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There are plenty of good answers about this particular question on private, paid fire services. Read the one posted by David Wayne. The bottom line is that one way or another, you have to pay upfront for services like that.After reading those, I saw this situation as a good lesson for those conservatives in rural counties that vote red and who love to say they hate government.It turns out that the government is a really good idea.And, to answer your question right now: No! Americans are not entitled to publicly-owned tax-supported services unless they pay for those services!And, for most people, they pay up front for government-provided first responder services—but even government-funded services are not always as simple as you might think.Oh, by the way: No. You’re not entitled at all! You have to pay.A LITTLE RANT, THEN A GREAT EXAMPLEThese services—whether provided by a government system or a private system—are funded on the same basis as private insurance.These rural voters like to rebel against paying taxes but then have no difficulty understanding their own private insurance. If they were to refuse to buy car insurance, and they were to total their car, they would understand that no insurance company is going to issue them a policy after the wreck that will cover the damage.But they are, clearly, surprised that other services work the same way.NOW THE EXAMPLEThere are disputes still today along the boundary between my home state of Virginia and neighboring West Virginia. West Virginia seceded from Virginia in 1861 because they opposed slavery. They took 38 percent of Virginia’s land and formed a new state in the Union.But not many people know that there was a move to form three states, with the third one lying between West Virginia and Virginia, to be called Kanawha.The counties that would have formed Kanawha are up along the mountain ridge and no one was really sure where the boundaries were, and those folks wanted out of the whole state thing anyway. If you’ve driven through there, you’ll see why—even today. But if you go, take an SUV.The brown counties are in Virginia. The yellow and green counties are in West Virginia. The green counties contain indistinct, very back-woods regions along the mountain ridge that wanted to form the state of Kanawha.Virginia-West Virginia BoundaryState of Kanawha - WikipediaBack in those days the layout of the counties was not strictly established and there were squabbles between people who lived there over which county they were in.Believe it or not, those ridge boundaries are still in dispute.The people who live in those green counties still have problems when they need first responders: which fire department will come, which ambulance, which police department. And sometimes it’s a stand-off and no one comes. And houses have burned down. And people have died.ADDENDUMAfter a few comments built upon this, I decided to insert this little sidebar to clarify the unbelievable problems where the green counties and brown counties touch.There are people on the eastern edge of the green, and the western edge of the brown that dispute which state they live in! They resist paying WV taxes and fees because they claim they’re in VA. Of course, when the VA folks come around, they say they’re in WV. The legal borders were defined by the ridge line and when you’re up there, where, exactly is that line?Because one commenter made the wise and logical statement that the state should fix this, I had to toss in this addendum to point out: which state?It turns out you cannot hate government—and protest and rant and rave about paying taxes—but then when you need a first responder still expect someone to come just because it’s an emergency.How many cliches on this come to mind? Duhhhh!So, the counties that at one point wanted to form the state of Kanawha give us a good lesson today that well-funded, well-organized government is not quite the bad guy that a lot of rural folks think it is.AND, THERE’S MOREIf you want another example, do some research on the failed bid to form the Free Republic of Franklin in some counties that are between Tennessee and North Carolina. Same mountain ridge. Same kind of people. Same feelings toward government.State of Franklin - WikipediaBy our Constitution everyone has the right to publicly hate the government—but if you do, and you refuse to pay for the services that governments provide—then if your house burns down you have to just get out, stand back, and think, Well, I love to live this way, I chose to live way, so this is on me!And you’ll have plenty of time to rethink your hatred of government while you rebuild your house.

For reasons that escape me, Americans don't seem to understand how good health insurance works. Essentially, it is a solidarity system where everybody pays their premiums into a big pot so that if they (or anyone else) gets sick, their expenses are covered. The motto here is "all for one and one for all", like the Three Musketeers.This only works, of course, if everybody contributes. If someone refuses to pay into the system, everybody else must make up the difference, so not contributing is selfish and antisocial.That's what America has today, and its motto is "every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost".In the current discussion, a lot of buzzword are being bandied about, including "Medicare for all", "single-payer" and "universal coverage." Lets look at what each of these means.In the United States, Medicare and the Veterans Health Administration are actually very like single-payer systems, except that they aren't really, because they allow private insurance companies to manage care in the program, which means the government is not the only payer of claims. Medicaid, on the other hand, is jointly funded by the federal government and each state government. So, although it's a form of government-funded health coverage, the funding comes from two sources rather than one.Universal coverage refers to a health care system where every individual has health coverage. To date, there are no less 32 countries with some for some form of universal health coverage. In Canada, for instance, there are no uninsured Canadian citizens; their government-run system provides universal coverage. BTW: Canada's government-run system does not provide coverage to undocumented immigrants, which apparently worries some Americans who would prefer to watch illegal immigrants die in the streets than offer them any kind of health assistance. So much for Christian values.Finally, there is something called "socialized medicine" which really scares the pants off lots of people in America. In fact, the U.S. Veterans Administration (VA) is already a good example of socialized medicine because the government not only pays for the healthcare but operates the hospitals and employs the medical staff. In Great Britain, the NHS, or National Health Service, works that way. It is often criticized for inefficiency, but in fact it works in so far as everyone in the United Kingdom can simply make an appointment and be treated with no questions asked (and no bills to pay). This is, of course, because everybody has already paid their premiums in the form of taxes.Today, 18 countries offer true universal health coverage: Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Others, including Austria, Belgium, Japan, and Spain, have near-universal coverage for more than 98 percent of their population.Where I used to live in Germany, there is universal coverage but no single-payer system. Instead, everyone in Germany is required by law to have health insurance through their employer who automatically enrolls you in one of more than 100 non-profit "sickness funds," jointly paid for by employees and employers.Alternatively, there are private health insurance plans available that offer benefits like single rooms in hospitals and the right to be treated by the head physician, but only about 11 percent of German residents choose them because they can be very expensive.Some experts have suggested that in the United States, government should fund a safety net for the sick and poor (sort of a deluxe version of Medicaid expansion) while requiring those who are more fortunate health-wise and financially to purchase their own policies. Theoretically, this would mean a national single-payer system without universal health coverage; given the political gridlock in America this is unlikely to happen anytime soon.My bet is that the U.S. will eventually wind up with some kind of "Medicare for all", which would at least be a lot better than today's dysfunctional system. In 2016, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, 28.1 million Americans were without any kind of health insurance at all. Yes, that’s lots better than the 46.6 million who had been uninsured before Obamacare was introduced, but it still means that the healthcare system in United States, while remaining the most expensive in the world, continues to lag far behind the rest of developed countries in terms medical assistance provided to its citizens.

Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt….The workers of the banana plantations in Colombia went on strike in November 12, 1928. The workers made nine different demands from the United Fruit Company:1. Stop their hiring practices through sub-contractors2. Mandatory collective insurance3. Compensation for work accidents4. Hygienic dormitories and 6 day work weeks5. Increase in daily pay for workers who earned less than 100 pesos per month6. Weekly wage7. Abolition of office stores8. Abolition of payment through coupons rather than money9. Improvement of hospital servicesThe troops set up their machine guns on the roofs of the low buildings at the corners of the main square, closed off the access streets, and after a five-minute warning opened fire into a dense Sunday crowd of workers and their families including children who had gathered, after Sunday Mass, to wait for an anticipated address from the governor. Survivors, popular oral histories and written documents give figures 800-3000 killed, adding that the killers threw them into the sea.Other sources claim that the bodies were buried in mass gravesThe Telegram from Bogotá Embassy to the U.S. Secretary of State, Frank B. Kellogg, dated December 5, 1928, stated:“ I have been following Santa Marta fruit strike through United Fruit Company representative here; also through Minister of Foreign Affairs who on Saturday told me government would send additional troops and would arrest all strike leaders and transport them to a prison in Cartagena; that government would give adequate protection to American interests involved”“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.” ― Smedley D. Butler,War is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America's Most Decorated SoldierSorrows of empireInstead of demobilizing after the Cold War, the United States imprudently committed itself to maintaining a global empire. This book is an account of the resentments our policies have built up and of the kinds of economic and political retribution that ... may be their harvest in the twenty-first century.-- Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (2000)World politics in the twenty-first century will in all likelihood be driven by blowback from the second half of the twentieth century -- that is, from the unintended consequences of the Cold War and the crucial American decision to maintain a Cold War posture in a post-Cold War world.-- Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (2000)A nation can be one or the other, a democracy or an imperialist, but it can’t be both. If it sticks to imperialism, it will, like the old Roman Republic, on which so much of our system was modeled, lose its democracy to a domestic dictatorship.-- Democracy Now! television program, 22 November 2010 - transcriptIn Blowback, I set out to explain why we are hated around the world. The concept "blowback" does not just mean retaliation for things our government has done to and in foreign countries. It refers to retaliation for the numerous illegal operations we have carried out abroad that were kept totally secret from the American public. This means that when the retaliation comes – as it did so spectacularly on September 11, 2001 – the American public is unable to put the events in context. So they tend to support acts intended to lash out against the perpetrators, thereby most commonly preparing the ground for yet another cycle of blowback. In the first book in this trilogy, I tried to provide some of the historical background for understanding the dilemmas we as a nation confront today, although I focused more on Asia – the area of my academic training – than on the Middle East.-- Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic (2006)The Sorrows of Empire was written during the American preparations for and launching of the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. I began to study our continuous military buildup since World War II and the 737 military bases we currently maintain in other people's countries. This empire of bases is the concrete manifestation of our global hegemony, and many of the blowback-inducing wars we have conducted had as their true purpose the sustaining and expanding of this network. We do not think of these overseas deployments as a form of empire; in fact, most Americans do not give them any thought at all until something truly shocking, such as the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, brings them to our attention. But the people living next door to these bases and dealing with the swaggering soldiers who brawl andsometimes rape their women certainly think of them as imperial enclaves, just as the people of ancient Iberia or nineteenth-century India knew that they were victims of foreign colonization.-- Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic (2006)