“I thought the NHS was there to protect us.” Spoken like a typical British progressive. In the USA ( although increasingly less so than was once the case ) people believe in self-sufficiency. Not being “protected”. This doesn’t mean we don’t have a social conscience. Check the evidence: Americans are the most generous people on the face of the earth, per capita. By far. But we tend not to look first to government bureaucracies to see us through difficulty. America was built on self-reliance and ingenuity. We value liberty above security. Sometimes, even at the risk of our lives. At least, most of us do. Like the British population in 1939.
Wow Gerald. I have plenty of criticisms of the British healthcare system but given the simple binary choice, is the healthcare system there to protect the people or are the people there to protect the healthcare system, I’ll go with the former.
David Simpson
4 years ago
I had to smile this morning when consuming my 2 minutes of news headlines from Today – the NHS is appealing for more people to come to A&E; they are half empty apparently, whether because people don’t really need to visit A&E, or because rightly they suspect it’s a jolly good place to pick up a smidgin of Covid-19. I last visited a hospital about 15 years ago after a motorcycle accident and spent a week there terrified of being given a dose of MRSA. A young healthy friend of mine had gone in with concussion and cuts and bruises after a gliding accident and came out 3 months later, having been infected with MRSA shortly after being admitted.
chasfgr
4 years ago
It is too precious to join in the rough and tumble of ordinary life, apparently. Persuade people to not use an on-demand facility, and look at how much they save. We did see some appalling sights in Lombardy, where the facilities were overwhelmed by demand. So” be good little pensioners and die quiently at home”.
Gerald gwarcuri
4 years ago
The problem, of course, for all socialized services is that they are rendered regardless of the motivations of the beneficiaries. Welfare ( the dole ) is the prime example. Paying people who do not work chronically is far different then paying the temporarily unemployed or disabled. Welfare programs cannot be based on the goodwill of the recipients.
The Amish model is not scalable in a free market, democratic society. It requires a high degree of assent and commitment, things largely lacking in a secular, consumer-driven culture.
it requires believing in something more than just yourself as the most important person on the earth
rosalindmayo
4 years ago
Em, one vital ingredient missing I suggest, from your appraisal of the Amish philosophy and much more holistic meaning of health, is their religious belief- which inform and guide every part of their daily actions and living as a community – indeed the community for them, is greater than the individual, whose liberty and freedoms equals the community, and is in the hands of God. The UK would have a very long way to go towards living like this,but I would like to hope that maybe, just maybe, out of this crisis, the so called rights of the individual, so loudly trumpeted by the liberals for so long until we are all deaf to the implications, might shift towards the beginning of something else- something more hopeful more generous, and a lot less narcissistic.
Call me a rebel but I thought the NHS was there to protect us.
“I thought the NHS was there to protect us.” Spoken like a typical British progressive. In the USA ( although increasingly less so than was once the case ) people believe in self-sufficiency. Not being “protected”. This doesn’t mean we don’t have a social conscience. Check the evidence: Americans are the most generous people on the face of the earth, per capita. By far. But we tend not to look first to government bureaucracies to see us through difficulty. America was built on self-reliance and ingenuity. We value liberty above security. Sometimes, even at the risk of our lives. At least, most of us do. Like the British population in 1939.
Wow Gerald. I have plenty of criticisms of the British healthcare system but given the simple binary choice, is the healthcare system there to protect the people or are the people there to protect the healthcare system, I’ll go with the former.
I had to smile this morning when consuming my 2 minutes of news headlines from Today – the NHS is appealing for more people to come to A&E; they are half empty apparently, whether because people don’t really need to visit A&E, or because rightly they suspect it’s a jolly good place to pick up a smidgin of Covid-19. I last visited a hospital about 15 years ago after a motorcycle accident and spent a week there terrified of being given a dose of MRSA. A young healthy friend of mine had gone in with concussion and cuts and bruises after a gliding accident and came out 3 months later, having been infected with MRSA shortly after being admitted.
It is too precious to join in the rough and tumble of ordinary life, apparently.
Persuade people to not use an on-demand facility, and look at how much they save.
We did see some appalling sights in Lombardy, where the facilities were overwhelmed by demand.
So” be good little pensioners and die quiently at home”.
The problem, of course, for all socialized services is that they are rendered regardless of the motivations of the beneficiaries. Welfare ( the dole ) is the prime example. Paying people who do not work chronically is far different then paying the temporarily unemployed or disabled. Welfare programs cannot be based on the goodwill of the recipients.
The Amish model is not scalable in a free market, democratic society. It requires a high degree of assent and commitment, things largely lacking in a secular, consumer-driven culture.
it requires believing in something more than just yourself as the most important person on the earth
Em, one vital ingredient missing I suggest, from your appraisal of the Amish philosophy and much more holistic meaning of health, is their religious belief- which inform and guide every part of their daily actions and living as a community – indeed the community for them, is greater than the individual, whose liberty and freedoms equals the community, and is in the hands of God.
The UK would have a very long way to go towards living like this,but I would like to hope that maybe, just maybe, out of this crisis, the so called rights of the individual, so loudly trumpeted by the liberals for so long until we are all deaf to the implications, might shift towards the beginning of something else- something more hopeful more generous, and a lot less narcissistic.