How a Medical Catastrophe Can Bankrupt a Life
I understand the narrative, its the &#x27;tiger outside the village&#x27;or the &#x27;wolf in the forest&#x27; sort of tale that there is this &quot;bad thing&quot; that will randomly attack&#x2F;kill&#x2F;impoverish people that collectively we could eliminate if we just had the will, as a community, to do so. And I don&#x27;t disagree, we could overcome the badness if we had the will.<p>Where I part company with the narrative is over looking how we have structurally made the &#x27;collective&#x27; so large as to prevent such a decision to be taken.<p>I expect that if you were to poll San Francisco you would find overwhelming support for a single payer, &#x27;state&#x27; (and by that I&#x27;m using the notion of the collective government not the state of California) administered health care system for residents. No doubt it would be paid for by taxing some of the wealthiest residents or as part of some sort of rent&#x2F;property taxation plan.<p>You might even be able to get this passed (agreed to) for the entire state of California.<p>However, country wide consensus on the issue is elusive and often divisive.<p>The saying goes that &quot;all politics are local&quot; and to a large extent that is true. But I wonder why it is that the state of California was progressive enough to legalize marijuana but can&#x27;t get something like this done? The current punch line is &quot;This isn&#x27;t a problem in North America if you are Canadian.&quot;[1] so why is that the case in California? We&#x27;ve got the largest state economy in the US, we&#x27;ve got the largest population base, and we&#x27;re bigger than France[2]. So what is the hangup with just showing the rest of the country how things &#x27;should&#x27; be done rather than complain about how things are being done &#x27;wrong&#x27; ?<p>[1] And yes I know there are plenty of complaints about the system there as well, it is still better than what you get south of the border.<p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.weforum.org&#x2F;agenda&#x2F;2016&#x2F;07&#x2F;american-state-bigger-economy-than-india&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.weforum.org&#x2F;agenda&#x2F;2016&#x2F;07&#x2F;american-state-bigger...</a>