One and a Half Degrees

We all know the theory of 5 degrees of separation. We can debate its relative accuracy, but we know it is true more-or-less. Have you ever heard someone say, "I know someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows Kevin Costner."? Probably not. At five degrees of separation, it's not really "knowing" someone anyway. What matters most is that you know yourself, and that you know the people that surround you. These are the people that form your inner circle of trust. Not all of the people I know are trustworthy. I'm not afraid to associate with them, but I do try to avoid getting tangled up in any of their affairs; and I exclude them from my inner circle.

So when I need an answer to an important question, I first look inward, and then to my inner circle. But what if that's not enough? What if the answer lies outside of my inner circle? How far can you look outside of your inner circle before the information you receive becomes unreliable? At this point in my life, I've settled on a theory I call One and a Half Degrees of Trust: Trust yourself, trust your inner circle, and - by association - trust those few people whom your inner circle says warrant your trust. That's the limit. After that, it's just a crap shoot. There is a big difference between knowing and trusting. Leaders of nations know each other personally before they declare war on each other.

Why does any of this matter? It has to do with health care in the U.S., and the changes that are coming down the road. I've heard so many claims from those I don't trust, that sometimes I wonder what to think; but when I look inward, I know that health care is something everyone deserves - regardless of who they are and what they do. When I talk to people I trust, I often hear personal tales of woe centered on insurance abuses and outrageous medical bills. And when I talk to Canadians, they just shake their heads. How can we have such a poor system for health care, and why are we unable to fix it? I have yet to speak with Canadians who say their health care system is inadequate; and they all say it is cheap - the couple from British Columbia that I spoke with last week, said health care costs them about a hundred bucks a month. They wonder what we are waiting for ... and so do I.