Creating a "Culture of We"

I finally watched Michael Moore's SiCKO last week, and have been pondering it ever since. One line stuck out to me in particular, and that was someone in either Canada, Britain, or France (I forget now which place he was in at that point) explaining their nation's openness to nationalized health care by saying, socially, they have a "culture of we" whereas their perception of America is as a "culture of me."

That's very telling, and I would say, accurate, but not necessarily in the way the speaker thinks. As Moore illustrates in the film, for a culture of supposedly rabid individualists, we'll do just about anything for a neighbor in need: buy calendars; make straight-up donations; hold dinners, silent auctions, raffles, community carnivals, etc.

My question is - and has always been - why are we wiling to bend over backwards to raise thousands of dollars which, under our current health care system, makes really only a dent in the medical bills of the seriously ill and/or seriously poor, when we could be taxed an equal amount (or maybe even less than what we do in fundraisers) and everybody would just get the care they need when they need it?

This is where the "culture of me" comes in, I think. It's not that Americans aren't or can't be generous with our money, but we want control of where it goes.

We have a similar problem in the church. If we do a special appeal for a particular project, the money comes in, often much faster than we could ever anticipate (point in fact: we need a new fridge for the kitchen, which we announced the last Sunday in June - we met our fundraising goal this past Sunday, a mere three weeks later). If we would have just purchased the fridge out of general fund monies, it would have set us behind in our bills this summer, because getting folks to give to the general fund is like pulling teeth. I think we run a pretty tight ship, financially speaking, but nevertheless it's like the congregational mindset is not to trust the "institution" to spend their money wisely. But if they can give it themselves directly to a project, cause, or initiative they support, then they fund it very generously.

Extrapolate that now to the country - fiscal conservatives and libertarians are already naturally predisposed to distrust the efficiency and wise management of "big government," and you add to that the "culture of me" that wants to do good that I can personally see the results of and be generous to a beneficiary of my choosing - it's no wonder national health care has such a hard time gaining traction here, even though it's clearly in our best interest.

So here's the million dollar question: how do you take that generous impulse and bend it to create a "culture of we"? Will it only happen after enough people have been severely hurt by the brokenness of our current system? Or is there a way to draw it out of us, proactively, positively, before we get to that point?