45,000 years ago, a Neanderthal man experienced a crushing blow to the head that left him partially paralyzed for life, but his bones healed and he lived into his 30s or 40s, something only conceivably possible with the help of his community.
45,000 years ago.
But let’s pretend that 45,000 years later, we “can’t afford” universal healthcare.
https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/fossils/shanidar-1
It’s important to understand that people—not even Homo sapiens!—living at what must have been the subsistence margin, without states or written language or metal tools or electricity or antibiotics, managed to keep this person alive. They devoted resources to his care and survival. He lived for years, possibly decades, with a severe disability at a time when his community would have been doing things like fighting off literal cave bears.
Our society has inconceivably more material, social, and technological resources to bring to bear to help each other. We have no excuse.
@HeavenlyPossum I'm gonna very gently disagree about the subsistence margin part, but there's no doubt that we have orders of magnitude more resources at our disposal.
Plus the literal cave bears part is no joke.
Technically, no society lives at the subsistence margin, but I lack a pithier way of conveying how tenuous their survival would have been.
@HeavenlyPossum You don't need to reach back 45,000 years to prove that universal health care is affordable. Ask nearly every other country in the OECD today how they do it.
The real question is whether there is enough political will and votes to do it in your country.
45,000 years later, some people are more concerned with preventing crushing blows to the head for themselves and delivering crushing blows to the head to the other guy. And, 45,000 years later, too many still profit off of warfare. Funding treatment for the injured? Hell, even health care for vets who need it is lacking...
...and, as some might say, it will be a great day when health care is fully funded, and the Pentagon has to have a gofundme to pay for their new toys. But that saying, and the "45,000 years" notion, are too facile. The idea of the "noble savage" and the idyllic past are myths that offer no guide to how we can solve our current problems.
My intent was not to make a “noble savage” argument. I think that’s your baggage, not mine.
I can recommend "The dawn of Everything" (listening to the audiobook).
Quite enlightening to learn how many of our (subconscious, unquestioned) assumptions on linear progress, quality of civilization, economy, and justice may be based on anachronistic, self-serving concepts that "justified" the status quo of societies that had serfdom, slavery, or ultra-capitalist exploitation.
Actually because there was no profit back then no one ever did anything and they all starved to death and now we’re all just ghosts.
I love how quickly they get wrapped up in knots. If every potential “utility” you might derive from an action is synonymous with “profit” or “gain,” then we run into absurdities like “giving away all your possessions and living as an acetic is an act of profit-seeking capitalism.”
Sounds like a good idea but im one of those weird people who thinks UNIVERSAL means that EVERYONE has to have it! Which means we have to prevent as much transmission as we can woith running past diminishing returns.
. As SOON as everyone starts demanding PREVENTION if infections in health care (add n95 masks tk standard ppe AND effective air quality control standards we can discuss what ELSE is ALSO a necessity.
I agree, let’s offer prevention too
@HeavenlyPossum which is plain common sense.
Idk why "wear masks in health care' stopped being taken for granted as a obvious good idea.
The answer should always be, what more should we demand from our society?
If we can devote a trillion dollars a year to “preventing” potential harms via national defense, then we’ve already proven we’re capable of mobilizing our resources for other purposes too.
The problem is systemic, not “the current batch.” There’s no elite constituency in the US for reducing public precarity to that extent.
I’m not sure who you could plausibly vote in who would fix this problem. Obama had majorities in the house and senate and his crowning legislative achievement was a massive subsidy to medical insurers.
@HeavenlyPossum @chaoddity ...
As SOON as the general public believes that people with disabilities should get health care we will have it...
Guess Neanderthals were a better species than us H Sapiens =/
America is very poor or something
@HeavenlyPossum
I heard one scientist argue that surviving a leg injury showed the existence of civilization.
Lots of the US is simply uncivilized.
Thing is, the community doesn't want to help.
I do not think that is true.
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