Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Obstacles to Implementation of Universal Healthcare in the U.S.A.

I've heard from some friends from Europe that Universal Healthcare works quite well there; they believed it was because in Europe they're more individualistic thus ensuring a corruption-free system (corruption can only thrive in a society of complacency). 

However, I've seen Universal healthcare work well entirely in the private sector without any government involvement whatsoever-- this is the case in Japan, where the free market ensures competitive high quality healthcare for almost all Japanese people, and virtually all Japanese people living in non-rural areas (which the exception of course of the people who's income is derived from prostitution, loan sharking, and other illegal activities).

Considering that most Americans to a strong degree advocate some form of the free market, One would think that the Japanese system would work best. However, there are two important differences that work against us in this regard:

1. American people are far more selfish and individualistic than Japan.
2. The primary reason Universal Health Care works so well in Japan without government involvement, is that collectivist values and a relatively altruistic culture help ensure that healthcare in Japan works well irrespective of government involvement. 

For the most part, Japanese government exists in the ideal libertarian fashion: to keep the peace and order, with some taxing for basic services, but very little else. Their government is in many ways far more efficient than our own. However, this is largely because Japanese society is highly sophisticated and remarkably mature, making the role of the government in ensuring "quality of life" here, a mere redundancy in Japan. Most of what is enforced legally here, in other words, is enforced on a societal level in Japan.

I don't know what implementation of healthcare (if any, I am personally disapproving of any universal healthcare system) would be bet for America, but it probably lies somewhere in-between the highly-socialistic healthcare systems of Canada and Europe, and the free market system of Japan.

In either case though, we need to ensure that the support for Universal Healthcare is imbued by our society and culture, *not* enforced by government, because the moment that a government feels the need to force anything as big as healthcare on their people "for the greater good", we have become no better than a self-righteous fascist state. Even the Nazis believed with all their heart that everything they did was for the greater good; we should no better than to blindly follow in their footsteps.

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