I have a new column this week on OnlySky. It’s about the generous benefits that Israel provides its citizens, and whether Americans are paying for it.
In the richest nation in the world, millions of Americans go hungry, can’t afford health care or are weighed down by student-loan debt. Meanwhile, the far smaller and less wealthy Israel offers a broad range of safety-net and welfare programs to its people: universal health care, state-funded IVF, cash allowances for children, heavily subsidized tuition, and more. This feels especially infuriating, considering that Israel is far and away the largest recipient of American foreign aid since World War II.
Are we spending billions of dollars per year to lavish benefits on another country that we can’t have for ourselves, and getting dragged into globally disastrous wars in the bargain? What else could we be doing with that money at home, if we weren’t using it to fund campaigns of genocidal destruction?
Read the excerpt below, then click through to see the full piece. This column is members-only, so consider signing up! Members of OnlySky also get special benefits, like a subscriber newsletter:
Taken as a whole, Israel’s welfare state offers similar benefits to those that are available in many wealthy and developed nations, such as western Europe or Scandinavia. It’s not exceptionally generous by world standards, but it is generous by comparison with America’s skimpy safety net and crushingly expensive cost of necessities like education and healthcare.
And therein lies the rub—because, for decades, the United States has funneled billions of American taxpayer dollars to support and defend Israel. In effect, one could argue, we were paying for Israel’s people to enjoy benefits that we didn’t have for ourselves.
When lockstep alliance with Israel was a keystone dogma of both major party establishments, there was little chance of this cushy deal changing. However, polls show that voters’ support for Israel is rapidly declining—especially among Democrats, but among Republicans as well. Perhaps it’s time we reevaluated how much Americans are getting out of this special relationship, and what else we could be doing with that money.
I read the full article, and most of te comments. As someone who once lived in Israel (though not this century), I’d like to add a bit:
Israel’s national healthcare system was introduced in 1995, long after much of the safety net was in place. There is a reason this was done later, and also a reason it was done at all. Prior to the enactment of the National Health Insurance Law health insurance was provided via the same 4 funds (known then as ‘sick funds’ in literal translation). The biggest of them was Kupat Holim Clalit (The General Sick Fund) which was affiliated with the Histadrut – the general trade union federation. It had branches almost everywhere, accepted members regardless of health status, and membership in the sick fund also included union membership. This meant that Clalit members supported the maintenance of the unions and the various services they provided (including a large network of public libraries, sports clubs, a daily newspaper, somewhat subsidized supermarkets and who knows what else). So the Labor Alignment (which had the majority in the Histadrut) was opposed to nationalizing healthcare.
The three other sick funds, besides being smaller, operated differently. They refused to insure people with certain chronic illnesses. On the other hand, they provided more services (IIRC on a tiered basis), and allowed patients to choose their doctors from their networks. (In Clalit you got assigned a primary provider based on your address.)
In the mid 90s the number of uninsured Israelis was getting to 5%. At the same time the sick funds, and especially Clalit were in debt. Thus Rabin’s Labor government ended up passing the National Health Insurance Law. The required Health Basket was based more or less on the services that Clalit provided at the time. This is the level of healthcare one gets via taxes. And similar to the original Clalit model, a Health Service Fund (they all renamed after the law passed, and also stopped referring to members as ‘patients’) is not allowed to reject anyone who wants to join it on the basis of age or health status. What they can do is offer packages of additional services for extra fees, and these packages are offered on a selective basis. So if you are better off healthwise and economically you can have access to better health services, but the level available to everyone is pretty decent.
Ending the link between Clalit membership and union membership caused union membership to nosedive (1.8 million members to 200,000 over a short period), extremely weakening unions. (They have since recovered somewhat and now have about 800,000 members)
Thanks for that history! That’s good context to know.
It sounds a lot like why American unions supported the Affordable Care Act. Tying health insurance to employment was beneficial for union membership, even if it was bad for society as a whole.
Since all of US foreign aid is typically 1.5% of the budget, simply cutting it (whether just to Israel or all of it) is not going to make a difference in the US safety net. What needs to change is the attitude of those in power in the US. There needs to be a return to the FDR model of the government’s role and the meaning of freedom. Remember ‘freedom from want’? The problem isn’t lack of money for spending on the social safety net, the problem is lack of will to do so – in part due to the greed motive of corporations and their owners and in part the beliefs of many Americans that certain people are undeserving of services, or of a decent life at all.