I read an article about a baby in Indiana who needs a life-saving thymus transplant because he suffers from a fatal disease.  Medicaid in Indiana denied the surgery, citing it as an experimental surgery.  Reading through the thousands of readers' comments after the article made me want to make a couple points.

The first is that this is the problem with government health care.  When you are counting on other people to foot the bill for a potentially half a million dollar surgery that is deemed experimental, you are at risk.  There is a finite amount of taxpayer money, and politicians have to make tough decisions about how to allocate those resources.  This is why a private solution to rising health care costs is so vital.

The second point is that a large percentage of the readers' comments were blasting selfish politicians, largely against Republicans (although I thought Indiana was currently under democratic control, but I could be wrong).  They were blaming the politicians for elevating money above a baby's life.  Many strongly urged wealthy celebrities such as Oprah to cough up the half a million dollars.  This highlights a huge problem with the government dependency mentality: it's always someone else's problem.  Someone ELSE needs to fix it (but not me!).  Not one of those critics that I read talked about donating some of their OWN money to help this little baby.  It was just outrage at the government and greedy politicians.  There's a lack of understanding of the finite resources from OTHER people's money.  There's a general misconception that there is an unlimited pool of money that everyone is just sitting on.  Everyone, including the government and the wealthy, must figure out how and where to allocate their resources.  It's this class envy and lack of personal responsibility that is so destructive to our country.  The attitude of looking to someone else to solve problems creates dependency and learned helplessness.

For those of you that understand what I'm talking about and want to donate to this baby, you can do so at:
sethbenjamin.org/

I believe in the old fashioned American spirit, and I believe that the money can be raised by generous Americans that are willing to donate whatever they can.