CDR: Re: why should it be trusted?

[James A. Donald]

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At 04:21 PM 10/25/2000 +0100, Ken Brown wrote:
 > This isn't really true.  The NHS tends to be quite good at big
 > stuff, serious interventions.

Serious interventions, for example coronary bypass for the elderly, are 
rationed.  Furthermore they are corruptly rationed.

 > on the whole I think you'll find few Brits who would give up the
 > idea of the NHS.

Stockholm syndrome.

Named after the irrational response to some terrorists in Stockholm.

When someone is able to kill with impunity, many people have a desperate 
desire to see him as wise and good and just, as more than human.  In 
particular the vast majority of people subject to his terror have a 
desperate desire to see him as wise and good and just and reasonable, no 
matter how glaringly obvious that he is a vicious sadistic and capricious 
murderer.  Even if he kills randomly without reason, for the mere pleasure 
of it, they invent good reasons for each killing.

Once he is killed, or his power successfully opposed, most people then seem 
him as he really is, but not until then.

We see the same phenomena in health care.  When a government with a total 
monopoly over health care, for example the Canadian government introduces 
"health care rationing" people love it.   When the VA (an American 
government operation which does not have a monopoly) rations health care, 
people hate it and are outraged and indignant.

I saw the same thing in Cuba since tourism.  In the interior, away from the 
tourist zone, I found that everyone loved their free medical health care 
system, and were very proud of it, though it is profoundly unimpressive.

In the tourist zones, where Cubans can get real medical care by 
prostituting their daughters to tourists, etc, many of them hate  and 
detest the Cuban medical system, and consider it one of the major evils of 
communism.

I attribute their affection for their socialist medical systems, (as I saw 
in the interior) to the Stockholm syndrome.  You are reluctant to think 
hostile thoughts about people who hold their life in your hands. Since 
Cubans in the tourist zone could buy black market medical treated diverted 
from the tourists only facilities, they were free to hate the monopoly 
medical system.  Cubans in the interior were afraid to hate.

We can see the same phenomena with the communist regimes.  Before the 
Soviet Union fell, people in the West were shocked and outraged if you said 
unkind things about communist regimes.  Now there is no problem.  "Hey, of 
course the Soviet Union was the evil empire, do bears shit in the woods?"

 > After all we live longer than you do, on average (assuming you are
 > USAn), are slightly poorer to start with & spend a *lot* less on
 > healthcare per head, public & private combined.

You do not live longer than people in the US do.  The hopelessly 
incompetent and improvident among you live longer than the hopelessly 
incompetent and improvident in the US.  Doubtless the same is true of 
people in prisons.

When the slaves were freed, their death rate similarly went way up, because 
many of them were too feckless to look after themselves.  Nonetheless, few 
of them wished to return to the old system.

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          James A. Donald
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