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nty and the rate by which we re using it has increased geometrically as well everyone knows this growth rate is unsustainable but almost no one talks about it publicly we ll find new ways of addressing these problems science will make advances the growth rate will naturally moderate and so on the cost to feed cloth shelter employ and care for each human individual is a staggering burden on the planet the price tag attached to every person s long term care severe fatal or chronic disease or malady given the contemporary approach to treatments is far far beyond society s resources to afford if for instance we sought to deliver sophisticated comprehensive medical care to each individual in the world today there not only would be no money left for anything else the world s economy would crumble under that weight acknowledging this fact is the first step in realistically addressing any so called solutions to the world health crisis it s generally acknowledged that the third world s health problems won t be solved can t be solved until or unless its burgeoning population can first be brought under control conquering infant mortality and extending life expectancy have been wondrous accomplishments on one level but the resulting success of human increase is the flip side of the coin of our advance as a species successfully overcoming the natural curtailments of our numbers has meant that we ve rapidly accelerated our exploitation of the world s resources to meet the extraordinary demands placed upon it the demand for health care like the demand for food materials for shelter and textile and energy has risen far faster than our actual ability to meet that demand and today it is far beyond anyone s wildest ambitions probably the main reason that national health systems have worked in certain countries is that those economies have not been overburdened by other priorities specifically military expenditures as a share of national product and expense universal coverage easily trumps every other priority indeed there are those who believe that the national health model has only been a brief open window of opportunity and that eventually these systems as popular as they may have seemed up to now are destined either to fail or to result in compromised delivery to take an example if say the world were to have limited its use of petroleum to levels that were typical in 1935 the horizon of world petroleum reserves would probably have been 3 5 centuries today with all known reserves and at the steeply accelerating rates of consumption it s unlikely that oil as a predominant source of energy will last much beyond the current century at which point it will already be running out are there sufficient possible economies of scale or application that could stem the increase in medical care costs in the short term even if we limit the discussion to the civilized economies of the west it s unlikely that this will ever happen either the quality of care will decrease or the numbers of those whom society deems eligible for care will decrease or both we re already seeing that insurance companies are dumping policy holders in order to control costs there s a troubling margin in for profit insurance companies but this is merely a footnote to the problem the government already has shaken the society down need based health care has been around for half a century in the form of medicaid for instance the amount of confiscated capital in the health insurance industry is just a tiny fraction of what it would cost to provide real universal comprehensive care this is what the republicans are fighting against if our country opts to entitle all the uninsured and underinsured populations today eventually the cost will far outdistance our ability to pay for it indeed as history has shown any publicly underwritten health policy has had the effect of driving up costs rapidly this is what conservatives mean when they talk about capital transfers or confiscations if the bottom 25 of the population in terms of income becomes lawfully entitled to comprehensive federally funded free health coverage the burden of that expense will inevitably fall at least to a proportional degree upon the rich and the corporations the medical industries could effectively starve the federal and state budgets of the entire nation in the long run and in the short run they would shoulder aside virtually every other budget priority including military and defense spending also in the short term budgetary priorities are showing just how meager the fruits of our economy will appear once we start measuring them against the theoretical promise of universal coverage during the bush ii administration money that might have been devoted to funding universal coverage was spent instead on foreign military adventures and awarding tax breaks to the rich and the corporations we have spent a trillion dollars on these wars since 9 11 a dead loss to the american taxpayer since our petroleum interests which might have been the only sensible reason for our iraq invasion came to nothing the chinese have been securing oil leases all over the world without firing a shot true estimates of the eventual cost of universal coverage under our highly sophisticated and advanced medical care system in america are staggering ten trillion dollars by 2015 more the fight over what burdens this will place on our federal budget will get bloodier as time goes on why are the republicans so partisan about holding the line against universal coverage because they realize that as the middle class shrinks as america loses more jobs and as its economy declines in real terms compared to china india etc the burden of taxation will fall increasingly upon their constituencies the rich the business interests and foreign debt holders what is happening today is that china and arabia are lending america the money to run its government programs each new obligation we add to the burden means america its economy becomes that much more dependent upon the pleasure of the holders of our paper at some point too america s position as the primary consumer of commodities begins to decline when the chinese and indians realize they have no reason to prop up a failing giant will they have any reason not to call in those obligations or to stop lending to us altogether on balance then our declining economy will mean that our ability to care for our own population will also decline in several senses americans have been living on borrowed time over the last three decades nearly every indicator points to a lower standard of living for the great majority and that includes health care as well rather than controlling health care costs we will end up choosing whom to exclude whom to privilege the criteria for that will inevitably be cost the marketplace ultimately will decide debt obligations aren t open ended faith in institutions no matter how big does have limits our federal government will never be too big to fail what is the tipping point at which our ability to sell our debt becomes untenable when do u s bonds get reduced to junk status when unemployment rises to 20 when we close our public schools when we stand down our uniformed forces how far are we from a general national collapse based on the amount of debt we seemed determined to take on can you think of any reason why china probably the most selfish nation in the world today would be inclined to help america if we fell into a deep 1930 s style depression the only argument i ve ever heard is that they depend to an inordinate degree upon american markets for their goods but if that market were to dry up what then the world s resource balance is not open ended our ability to provide comprehensive health care isn t either the ultimate rebalance against the world s ability to provide for its excess population will result in human suffering on a frightening scale nationally we can look elsewhere with remorse upon the millions of humans who suffer from hunger disease and early miserable death because we refuse to control our populations this is the unavoidable consequence the fact that it s happening elsewhere allows us the comfortable complacency of believing that there don t have to be any losers that it s not a zero sum game expressed in terms of health coverage it may appear as an illusion of priorities if only we could be smarter about allocation everyone could be saved but the hierarchy of priorities the bell curve of who gets what across the spectrum of nations and economies will eventually involve choices but there won t be any good choices _____________________________________ addendum 3 3 10 i wish i believed that the government could organize and administer health care while controlling costs the government system model is being tried in several countries presently but the jury is still out on how successful those models will continue to perform in the long term but the point of my post isn t to set up a dialectic between private and public administration of coverage my purpose is much larger and may be pointlessly conceptual to restate the earth s population has literally outrun the resources both natural and human needed to support it that shortfall notably includes medical care our view of american health care seems to be controlled by a couple of spurious assumptions 1 that it would be possible given the available resources to deliver health care to every american without somehow compromising every other budgetary priority and 2 the amount of profit to be derived from any for profit social insurance system provides enough excess margin to make up for any shortfall in the cost of running a universal system if we extend the context to include the vast numbers of uncovered individuals in the so called third world it becomes clear that global universal health coverage is truly unattainable with the growth of the so called global economy we re seeing that our traditional american historical insulation from other participants in the world economy is evaporating the world economy truly is a zero sum game everyone can t be rich and as population grows the numbers of those who stand to be excluded grows not just in terms of separate nations but in terms of discrete classes of patrons america has a capitalist economy socialistic revisions of that system have been made which moderate certain of its more destructive effects it may well be that the american health insurance industry could be nationalized that would allow us to claim that we had universal coverage but it wouldn t generate more revenue if we went on a pay as you go basis the budgetary compromises would end up looking exactly like the arbitrary measures private insurance companies engage in i e some treatments and some individuals would end up being deferred or denied the idea that the only thing standing between the present situation and a fully functioning universal health care system is the elimination of the profit motive is a serious delusion what we could end up with would be a two tiered system in which the rich would still acquire high level treatment while everyone else would be thrown into a third rate system with compromised quality all down the line because the cost to insure and treat the bottom 25 would easily drag the rest of the population down in my view the real culprit in all this is the decline of the american middle class with the resulting decline in real per capita income occurring at just the moment in our history when health care costs are climbing rapidly take the auto industry america s on the verge of losing all automobile production to other national economies the loss of that capital and the fruit of that capitalization is staggering millions and millions of jobs lost buying power gone and all the things which that capital once afforded including good health care policies gone posted by curtis faville at 9 11 am 19 comments thursday february 25 2010 a matter of taste how we sense flavor like most people i think i took the phenomenon of taste for granted for most of the first half of my life as a child growing up in a household comprised of two midwestern parents who d never been very adventurous in their eating habits i tended to regard spicy or unusual flavors with suspicion and even revulsion there were certain foods and food flavors which i found intolerable my stepfather who had traveled around the world while working as a deck hand in the merchant shipping business during the 1920 s had developed a strong distaste for highly spiced foods especially garlic and peppers my mother had grown up in a poor household during the depression and like many of her generation welcomed the convenience food revolution of the 1950 s preferring canned and frozen food alternatives to fresh for my part i had a severely restricted range of acceptable flavors and was usually unable to consume certain foods or flavors i can recall distinctly being unable to eat dairy cream spinach asparagus brussel sprouts mushrooms fruitcake peppers avocado liver fish creamed corn beets artichokes and several other things which i can t recall at the moment i remember distinctly being unable to eat campbell s cream of mushroom soup and being punished by being made to sit in front of the bowl at the table for hours after meal time forbidden to play until i ate my lunch both the flavor and the texture of mushrooms literally made me spontaneously retch a horrible sensation my parents somehow thought my resistance was deliberate and irrational and that by forcing me to eat the offending food i would get over my revulsion my reaction to certain flavors and textures in foods was thought to be a kind of immaturity or childish unreasonableness in refusing to try new things or to act more grown up about eating like most kids i loved sweets and wanted my foods to be bland and predictably consistent in texture or sensation i liked hamburger and mashed potato ice cream and cookies chocolate milk and sliced apples chicken legs and watermelon my parents would be shocked i imagine to learn how broad and cosmopolitan my tastes have become as an adult surprised and perhaps even vindicated in their campaign to enhance my childhood appetite but it turns out that my behavior in childhood was completely normal research into the behavior of tasting has shown that children generally have much more sensitive though much less sophisticated taste than adults generally do as people age their taste sensitivity changes growing less keen also those who smoke or consume alcohol in large amounts or have other environmental or vocational exposures or stresses may also lose taste sensitivity both of my parents for instance smoked heavily so it s quite likely that when they ate cream of mushroom soup it didn t have nearly as intense a flavor as it did to my immature taste buds they were literally experiencing something different than i was or at least experiencing it different...