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Just to keep things in perspective:
The universal health care that is being talked about for the US is not some government owned health care facilities. All people are doing is saying we need to examine the possibility of a universal health care policy. Nothing more, nothing less. What that entails, nobody knows because there is NO PLAN to discuss, only a policy that the current system is broken, leaves many uninsured, and it’s not going to fix itself.
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As a teacher, I know that if my school could preselect exactly which students we CHOOSE to serve, as private schools can, and if every family in my school was one that cared enough about their child's education to pay for it, as is the case in private schools, we would produce similar results. When you compare private and public schools it is apples and oranges, and it isn't fair to compare organizations which have to serve every child who comes through the door with one that can pick and choose who they serve. The outputs will inevitably be different because the inputs are different.
I have my large share of frustrations with the public education system, including the fact that I didn't spend most of my winter break planning for this semester, but instead creating NCLB documentation that will disappear into a filing cabinet forever. I would have spent that time working no matter what, I just wish I had been able to spend it on something that actually serves my students, not paperwork. Didn't mean to hijack the thread, but schools and education keep coming up here.
Carol
Carol
Every time you feel yourself getting pulled into other people's nonsense, repeat these words: Not my circus, not my monkeys.
Polish Proverb
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quote:
Originally posted by csgray
When you compare private and public schools it is apples and oranges, and it isn't fair to compare organizations which have to serve every child who comes through the door with one that can pick and choose who they serve.
Thank You for saying what many conveniently choose to ignore.
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Good point, Carol.
Tim
A superior man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his actions--Confucius
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Jon, Just so you're not sorry on my account, let me clarify the example was about 3rd world doctors not being the worse thing around and about the US system having it's flaws. I received better care in Mexico at less than a 10th the cost. Don't forget the better care part.
You probably could have made your point with a simple, "the difference is due to the high cost of malpractice insurance in the US." I gotta' say your response was typical for you. Think about what you typed, to me it's just another one of those statements that tells someone you think he's deficient if he doesn't think your way. What would you be sorry for? That I don't think like you? I gotta' admit that logic was not required for engineering students (they dropped it so they could add more engineering classes), but I did take it at a JC for fun.
"Sean...
If you had died in Mexico... it would cost the ER there nothing... If you had died in CA. your family would have sued for millions...
If you don't understand the difference, I am sorry."
See you in the surf
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Rob, trying to deal with a cronic lung condition in Pahoa would be difficult. Time in Cuba, because of their clean air with little pollution would probably help a lot. I tried to move our first home to Nanawale from Volcano to minimise it, but too late. Anywhere where there is major air pollution will complicate lung disease, my wife was asthmatic.
Gordon J Tilley
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I wouldn't assume Cuba has clean air, totalitarian governments don't have a good track record when it comes to the environment.
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My apologies Lee--my mention of socialized education inadvertently hijacked this thread. My intention was not to hijack or politicize the discussion, but I guess it comes with the territory of the subject matter. I was hoping we could discuss socialized education versus universal health care (socialized or not) without getting tangled up in words like "liberal", "progressive", "conservative", etc. My bad for being so naive.
God forbid we seek out common ground and share new ideas!
Tim
Tim
A superior man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his actions--Confucius
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quote:
So, are we making the assertion that people are different and not blank slates?
The common progressive belief is that only social influence determines out come.
We really do get some strange ideas on this forum. Don't know what esnap's concept of progressive is, but I would say that pretty close to everyone who seriously studies human development sees that the evidence supports both nature and nuture as foundations of the human situation. That makes talking-points/ideological statements like sound pretty ignorant. The "blank slate" (tabla rasa) concept is centuries old and has little to do with today's scientific understanding. We humans are distinctive for our learning and abstract pattern recognition abilities but we do also come already equipped with nearly a billion years of evolution behind us.
There are certainly common aspects to education and medicine. Perhaps one reason why some people interested in human progress are focused on the nurture aspect is that it is usually much more difficult to change the nature aspect. An average student can do poorly in a poor academic environment and well in a good academic environment. So for bang-for-the-buck an emphasis on providing a good educational environment (nurture) is a great investment. As far as "socialized education" goes, in its current form it's pretty recent and simply represents opportunity for all children rather the progeny of the elite, which is the historical model. Similarly "socialized medicine" simply represents health care for all people rather than just those who can afford it. And, looking at facts like the number of bankruptcies related to relatively small (<$10k) amounts of medical debt, many can not afford medical care these days. Like education, how we structure universal health to be effective, simple and transparent has much more to do with its potential success than public versus private concepts. I think Hawaii with its unique culture has as good a chance as any state to be a leader in health care.
