How can anyone be against universal health care?

[Ooberman]

It may cost some extra money, but when was money more important than health?

[Goat]

[Replying to post 118 by Ooberman]

Wow, Ooberman, you have a lot of faith in the state.

It's better than trusting corporations, or 'the free market economy' myth.
'

[help3434]

[Replying to post 120 by Goat]

What is better is being skeptical.

[Goat]

[Replying to post 120 by Goat]

What is better is being skeptical.

One should be skeptical, but one should also realize , sometimes the best solution is not always a great solution. It certainly is obvious to me that the government does certain jobs better than a free market economy... and, it just so happens two of those things are education, and health care.

If you care about the average citizen, rather than just the rich, that is.

[olavisjo]

.

I find it fascinating Christians aren't on the same page about these matters. These are not small things. How we (the people/government) treat the least among us, etc.

I don't think that we disagree about the need to take care of people. The disagreement is about who is best suited for the job. He feels that the government is not the right entity to take care of this (think USSR). The private sector is far better and more efficient at dealing with most problems than the public sector.
In the USA health insurance is available for most people through workplace plans. Why? Because if you are healthy enough to work, you will probably not need a lot of healthcare. If you are not working the insurance companies don't want to touch you. It is facts like this that makes health insurance problematic to have the private sector be the one to deal with it.
Medicine just can't be a profit driven concern. It must be built on a foundation of ethics alone.
At first a one payer system will be a fiasco, but over time it will improve.

[JoeyKnothead]

From Post 107:

You don't have to let the insurance companies make the decisions if you don't want. The only reason they can make decisions is because you personally gave them that authority voluntarily, when you signed the contract.

I can dig it. If I ain't uprooting my own goalpost, or offering an ad-hoc argument after you've mentioned a very legitimate point, I would add...


We can also add maybe even it's a noble idea that the free market is there, and that I do have options even if I stick to insurance, or I can just pay out of pocket when I'm able (as opposed to losing everything I own to a condition that we may rightly determine to be even less than traumatic, but danged if it doesn't bankrupt me all the same). Then on the issue of bankruptcy, we must consider that not everyone would declare bankruptcy - out of pride, lack of understanding, or any other legitimate, and non-nefarious reasons, and so where's that money coming from, if not through potential increases in my own insurance rates, or from taxes. Having mentioned the non-nefarious, we should now include nefarious reasons, but my aim here ain't to just get onto folks for them making the best decisions they know how to make, especially when it comes to health care.


My concern still lies with the poor, who are unable to afford insurance, and how they're impacted by an ideology that renders down to "No money, no access". As well, many poor uninsured, or just plain uninsured, ostensibly use the emergency room as a doctor's office (no nefarity), and so we have the issue of our insurance rates and / or taxes, being inflated (where we say it ain't right 'cause it ain't me who caught it, or spread it). There's also the issue of delayed treatment, and the potential for needlessly inflated costs there associated. I would include in this scenario the issue of children, who through no fault of their own, don't receive proper care, including even "inexpensive" care, but dangitall them kids caretakers can't spend what ain't there to get spent.


On the issue of insurance companies, they have a vested interest in keeping costs down, and that can be a good thing when considered against rapidly rising costs. However, they also have a vested interest in keeping folks from even going to a doctor / hospital, much less any following issues of care versus efficacy (no nefarity need be implied here). We also consider the issue of those with pre-existing conditions, and how the potential and often real inability to afford insurance, much less increased rates, may impact their own quality of care. Of course I agreed above that the free market tries/would/could/does work to overcome these certain matters, but there they are.


On the issue of government sponsored / provided healthcare through a system of taxes or such, my position is that the government has a role to play in helping at least those among us who can't afford medical care, up to and including the cost / health impact of those who may even be a bit better off, but with such pre-existing conditions they might fall prey to a certain level of "compoundingly worse for just having the condition" (rather nebulous term, but we can work it out in time). I'm talking real, go see a doctor every once in a while for a physical and a set of points and plugs medical care. Not just the "emergency room as doctor's office" care the US is fortunately so great at providing, in both terms of outcome and pay considerations.


We now think of some moral and other considerations, that maybe they ain't directly related to healthcare, but maybe we might think they're important to ponder on anyway...


In a nation, that prides itself on its "exceptionalism", and that don't hafta be a bad thing, can we really lay claim to such a term when so many other good, right, nice, friendly, allied, and just all around decent countries offer a health care package that doesn't rely on ya going broke so you can experience the latest craze in heart attacks? In cancer? In stomach aches?


In a nation, or heck, a world of people who declare ourselves moral and caring, do we have a right to say we are when so many can't even talk to a doctor, without they gotta get them a heart attack, or the cancer? Or lop them a limb off?

In government run healthcare, a pencil pusher makes a decision based on convoluted government regulations that are designed to favor political contributors, and that is done without your personal authorization of anything.

I've yet to meet me an insurance salesmen that didn't have him a stockpile of pencils and erasers, and the knowledge and motivation to use 'em both, but only at his convenience. I've dealt with insurance companies, and find the charge of "convoluted" ought never be used when one has to dig through their own reams of paperwork to find it.

I respect that you may prefer the "pencil pushing insurance salesmen, and his convoluted plan" over the government's "pencil pushing bureaucrat, and his convoluted plan".

What I don't respect is the complete lack of self-awareness of those who can't even tell it's their own projector bouncing images back to 'em.

What's so different about their ("favor...contributors"), in an environment where we have a vote, compared to I pay my insurance on time all the time, I still risk getting dropped ("favor...anyone but the most healthy") over an ingrown toenail if I didn't have sufficient love in my heart when I crossed me a t, or god forbid forgot to dot me an i back in '82?

Insurance companies, as corporate entities, have no soul, and no real commitment to those in need, beyond what positive PR they can wring from the suffering of those who find themselves in need of care. They have "fiduciary responsibilities", they have "profit / loss margins". The have, "I'm so sorry to hear you have the cancer that I just can't hardly eat this surf and turf your payments helped pay for. And I'm just so sorry I could spit about how you didn't mention that hangnail back there when you was so young you didn't even know what a hangnail is. Request for a reasonable quality of life denied due to pre-existing condition."

Is this what we want in society, a business that sees a potential vacation, or Christmas bonus at risk, cause someone has the selfish need to live?


I think it far more reasonable to have a situation where we look at those in need, and we tell 'em how quick we're getting 'em to a doctor, and how slow we'll be in bankrupting 'em for having done it. A universal system is doable. It is the morally right thing to do.

Leave the free market open to those who feel they need an extra helping.


This stuff here is not directly related to the post in question, but I feel it needs it a telling...

It is a most specious and dastardly argument to sit on the side opposing, and in the case of some, opposing tooth and nail, government run healthcare, and many other services for the less fortunate, while claiming government can't do anything right. Government can't do right what we do our best to keep it from doing at all.

If only I was the one that saw it, I saw in the past few decades a deliberate and concerted effort by far right folks, under the guise of their wealthy patrons, to undercut, underfund, prevent, block, piss on, obstruct, defame, and everything else they can to destroy some of the most noble, necessary, and important sectors or functions of a once strong and capable, if human, government. These folks are typically those who can afford private schools, private insurance, private communities, and not just private chamberpots, built of the finest craftsmanship, gold laden, and covered in the bloody diamonds wrenched from the still warm hand of its dead finder, but they have their own private poor to dump it for 'em, and they by god better not be asking for enough money to feed themselves for their efforts, that's just class warfare! The poor should be proud of the privelege to smell my protein rich, champagne scented effluence!


The poor live exposed to the damage that is shrinking school budgets, and active efforts to undermine the quality of education such shrinking budgets are already harming. The poor are exposed, stripped naked down to their pride, to the whims of the rich and moreso the super-rich, who find spending to help the poor see a doctor is some "communist plot" to have all those unwashed poors get healthy enough they're able to muster their last bit of starving strength for one last bum rush of the yachts of the rich, if only to ask if they can just steer it for a minute or two, 'cause you can bet that's their plan, but that ain't enough for the poors, oh heck no, those scoundrels, they wanna top all that off with putting their filthy fingers in the garlic and herb infused butter the rich man can't possibly eat his lobster without, just to watch it be thrown away, in the perfect metaphor of the plight of our nations poor, only to have one's personal chef fix 'em up another'n, but this time in a bowl untouched by unwashed, disease ridden vermin that are this world's poor.

It is a disgrace of a human being that would begrudge the poor their health, their education, and their pleasures, simple as they be. It is a shame that a human being would use the tactics of the extreme, and not so extreme right, for any reason. It is a bubbling, festering, oozing, sypilitic pox on humanity that those at the very top of the income scale should find themselves so shocked they'd spit out their cavier, should they dare hear of some poor dude on food stamps buying his birthday boy that shrimp ring he asked for, instead of the feces laden bags of moldy grain the rich have so kindly reserved for the exlusive sale at the only stores the poor can access.

Shame on every dang one of y'all that think it, act it, or legislate it, or ain't upset about it. Shame on every dang one of you soulless, morally empty abusers and deniers of this planet's poor, and if doesn't bother you too much to do it, ask that butler of yours to get onto that Nanny of yours for not raising you right.

[nayrbsnilloc]

[Replying to post 124 by JoeyKnothead]

I agree with you in two major aspects:
1)The plight of the poor is (at times) a terrible travesty
2) Exploitation of a group of people based on how much money they have should not happen.

However, you advocate aiding the poor and ending their exploitation by exploiting the rich. Because they have extra, they won't miss it that much if we take it from them and give it to those who need it. This is a double standard.

Yes, those with extra SHOULD help out those in need. Kindness, generosity, and empathy are also widely considered high in moral character, and Morality is pretty widely considered a good thing, pretty much by definition. However, forced "morality" is a perversion of the entire concept.

[Goat]

[Replying to post 124 by JoeyKnothead]

I agree with you in two major aspects:
1)The plight of the poor is (at times) a terrible travesty
2) Exploitation of a group of people based on how much money they have should not happen.

However, you advocate aiding the poor and ending their exploitation by exploiting the rich. Because they have extra, they won't miss it that much if we take it from them and give it to those who need it. This is a double standard.

Yes, those with extra SHOULD help out those in need. Kindness, generosity, and empathy are also widely considered high in moral character, and Morality is pretty widely considered a good thing, pretty much by definition. However, forced "morality" is a perversion of the entire concept.

Yet, when it comes to 'morality' and the 'act of charity' to help the poor,.. guess what.. it doesn't happen when it is not out there.

I mean, it's not a double standard for having the people who have more money pay into the pot. I mean, taking 10,000 bucks from a multimillionare won't mean a thing, but take 15 bucks from someone who is poverty, they might not be able to feed their kids. It's a matter of practicality.

The progressive taxes are put into place to attempt to get a better distrubution of wealth so there is a healthy economy. Supply side economics does not work. Having a healthier work force means you have a more productive work force.

[WinePusher]

All really insightful if true, but it's not.

For example, the most atheistic countries also tend to be the most Socialist. They give about 50% of their income in the form of taxes to help EVERYONE in their country.

They don't give 50% of their income in the form of taxes, they have 50% of their income forcibly confiscated from them in the form of taxes. If you seriously want to suggest that atheists give more than how come atheists can't give voluntarily? Why do they need the government to do it for them?

Because free market healthcare is better than government run healthcare. Do I really need to list the reasons? With the free market you would get lower costs, higher efficiency, better quality.

This isn't true, though, and, even if true, the thing you are missing is that only a few people benefit from those wonderful things.

I'm sure Bentley's are nice cars, too... Now, how does that help the average guy trying to get to work?

Cars, in general, are delivered through the free market. The government has not socialized the automobile industry and whataya know, the car industry functions wonderfully. Lower costs, higher efficiency, better quality and many poor people own some type of vehicle.

The more amount of competition, the better. The increased competition between healthcare providers lowers costs, would force them to increase their efficiency in order to attract consumers and provide better quality care.

When has chasing the lowest cost been good for quality?

Competition forces firms to lower costs and improve their quality, both of which benefit consumers. What, are you really saying you don't want healthcare costs to come down?

The problem of the free market fantasy is that once you get to about 20% profit, you stop attracting the best and brightest.

The only reason for people to get into the business is for the profit.

Yea, and profits is what makes the market function properly. If a healthcare provider isn't making profits that means they are obviously doing something wrong. They will seek to attract consumers to partake in their services by improving themselves through a variety of ways, such as lowering costs and increasing their efficiency and quality. Profits are signals that tell businesses what to produce. If there were no profits to be made in healthcare then there would be very few hospitals, health insurance companies, clinics, etc.

The free market doesn't have a ledger column for "Public Good". It's all about the money.

Everything is all about the money. There is no such thing as a free lunch. If you want healthcare to be completely free it is never going to happen. Somebody has to pay for the resources.

The State, inherently, isn't concerned about the profit and shouldn't be.

So what is the state concerned about?

I would keep a basic healthcare safety net that would take care of people with 'limited IQs.' I wouldn't socialize the entire system though because it wouldn't work.

So, you put the burden on only those people who would want to help a societal problem?

How is that fair?

No, I would keep a small and basic social safety net that would take care of people who truly needed the help. Yes, it would be socialist in nature. But it would be small.

You are simply wrong, winepusher. Using the State as as a tool of the people to help the people is a reasonable and logical thing to do.

Except doing so would only worsen the problem. How would the state go about reducing poverty? Has welfare or food stamps actually reduced poverty? Giving $100 to a poor person does not reduce poverty in any way, it merely perpetuates it and creates a culture of entitlement. Giving education, job training, and occupational skills would reduce poverty. Unfortunately, that isn't something you seem interesting in doing.[/img]

[nayrbsnilloc]

Yet, when it comes to 'morality' and the 'act of charity' to help the poor,.. guess what.. it doesn't happen when it is not out there.

I mean, it's not a double standard for having the people who have more money pay into the pot. I mean, taking 10,000 bucks from a multimillionare won't mean a thing, but take 15 bucks from someone who is poverty, they might not be able to feed their kids. It's a matter of practicality.

The progressive taxes are put into place to attempt to get a better distrubution of wealth so there is a healthy economy. Supply side economics does not work. Having a healthier work force means you have a more productive work force.

The problem results in a contradiction of principles. On one side is the principle of fairness and equality. On the other side is the principle of freedom and the right to personal property.

People that view fairness as a greater quality advocate for the social reform and welfare. People that view freedom as a greater quality advocate for the prevention of legalized plunder. (little bastiat reference for those who care)

I personally do not think that equality is mandatory, nor do I want total equality. To clarify: I am an advocate for totally equal rights, but that is not the same. That is what freedom is - Equal Rights. Someone should have the right to retain their personal property regardless of how much they have in comparison to others.

Those are the positions on opposite sides of the principle spectrum. You may say that it is impractical and that the proper place to be would be somewhere inbetween, in the middle of the spectrum. This is where I disagree.

Pragmatism and Principles are mutually excluse concepts. In choosing a "practical" solution, you inevitably sacrifice some part of your principles and you have to choose which one is more important and which one you give up.

[Goat]

Yet, when it comes to 'morality' and the 'act of charity' to help the poor,.. guess what.. it doesn't happen when it is not out there.

I mean, it's not a double standard for having the people who have more money pay into the pot. I mean, taking 10,000 bucks from a multimillionare won't mean a thing, but take 15 bucks from someone who is poverty, they might not be able to feed their kids. It's a matter of practicality.

The progressive taxes are put into place to attempt to get a better distrubution of wealth so there is a healthy economy. Supply side economics does not work. Having a healthier work force means you have a more productive work force.

The problem results in a contradiction of principles. On one side is the principle of fairness and equality. On the other side is the principle of freedom and the right to personal property.

People that view fairness as a greater quality advocate for the social reform and welfare. People that view freedom as a greater quality advocate for the prevention of legalized plunder. (little bastiat reference for those who care)

I personally do not think that equality is mandatory, nor do I want total equality. To clarify: I am an advocate for totally equal rights, but that is not the same. That is what freedom is - Equal Rights. Someone should have the right to retain their personal property regardless of how much they have in comparison to others.

Those are the positions on opposite sides of the principle spectrum. You may say that it is impractical and that the proper place to be would be somewhere inbetween, in the middle of the spectrum. This is where I disagree.

Pragmatism and Principles are mutually excluse concepts. In choosing a "practical" solution, you inevitably sacrifice some part of your principles and you have to choose which one is more important and which one you give up.

Frankly, I don't give a good darn about 'balance of principles. I am worried about people getting healthcare. Period. End of story. And no, pragmatism and principles are not mutually exclusive. You can COMPROMISE to achieve a solution.. and that is both principled and pragmatic. Only those who are too rigid to do anythinG BUT what they want will not compromise. That isn't principled, that is egotistical.