How To Live Under An Unqualified President by John Piper

[Paidion]

Well, here in Ontario, my wife (who came from U.S.A.) had two hip replacements. What would that cost in United States? It cost us nothing. Ontario Health Insurance Plan.

I had a trans urethral resection of the prostate in 2007. What would that have cost in United States? It cost us nothing. OHIP.

Oh, but the Ontario government forces me to pay the OHIP premium ever year. What a hardship!

How much was that premium in 2016? Exactly $57.14 in Canadian funds. Oh, if we only had a good capitalist system that wouldn’t force us to pay that hefty premium! Then we would merely have to pay $40,000 or more for each of those procedures.

[anon12438761]

I’m happy for you!

You have a very good health-care system. Google shows me a number of pro’s and con’s, but that’s to be expected in any system.

There are lots of this kind of article that kinda take the shine off the canadian program, though:

huffingtonpost.ca/nadeem-esm … 33080.html

[anon12438761]

Here’s a follow-up to the British Health Care story I linked to above:

foxnews.com/health/2017/07/0 … pport.html

[Holy-Fool-P-Zombie]

“Refuse to fight small battles with petty people. Your life is bigger and better than that.”-- Author Unknown

This weekend, marks the US, Fourth of July. Our Independence Day celebration. But our brother in Christ from Canada, will also be celebrating. It’s Canada’s 150 year birthday. See the BBC story at bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40468161.

Let me also share an email, from this week’s reflection…From Francasian, Roman Catholic priest at Richard Rohr

Practice: Moving from a Still Center

Action and contemplation need and feed each other. Without contemplation, our actions will be unconsciously rooted in ego. Without action, our “inner work” may be narcissistic and ineffective.

Each Saturday I offer an invitation to contemplative practice. There are many different ways to meditate or pray such as Centering Prayer, yoga, walking meditation, or simply focusing on your breath. [1] If you haven’t yet found a regular practice, I encourage you to choose one and stay with it for a while, practicing each day for as little as twenty minutes or as long as you’re able. Over time—months, years, a lifetime—contemplation gradually opens our hearts, minds, and bodies to Love as our True Self.

Each week, I also suggest a different “Gateway to Silence,” a phrase to help lead you into nondual consciousness and openness to God’s presence. You might repeat the phrase to set an intention at the beginning of your practice. Explore the words through journaling or art. Or you could choose a single word from the phrase to use as a touchstone in Centering Prayer, for example “Be” or “Move.”

As you go about your day-to-day routines, recall and return to your intention and open-hearted presence. Listen and look for ways of embodying your most loving and True Self. How are you called to move outward from your still center in ways of compassion and courage?

Gateway to Silence:

Be still and still moving.

[anon12438761]

O Canada!!

[Paidion]

Dave, here’s a quote from the article to which you linked us:

In 2013, a typical Canadian family of four can expect to pay $11,320 for public health care insurance. For the average family of two parents with one child that bill will be $10,989, and for the average family of two adults (without children) the bill comes to $11,381. As a result of lower average incomes and differences in taxation, the bills are smaller for the average unattached individual ($3,780), for the average one-parent-one-child family ($3,905), and the average one-parent two-child family ($3,387). But no matter the family type, the bill is not small, much less free.

First, there’s no such animal as “The Canadian Health Care System.” Health care in Canada is provincial. I know nothing about the systems in other provinces; my experience is only with the Ontario Health Insurance Plan.

Next, let me say, that I misread my 2016 tax return. What my wife and I paid as a premiums to OHIP was based on our taxable incomes. I paid $432.89 and my wife paid $53.56. Would Nadeem regard our personal situations as atypical? I am a retired teacher with a comfortable retirement pension. The premium of $432.89 that I paid in 2016 is a long way from even the $3,780 premium that Nadeem claims the average UNATTACHED individual pays. If that is what the AVERAGE unattached individual pays, then my payment of only $432.89 must mean that I am living in poverty. My attachment to my wife wouldn’t make the difference, since she paid a premium also.

I can’t see a “typical Canadian family of four” having to pay $11,320 annually as Nadeem claims. “There’s something rotten in Denmark!”

Furthermore, neither my wife or I have had to wait in the “lengthy queues” to which Nadeem refers.

[anon12438761]

Obviously I don’t know much about Canada. I’m happy that you are getting really good service.

However, there is a lot of Google activity along the lines of (see link) that have me scratching my head. This is a 2017 article. Let me know your thoughts? I’m only interested because I’m wondering why the fools in Washington D.C. don’t just get with the program and follow, say, a Canadian model.

torontosun.com/2017/01/10/on … e-declines

[anon12438761]

I don’t have an answer for that, qaz. Is there some crazy rationale the repubs are using to justify it?

[Holy-Fool-P-Zombie]

I’t could be worse. You could be living in Illinois

Powerball and Mega Millions suspend Illinois thanks to its ballooning budget crisis

Let me link to a good song or two - to cheer everyone up.

youtube.com/watch?v=BKY8KIt9kqc
youtube.com/watch?v=cz6LbWWqX-g

See, here’s what’s missing folks. Take the Center for Contemplation and Action with Richard Rohr. We emphasize the action part (i.e. Christian charity, good works, etc). But we are missing the contemplation part. The two go together. Or to put it in Eastern terms, the Yoga of mediation (i.e. Dhyana or Raja), meets the Yoga of action. And if we throw in TV evangelist Joel Osteen, we add the third leg. Which is to expect, good things from God.

[anon12438761]

I’m not saying this is definitive, and it is a couple of months old, but the link will lead to an article that says in part:

What The Bill Does Not Do
First, it must be emphasized what the bill does not do. It does not repeal the ACA. Indeed, it only repeals particular sections of the ACA, such as its taxes, mandates, Medicaid expansion and subsidies. And some of these it only does after 2019. It does not appear to repeal most of the ACA’s insurance reforms, such as the requirements that health plans

cover preexisting conditions;
not health status underwrite; meet actuarial value requirements;
cover adult children up to age 26;
not discriminate on the basis of race, nationality, disability or sex;
cap out-of-pocket expenditures; and
not impose lifetime or annual limits.
It does not touch the ACA’s Medicare reforms or cuts. It is replace, but not repeal.
quoted from healthaffairs.org/blog/2017/02/2 … ment-bill/

If otoh we know for sure that lifetime limits will be imposed, I’d like to find that document. And call my congressmen.

[anon12438761]

That will well and truly be unforgivable, if that’s how it works out.

[anon12438761]

Is health care a RIGHT in Canada? Here’s an interesting case:

quote:
However, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) stood out for asking a pointless “question” (actually a statement), which was conspicuous because it was based on an error. As he has done many times, Senator Sanders made the false claim that health care is a right in Canada and other countries outside the United States. According to Mr. Sanders, this is a unique stain on the United States.

With respect to Canada, it is simply and plainly not true that health care is a “right.” By “not true” I do not refer to the fact that an American standard of health care is not available to ordinary Canadians (due to long waiting times), but that those who enforce Canada’s single-payer system have insisted in court no such right exists.

The claim was made in the Supreme Court of British Columbia in February 2009, in the case known as Cambie Surgical Center et al. v. Medical Services Commission et al. Cambie Surgical Center offered orthopedic surgery outside the single-payer system for private payment. The Medical Services Commission is the agency which operates the provincial single-payer system.

Contrary to Senator Sanders’ claim, it was the private clinic which asserted a legal claim that its patients had a right to pay for surgery. It was the government agency which denied it. Don’t believe me. Read it on page 5 of the agency’s statement to the court: “there is no freestanding constitutional right to health care.” - unquote

[Paidion]

Dave, I don’t think it could be maintained that access to the provincial health care systems is not a right for Canadians. For example, I had prostate surgery in 2007. It has been discovered by medical authorities that I need another. I don’t think the health care systems could legally say, “No. We’re not going to give you one this time. You have no legal right to it, and so we decided we won’t do it.”

However, there are particular procedures that are not covered by the Canadian Health Care systems. For example, dental work is not covered. Ordinary medicine is not covered (unless administered within a hospital or given directly by a physician). I have a private plan to cover dental work and medicines. What is covered by the Health Care System are visits to physicians, hospitalization, surgeries and other treatments that physicians or specialists carry out.

[Paidion]

Admittedly, Tolstoy was a young man less than 23 years of age when he wrote the words quoted below. He may have changed his mind drastically in his older years after he became a disciple of Christ. However, the following words are found in his earlier diaries, page 97.

Men have sought the philosopher’s stone, and thereby discovered many chemical combinations. Let them seek also virtue from the standpoint of socialism, i.e. of absence of vice, and they will discover a moral verity of use.

Tolstoy died in 1905. He never experienced the horrors of Communism that developed in Russia. I suspect that he thought of “socialism” as the social interaction of society, helping and supporting one another, in contrast to the wealthy landowners who enriched themselves by taking advantage of the peasant workers of their land.

Probably, Tolstoy had become acquainted with the writings of Karl Marx—though those writings were largely ignored in Russian society during Tolstoy’s youth.

[anon12438761]

Don, I did actually read the court case referred to in the quote, and the court very plainly said that health care is not a right.
The clip I attach is at the middle of a long argument, but it is important because it is the :

MEDICAL SERVICES COMMISSION OF BRITISH COLUMBIA,
MINISTER OF HEALTH SERVICES OF BRITISH COLUMBIA
and ATTORNEY GENERAL OF BRITISH COLUMBIA

who are making the statement, to wit:

In response to paragraph 25, there is no freestanding constitutional right to
health care.

I don’t know what paragraph 25 says; however in response to it, the att general et all made the statement.

I don’t know what importance it has, maybe very little. JUst trying to look at differerent systems and seeing what others are doing.

[Holy-Fool-P-Zombie]

Here we go. Perhaps this might help at sencanada.ca/content/sen/committee/372/soci/rep/repoct02vol6part2-e.htm

Even though Canadian courts have not yet established a right to health care under the Charter, it is clear to the Committee that, when timely access to appropriate care is not available in the publicly funded health care system, the prohibition of private payment for health services becomes increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to justify. The rights to liberty and to security of the person under section 7 of the Charter are likely to be violated when timely access to publicly funded health care is denied and, simultaneously, Canadians are effectively prevented from obtaining the required care elsewhere in Canada.

[anon12438761]

It’s this type of report, and I’m pretty sure we will hear more, that turns me off of both the welfare state idea or the socialist idea.
Human nature is the problem, it seems to me, not just the social and economic relations within a society.
These welfare recipients would not look for work or take the offered training to get skills for a job. This item represents a small sample population, but it is my feeling - which could be wrong - that welfare by and large is grossly mishandled, many needs are fraudulent, and a huge number of recipients are gaming the system. Certainly there are studies that back up that contention.
If this is so, I don’t see any big change coming from a reorganization of government into a welfare/socialist state, since human nature is - what it is. Isn’t that the experience of socialist experiments since Marx, all over the world?

Of course this is a huge subject, and I’m just getting a toe in the water.

foxnews.com/politics/2017/07 … ments.html

[Holy-Fool-P-Zombie]

I don’t think we can extrapolate from that data that having universal healthcare or guaranteed basic income would lead to a significant portion of the population being unwilling to work.

I fully agree. I would definitely like to become a movie actor…a mattress tester…a film critic…or a wine taster. As long as there is job training provided, I’m willing to work.

Perhaps my job interview will be similar, to the physicist at youtube.com/watch?v=mnkIa6djrEM

As a public service, I present this discussion from today:

What is the state of string theory in 2017?

“You cannot brighten another’s path without lighting your own.”-- Frank McKinney

[anon12438761]

Well we COULD extrapolate from that data, but it would not be wise to do so.
That was not the intention of my post, though, as I hope I made clear.

[Paidion]

I support the welfare state, but not socialism.

With me it’s just the opposite, depending upon what one means by “the welfare state” and “socialism.”

To me the phrase “the welfare state” suggests a condition in which the state provides for everyone, including those who are too lazy to work, whereas, I see “socialism” as a system that provides, as much as possible, equal opportunity for all. Although welfare may be provided for some, applicants would be carefully screened to exclude the loafers. Socialism does not eliminate free enterprise. Canada is considered to be a socialist country, and there is no more hindrance to free enterprise than there is in United States.