What can $2 trillion do?

How much health and well being can our global war budget of $2 trillion buy? ‘World Beyond War’, a new 10 minute video I just saw and recommend, contrasts 2 choices:

Choice 1 — People, health, housing, education, infrastructure, rights rather than privileges, clean environment ...
Choice 2 — Violence, death, waste, pollution, poverty, sickness, hatred, …

The 2 competing outcomes are explained with a few charts, many photos, and archival video quotes from President Eisenhower and M.L. King Jr. It’s a message most of my readers know, presented in a fresh and easy to understand manner.

The dichotomy (Choice 1 or 2) is similar to guns or butter (economics), and swords or ploughs (religion), but without metaphor or analogy. Its directness reminds me of the forgotten wisdom of Tolstoy, Gandhi, and King about justice and love.

WBW launched last September from Virginia USA, using social media to teach peace. The website has a petition and educational material.

Education is the key to improving our future on planet earth.

I add WorldBeyondWar.org to my list of recommended study websites.

Global Action on Military Spending hosts an annual global day of action in April, and provides signs, such as 'Cut Military Spending - Fund Human Needs!', and a 2-minute video: ‘What Would it Cost to Save the World?’

War Resisters League puts out an annual pie chart on military and domestic spending.
This is very useful and easily understood for USA. We need something like this for Canada.

Project Ploughshares, Waterloo, Ontario, says: ‘and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation; neither shall they learn war any more.’

Transcend International has a chart: Some Consequences and Costs of War, and other resources. 'We are a Peace Development Environment Network. Our aim is to bring about a more peaceful world by using action, education/training, dissemination and research.'

Center for Global Nonkilling in Hawaii provides many free books and tools designed 'to promote change toward the measurable goal of a killing-free world by means open to human creativity in reverence for life.'

Historians Against War testify: ‘... we stand opposed to wars ... to dominate the internal life of other countries….’

Tommy Douglas and Universal Health Care

On November 16, 2013, I attended a panel discussion on ‘Living the Dream: a healthy society for all, how a focus on health can revive Canadian democracy’, hosted in downtown Ottawa by the Douglas-Coldwell Foundation.

I attended mainly to learn about adding dental and prescription drugs to our national health care, and I had a personal interest in Douglas and gratitude for his work.

I grew up in Saskatchewan when Tommy Douglas (1904-1986) was in office and co-led the battle to give us universal health care in 1962. I personally briefly met him once. In 2013 he was honored with a commemorative stamp on the 50th anniversary of our Medicare legislation.

It happened that the birth of my daughter was expected during the 1962 Doctors’ Strike in Saskatchewan against the new socialized medicine. We were relieved when an English doctor came to deliver her in our apartment.

When I had my open heart surgery in 2006, I was again very thankful that Canada provided universal health care. I got excellent care.

Living the Dream

At the meeting, I heard 3 panelists assert that

• our future as a nation depends on healthy citizens, and
• our health insurance can be improved if we work together

Dr. Ryan Meili, a Saskatchewan physician, said, ‘whether you live long depends greatly on the health system.... Other determinants of health include income, housing, food, and employment.’ International healthcare data show that Canada compares well in longevity and costs in a 2008 comparison of 8 countries, surpassed by Japan.

Dr. Vincent Lam, a Toronto physician who wrote a biography of Tommy Douglas, said ‘we must dream boldly in how to achieve our dream.’ He quoted a conversation with actress Shirley Douglas (daughter of the late Tommy Douglas), who recalled that her Dad, at the end of his political career said that ‘one day we will go to the moon’ and we did; and ‘one day we will have a publicly-funded health care in Canada’ and we have.

Dennis Gruending, panel moderator, said that ‘living the dream is possible if we set our minds to do it.’ Dennis pointed out that the current Conservative government of Stephen Harper established expensive border services, built new prisons and enlarged the military. ‘If it can do that, surely it can find the resources to ensure the fulfillment of our dream in getting a full proper universal health care for our citizens in this country, as Tommy Douglas had envisaged it more than 50 years ago.’

In 2004 Tommy Douglas was crowned the ‘Greatest Canadian’ undoubtedly for his hard work to pass the first universal health care act in North America — for which all Canadians are most thankful. But we can improve it.

This ‘Father of Medicare’ was a Baptist minister, a federal Member of Parliament and Premier of Saskatchewan for 5 terms, up to 1960. Like many Canadians, he believed full health care was a human right that superseded private interests. We should unite to realize that dream by adding dental and drug services!