Government health care better than nothing
Let government into the health insurance business, the argument goes, and private health care will be destroyed.
"Government doesn't compete," the Tribune editorial page opined Friday. "It overwhelms."
Does it? We needn't confine ourselves to the hypothetical. Should the health-care bill pass Congress, it will not be the first time the government went head-to-head with private industry. Examine the record.
When the United States Postal Service introduced next-day service, did it drive FedEx out of business? No. There were also concerns at the time about unfair competition -- USPS trucks don't get parking tickets, for instance, while FedEx trucks do. But the two services ended up working together.
Or consider money. Money -- currency, pocket change -- is a successful government program that has worked for hundreds of years. But that did not stop banks from introducing their own form of money -- debit cards -- and succeeding. Debit cards will be around a lot longer than dimes will.
Even the most unquestioned government monopolies have a way of sliding into the corporate world. Think space exploration. Once the exclusive realm of government, now the plaything of numerous private companies. Ditto for jails.
The fear that government will bigfoot health care is both unfounded and at odds with the worldview that inspires it: the notion that government does nothing well.
That might make sense if you are a rich manufacturer plagued by safety rules. That does not make sense if you are, for instance, one of the 17,000 children thought to die every year in this country because their parents have no health insurance. To those kids, even an imperfect government system is better than the nothing they now have.
You can't simultaneously argue that government is too inept to run health care and, if it does, that its bungling will drive all others out of business.
We all die -- that's natural -- but how death is treated differs from one culture to another. My strongest memory of being in Japan is walking through a graveyard dedicated to mizuko, or "water babies"-- aborted fetuses who are given their own memorials, little stone statues wearing blue and pink caps and bibs their apologetic erstwhile mothers knitted them, pinwheels stuck in their lifeless stone hands slowly clattering in the wind.
At a temple in Taiwan, I paused to burn "hell money" -- fake currency, with pictures of little family groups on it. The idea is, you stoke the faux cash into the furnace to line the pockets of your loved ones in hell. Since hell must be full of Steinbergs, I tried to be generous.
America's big death festival, Halloween, is this weekend Saturday, and it says something about us that we downplay the death aspect. We choose to go with cartoon Freddy Krueger gore, bloody limbs, jangling skeletons and such. Candy, for the kiddies, and beer for the adults. Death is spooky, cartoonish, an abstraction. You'd think nobody ever died.
Sunday, however, is the Day of the Dead -- actually Sunday and Monday, since the celebration in Mexico and Latin America goes over two days, with the first being the Day of the Innocents, a time to remember departed children, and the second being the actual Dia de los Muertos, to honor deceased adults.
It is very different than Halloween -- equally festive, with music and food and drink and artwork. But also serious, about real dead people you actually once knew.
This may be unpatriotic of me, but Day of the Dead has got Halloween beat, hands down. It's more meaningful, with better visuals: the neon skulls and mariachi band skeletons are a far better look than all those cut-out cardboard witches and Frankensteins. The sugar skulls and sweet bakery-fresh pan de los muertos ("bread of the dead") are more appealing than stomach-churning mounds of standardized packaged candy.
The continuous mouse scream of fear that passes as U.S. public reaction to Hispanic immigration has ebbed lately, so perhaps I can get away with mentioning that among the many, many good things we can expect from our historic demographic shift is more Day of the Dead and less Halloween.
Good.
Regular readers of this column might recall Charlie Bliss, the exuberant Chicago firefighter who lends his 500-megawatt smile to the department's calendars raising money for charity. When Charlie isn't at his Halsted Street firehouse keeping people safe, he oversees coffee sales at the Metra station in my leafy suburban paradise. He always has a friendly word and I am always happy to see him.
Charlie's father, George S. Bliss, passed away Tuesday and Charlie, in his outgoing fashion, put up memorial posters around the coffee shop paying tribute to his dad.
George Bliss was 79, a Marine, a Korean War vet, who came home and became a union truck driver for Butternut Bread.
Charlie didn't know his birth father -- George Bliss married his mother and adopted her four kids when Charlie was 13. George never missed one of Charlie's football games.
"My life got better as soon as he came in," said Charlie. "He was always there, no matter what."
Visitation is from 3 to 9 p.m. Monday at the Cooney Funeral Home, 625 Busse Hwy. in Park Ridge, with the funeral Tuesday at 10:30 a.m. at the funeral home.
When I was twelve I went as my mother for Halloween. I put on a pair of heels, went door to door, and criticized what everyone else was wearing.
-- Robin Bach