[LA County] Supervisors vote to slash jobs, close health centers

This is a strong argument against government involvement in healthcare. It's putting all of your eggs in one basket. When that basket has a problem, the disruption and chaos created is far above the situation, if you had no government involvement. The LA County Health system has been in crisis for at least a decade.

You have to just admire what Davis did for the California budget.

An aircraft carrier costs under five billion dollars. Other ships are less. With the large change from a huge surplus to a large deficit would buy one of the largest fleets of warships in the world. (well over 100 billion dollars).

How do you tell people with no health insurance, no child care or transportation

First of all, if they have no health insurance they go to the public clinic you have set up (which is losing $800 million). You have given them no incentive to get insurance by offering them free care.

Second, What does child care have to do with it? Bring the kid along.

And transportation? This city is riddled with busses. Tell them to take the bus, as people do in most cities in the world. By the way, if the county stopped subsidising the busses, and made people pay the real cost of riding it, maybe there would be enough money to keep these clinics open. All the more reason why the county should privatize the bus system.

More to the point, the bus system as run by the Southern California Sluggish Transport District (or STD, since it's about as popular as one) is known for abysmal service.

The Santa Monica Municipal Bus Line runs far better service at a fare little more than 1/3 as much as the STD ($0.50 versus $1.35). The drivers are friendlier, the busses are cleaner, and service is more punctual. You can make snide jokes about the People's Republic of Santa Monica, but this is one government service that really works.

I will never understand government's strange toleration, indeed, acceptance, indeed, encouragement, of wretched service combined with high union pay. Surely if the unions get better pay for their members, their members should be, well, happy? Then why are non-union busdrivers uniformly more pleasant than union drivers?

Maybe someone can tell me the answer, because I'd really love to know.

I've read a lot of pro-union rhetoric over the years, and some of it sounds convincing. But I'm virulently anti-union because of those lousy bus drivers.

I'm not against unions per se, but they are largely unneccessary in today's world in my view.

I think maybe the union bus drivers are full of their own sense of power. Perhaps some people will just never be happy.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.