Frustration Friday: Save Versus Decision-Making For Half Responsibility

Remember the last presidential campaign when we heard endlessly about “Death Panels”? I do, though that may be because I'm a news junkie. Either way whether you remember it, don't remember it, or blocked it out because you are sick of the entire political process, that was back when some people claim that changes to healthcare laws would result in “Death Panels” that would decide who lived and who died.

Yeah, I know. It was a strange and annoying time.  It felt like I was in some kind of indie film mocking the political process.



Of course as these policy discussions rambled on, people also brought up the fact that insurance companies were in the way, deciding who lives and who dies. These were, in a way, also “Death Panels.” It seemed to be that the entire debate about healthcare, insurance, universal coverage, and so on boil down to who got to make the decisions about who died. Sure it wasn't phrased that way, that's really what it boiled down to, and in the end not much got solved.

I should note that I support a robust, very public, carefully monitored universal healthcare. However, I also accept the dark, cold truth that decisions will be made that affects when people die, and the health care coverage that they get.  I just figure a more universal system is better for people overall – that is the conclusion I decided on.

And then, unfortunately, brings up the subject of today's frustration Friday; the political and economic issues that people just simply want to foist off on others, and ignore responsibility.

There's nothing magical or responsibility–fulfilling about letting the “free market” of insurance decide people's healthcare issues. There's nothing magical about government healthcare and large-scale policies that affect our lives. These are all, simply choices we make, responsibilities we take–and, in the end, admitting that hard decisions get made.

However, I'm getting the impression people don't like to make decisions in politics, business, and so on. Decisions are hard. Decisions mean you can be wrong. The decisions mean you can take blame. Decisions mean that if you do something stupid, people make knowledge that you're an utter idiot, immoral, or just a total dumb-ass.  People don't like risks like this; they don't like the risks of decision.

Looking at it that way, political and economic problems we have to deal with are a lot clear; people don't want to make decisions, and accept responsibility. They like to defer it, they like to invoke various principles to justify their decisions, but what they don't like to do is say simply “I have made a decision and I live with the results.”

Or in short, cowardice of a particularly wimpy variety.

Thinking about that way, do any of our political and economic problems seem particularly surprising? Do you wonder what a lot of things don't get done, get deferred, get foisted off to the next generation? People don't want to make decisions.

You've probably seen this at your job before, among your friends, at school, and so on people are all too easily decision–adverse.

I'm not exactly proposing a solution here, beyond those of us here who read this making decisions and standing by our choices. Hey, this is a Frustration Friday, where I get things out.

What can I say?  That's my decision.

Steven Savage