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« On Benchmarks and Timetables | Main | Because it's That Time of the Year... »
Last year I wrote about my late realization that the U.S. taxpayer was indirectly footing the bill for many of our Euro-pals' socialism (Bunch of B.S. - Baltic States). In his new book, America Alone, Mark Steyn points out that the U.S. is subsidizing a lot more than just defense:
Euro-Canadian socialized health care is, in essence, subsidized by American taxpayers: since the end of World War Two, Washington has assumed the defense costs of its allies, thereby freeing up those countries to spend their tax revenues on lavish social programs. But if America follows the [author Will] Hutton plan and "joins the world," it will reduce its defense expenditures to Euro-Canadian levels. So the next time a tsunami hits Sri Lanka or Indonesia there will be no carrier groups to divert and save lives. So more people will die, waiting the weeks and weeks it took for the sleepytime gals at the United Nations to arrive. Were America to "join the world," it would have to reduce its funding of the UN and other world bodies to European levels. And it might have to scale back in domestic agencies so that they're no longer able to serve in effect as international ones. Which will be tough when some kid in some village on the other side of the world comes down with some weird illness no one's seen before and they want to FedEx the test tube to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta to figure out what's going on. Indeed, even relatively advanced societies admired by the likes of Will Hutton take it as routine that the CDC is a kind of Health Ministry of last resort. When SARS leapt from China to infect Toronto's hospitals in 2003, the principal contribution of the WHO (World Health Organization) was to issue a travel advisory warning visitors to steer clear of Ontario, leaving it to the CDC to provide advanced and practical analysis of the problem. Toronto's mayor, Mel Lastman, had a hard time keeping track of all the acronyms, and in one press conference launched into a bitter attack on the damaging effects of the travel advisory issues by the CDC.
The doctor next to him tried to correct him: "Who," she said.
"The CDC," he repeated.
"Who," she said.
"The CDC," he repeated, wondering why she hadn't heard his answer to the question the first time. This diseased version of the Abbott and Costello routine went on a while longer, before the doc realized she had to spell it out: W-H-O, the World Health Organization..
"Oh yeah. Them, too," said [Lastman].
Yet under the who's-on-first shtick lay an important truth: if an infection shows up in an Atlanta hospital, no American doctor looks for guidance from a Canadian government agency. But if it shows up in a Toronto hospital, the Ontario health system takes it for granted that the best minds of the CDC in Atlanta will be staying late at the office trying to work out what's going on.
The answer to that Canadian doctor's vaudeville feed—"Who's on first?"—is America. When something goes awry, in a Sri Lankan beach resort or a Toronto hospital, it's the hyperpower who shows up. America doesn't need to "join the world": it already provides a lot of the world's infrastructure.
Which raises the question: Who's going to subsidize American health care when our government implements universal coverage?
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