The latest estimate of deaths from the French heat wave is up to 10,000 or so. This raises a number of issues.
- How reliable is this number, of course, and what does it really mean? Most of the dead appear to be elderly and infirm in any event, and many would likely have been carried off by the next stressful event in their lives. Nonetheless, the number appears to reflect “surplus mortality” over a comparable period, so lets take it at face value for now.
- What does this say about the state of the housing stock in France? We are told that apparently the French are unacquainted with modern air conditioning, apparently because their weather is so mild. I seem to recall during the recent Tour de France coverage a great deal of commentary about how the heat is always an issue during this event, so I wonder about this. I also lived in the American South for several years without air conditioning, so I can assure that it is possible, and that in fact lots of people have, and continue to do so, without dying.
Nonetheless, in the US central air conditioning, never mind window units that can cool a single room, is standard equipment on most new houses regardless of where they are located (leaving aside Alaska). I live in Wisconsin, in the northern tier of states, and I can assure you this is true, and that many older houses, including mine, are retrofitted for central air. It is true that Chicago suffered some excess deaths during a heat wave a few years ago, but those were confined entirely to the very poorest parts of the city.
Permit me to draw a connection here between the better condition of America’s housing stock, its stronger economy and higher GDP, and its relative lack of government interference in the economy.
- What does this say about the state of socialized medicine in France? This is a nation, after all, that prides itself on its socialized medicine and other social services, but it would appear that these are precisely what failed to prevent so many presumably preventable deaths. It turns out that the nursing homes were grossly understaffed during the August holiday period.
Allow me to suggest a connection between the chronic understaffing of nursing homes and other health facilities in France and incentives to not hire created by all the worker protection legislation there. Allow me to further suggest that the practice of allowing employees to take vacations during August is a reflection of a culture that is focussed more on the needs of the employees than the customers, a classic symptom of either government employment or suppressed competition. Allow me to suggest that the sluggish response to the changed conditions of the heatwave is typical of top-down government-run systems.
Finally, to show the contemptible politicization of the health issues that occurs in socialized medicine, the following quote:
Many healthcare professionals – including the doctor, former health minister and founder of Médécins Sans Frontières, Bernard Kouchner – said it had been a disaster waiting to happen. “We are all to blame,” Dr Kouchner said, irritating many of his colleagues on the left, who had hoped the crisis would help them to destabilise the centre-right government and head off health reforms planned this autumn.
One is certainly left with the impression that members of the French health care system are willing to sacrifice patient lives in order to score political points in defense of the socialized status quo.
Yes it is another outstanding record of the rightist government (Chirac The Crook + Raffarin The Tacky) which preferred to cut hopsital budget by millions of euros rather than managing public service correctly.
You can take them both at your best convenience for further privatisation in the UK.
Kodiak
Chirac and Raffarin are rightist only in the French sense. In any other country they would be called left of centre. No French politician apart from Alain Madelin would be welcome in my house.
I’m still waiting for someone to claim that the heat wave is a result of the U.S. not signing the Kyoto treaty.
Certainly and surely the real killer of these people is the failed system of health care that has been begat by a dying system of government.
Then wait no longer, my feathered friend.
The Guardian on August 17.
Kodiak – of course, the fact that health care is a public service in France is what places it at the mercy of every crook and rapscallion to temporarily hold office.
Not to mention the more chronic structural problems that cannot be solved simply by increasing the rate at which other people’s money is shovelled into the bureaucratic maw.
Maybe Kodiak would care to remind us which side of the French political spectrum enforced this utter stupidity called the 35 hour worked week…
Besides, hospitals and retirement houses weren’t build yesterday sweetheart.
The Left looted (I mean, ruled) this country for the past 30 years and they apparently didn’t care to equip public hospitals and retirement houses with air conditioning.
But of course, they didn’t even care to have the transfused blood properly HIV-tested so why would they give a f* about air conditioning? What was that again? A french Socialist Prime admitting he’s “responsible but not guilty”?
Blame ChIraq and Ra-fout-rien for their own mistakes, and blame your adored Left for hers. What you fail to understand is that they were trained at the same school and play the same game.
They just have different names and colors on there tee-shirts.
As Edmund observed… Chirac and Raffarin “rightists”? That’s a good one.
(Btw, putting together the words “managing”, “public service” and “correctly” is a pretty good one as well.)
What does this say about the state of the housing stock in France? We are told that apparently the French are unacquainted with modern air conditioning, apparently because their weather is so mild.
This is a non-point.
The British, Germans and other northern Europeans are equally unacquainted with modern air-conditioning. Its not needed, currently, for the few hot days a year that there are. It would be a pointless waste of time.
OTOH Appartments in Southern France do have Air-Con, because they need it. From my experience of having a house in California and friend’s homes in MA, the construction techniques of Northern European homes make retro fitting something like Central Air to be practically impossible.
On the more serious issue of the French health service, it will be interesting to see how the chickens come home to roost on this. The Grande Vacances is a weird time to be in any of the cities and this looks like being the main culprit.
Reading articles recently on the numbers of US servicemen dying of heat related sickness in Iraq, the actual percentage of the total circa 0.01% seem similar and the cause is probably similar – people unused to heat don’t always realise when they are in need of liquids. I have read that the thirst trigger is actually not terribly efficient.
“Its not needed, currently, for the few hot days a year that there are. It would be a pointless waste of time.”
This was the view in the northern US as well, until the level of the nation’s wealth rose to the point that the “luxury” of air conditioning that was used only a few days per year became affordable. We have central air that we use only infrequently because we can afford it. The reason that we can afford it is that our economy is not so bogged down in government mismanagement.
I’m rather interested in how so many people died from heat when it wasn’t (by Southern California desert standards) all that hot. However, I don’t believe that lack of airconditioning or socialized medicine are to blame. I lived for most of my life in places where it was something of a relief when the temperature got down to 104. The public schools I went to had little or no air conditioning (at least, outside the administration building), and the health care system was irrelevant. Nobody died.
Did any French TV stations run public service announcements telling people how to deal with high temperatures? Or anything like that?
I work in the same division as a man who has just recently, this year, arrived in the US from France. I had read about the heat wave and inquired about his parents (they are elderly). In the course of our conversation he revealed that his parents didn’t even have a fan, let alone air conditioning. It’s just not something they would buy for themselves, even in this heat wave.
He didn’t seem to think his parents were in any danger. They open the windows, and as far as he was concerned that is enough. He saw no need for his parents to purchase a fan just for this once in a while heat wave.
I imagine if you only get heat waves once in a great while, you wouldn’t be prepared for them and people could easily die. They may not have realized how deadly the heat can be for the elderly because they don’t have heat waves that often. My French co-worker didn’t seem to think it was that big of a hardship on his parents. He was right, they are doing fine and came through the heat wave without even one fan.
Question:
10,000 deaths is quite a lot. Were the French media reporting the deaths all along or did it take the media by surprise as well? I know when we have severe weather, the media here report the deaths on a daily basis. I was wondering if such a thing happened in France, or in any of the other countries hit by this heat wave?
Kodiak said:
Yes it is another outstanding record of the rightist government (Chirac The Crook + Raffarin The Tacky) which preferred to cut hopsital budget by millions of euros rather than managing public service correctly.
Kodiak,
Roughly how big were the budget cuts? Do you have any links where I might find this? I’m trying to find the info on line, but am hampered by the fact that as a cultural savage, I do not speak French.
RK Jones
You call that heat, messieurs frogs? Come to frog-wrangling country, and I’ll show you some damn heat. 100 degrees F in the shade with 90% humidity. Yeah, it’s Mississippi, and we like it.
what i dont understand is why didnt the government or someone with half a brain in their head advise old people to half fill a tub with cool water and sit in it when they were feeling the heat. when i was a kid in nyc all the old people did that and most of them made it through the nyc trinity of hazy hot humid
RC Dean,
This was the view in the northern US as well, until the level of the nation’s wealth rose to the point that the “luxury” of air conditioning that was used only a few days per year became affordable.
Stuff and nonsense!
I’ve just got back from NE USA, I have UKian friends who’ve lived there for 4 years now. Every summer the temperature is in the 90’s or higher since they moved there.
This is the first summer since the early 90’s in the UK where its done the same. People in the South of France do own air conditioners, there is really no point in bothering in the North. The average temperatures are such that you might only need the aircon once every 5 years or so.
Besides, as I said, house construction techniques make retro fitting central air a waste of time. They did put it in some houses in Milton Keynes in the mid-70’s but it wasn’t a useful enough feature to sell much. OTOH, every house has central heating systems.
Dave, as someone who just retrofitted a 100 year old house with central air, I can tell you with absolute confidence that any house that has forced air heating can be easily retrofitted for central air as well. It took precisely two hours, and the drilling of two holes, the largest slightly over 1″ in diameter, to accomplish the retrofit.
When you say stuff and nonsense, exactly what are you dismissing? Surely not the idea that central air has spread further north as it has become more affordable?
has forced air heating
And if it doesn’t? Most houses here use water filled radiators.
When you say stuff and nonsense, exactly what are you dismissing? Surely not the idea that central air has spread further north as it has become more affordable?
No, the idea that its some facet of French economic poverty that stops people in Northern France from owning aircon while their Southern cousins do.
Its practicalities.
There’s been a week of consistently hot weather in the UK this summer where I’ve been tempted. But what the hell is the point of spending several hundred pounds on something I’ll use once this year and maybe not need again for another 4 or 5 years? Its a waste of money.
But Dave, my point is that what is practical is directly related to what is affordable.
I find it hard to believe that it is controversial to state that, if the French were wealthier, more of them would have some kind of air conditioning.
My experience is that people who can afford it are perfectly willing to spend money on air conditioning that is used infrequently.
And yeah, hot water heating systems take a lot more retrofitting than forced air. That just means it is more expensive, though, not that it is impossible, and we circle around once again to the notion that this kind of retrofitting would be done if people could afford it.
I am perpetually pleased by the points of view brought to light on this page. Especially since I do not travel, and seldom read something remotely concerning said which suggests something other than commercial travel, like the need for progress.
kudos from texas.
Heating ducts? Water heaters? Luxury lads, luxury. Here in Northern Ireland we had fireplaces and turf fires… which now you aren’t supposed to use because they cause so much smoke… and instead we’ve got electric heaters that heat up bricks at night and release the heat during the day… and really neat heaters that sit in the fireplace and pretend to be a fire.
Central heating? HAH!
“But what the hell is the point of spending several hundred pounds on something I’ll use once this year and maybe not need again for another 4 or 5 years? Its a waste of money.”
Yeah, I never understood that TV tax you guys have.
Those unfortunate recently deceased could have been saved with cold water. In other words a glass of water with ICE CUBES in it that was unavailable even in the HOSPITALS. I have made it through some massive heat waves without airconditioning with cool showers and cold drinks and so could have almost all of those poor unfortunates in France. What kind of advanced Socialist country can’t produce ice cubes?
Ten thousand is an extraordinary death count, and none of the explanations really add up to me (even when they reinforce my prejudices).
People from the mild, mild climate of England have been moving to brutally hot places like Mississippi, Africa and India for centuries without keeling over on the spot. And they did it wearing full dress military uniform and crinolines (though usually not at the same time).
Did all these folks outlive their children? Or have their children transferred all familial responsibility to the glorious state? How about neighbors, or pastors? This is as telling a story concerning the decline of family and community responsibility as I have ever heard.
Congratulations France, you have reached a state of nature equivalent to that of the noble Eskimo. Instead of abandoning grandma on an ice flow you broil her in her apartment.
What noble savages.
There may be another explanation for the French death rate: If one habitually drinks wine instead of water, one would tend to dehydrate and overheat more easily. I don’t have any idea whether the French eschew water more than the Germans or the Italians or the Spaniards, but there must be similar levels of socialism and high temperatures in the surrounding countries. Yet, so far as reports go, not so many deaths.
The other possibility that suggests itself is an informal institutional policy of letting the elderly die. Here in the US, there seems to be a prejudice against strenuous measures to treat those over about 75. The therapies that a 40 year old would be given routinely tend to be deemed a waste on an older person, regardless of his individual state of health/aging. I have to wonder if this isn’t a quiet consequence of the social welfare/social security system for the elderly: If you depend on the government to take care of you, you may trust that it will “take care of you” one way or another.
Ten thousand. That’s quite a few. Praytell, how many are left?
I say, let’s all pitch in and buy France an air conditioner!
Not to make light of a human tragedy, but here in Houston, Texas the temperature tops 100 degrees F. (100% humidity) more or less as a matter of routine.
I humbly submit that there’s much more wrong with France than the temperature.
Kenneth
Dr. Patrick Michaels had an op-ed on Foxnews.com, “Taxed to Death”, claiming that the green energy taxes imposed in France discourage fans and air conditioning. He cited stats showing that heat-related deaths have declined drastically in the U.S. over the last 50 years, which he attributes to affordable energy and air conditioning.
Bizarre comment by Romulus. There are lots of things that one could point to as wrong with France, but the health care system (relatively speaking) isn’t one of them. Yes; it is expensive if you are well: but if I were going to be ill I’d hope I would be in France at the time.
Better not to leave my implication implicit:–
We know about 10,000 French people. How many Britons would the soviet-model NHS have lost to 40 Celsius heat? How many did it kill off in our own, much milder, heat wave? Maybe we’ll be able to find out in a year or two when the figures become available.
Lets not get too excited though. Extreme weather does finish off people who are already weak. No system of government is responsible for that brute fact.
RDB – Very funny!
Re air conditioning, the south of France bakes every summer. It’s not rare. The vast majority – say 98% – of people in the south of France do not have air-conditioning in their homes – and most shops. French electricity rates (the monopoly power company is state-owned) are too high for most people to be able to run air-conditioners. The Spanish, Italians and Greeks have air-conditioning; the French, by and large, do not.
We have had a summer where temperatures got up to 110F and for days didn’t go below 100F. The rest of the three months has been in the mid-to-upper 90s. The temperatures are not unusual, although the duration is. Thus, there is absolutely no excuse for nursing homes and hospitals not to be equipped with air-conditioning. In fact, it’s criminal negligence. Old people in their 80s and 90s are not able to leap into ice cold baths, as has been suggested above, and most of their little sysems would be too delicate for such a thing even if they were mobile.
Doug Collins – The French do not traditionally drink wine instead of water. In fact, they buy bottled water in 1/2litre sixpacks – sometimes several sixpacks at a time, although most drink a little wine with their meals. Except those in hospital and nursing homes, who don’t get wine at all. Sometimes, when it cools down in the evening, the French will sit around with another glass or two, but they’re very moderate drinkers. Having lived in this region for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, they’re very well aquainted with the need to drink water.
This death toll is the result of criminal mismanagement. As Mark Steyn notes in today’s Telegraph, three deaths from cholera in Swaziland or somewhere and the French government is on its high horse and sending in Medecins Sans Frontieres and lecturing the United States on not spending enough money on Africa. 10,000 avoidable deaths in French hospitals and nursing homes and Jacques Chirac goes to Quebec on vacation.
Socialised medicine sucks, folks. You are completely at the mercy of what the state deigns to hand out to you.
Isn’t it refreshing that topics related to France are really helping increase Samiz’s feeble posting volume due to August turnout ?…
Edmund Burke: Alain Madelin is not only a complete loser with no oratory talent (even if he’s desperately trying to be more sonorous), no electorate credential whatsoever (not even in the polls…) & not even one single bit of political relevance. He’s also hypnotised by extreme-rigthtists you’d be appalled to “welcome in (your) house”.
Romulus: the only “dying system” I can see is the mental process that has you utter such nonsense about the best “system of health care” on Earth.
R C Dean: the French health care system is an efficient mix of powerful State management & private-run companies. Why it went wrong isn’t due to State, it’s due to lack of State: Chirac & Raffarin (two rightists I repeat) didn’t properly manage health industry as they should have. I agree “the more chronic structural problems” can be solved by letting the State do what it’s got to: assess, decide, finance, implement, monitor, adjust etc. Health workers are working like hell & delivering brilliant service to patients. What they need now is more staff, more facilities, more controlling tools, more money and, above all, more ambition.
Quoting you: “The reason that we can afford it is that our economy is not so bogged down in government mismanagement”. Are you referring to the recent power failure that plunged 50 million people (!!!) in the dark or to the latest hyperpower failure that plunged 23 million Iraqis in gloomy darkness?
TDF: yes, honey, Kodiak does care to remind you that the left hasn’t been ruling France for 30 years. Mitterrand got two 7-year terms (2 times 7 is 14, minus the couple of years cohabiting with Chirac, that’s close to 10, isn’t it?). Jospin (the former PM) got something like 5 years run the country. Altogether that’s 15 years or so, right? Not 30. 35h wasn’t an utter stupidity: its implementation was. One day, TDF, when you grow old, you’ll see that working time is diminishing (ask your grandfather) & that the trend is not Froggish, it’s worldwide (buy a book in economics). Again, allow me to repeat in case your your pretty little Norman ears are plugged with a Calvados cork: barking your astounding ignorance about French politics + labelling me a leftist isn’t going to get you anywhere. Compris? As for the leftist felony regarding the HIV outrage, I couldn’t agree more.
S. Weasel: “Ten thousand is an extraordinary death count, and none of the explanations really add up to me” + Ken: “I don’t believe that (…) socialized medicine (is) to blame”. It is not, you’re right. But the incompetence of the government is. Relevant sanitary watch wasn’t delivered. The IVS (Institut de Veille Sanitaire) andt its 300 staff were monitoring something like 30 diseases (mostly infectious ones) & various epidemics like flu, measles etc. They didn’t anticipate heat in summer (although Météo France claimed in April that a severe heat was possible in the next summer).
Chris: “10,000 deaths is quite a lot. Were the French media reporting the deaths all along or did it take the media by surprise as well?”. It was 50/50. Health workers had to shout like hell to make themselves heard.
RK Jones: one example is the freezing of 103 million euros (out of a 183-Mio-euro budget) that were intended for companies providing the elderly with specific housing & light medical service (maisons de retraite).
Scipio + Kenneth: every year they got 40° in Bordeaux with huge humidity (a storm every 2 days) >>> there’s a bit of regular surmortality (elderly), but nothing compared to the sad record we just had.
Akaky: you’re right. But the fact is that ageing organisms need being medically taken in charge (old people are facing a specific biological deterioration at work due to poor body reaction).
Rick Sasko: “What kind of advanced Socialist country can’t produce ice cubes?” Please see above.
Posie: air-conditioning isn’t necessary: a good fan with closed windows & closed shutters is enough to lower the temperature substantially (+ cool showers & baths + cold beverages). Air-conditioning may suit you. As far as I am concerned, I don’t like it except in emergency (burning, suffocating car) or in public places where I just transit (shops, airports). I turn it off in my office & I don’t want it at home. What the other French do? No clue. Some may well be addicted to air-conditionning.
As a conclusion & in spite all flaws, French longevity is only 3rd to Japanese & Australian & France’s health care system is simply the best.
RC Dean,
I don’t know about you but I don’t generally spend my money on things I’m probably never going to need.
Wealth has nothing to do with that calculation.
For example, I could afford a snow blower but why would I need one?
“There are lots of things that one could point to as wrong with France, but the health care system (relatively speaking) isn’t one of them.”
According to the articles linked above, there is indeed something very wrong with the French health care system. It is understaffed and underbuilt (that is, it lacks adequate facilities for caring for its elderly during a heatwave). There are also intimations of a deeper rot attributable, in my view, to socialism – a willingness to let understaffing reach catastrophic levels in order to avoid inconveniencing the staff’s vacation plans, a certain callousness toward the customer, and etc.
R C Dean,
Sorry but there’s no “customer”, just citizens, going to public hospitals. Customers are to be found in private clinics only. But there’s of course patient care in both cases (not just a dreadful customer service approach).
Flaws aren’t attibutable to “socialism” for France isn’t a socialist country. Anyway the flaws you mentioned (lack of staff & facilities) is only due to erroneous or pusillanimous management of State activity, not to State activity as such. Should all CEOs on Earth be fired because just one company would happen to be run by a clown? It’s the same with State management: we should fire at once incompetent managers & replace them with ambitious & competent leaders, not change our society orientations.
And before wondering if “there is indeed something very wrong with the French health care system”, you should have a glance at the extremely well performing NHS.
I think these figures are nuts. I’m a native Californian and 106F+ is just about when I think it’s getting REALLY hot.
We never had A/C when I was growing up, just a single wall unit in the combo living room/dining room. Most people didn’t have all-air in their homes until the 70s or 80s. In fact a lot of folks still don’t have it.
I don’t recall that old people were keeling over by the thousands in my neighborhood every summer.
Also, what’s up with the children and other family members of these unfortunate French oldsters? Did they not check in on Grandmere to see how she was doing now and then?
Why didn’t community groups organize to help themselves?
Also, why didn’t the other EU countries send aid and help?
Posie may have suggested the answer to the question that I was really speculating on with my wine drinking comment: Why France and not Italy or Spain, which must have had similar weather?
Her answer – which also answers the air conditioning debate : French electrical rates. These are the real cost of air conditioning, not the cost of the appliance. I guess all those nuclear plants haven’t really helped with the cost. Is that all socialism? My prejudices say yes, but I have noticed that here in the US, with electrical deregulation, the nuclear sourced electricity tends to be higher in cost, at least for the present. This is supposedly a result of amortizing plant costs.
Kodiak — your post about the health care system needing “more staff, facilities, controlling tools, money & ambition” — there’s no limit to the “more” the health care system will need. More will always be needed. My question to you is — why? Why aren’t the French people considered able to handle their own care? You talk about private clinics like they are backwards installations and totally unnecessary on top of it. I’d say they are quite necessary, if TEN THOUSAND elderly people have died in the public ones, for whatever reason.
I’d say the public clinics, being a permanent installation and apparently not subject to 1) peer review 2) competitive forces or 3) governmental sanction, and definitely not subject to protest by the people (we haven’t even heard if there was any, which either means the French in general don’t give a damn about their elderly or that their voice is as a mouse squeaking in the wilderness), on the whole need to be excised and the whole system turned private. Ten thousand deaths ought to tell anybody that something is very wrong.
But don’t let it shake your faith in the all powerful state at all, Kodiak. Of course they have your good health and best interest at heart…until you’re 75 or so, and you don’t have income to dump into the state accounts any longer. After all, the state is the whole reason for existence, so what point would there be behind your continuing to breathe? (Not to say that France is socialist, of course.)
Doug Collins – After British Electricity was privatised by Maggie, rates plummetted. But wait – you haven’t heard the best bit! — the French electricity company was selling electricity to English electricity companies for LESS than it was selling it to to French consumers — and wait, you haven’t heard the best bit! — the English freemarket electricity companies buying French electricity were still making money selling electricity to British consumers! So French consumers are shafted daily.
Nuclear generated electricity has been the norm in Britain and France since I was little. It’s not a point any more – except the Kyyyyooooto Treaty.
Hospitals and maisons de retrait – retirement homes – should have air conditioning as a force of nature. If the government hospitals are too mean-spirited to turn on the government-owned electricity to run their (non-existent) air conditioning most of the time, at least it would be available in crises. But no. They’d rather subsidise the TGV (the world class high speed train service, which is superb and very cheap) as a showcase for French engineering, than buy air-conditioning to allow hospital patients and the very elderly a measure of comfort. The TGV is French. Air-conditioning is an American invention.
Bottom line.
If I could insert a serious question among the bigoted ravings…
Kodiak wrote, “But the incompetence of the government is. Relevant sanitary watch wasn’t delivered. The IVS (Institut de Veille Sanitaire) andt its 300 staff were monitoring something like 30 diseases (mostly infectious ones) & various epidemics like flu, measles etc.”
Is the IVS the agency that’s supposed to notice lots of people are dying from the heat? From the (somewhat vague) English language reports I get the impression that nobody really noticed what was happening until it was too late.
Susan: maybe 45° is all right for you because you are young. The inquiry on elderly surmortality has already identified the main dysfunctions at stake; the reason why this happened in France only has not yet been elucidated. The sad fact is some old people do not have any close relatives or have some who don’t take care about them. But this alone can’t account for 10.000 deaths. No country was asked to send help for even the uncaring government haven’t seen the reality.
Doug Collins: pardon me if I got you wrong, but if you meant than French electricity is more expensive than -say- the UK one, it’s false; prices are the same. The US electricity is a bit cheaper, I reckon. Italian electricity is 50% more expensive than in France. Air-conditioning appliances are available from 1.500 euros on in every street-corner shop. Maybe the French aren’t accustomed to run air-conditioning in summer just for the pleasure of wearing animal fur coats over their bathsuits as they are in LA… 😉
Shana:
1/ “(…) there’s no limit to the “more” the health care system will need. More will always be needed” >>> actually the US system is devouring more money to deliver a much poorer service than the French one (absolute figures, figures per capita served, figures per service rendered etc).
2/ “You talk about private clinics like they are backwards installations and totally unnecessary on top of it” >>> I haven’t actually. Maybe your worn-out rightist rationale is getting you like Joan of Arc: hearing unpronounced voices.
3/ “Why aren’t the French people considered able to handle their own care?” >>> they are since the health system they wanted is at their service, not at the service of corporate interests.
4/ Striking health workers do work while they strike. That’s another French peculiarity & an example of the dedication of French nurses & doctors who are also highly appreciated all around the World.
5/ I’ve got no faith in the State: I’ve got an interest in the State, as all my fellow citizens too have. We’re indeed very proud of that.
Posie: what’s this obsession with air-conditioning? You can fight heat without it.
Ken,
The IVS failed to notice while nurses, doctors & thanatopractioners obviously noticed.
The time needed by medical workers to shake up the IVS, the media, the government & the rest was enough for many people to die.
Kodiak,
See my original post above. I was NOT referring to dumping a bunch of elderly into ice baths. From the reports I have read, many of the elderly that were in your wonderful state run hospitals were left to rot and die by the state paid staff (those that were not on a six week romp in the countryside that is) and were not given a simple glass of ice water to DRINK to lower their body temperature and hydrate themselves. Please ‘splain that…if you can.
*****
As for a “window unit” air-conditioner costing 1500 Euros…that is ridiculous! What does that price consist of pray tell? 300 Euros for the actual cost of the unit and 1200 Euros in tax maybe?
Kodiak–Sorry but there’s no “customer”, just citizens, going to public hospitals. Customers are to be found in private clinics only.
Well, there’s your problem in an utshell. A system which doesn’t understand that those who produce the money which support it and consume that which it provides are in fact customers. With a blindness like that it would be a miracle if they provide what people need rather than that which happens to suit the system.
It will be interesting to see how many old people die in France next time there’s a severe winter.
And equally interesting to see how they blame George Bush for that.
Andrew Duffin,
There will probably be less many French old people dying out of cold next winter as were Shiite Iraqis killed by George The First’s felony during the War in the Gulf.
Way to go totally off topic, Kodiak.
If you are referring to the US forces stopping at the border of Iraq, well, all the UN members demanding that they do so (including France) should stand ready to shoulder their share of the blame.
–I don’t know about you but I don’t generally spend my money on things I’m probably never going to need.–
Dave, like insurance?
Nelson Ascher at Europundits posted this:
Now I Understand
“Having just witnessed how coolly, disinterestedly and unemotionally the French, from their top politicians to the common-man-in-the-street, reacted to the cruel, unnecessary death of over 10.000 of their own countrymen, I’m beginning to get it. If what has just happened here didn’t move them a bit — and there was no scandal, no noisy outcry in the papers, there were no protest marchers on the streets, nobody asked for the government to resign – then isn’t it obvious that they’d see the American reaction to “only” 3.000 dead (out of a much larger population) in 9/11 as a kind of overreaction? Besides, if they don’t care for their own, why should it be expected of them to care for foreigners and, above all, American (and possibly Jewish) foreigners? America has just been given a lesson on how, according to civilized European standards, a country should react to the mass-death of its nationals.”
Sandy P.,
Here’s what you may pass on to Mr Ascher:
“The correlation insinuated is sordid. The conclusion drawn is pathetic. The allusion to the Jews is revolting. The passage as a whole is bitter deception”.
I’ll refrain from displaying numerous instances of how the USA took care of its own people. You’d be too happy to be fed this way.
Sandy,
–I don’t know about you but I don’t generally spend my money on things I’m probably never going to need.–
No, I’ve had occasion to use my household insurance, although its a close run thing cost wise.
I was thinking more like having a hot tub.
It would be a nice thing to have but do I really want to buy something I can only use every few years and then only for a few days? No, I have much better things to do with my money.
Sandy, do you own a boat?
As for a “window unit” air-conditioner costing 1500 Euros…that is ridiculous! What does that price consist of pray tell? 300 Euros for the actual cost of the unit and 1200 Euros in tax maybe?
1200 is a little high, 300 looks a little low. Checking US sites I see that the price is more like $500, its a little higher for a basic one in the UK but that’s about right.
There’s a more serious problem for this sort of thing in, for example, my house, which is placing the damn thing without changing all the windows or drilling holes in 12inch thick limestone.
Many UK houses have “swing” windows which pivot at the side which make the conventional US ones which sit in a sash window inpractical. So you need the more expensive floor standing units with a hose which can fit through an upper window.
Rick Sasko & Dave O’Neill,
I haven’t got any air-conditioning appliance but I received many commercial brochures about that with 1.500 euros as lowest price.
It’s not impossible that 1.500 euros is a bit expensive. That’s what I got in my mailbox though.
There has been a lot of profit taking in the recent heatwave which is undertandable and very free market so nobody here should complain 😉