Counter-Currents
1,388 words
Editor’s Note:
Apropos of the current consternation about “Obamacare,” we offer this reprint of an earlier article for discussion.
Most productive Americans hate the idea of socialized medicine since they think that they will pay more into it than they will get out of it, and they are right. Americans who take care of their health—i.e., exercise and avoid smoking, junk food, excessive drink, and recreational drugs—should also hate the idea of socialized medicine, since they will be paying for the cancer treatments of chain-smokers, the triple bypasses of lard-asses, the venereal diseases of the oversexed and impulsive, and the diabetes, cirrhosis, dialysis, obesity, etc. of the overfed and overindulgent.
Is it any wonder, then, that productive, health-conscious people prefer the present semi-private system to socialized healthcare? They would need mental healthcare if they thought otherwise.
But, crazy though it may sound, I want to argue that healthy, productive Americans should prefer a socialized healthcare system to what we have now.
First, they are already paying for socialized medicine without reaping any of the benefits, because we have a sneaky, hypocritical form of socialized medicine anyway.
Second, a socialized healthcare system need not exploit the health-conscious to coddle the sickly and self-destructive. One could also award health-conscious people certain benefits and penalize people who do not take care of their health appropriately, so perhaps they would take better care of themselves.
Before we go into the details, however, we have to confront honestly why we do not have a completely capitalist, free-market healthcare system. Such a system would mean that the only health care one could get would be what one can pay for by oneself (or persuade others to pay for).
Yes, there would be charity hospitals for the indigent in such a society, as long as some people did not completely embrace the libertarian ethic of selfishness. But there would be no “safety net”: no government guarantee that everyone who needs healthcare gets some care, no matter what.
In a completely capitalist system, there would be people who suffer and die of easily preventable diseases simply because they lack money (or the ability to persuade others to foot their bills). Not enough people want that sort of society, whether from religious conviction, altruistic sentiments, or simple rational self-interest (since anyone can have a run of bad luck). So we already have a form of socialized healthcare.
If you have private health insurance, you still pay taxes for Medicare and Medicaid and emergency room care for the indigent. And private health insurance is also a form of redistribution. The healthier you are, the less medical care you use. The people who really benefit from private insurance are those who have serious medical problems.
In the past, healthy people with private insurance could at least count on a modicum of protection from this because their insurers could turn away people with serious health problems or at least refuse to cover pre-existing conditions. But today, thanks to our government, they can’t. So the healthy are forced to contribute to the health care of smokers, fatties, drunks, druggies, AIDS patients, and others who can join your “private” health plans.
But it gets worse. Many health-conscious and responsible people pay such high premiums with high deductibles that they postpone visits to the doctor and important checkups and tests, while hypochondriacs clog the waiting rooms. This often leads to serious medical problems that could have been easily prevented if decent people were a little more inclined to be crybabies and mooches. Where is the justice in this?
In our current system of semi-socialized medicine by stealth, disproportionate benefits go to the improvident, undisciplined, and irresponsible—paid for by the productive, disciplined, and responsible. Given that, productive and health-conscious people might actually be better off with outright socialized healthcare.
Socialized healthcare is merely the logical extension of the commitment that our society has already made not to allow anybody to go without necessary care. I believe that commitment is fundamentally right.
But a socialized healthcare system need not be run by malevolent egalitarians out to penalize the healthy and responsible and coddle the sickly and irresponsible. Instead, one could have a set of incentives that reward healthy lifestyles and penalize unhealthy ones.
First of all, let’s divert all the monies raised from cigarette and liquor taxes to the healthcare system, so that people who smoke and drink subsidize their own care.
Second, let’s tax junk food for the same purpose. Let’s make corn syrup more expensive than caviar. Let’s return to a society where obesity is a rare sign of great wealth rather than a common sign of poverty, as it tends to be today.
Throw in hefty taxes on TV, golf carts, ride-on lawn mowers, leaf-blowers, drive-throughs, and everything else that promotes laziness and unhealthy living.
Conversely, give tax breaks for healthy lifestyle choices: joining gyms, taking yoga classes, quitting smoking and drinking, etc. Change zoning laws to mandate mixed-used development and walkable communities.
These are just a few suggestions, but they suffice to illustrate the basic idea. We need to create incentives to encourage healthy living and personal responsibility rather than penalize them.
But what about freedom? It’s overrated, but still a value to be preserved. Under my plan, nobody would be forced to do jumping jacks. Nobody would be prevented from eating Twinkies. (Well, maybe Twinkies.) I do not propose turning society into a vast boot camp or making fat farms mandatory.
But people who abuse their health will have to pay the full cost of it, since their little indulgences will be taxed to pay for treating the illnesses that follow from their lifestyle choices. (I do, however, think that individuals whose drug and alcohol problems prevent them from carrying out their personal and social responsibilities should be forcibly dried out.)
Should people have the freedom to opt out of a socialized healthcare system altogether? Yes and no.
No, people should not be able to opt out of paying for a basic healthcare system, even if they say that they are willing to suffer the consequences. First of all, most of them would come running to the emergency room anyway. But beyond that, some individual choices are foolish and should not be honored. A certain amount of paternalism is necessary in a decent society.
But although people should not be free to opt out of the standard healthcare package available to all citizens, they should be free to pursue additional healthcare if they can pay for it. The rich, after all, will always be with us, and as long as they can travel abroad, they will seek out whatever healthcare they can afford. So there is no reason to eliminate a private healthcare sector in addition to a socialized sector. Furthermore, it would probably be more efficient if most healthcare providers were private enterprises. The government would merely be the biggest customer.
Of course, the biggest barrier to socialized healthcare in America is not that people think it is immoral, impractical, or undesirable. The problem is a deep division and distrust within American society. Most white Americans correctly believe (1) that the left would end up administering any system of socialized medicine, and (2) that the American left is deeply hostile to the interests of white Americans.
There is also a racial dimension of this anxiety. Whites instinctively know that blacks and browns would take more from the system than they contribute, with whites paying the bills. Moreover, the old are disproportionately white, the young disproportionately non-white. Thus it makes political sense for the Democrats, as the party of non-whites, to want to bump off old white people to divert their healthcare dollars to the Democrats’ younger, non-white constituency.
As Harvard professor Robert Putnam’s studies have shown, racial and ethnic diversity are profoundly destructive of social solidarity and civic mindedness. Thus America will never have a Scandinavian-style welfare state unless and until we have the racial and ethnic homogeneity Scandinavia used to have. (Specifically, we would need a homogeneous society of intelligent, industrious, conscientious people.)
We’re never going to have a fully private healthcare system. The present semi-socialist system is immensely costly and inherently unjust. Maybe somewhere down the line, when the White Republic is established, we should consider replacing the socialism of the sick with the fascism of the healthy.
22 comments
I was wondering if you’d gone off the deep end Greg. I appreciate this article greatly, since it hits the points I concluded about socialized medicine years ago and then some. How many years did I read commenets by different people that, if we have socialized medicine, we will be like Europe,etc. Yet, I knew what socialized medicine was like in Canada and Europe through family and friends I had in both nations. In Germany for example, taxes are only slightly higher on peoples incomes than in the U.S. Yet, I heard for years, that taxes are sky high for workers in nations with socialized medicine. I also, heard ad infinitum, that gas is sky high in Europe to help pay for socialized medicine,etc. Yet, I correctly predicted to friends of mine long ago, that here in the U.S. the day will come, when our gas will be sky high, our taxes will rise, and we still wont’ have state sponsored medical care. I was of course, discussing what will happen to what is left of America’s middle class. It doesn’t gratify me that almost all of my predicitiins and thoughts on the matter have come true. Very relevant article Greg, which I think will further wake up the Rip Van Winkles in the nationalist community.
“There is also a racial dimension of this anxiety. Whites instinctively know that blacks and browns would take more from the system than they contribute, with whites paying the bills.”
It goes even deeper than Putnam knows. Even progressives are beginning to intuit that their clever scheme to destroy Whites is not compatible with the Scandanavian social democracy model they wish for.
The ultimate, and justified, resentment that Whites have is that they are k-selected and Blacks and Browns are r-selected. We will be reduced to penury and have fewer children while the Improvident Races multiply uncontrollably on the monies extracted from us that limits our fertility.
It’s bad enough to have to train the Indian fellow who is going to replace you after you have been fired. It’s another to have to pay for the army of Orcs that are going to murder you and your children.
Still, this is the whirlwind we sowed by fighting for our own dispossession in WWII. Jewry and High Finance are now an unstoppable global force with no one to resist them left alive, just servile extended-phenotype Protestant Anglo-Saxons to act as their janissaries.
Honestly, it would be preferable for the world to end rather than what is actually going to come. The Eastern front will be remembered as a playground squabble. The Soviet Union, a worker’s paradise.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn called the twentieth century “the caveman’s century.” This century is likely to be even worse.
Yes Putnam himself is a fine example of how deep the sickness goes. He suppressed his own work for several years because he was afraid it would strengthen the opposition opposing mass amnesty. So why does not care about the meaning of his own findings? He chooses dogma over the Truth he knows to be true by his own work namely that diversity decreases social capital. The Soviet Union never had a system whose tyranny was so deeply ingrained in the psyche. They merely suppressed authors and researchers they didn’t like. Our victims even suppress themselves. Our system is thus more Maoist but even deeper – approaching the “ideal” of double think that Orwell talked about in 1984.
Putnam’s only comments are to the effect that we must “try harder” – much like the ill fated Boxer of Animal Farm.
“So why does not care about the meaning of his own findings? He chooses dogma over the Truth he knows to be true by his own work namely that diversity decreases social capital.”
Putnam is a Jew. He converted on account of his wife. I’m sure social capital in Israel is of paramount importance to both of them.
The Anglo-Saxon Protestant in enveloped into the matrix that spawned him. The circle is now complete.
Very important info for anyone who missed it at the time. Take 15 minutes.
http://paulcraigroberts.org/2013/02/03/obamacare-a-primer/
Obamacare plus the “comprehensive immigration reform” and “entitlement reform” legislation that are pending for 2014 will be a triple shotgun blast to working and middle class white Americans. It has to be a final phase in looting what remains of white American wealth for the benefit of the elite whites and Jews at the top. They’re coming for all of it. And of course with Obamacare, as soon as the money starts running tight and you need that surgery or cancer treatment down the road, good luck.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, commonly referred to as the ACA or Obamacare, will go into full effect in 2014. This decree mandates that all Americans must purchase and maintain government-approved health insurance or pay a penalty to the IRS. Touted as a plan to provide all Americans with access to medical care, in reality, this compulsory shakedown commands everyone to purchase insurance that for many will be too expensive, even with government subsidies – or unaffordable to use – or both.
The ACA was not selflessly designed with the intent of providing affordable and equitable medical services to those in need, but rather to acquire taxpayer money for the private insurance companies under the seemingly helpful guise of health care and the ideological excuse of personal responsibility. It takes money from ordinary people and gives it to a medical insurance industry that profits handsomely from this legally-enforced corporate welfare – all while keeping Americans locked in the same broken system that puts profit before patients. The law was essentially written by business executives from the industry so that special interests would not be upset and profits assured.
Great article, Greg. I missed this one originally. I’ve always been big on the “socialist” aspect of NS and other similar concepts. It’s not that it can’t work, or that it the notion is inherently flawed from an ethical perspective, it’s simply that it’s IMPOSSIBLE for it to work in a pluralist, multi-racial mass state. Thus, it will not work here.
As for the looming ObamaCare, Immigration Reform and the final, inevitable push for power, White genocide and the subsequent “collapse”, all I can say is: start looking for work and relocation opportunities overseas. I am. New Zealand, Tasmania and even parts of Eastern (Orthodox) Europe, for instance, are quite appealing. Sorry, folks, but a NW or other “White homeland” isn’t going to materialize any time soon. We are far too few in number, don’t have the time or resources to reach and educate enough of the other sleeping Last Men of our race, and we can’t compete with the full force of the US military (which will be unleashed once we become “outlaws” or “threats to national security”). Facts. Just look at the Golden Dawn. The regime is just getting warmed up.
In a completely capitalist system, there would be people who suffer and die of easily preventable diseases simply because they lack money (or the ability to persuade others to foot their bills).
You and all the others who care about them so much will be free to form a charity.
That, of course, is the liberal answer. We reject liberalism. A social safety net is the moral policy to pursue. Allowing selfish people to opt out of paying for it puts an unfair burden on moral, decent people and gives financial advantages to immoral, indecent people. In other words, classical liberalism encourages selfishness and penalizes altruism. Thus we must do away with it. Decent people must take power and use it to coerce the selfish to pay their fair share.
On the other hand, folks who work hard at regaining or maintaining their, and their children’s good health, will sooner or later get fed up with paying for those who don’t behave in this manner. It doesn’t matter if you call it liberalism, libertarianism, selfishness or anything else.
The reality is that there is more to being healthy than ‘don’t smoke, don’t overdrink, avoid drugs & junk food, get your daily exerise’. We are weak beings at this time in history and we will get sick even if we think we are behaving correctly in some superficial sense. Determined people, the kind you want in your society, will pull out all the stops to find the roots of their illness and not expect anyone to fund them – the reality is that diagnosis and treatment of a truly fundamental kind are often not paid for by any insurance company or government, anywhere. And then acting on professional advice is sometimes not easy. So much easier to just let yourselves slide into the muck, then demand the slash/burn/poison routine. I sure as hell don’t want a social safety net for poorly constituted, chronically weak people. Why would anyone want a system that keeps inferior, complaining, whining people alive? I have an uncle who medicare must have sunk $5,000,000 into over a few decades. For just one example. There are much, much worse ones.
This topic is not a simple issue of how health care is delivered (as if health can be handed to you on a platter in the first place). The styles of medicine should be a mandatory aspect of the discussion.
In my experience with the medical field, you better have some type of insurance or you’re not going to get very far. Unless you’re somewhat wealthy. Even minor surgeries are very expensive. Then, if you have something that is not minor, the costs really go through the roof. I’ve had the misfortune of going through a major medical crisis, and it is not cheap. Even though I had insurance my out-of-pocket costs were still very high.
Would castor oil for antifas be a form of fascist medicine?
Good one
As I’ve pointed out before: it’s not about insurance.
Build more hospitals.
Train more doctors.
Keep your healthcare professionals in this country. Don’t bring in healthcare professionals from other countries.
you thereby cheapen medical care, and cut out the need for insurance.
I hope this doesn’t seem petty, but how hefty a tax would you want to throw on “ride-on lawnmowers” that “promote laziness”? I ask this because I have to mow a considerable amount lawn and there is no way I could push mow it (we’re talking a field here). Just because someone is using a riding lawn mower (myself, I use a small, nearly commercial grade zero turn mower) doesn’t necessarily indicate laziness. To me, laziness would be not mowing the lawn at all. Using a leaf blower is not necessarily easy work either. Weed whipping or chainsawing? That can be downright vigorous. Just a question. I did enjoy the article by the way.
Don’t get too fixated on the examples. I think we both agree that a lot of labor-saving devices actually promote sedentary, unhealthy lifestyles.
As for lawns, my underlying agenda is anti-lawn. Most lawns are far bigger than necessary for children and dogs to play, and maintaining big lawns really is terrible for the environment.
As for leaf-blowers, the underlying agenda is anti-noise.
But given that many very active men carry around big guts, the problem is probably dietary: giant bottles of soda full of corn syrup, for starters.
While I can accept that some socialist measures for healthcare would yield better health outcomes, I also believe that as a whole they have a negative effect on society and a nation. This is particularly the case in the U.S., where wealth is redistributed from productive Whites to non-Whites. More detrimental though is the transfer of power and responsibility away from individuals to the central government, as part of a process of transforming responsible adults into dependent children of the Nanny State. This degradation of the populace appears to be a prime factor in the decay of socialized Europe, increasingly bereft of individual moral will and confidence. I increasingly feel that Europeans everywhere need more than anything swift kicks in the ass and more hardship with less coddling and state benefits.
In short, fascist medicine.
I’m surprised many here aren’t able to see the bigger picture.
Modern, industrial medicine is a bankrupting force, wherever it is practiced. Despite what you may have seen on sci. fi. shows and TV ads, people just aren’t meant to persist and persist forever. This understanding, by the way, is very traditionalist.
So arguing for free market vs. socialist vs. fascist healthcare is like arguing who gets control over this ruined building or abandoned factory.
It’s going down, understand? In the world of the future, you are either healthy, or you die, period. That’s the way it was for 99.9% of human existence up until the 2oth century, by the way.
The idea of taxing unhealthy products to finance health care is clever, since it effectively kills two birds with one stone: one reduces the incentive to indulge in unhealthy activities and at the same time, one finances the medical treatment of those who still do so.
I’d add one more measure: a total ban on advertising of unhealthy products, (such as fast food, automobiles, alcohol, cigarettes, etc…) Many individuals are misled into over-consumption of these by commercial propaganda: a total ban will encourage healthier lifestyles, without infringing on personal freedom (since one will still be free to eat as one pleases) – indeed, if anything, removing such advertising increases one’s freedom by reducing the chances of being indoctrinated by corporations into purchasing their unhealthy products.
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