“David Brooks” is produced by five guys named “David Brook.” They all get together and agree on stuff!”
Tom Scocca on American socialism:
The awkward, mainly unspoken fact of our time is that America is a socialist country, or that Americans operate under the assumption that it is a socialist country. American socialism works the same way that our system of universal health care does—and we do have universal health care.
Here is how universal health care operates, as we currently practice it: if you are sick and dying in the street, and someone sees you and calls an ambulance, the ambulance is required by law to pick you up. The ambulance will take you to the hospital, which is required by law to treat you. (These procedures are not always followed, but—at present—the failure to follow them is still mostly seen as an outrage.)
The treatment may use up all the money you have, but even when the money is gone, treatment will continue. This approach to handling the illness of poor people is incoherent and irrationally expensive—the amount spent on ambulances alone is staggering—but it comes from a series of moral decisions. We do not believe people should be left to die without medical care.
So, too, Americans assume—under the existing social contract, as they understand it—that they will not be left to die because they are too old to work and have no money for food or housing. This belief is not, however, based on anything as specific and reliable as ambulance service.
