One of these three definitely needs to be shot. Which one would you kill?
“Shoot Bambi” says Mark Fizgibbon.
Fitzgibbon, the head of NIB, Australia’s largest health fund, wants to shoot Bambi. He conveniently ignores the fact that taxation and the public service is the most efficient way to provide quality healthcare for all whilst simultaneously protecting the poorest and most disadvantaged Australians. The real trick is to get the super-rich to pay their taxes, then everything would be okay.
But Fitzgibbon sees a way of making himself way richer than he already is. By eliminating Medicare/enforcing private cover we would remove the poor from the healthcare equation, thereby using their resultant sick, miserable, untreated state to prop up still-expensive healthcare options then available only to the rest of us who can pay. The rich would get richer and the poor would get the picture. Of course Mark Fitzgibbon doesn’t care about the sick poor - they can’t afford to buy his creepy products anyway.
Well, Mark, thankfully, US-style ideology doesn’t (yet) work in Australia because we haven’t (yet) been conditioned to see the disadvantaged as a liability to the rest of us, nor to see socialist health care as an affront to our liberty. In fact, we are PROUD to help the poor; it is socialism that is (still) central to our national identity. American-style selfishness and malignant individualism is (still) an affront to us, and we simply won’t have it. Cut it out Mark, and put it in the rubbish where it belongs. The poor are part of us; the poor ARE us. And you have offended us by wanting to sweep us out of your way so that the poor can suffer whilst the rich lie back on the couch, fully-covered in their own healthcare luxury getting over-priced treatments. Australians (still) have compassion for all Australians not just those who aspire, even against all odds, to one day be as rich as you. We will not blame the poor for their poverty or the financial load they cause, nor will we excuse them from compassionate care on that basis.
Australians do not (yet) see our wealth as our right, as God’s providence, or as a justified reward only for those who ‘work hard’ (as if the poor are lazy ungodly creatures rather than full, valuable human beings who often struggle in ways that you do not understand). We will never see guns, racism, and private healthcare as the currency and enforcers of the US-style ‘holy’ order. We will not be thanking God that English is the language that was spoken on the moon, and we will not be forced to waste our money helping you stratify and divide this nation by letting the poor suffer whilst the rich help you become part of the 2% in return for your inefficient delivery of over-priced healthcare products that we all need and deserve.
Selfishness and elitism are hate and I will not shoot Bambi. I’ll proudly stand in your way.