lapsedmodernist has written an exquisitely barbed Swiftean parable inspired by the healthcare reform debacle in the USA: it deserves to be an Internet classic: here.
I've pretty much given up on trying to parody the health care situation. I was half way through reading a call for a universal government-run police force before I realised that it wasn't true :) There are some good examples in the comments, and the comments to theferrett's post, describing recent and contemporary private firefighting services in Fairbanks, Alaska and Africa respectively.
Obviously, when firefighting is first introduced, a subscription model might well be the only way to do it, even if it's not ideal in the long term.
Swift compared letting people starve to eating babies, and people didn't get the satire; the bar is a lot higher now, even though people are more familiar with sature. I'm literally scared to try to think of an example more extreme than the reality, in case it becomes true! To be fair, the best satire might also be reality: pointing out other historical/geographic cultures where the healthcare situation is much worse than the USA and asking "do you want to be like that"?
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Obviously, when firefighting is first introduced, a subscription model might well be the only way to do it, even if it's not ideal in the long term.
Swift compared letting people starve to eating babies, and people didn't get the satire; the bar is a lot higher now, even though people are more familiar with sature. I'm literally scared to try to think of an example more extreme than the reality, in case it becomes true! To be fair, the best satire might also be reality: pointing out other historical/geographic cultures where the healthcare situation is much worse than the USA and asking "do you want to be like that"?
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