This was the first time I’ve seen Clinton talk in person. My dad was briefly personally recruited by him to be a doc in Arkansas, while he was governor, but declined. Let’s just call it a bullet dodged and move on.
I think we hit a pretty good balance of getting there early enough to have decent seats, but not waiting too long for them. His speech centered around 5 points.
1. We need good security from terrorism. But he was quite explicit in pointing out that good security in the case of terrorism is the stuff you never hear about, I believe he actually said “never gets seen in the paper”. He didn’t mention Valerie Wilson, though that would have been an excellent opportunity to do so, if he were trying to make a partisan slam speech.
2. We need to make more friends and fewer enemies, turning enemies into friends, is in fact, job number one. He pointed out the opinion polls turning for America and against Bin Laden in countries receiving US aid after national disasters.
3. He cited a need for international cooperations as opposed to going it alone. At this point, he got into a compare and contrast with the current administration. I don’t remember him making a strong case for this point, but the audience, myself included, was highly receptive, and I wasn’t taking notes. He did make the case that the US is currently in a position of power, and that that power will likely decline, and that we may wish to set the world up so that it’s the way we want it when “we aren’t the biggest dog on the block.”
4. He talked about the importance of caring for our population, and maintaining our environment. He made the point that we are rare in our failure to provide the health of our citizens, that it’s not economically efficient, and several other points besides. He compared our national healthcare expenditures as a percent of gdp. He compared our administrative overhead in the private healthcare system and noted that it was way higher than everyone else’s.
5. His final point was about balancing our budget, both at the federal level and on the individual level. And the danger of mortgaging our future for current consumption. (I look guiltily at my own credit card debt here).
And he tied all of it in to the morality and/or ethics of how we want to live and how we think we ought to live. It was a good speech. As I expected, I very much enjoyed it. The two hours of crowd to get in was a bit much, but so it goes. It was good, and I’m glad I went. Matt provided conversation such that I didn’t mind the wait so much. And thoughtful commentary afterwards.
ITYM “turning enemies into friends”.
Also, as a percentage of GDP, we *do* spend a remarkably high amount. I forget the exact numbers but I recall seeing the figures, I think The Economist. Just because it’s not the government spending it, doesn’t mean it isn’t being spent. That’s why we have some of the best available healthcare in the world, even if it isn’t available to everyone.
It’s a hard problem, really. Would you take away the right of people to buy exemplary healthcare for themsevles so that everyone has the same standard of care?
Thanks for catching my mistake.
It’s not so much the exemplary care I’m worried about. Clinton noted that we spend more on the final two months of life than any other country. For example, we let the snake oil salesman have free reign with desperate people when it comes to advanced cancer treatment. It’s not really snake oil, they have marginal benefits. But they typically also have extreme side effects. And they cost extraordinary amounts of money.
But that’s simply recouping research costs. Cancer medicines are used by few people for short periods of time. To make up the research expense, they must be expensive.
Still, a cost benefit analysis suggests that this is not a good exchange. Alot of money for poor results, with large nonmonetary costs. Another memorable Clinton quote was (approximately) “for a nation so religious, we are awfully reluctant to go to heaven.”
If I have terminal cancer, my first choice would be to advance the state of the art in new drugs. I’d probably die anyway, it probably wouldn’t go well, but at least I’d help in the advance of human knowledge. A close second choice would be to spend my last week on enough painkillers to stay functional enough to say goodbye, rather than spend two months receiving expensive, extraordinary efforts to stay alive.
Who cares if rich people who have a lot of money spend it on trying to extend their life? But I don’t think that’s your point, is it? It’s that medical insurance will cover a lot of it. What if it didn’t? What if we widened the distance between what wealth and an ordinary person could buy? Neither seems particularly desirable, but there it is. There was a recent article on boutique doctors ( http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/30/health/30patient.html ) in the New York Times. What we have here is an extention of that argument. The main doctor interviewed in that article had a yearly retainer of $1700 dollars. Hell, even as a healthy individual, in a couple years that might be worth it to me just so I don’t have to sit around in waiting rooms.
A cost benefit analysis of someone dying is pretty simple. They can’t take it with them, so might as well spend it. Or should they not be permitted to do so on the theory that it will be taxed and that money could be reallocated more efficiently by the state? What are the nonmonetary costs you speak of in this case? It may be a humorous quote on Clinton’s part, but I believe there’s a lot less real faith out there than one might think. Aside from that, given my beliefs (or lack thereof), I’d have no reason not to extend my life. Only if I were living in complete misery and there was no chance of a cure coming along before I was to kick the bucket would I give up.
When I read this aloud to Laura I put a little verbal innuendo into
And “thoughtful commentary” afterwards
Apologies if “Matt” is reading this and is not into you in that way.