If Progressive Govt hadn't "crowded out" mutual aid societies to begin with - Granite Grok

If Progressive Govt hadn’t “crowded out” mutual aid societies to begin with

Mutual Aid Societies and Fraternal Organizations – before Progressives decided that ONLY Government could and should do charity work, there were mutual aid societies.  Groups of people banded together to help each other – family, friends, fellow immigrants.  And to the latter, I dimly remember stories from my Dad’s dad who came over to Southie (Boston) of the “Irish Diaspora” (stemming from the irish Potato Famine) and that he got help from those that had arrived earlier.  They had banded together, pooled their resources, helped him get started – and then expected him to do the same thing later on.  The quintessential “pay it forward” popular now was a way of life back then – because in many cases, life DID depend on it.  A snippet from The American Interest (via Instapundit) that recalls those entities:

The ACA is not the only game health care game in town. Either because they are opposed to the values embodied in the ACA or because they are unable to afford the costs it imposes, some people are dropping out of mainstream insurance altogether. WaPo looks at some of the health care programs they are opting into instead. Of particular note are groups like Christian Healthcare Ministries. Members of CHM pool money to pay for each other’s health care bills, out of pocket and unmediated by insurance.

We don’t know how many people are using this kind of system; the piece does tell us that CHM has 80,000 members, and the overall number is probably vanishingly small. But CHM and similar groups represent a kind of approach that deserves more attention than it is getting, for two reasons. First, it encourages responsible health care use. . . .

Cost-sharing groups therefore provide exactly the kind of cost-controlling incentives that an impersonal, national insurance system can’t. Perhaps more importantly, programs like this introduce some sense of social solidarity into the health care market.

…Cost-sharing groups therefore provide exactly the kind of cost-controlling incentives that an impersonal, national insurance system can’t. Perhaps more importantly, programs like this introduce some sense of social solidarity into the health care market.

What is old is new again, as shown above (and mirror what the Amish have done for generations).  People who are depending, not on Government, but on each other and holding each other accountable (and given what we have seen in the Veterans Administration of completely Government owned and run Socialized Medicine, it is easy to see that Government workers there just don’t give a damn leading to how many needless deaths?).  Why should we devolve our healthcare system to be extremely low standards of the British National Health System – another socialized system?

But Progressives are constitutionally unable to accept that people can succeed without Government (e.g., Elizabeth Warren and NH’s own Carol Shea-Porter).  They extended the reach and role of Government into what used to be Civil Society until it crowded out mutual aid societies and the charities that made for that vibrant society – or effectively absorbed and set to control them via regulation and the doling out of taxes to fund their operations and PRESTO!, we’ve been herded into Obamacare without a choice.  But, as my former NH State Senator Kathy Sgambati said, in this Land of Choice and Freedom, this has been by design and by Government fiat:

Everybody in the chamber respects personal freedoms and individual rights…[BUT] We’re also trying to ensure that all citizens in the state have the protection they need. It’s unclear to me how you can possibly have all the benefits of coverage without everyone being under the tent.

This is both the intolerance and totalitarianism of ProgressivesYou will participate in what we have created for you, and you will comply with the law’s demands” – Freedom has no place in their culture except for what they decide for us – our choice is taken away.  I DO wonder how long it will be before this cost sharing option is taken away so that everyone will be “under the [Progressive] tent” – choice no longer allowed and Individuality must be suppressed for the sake of the Greater Good.  Even as some Conservatives would like to see this option of each helping each out voluntarily extended outside the confines (and certainly, the control) of Govt be brought back even stronger, most Progressives are fighting back (see here in The Atlantic, which makes lots of claims of why it can’t work but no solid evidence to support such claims and comes to the conclusion that only Government can do the job).

I hear, all the time, that Progressives value a sense of “community” – these kinds of mutual aid societies (aka, cost sharing group) does exactly that – just not under the government “everyone all in” like Sgambati orders us to be in.  I just don’t get the “cognitive dissonance” here – at the same time that the Democrats / Progressives want us to be all in, politically they want us all to be divided into small “identity politics” groups at the same time.  Why can’t they figure out that we all are just “Americans” or allow us to be in our own small “healthcare” group of our own?  Why ALL IN here, but SEPARATE GROUPS there?

They make no sense at all, right?

 

 

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