance, indicating that it was helping those who didn’t need it.
This is why universal health insurance is such a bad idea. It encourages people to do things that they normally wouldn’t (and shouldn’t) do.
Update Here’s a quote, generally attributed to Alexander Fraser Tytler which so perfectly predicts and illustrates this dynamic.
“A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.”
The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:
• From bondage to spiritual faith;
• From spiritual faith to great courage;
• From courage to liberty;
• From liberty to abundance;
• From abundance to complacency;
• From complacency to apathy;
• From apathy to dependence;
• From dependence back into bondage.
This is why I’m a Libertarian, and why the less government we have in our lives the better. Nobody will listen, though. They’ll keep on looking at the ample teat of government as a place to suckle for free, always expecting other people to pay for things they should be doing themselves. When you remove the incentive for responsible behavior you end up with citizens behaving irresponsibly.
Which, I’m sure, would NEVER happen in Michael Moore’s fantasy healthcare utopia, would it?
Comments
Considering your position on the subject, Lee, it seems rather odd to me that you would quote someone who thinks that the catalyst of liberty is spiritual faith. One might argue with you that the lack of spiritual faith is a primary cause of our current situation.
And Bernanke is pushing for yet another stimulus bill, complete with more food stamps…
Fangbeer, how did you get the thinks that faith is the catalyst? He’s talking about the progression of democracies. I completely agree with the fact that spiritual faith is a necessary phase, sort of a glue that bonds disparate groups of people into a self-identified nation. It’s just one aspect, though, and he shows how societies transcend spiritual faith to go on to bigger and better things. If anything, what he’s written here is that spiritual faith is the most primitive method of defining a nation, and that nations use means other than spiritual faith to become powerful democracies.
The 13 colonies were largely the product of people looking for religious freedom, escaping persecution in their home countries. They then transcended this bonding mechanism to become a great capitalist democracy. Look, now, at the current election. It’s all about which candidate will bestow on you the most government freebies.
It’s just one aspect, though, and he shows how societies transcend spiritual faith
That logic doesn’t follow. Do you transcend courage to attain liberty? Do you transcend liberty to attain abundance? Do you no longer need courage and liberty during a time of abundance? It seems to me that it’s clear that a loss of courage and spirituality is what leads to complacency and apathy.
His claim is not that spirituality is transcended, but that’s replaced with complacency and apathy which lead to the downfall of the society.
The problem with programs like this and welfare is that there will always be lazy opportunists who will abuse the system and find every possible loophole to rip off the state or federal government. Here in Hawaii, there are many, many single moms who collect welfare, foodstamps, WIC, etc. while the father of their children still lives with them while dodging social workers so she can claim he doesn’t contribute to the home.
lazy opportunists who will abuse the system
No, the problem isn’t lazy opportunists. The problem is the concept itself. The federal government can’t just make people successful (promote welfare like the constitution says) by targeting people who it defines as unsuccessful.
The government is not able to set a standard that decides that something cannot be afforded. Really, how could it set that standard? In order to do so, the government has to take control of your priorities. They have to decided how much of something you need, what you should be paying for it, and how much should they have left over afterward. That’s not the role of government.
The reverse is true as well. Really, can Lee prove that the people in HI who dropped coverage really could afford it simply because they were paying for it before? Were they doing without something else like food or education or transportation or retirement savings so that they could pay for health coverage? How does Lee know what their priorities were?
No. There’s a problem with the system. But the problem isn’t just that people are lazy or take advantage. After all, people are supposed to take advantage of the system. That’s why the system is set up. There’s just disputes over which people are supposed to take advantage of it. The problem is that it’s not within government’s jurisdiction to decide exactly which. To do so government would have to be the judge of how people should live their lives. Without that control (which they should never have) they cannot impose a value on products or people.
hey guys! I found a fun little stres reliever that I think you will all appreciate! It’s on this website where average joes create their own games and you can play them for free! This one is called “Interactive Buddy” it starts with a Pillsbury Dough Boy looking character and a few simple instruments of torture and mayhem. After a while you can “buy” new skins including one of none other than Mikey himself. I must have spent half an hour throwing grenades and molotovs at him when I wasn’t beating his fat ass with a medieval flail or punching the crap out of him.
I invite all ofyou to try it out:
New Grounds Interactive Buddy
Loading up the cannonballs with some grenades produces some pretty spectacular effects in that little game. I’m not surprised about the failure of a universal health care. Trying to satisfy unlimited needs with limited resources isn’t a good fit for government.
I think by “spiritual faith”, he means “faith and hope which is inspired by - and inspires - the human spirit” and not necessarily “religious zeal”.
If one (particularly of the Sorosian mindset) were to try and shoehorn this into the modern political situation, it would be like saying the evil nasty greedy Repukkklicunts have the nation in bondage, which leads people to a like-minded faith that the lord and savior Barrack Obama will lead us out of the dark times and into a golden age of awesomeness.
From “bondage” to spiritual faith; from there to the “great courage” of “speaking truth to power” on Kos, DU, HuffPo, etc; from there to the “liberty” of a Democrat-controlled government the way God and Baby Jesus intended it. And so forth. Take this for what you will, just trying to make the example for “spiritual faith” not tied exclusively to religion.
I think by “spiritual faith”, he means
Well, the quote is not concretely attributed to anyone in particular. There’s really no way to know exactly what the person who said that thinks.
In practice however, there are quite a few examples of a people in bondage who put their faith in God.
There are, but many of those people had put their faith in God prior to their bondage anyway (e.g. the Hebrew nation). I was merely suggetsing that the concept can - and IMO does - apply more broadly than mere religious zeal.
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Let me tell you a little story:
For almost three years I worked in a public high school on the island of Oahu. It was during that time that I submitted my first blog here about Cindy Sheehan’s first speech here in Hawaii. As an employee of the Department of Education, I was pressured at the beginning of each school year to get as many kids as I could to sign up for free and reduced lunches. Not so that needy kids could get the food that they need, it was so the school could get more points and therefore more funding. Funding for things like trips to the mainland for the principal and her cronies.
Hawaii-more corrupt than Las Vegas. Seriously!