Only 10%! A Dying World Reborn

10% of what?

$100 or $1,000 or $1 million?

All too often, these articles leave out this vital bit of information -- which is essential context for one to read such articles with any intelligence and understanding -- which unfortunately, is the intent of the source providing the information. But the reporter should dig a little deeper at what is being unsaid as much as what is being said.

If someone is paying $100 a month for health insurance (not even health care), 10% more is probably not going to be a deal breaker, but when they are starting off at $1,000 a month, that is going to break the camel's back.

And now there is a plan afloat, that people will be required to make such payments -- or be fined $15,000 for not paying it -- for nothing.

If one has to spend more money for insurance than actual goods and services, how is anybody better off, except to indicate that the rewards to risk ratios have turned negative, and one can expect to get nothing, for a high fixed cost?

Actually, I should have used the more real world figure of $100,000 rather than the more whimsical $1 million dollars, as a more fitting illustration of such distortions.

Then we can include these "poor," starving, underpaid and undeprivileged "public service" union employees, demanding their 7% increases to continue -- just like the poor guys at the bottom who altogether are "rich," and so won't miss their plate lunches being stolen for that purpose.

I don't think it is so much that the people of Hawaii are ignorant and uneducated -- so much as they are misinformed and manipulated in this manner, to overwhelm us with everything that is irrelevant so that we cannot see the only thing that is significant.

And in the health insurance discussion, that would be, that one is no longer entitled to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," but one has to pay a premium to even remain a free citizen. And thus the premises for this society, has lost all meaning, and become the opposite.

No, the irresponsible dregs will find a way to milk the system.

What is hoped, is to spread the burden, among the many more who don't purchase health insurance but pay for medical actually received. These are among the healthiest people and so it is economic for them to do so because they are usually also, the prudent businessman, rather than the union workers who think they are not getting their moneysworth unless they take all their sick leave and run up as high a medical bills to cover the premiums they are not paying for anyway.

That's the motivation for attacking the health crisis as a health care insurance problem, and not as a much more overarching problem of this union mentality of getting something for nothing.

But some people actually have to pay the bills -- for everyone, which are your legions of small business operators just trying to get by, and needing whatever cash flow they have, to keep their businesses running -- which are taxed at gross receipts, and not profit.

That's the key concept -- personal responsibility.

The very antithesis of this, is insurance -- that spreads the risk across everyone equally -- rather than those outcomes being an indication for specific individuals to change.

Insurance is based on the "average," and not the specific, and we shouldn't be moving more in the direction of the generalized but actually in the direction of the validity of the specific.

In every activity, we're not trying to achieve the average; we're trying to achieve the exceptional, or the winning performance, and choose those activities and behaviors that enhance our chances of a favorable outcome. This is the critical failure and misunderstanding in the study of human behaviors -- this thinking that the average is the meaningful entity to consider, instead of the exceptional survival skills, and beyond that health beyond what most accept as "normal."

And what is the norm now but more resources to care for an increasing disabled and sick population.

Actually, the whole significance of the first decade of this century, has been this shift from the preoccupation with the "average" or mass -- to the individualized, just as the last ten years before this century, there was this shift from mass data processing, and mass media, into the world of the personal computer, and individually designed realities -- which are not false because they are not the average or mass (media) experience.

That world is dying, to be replaced by something entirely different -- unless we invest all our time, energy and resources to continue that dysfunctional trend into the future. But such a future has no hope and meaning -- if all we can look forward to are more vital people and resources, taking care of the dying and dysfunctional. We cannot continue on that path.

That was the society of the "More," in which the only solution for everything, was that we needed more of what we thought was the only possible. Health has to be personal responsibility.