Luke Ford

On the first hour of his radio show yesterday, Dennis Prager said: "Everyone I know has been turned down for loans. The banks got all this money but they don’t give out loans. If I were emotional, I’m about to say something I never thought I’d say, I’d say nationalize a lot of banks. But of course not, it would ruin the country. I want to identify with those of you angry at bankers.

"Those of us against the Stimulus Bill but were for TARP (the Bush bailout), we’re told, ‘You don’t understand the Wall Street predators. You have sympathy for big business and big banks.’ I have none. I have sympathy for Americans. I want to read to you something from the Malcolm Gladwell book ‘Outliers.’ Gladwell is an original thinker."

Prager read some of this:

Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, Outliers, has nothing to do with Public Health or Health Care Reform.  In it, though, Gladwell recognizes a phenomenon so singular to American ideology that it can not be ignored when looking at our health care system- and the ways it needs to evolve.

Gladwell discusses Dutch psychologist Geert Hofstedt, who, employed by IBM during the 1960’s and 1970’s, researched global differences in problem solving, working together and attitudes towards authority.  From Gladwell:

“Hofstede argued, for example, that cultures can be usefully distinguished according to how much they expect individuals to look after themselves.  He called that measurement the ‘individualism-collectivism scale.’  The country that scores the highest on the individualism end of that scale in the United States.  Not surprisingly, the United States is also the only industrialized country in the world that does not provide its citizens with universal healthcare.”

Unique to the world, America is defined by the opportunities permitted to those willing to work for them.  The rags to riches stories of Andrew Carnegie, Oprah Winfrey, even our new President, boast of America’s greatest strength, the power and opportunity we bestow on individual citizens.  Pulling yourself up by your bootstraps is an ethic honored in American life: individualism working at its best.

Of course, every strength can simultaneously be a weakness, and clearly, our healthcare system is failing under the weight of this individualism.  As reported by Atul Gawande in “Getting There from Here” (New Yorker, January 26, 2009):

“In 2007, 57 million Americans had difficulty paying their medical bills, up fourteen million since 2003.  On average, they had two thousand dollars in medical debt and had been contacted by a collection agency at least once.  Because, in part, of underpayment, half of American hospitals operated at a loss in 2007.  Today large numbers of employers are limiting or dropping insurance coverage in order to stay afloat, or simply going under– even hospitals themselves.”

Dennis Prager: "The collective will take care of us, we are not expected to take care of us, is the rhetoric of the Democrats. That’s why the rights language on the Left runs so deep. Normally you were expected to take care of yourself and your loved ones. If you couldn’t then your family did. If not your family, then your religious group or local community. The federal government was the last resort.

"This Stimulus Bill is to transform America. That’s what Barack Obama set out to do. Barack Obama was elected on [a platform of] transformational change.