Let’s Do Like Them
I finally watched the movie Sicko. Though it argued quite unfairly (which of course does not make its conclusion wrong), it did make one good point at the very end. Since I can find no script online, let me paraphrase:
If another country makes better cars, we drive them. If another country makes better wine, we drink it. So if other countries have found a better way to take care of each other, why shouldn’t we adopt that too?
As we prepare to vote on Super Tuesday, let us remember that there is little new under the political sun. Most policy issues faced by a city, state, or nation are pretty similar to issues faced by other similar regions. Thus when considering how to solve their problems, each locale should pay close attention to other locales’ experiences. A successful new approach will be tried first in one locale, and then copied by many other locales. So the typical good policy will be to copy and adapt a new approach first tried somewhere else.
Yet when politicians propose solutions to long-standing problems, they rarely describe their solutions as variations on solutions tried elsewhere. They rarely say "that idea seems to be working well over there; let’s try it over here." Voters would apparently feel insulted to have to follow another locale’s lead, and politicians would seem weak to suggest such following. Alas, "not invented here" is not just for corporations.
I live in Belgium; here, it's the other way around: comparison of announced government measures or law proposals to the ones of other countries, is made extensively ("In The Netherlands, they have a system which..." / "Look what a disaster the UK Railway privatisation was, let's not do that here" / ...).
To the extent that it is mostly an excuse to hide ideological motives. For every possible change, there has to be a neighbouring country which applied just that (or further away, we recently had a fierce discussion about the "kiwi model" consisting of the New Zealand way of using government tenders for drugs). Regardless of any other circumstances which might differ and make the comparison worthless.
I've heard a lot of things that I don't know are true. If they were all true, then that may mean a lot of things.
I am going to make a list of all the things that I have heard that I don't know are true. After I do that, I'll go from there.
In the mean time, I'll stick to the one thing I know is true. There is an imaginary line over which were I to cross, I could get drugs cheaper than if I stayed on this side of that line.
The reason we can not cross that over that line, or have the 'other-side-of-the-line-people' ship the drugs to us at the lower price is that the people who have the power to make us pay more have persuaded the people who have the power to let us pay less to stop us from paying less.
In a nutshell, we are paying a sales tax to the pharmaceuticals. They are just tossing out strawmen to cover the action taken by our 'duly elected representatives in our democratic nation'.
Nothing new or rare in that for our 'duly' folk.
As for the remedy for that, that too is a prescription issue.