TDPS: What do National Healthcare and the Death Penalty Have in Common?

[celtics23]

Run time: 04:22 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6UZAk0hylo   Posted on YouTube: November 30, 2010 By YouTube Member: MidweekPolitics Views on YouTube: 204   Posted on DU: December 02, 2010 By DU Member: celtics23 Views on DU: 455

 
From: www.davidpakman.com | Subscription: www.davidpakman.com/membership | YouTube: www.youtube.com/midweekpolitics

OK, what else do we want to do here? Let me talk briefly about, in talking with Wendell Potter today for our interview which will air on Thursday about how close did the U.S. ever get to national health care, and I won't go into it now because we get into it during the interview, but there was an opportunity leading up to 1917 for the U.S. to actually go in the direction of national health care, and because of World War I, and because the similarity, alleged similarity, to what Germany had in place at the time, there was a very easy campaign to mount against national health care by saying hey, isn't that what the Germans have? That's un-American. We're against the Germans. We're not going to have the same type of health care system. Skip forward almost 100 years, and now we have a complete private manipulation, it's a game, of private health insurers. And I started thinking, you know, the U.S. is the only country at our level of development that still has no national health care and that still has the death penalty. Literally the only country, in many cases, if we look at countries equal to or very close to the technological and other development that we're at, fair to say?

Louis: Yes.

David: So then the question is well, what do we know that they don't? Right? If you believe that no national health care and the death penalty are things that are correct, are the best way, we must know something that all of those other advanced, industrialized, whatever term you want to use, countries don't know, otherwise why would we be doing it, right? We must know something about why it's better that they don't know.

Louis: Or we don't know that it's better there.

David: Well, that...

Louis: We're right.

David: That's the next logical argument. If it's not the case that it is better, and if it's not the case that we know that it is better, what forces are at play to prevent change? With national health care, it is obvious. Politicians are completely in bed with those...

Louis: The companies.

David: With the health insurers, with the pharmaceutical companies, so on and so forth. It's very clear, it's an easy one. With the death penalty, however, it doesn't seem to be a business thing. So what is it? Is it an ideological thing? The putting-people-to-death industry via...

Louis: Well, it's just tradition. I mean, it's up to the state.

David: So you believe that it is just ingrained in the social culture as opposed to being such a clear, what do we want to call it, a clear business thing, a lobbying issue like with health care?

Louis: Right, right. And it is up to the state, it's not a government thing.

David: Well, but whoever, it's up to the state government then.

Louis: The state government, not the national government, I'm saying.

David: So the question is, even though these apparently motivated by very different forces, the business and lobbyist component on preventing national health care, and apparently just values, we think we should be putting people to death for certain crimes, on the other hand, we're coming together and saying these are both things that are very rare, almost nonexistent, in other countries that are at our level of development. Is there any connection that I'm not seeing? I'd be interested to hear from the audience.

Louis: Right.

David: On one hand, it is, they're two unrelated issues, on the other hand, there's not too many other countries we can find that are at our development level that have both.

Louis: Right.

[aliciaabs19]

1. Agreed with the analysis

But disagree it can change

[tins0404]

2. The death penalty:

A pointless way to prove that we are still absurdly brutal

[RC]

3. The Death Penalty, befitting a nation that starts needless wars against innocent countries