SWEDEN JUST SAYS NO TO ALL THE SOCIALISTIC NONSENSE CONGRESS AND OUR president wants to ram down our throats. After thirty years of increasing its welfare state with poor results and a sluggish economy, Sweden is changing direction and going towards privatization, decreased regulations, free markets, lower taxes and individual responsibility. Needless to say, it's a lesson we need to review and learn from again. We certainly need to vote our big government, socialist, big spending jerks out of office.
H/T Carpe Diem
The difficulty here (with socialism) is that we are dealing with a faux religion, in which actually learning from experience demonstrates a disturbing lack of faith (to paraphrase Darth Vadar).
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FYI... Sweden's economy is anything but sluggish. Sweden socialized medicine consistently ranks at or near the top of worldwide healthcare rankings. Their life expectancy is 3 yrs higher than the US. Sweden consistently out performs the US in education - Swedish highschool students outrank the US in math, reading and science.
ReplyDeleteDid you even listen to the video William? It does not address healthcare, but rather free market changes that are making the economy more vital after years of sluggishness. However, that said, healthcare is provided by local counties and municipalities rather than the federal government.
ReplyDeleteIf this country is so ideal to you, then perhaps you should consider immigrating there, being such an avowed socialist that you are.
Costs for health and medical care amount to approximately 9% of Sweden’s gross domestic product (GDP), a figure that has remained fairly stable since the early 1980s. The state pays for approximately 98% of medical costs in Sweden. The USA'a health care cost's are 17% of GDP, rising sharply and clearly unsustainable. A 2008 report by the Commonwealth Fund ranked the United States last in the quality of health care among the 19 compared countries. Unlike Sweden, 15% of our population is uninsured.
ReplyDeleteIf I am a socialist, then all of our legislators, congressmen, police, military, state and federal workers that enjoy low cost socialized medicine are also socialists. I pay $82 a month for insurance (up from $16/mo 20 yrs ago). Outside of the state umbrella, I would pay at least 3X as much. I know several people who work full time and can not afford health insurance, when they one were able to. Health care in America, for those who fall outside of the socialized medicine umbrella, is a national disgrace and is bankrupting the nation.
A large percentage of the 15% is uninsured by choice, in other words, they can afford to have insurance but would rather have other stuff.
ReplyDeleteI see you've cut and pasted from Wikipedia and Sweden's system sounds ideal, but it's anything but.
For starters you might take time to read this to the end:
http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA555_Sweden_Health_Care.html.
This system is anything but ideal and the wait times are very long. And now county governments are in charge of most healthcare provision.
I totally disagree with your conclusions above. It is not bankrupting the nation. People not taking responsibility for their health and expecting Government ---that means me--- to do it for them---that is indeed unsustainable on top of all the other large entitlements coming due it's a train wreck waiting to happen.
William. I cite conservative think tanks because they most often espouse the principles which have stood our country in good stead for 200 years. They and we are not perfect. We live in a fallen world. However growing government and government intervention in our lives ultimately causes more problems in the long run than it solves, imo.
ReplyDeleteI am happy to publish some of your comments. However, as with your friend Ellen, you come in and take over the thread with whatever subject you decide you want to comment on. And if I publish one or two then you keep coming back AK-47 style and get heavier and harsher. And then you intimidate for not publishing them all.
I'm done with this.
Thank you for your comments here. You have a blog for writing your very strong opinions on how the heavy hand of government should trump the private sector inevery aspect of our lives. No discussion here is going to change your opinion or mine.
I suppose time will tell as things play out.
Meanwhile, I wish you well and hope you can find other places to lay down your endless rants. It will no longer be here.
Dear Readers,
ReplyDeleteCommenter William wants everyone to know that I don't let him comment here over and over ad naseum because I don't want you to see him "call me out," by all the truth he possesses (which you need to know if only I weren't so mean and dishonest). He has facts which would overwhelm us all and make us become liberals like him if only he were allowed more air time here.
He also thinks I exhibit a common lack of integrity.
Now William, I have conveyed your message to my readers. I have been duly called out, as you say. Embarassed to the bone. Dejected and ready to throw in the towel. My few readers can always come to your blog to hear or read more.
However, as I have said before, you have more than made all your points here over and over again and made it all personal.
It's time we called it a day here.
I wish you well.
In light of this, I am reminded of what Tim Keller has written (yes, I'm finally reading that book!) about what happens when we make our ideology our idol.
ReplyDeleteI remember parenting my young children and watching other moms with amazement at how they kept doing things that didn't work (threats that were never carried out, for example). Likewise none of these ideas for the government being able to make life better for people has worked historically over the long term.
Ever since LBJ and the "Great Society", we in the U.S. have thrown away uncounted dollars and opportunities chasing after the wind, as though somehow magically if we spend more dollars ad infinitum, the bad idea will work.
Yes, Fraydna, so well said. Government as god, government as nanny, government as healthcare provider and on and on. And yes, we can also make the ideology of less government and free markets too important, as Keller points out, lifting even good conservative economic/political principles and making them ultimate principles....I guess it behooves us all to know when we've crossed the line into making them idols, as Jonah did.
ReplyDeleteSo very true - and this elevation of good to ultimate is a point of conviction for me personally.
ReplyDeleteYes, me too....I think for women, at least for me, we often make family ultimate in our lives. That certainly is where I've tended to have the most emotional stuff over the years...
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