The Big Picture

What the post prior to this one points out is the government’s inability to deal with particular issues, like health care reform, in a straightforward realistic manner. Government has difficulty looking at the big picture and taking into account all the various factors that need to be addressed and targeting those factors with effective measures.

Dealing realistically with the healthcare issue would mean having to take into account preventable diseases and the individual behavior that causes them. Such a prospect seems to be anathema to politicians. Jerry Brown, in his bid to become Democratic candidate for president, was once asked at a campaign stop about his position on providing healthcare. His response to the question was, to paraphrase, “You smoke a pack of cigarettes a day, you eat junk food, and you don’t exercise. And you expect us to pay for your medical costs?” Jerry Brown was not nominated as his party’s candidate. Candid responses like his are not vote getters.

Raising the specter of individual culpability in exceedingly high medical costs is, it seems, to be avoided at all costs by politicians of either party. None have mentioned it. On top of that politicians are split on the issue - there are those who want everyone to be dependent on government and those who want everyone enriching the coffers of medical insurance companies. And so a realistic evenhanded assessment of healthcare reform is not possible. So, you have bills and plans being offered that are subject to endless tweaks for lack of a real solid foundation with which to base them upon.

My proposal for health care reform outlined in my last post is politically unrealistic because it deals realistically with healthcare costs and individual responsibility.

Healthcare is not the only issue which governments are prevented from dealing with realistically. Environmental conditions are another one. Greenhouse gas emissions, for instance, like medical costs are not a matter of ideological perspective they are what they are and measures to reduce them are inarguably clear-cut. But they are obscured by the perspectives of political expediency.

That we want to pursue unhealthy lifestyles and still be guaranteed health and abuse the natural world without adverse consequences points to a fatal flaw in all civilizations – the Idea that the business of civilizations are paramount on this earth and that the natural world is there to serve civilizations by providing necessary resources. But the reality is that civilizations always were and always will be subject to the natural world. Many civilizations have failed in ignorance of that reality and, yet, we continue to ignore it. Such ignorance is, of course, mandated by all our belief systems.

But nature will have its way and it will not be kind to our civilizations.