A true positivist technocracy can be described simply as a devotion to scientific and technological development to the benefit of all.
I do not see how you would build a technocratic system without a devotion to science at all - the two are inseparably interleaved.
Does this make us heartless and elitist monsters? Of course not; we are human too, of course we care about our fellow man and progress in all sectors, not just the economy.
No, we are not heartless, but we choose to put science above other matters; because today we live in a world were the lowliest layman has more luxury than the European kings of old due to technological progress.
So today we discuss social responsibility and the healthcare system of the TEL.
Basic needs guarantee
First of all we want to guarantee that any citizen can get a place to stay and food at any time when in need.
Along with basic justice I see it as core to claiming you have a state at all.
This is a service that will be free and available to all. Since our citizens paid to become citizens, making sure that they do not end up on the streets or starve is the least we can do.
Additionally this is not that expensive for the government to provide though the living conditions provided may be Spartan and it is unbelievable that we have rich countries around the world letting their people lie on the streets.
The technocratic reasoning behind this is not that hard to understand; everyone can fall on hard times and future great scientists may be born poor - we must protect our people and work together because team work is and always has been the key to human survival.
What we will not have is socialist redistribution of wealth, you will never receive any money if you do not work.
That is a luxury, we will protect you, clothe you, educate you and provide you with the best possible market conditions and infrastructure, but you must grab your own future.
Revolutionary medicine
Now part of the reason this weeks update is late is that since the "Chimera program" will not be technically feasible for the next 30 years, I have had to look into conventional medical practices and try to apply some of that data to technocratic thinking.
Healthcare is also a need in a "heartless" technocracy, because everyone may have an accident or an unexpected decease and quick help from a doctor can mean the difference between a lifetime of productivity or death at little cost.
Obviously as technocrats we want to find quick, cheap and painless solutions rather than bicker about how much should be spent or who should pay up, so research in medical science is a must for our healthcare system.
Sounds obvious right? Well, we are the only ones who would be doing things that way since today most medical research is undertaken by private firms.
This means that today there is a huge incentive to develop symptom only treating pills that you can sell again and again and not a lot of work being put into permanently curing people or making them exercise.
I would suggest we make development of permanent cures a public matter as well as standard healthcare.
In time this will save costs and increase performance of the entire TEL.
Effective healthcare
So until super advanced technology arrives what to do?
Well I have looked at some very different countries and compared their systems.
Cuba uses 7.3% of their GDP for healthcare and are pretty poor to boot, but have a relatively very high life expectancy of 77.1 years and 1 doctor/175 people.
Italy spends 0.1% more than the OECD average of 8.9%, but have a life expectancy 2 years above OECD average at 80.5 years and 1 doctor/238 people.
Denmark spends 9.8% and are among the richest nations per capita, yet have a life expectancy of 78.6 years and 1 doctor/294 people.
USA, and this surprised me with all their uncovered people and low performance, spends 16% of their GDP and have a life expectancy of 78.3 years and 1 doctor/434 people.
Another large economy Japan has the freak numbers 8%/82 years and 1 doctor/500 people.
Warren Buffet about US health care, explains why this interests a technocrat:
“That kind of a cost, compared with the rest of the world, is like a tapeworm eating at our economic body.”
There seems to be a very clear trend in the data, which goes for many countries not listed as well, which is that many doctors means better results for the money. Also many decentralized doctors performing regular check ups seem to cut costs and prolong life.
One trend that you do not see is that money = solving problems. Indeed this is why technocracy is the way forward; data and facts simply show that it doesn't matter whether you are red or blue, it only matters how you solve your problems!
Since solving problems is the focus of technocracy we will quite simply outperform every other ideology out there - no matter our exact priorities. We could spend 1% of GDP and still do better.
Cuba additionally has a lot of focus on the diagnosis, basically they diagnose both mental, physical and social health in order to get the full picture right away and truly help.
They also focus a lot on preventive care.
So what gives with Japan, what explains that, they have much fewer doctors and yet do well?
As it turns out they are heavily focused on advanced and widespread use of scanning technology such as MRI!
Again and again early treatment, good diagnosing, preventive care and many decentralized doctors are much cheaper and much more effective than spending a lot of money.
With this in mind it should be obvious that the TEL healthcare system will focus a lot on exactly that kind of healthcare which will allow us to easily cover every citizen while still spending a major part of the budget on Death Star construction.
In a technocracy everything is under scientific scrutiny, even the way we save people, so we will try to do different things and see what works in different parts of our future nation.
As emperor I do not really have the power to mandate the exact approach, but now you know my recommendations.
If you have trouble remembering all the details on TEL, look at the fact sheet.
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_car ... ted_States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Italy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Cuba
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_car ... m_in_Japan
http://csis.org/blog/oecd-figures-health-care-gdp
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0934558.html
http://www.indexmundi.com/denmark/life_ ... birth.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_Denmark
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Japan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_in_Italy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... expectancy
I don't think that's a good idea. However, if it's a Steve Jobs, him living 2 more years would be worth that times a lot more. How do you find the right mix?