The Enabler

            An enabler is someone who encourages, makes possible, or overlooks the unhealthy behavior of someone else.  Making excuses for and even staying with an abusive husband is being an enabler.  Paying bills for an irresponsible adult is being an enabler.  Denying your daughter’s drug addiction, defending your son’s unprovoked fights, even picking up after teenagers is being an enabler. 

            So it is with the U.S. and the state of Israel.  A smart and scrappy group of dispossessed people who only wanted a home—we saw it all in Exodus starring Paul Newman.  They so deserved our support.  Most Americans learned everything they know about Israel from watching that movie, hearing the theme, rooting for this underdog.  Like a favorite child who starts misbehaving, over the years, an empowered Israel committed atrocities on the Palestinians and others, and we in the U.S. looked the other way.  When they seemed threatened, we were more inclined to send money and military supplies, so hard-liners dominated Israeli politics and a chronic state of bad relations with the neighbors ensued.  The truth is that very many Israeli citizens would prefer to live in peace, but they can’t get the majorities they need to change course, and the U.S. participation (enabling behavior) has a lot to do with that.  Now there is such a history of bad events on both sides that this will be an extremely hard situation to heal. 

            Where do we go from here?  For starters, the aid we send should be targeted to encourage businesses in the Palestinian territories that would produce high value added products from Israeli raw materials.  There’s nothing like economic interdependence to help people get along.  Sending military hardware to this area is like sending guns and ammunition to inner city gangs—not really moving things in the right direction. 

            And when the prime minister of Israel comes to Washington, the message is not that “we have your back”.  We don’t take sides.  We have the best interest of all people everywhere

Million Dollar Accounts

     This is not my idea for a proposed policy for a national health care system--it was a policy question put to a class at Georgetown.  I like this idea so very much that I'm publicizing it and have tweaked it  to include unfortunate individuals under its umbrella. 

     Everyone with a social security number will have attached to this number a health care account for one million dollars.  This money can be used for any health care expense.  It can be used for dental care, vaccinations, eye care and glasses or lenses, diagnostic procedures, insurance premiums, psychiatric care, or any other health care expense.  Only the person with the account (under that particular social security number) can use that account, and it cannot be passed on after that person dies.  It can be used for that person and that person alone.

     I've always felt that a single payer system would be the ideal except for two considerations:   the difficult (prohibitive) transition from what we have to single payer; and the fact that in our country we just don't seem to be able to keep unscrupulous persons from gouging.  With the million dollar accounts, every person would treat this as his or her own money (since it essentially is) and would examine every bill and challenge every charge.  One of the most important considerations in every major policy change is the ease of transition.  The million dollar accounts system would cause the least amount of ripples of any system I've studied.  People who now have insurance can keep that insurance or consider other options, and they can take their time making that decision and making any changes.
     As a society, we will be the strongest we can be going into the future since children would get the eye, dental, and any other care that they need to come of age in the best health possible.
     This plan does come up short for care for children born with expensive conditions, those that would cost more than the million dollars.  Expensive conditions might affect someone at any age.  These unfortunate individuals could perhaps apply for an extension, based on the fact that this expensive condition was not brought on by their own behavior, and that they have been good stewards of their accounts.