If a private health care system can deliver world-class results elsewhere, then why can’t it do so here?
It can, and does, but only for the wealthy or well-insured. It certainly does not for the 17% of the population that is not insured.
Why would the public health care system be insufficient to meet the needs of the taxpayers?
Needs is ambiguous here. The wait time for non-critical, deferable procedures will always be a subject of contention, and the rich will always be able to jump to the head of the line
Why is a private system necessary to supplement the public system?
Because the wealthy can pay for the greatest convenience and exotic treatments
What happens if this private system doesn’t exist elsewhere?
Nobody is proposing banning the private practice of medicine. How could this even be accomplished worldwide?
How can we be sure that the private system will exist elsewhere?
See answer above.
How do we decide who gets access to the cutting edge technologies and treatments? How do we know that these technologies even be developed in a public system?
All health care is rationed. America’s current rationing system is inefficient because it does not distribute health care evenly, cutting off the indigent from even preventative care. A national health care system would ration care by more equitable decision rules.
Do you think that it would fair to have someone pay for his public health insurance, and then pay again for private treatment if the wait is too long?
“Too long” is not an arguable point. The wait will always be too long for some people, even under our current system. We have to consider the total performance of the system, not just isolated ancecdotes.
What about people who aren’t rich, and can’t afford to go elsewhere for treatment? Do they just have to wait?
People who aren’t rich don’t even get to wait in the US. If they are not insured they have trouble getting even emergency care, and then they are crushed under medical bills for the tardy and inferior care they do receive.
I asked you to think about these questions--not give me more these smug, pert left-wing talking points.
Okay, let’s work our way through these one at a time. Please tell me where you got the 17 percent number noted above in bold. Please tell me what is the nature of the poll (time series, cross-section), and tell me whether poll’s subjects were tracked over time, or if it was a snapshot at a given point in time. Finally, can you tell me why the uninsured people in the poll were uninsured?
Please define health insurance, and tell me the difference between health care and health insurance.
You said that you would rather crawl away and die in the wilderness than accept government-provided medical care. My definition of responsibility is to establish the correct balance between what we owe to ourselves and what we owe to others. You and I have made different decisions in that regard.
Mine is a struggle I dont expect you to understand and thats ok. It isnt about some lofty principles I have held myself to and expect of others as well. I was self-serving and irresponsible for too much of my life. I did not give to family and society during that time what I could have and should have or even wanted to. I dont blame individuals for everything wrong in their lives as I see and have lived the devestation that getting sucked in to the dark side of our society can bring people. It’s much harder to give myself that same break though. Accepting government aid is only part of it. As I said, being a drain on my family is unthinkable and THAT was my main point. When people HAVE worked hard and made the sacrifices to secure a life for themselves and their families, they deserve to reap the FULL reward. And I believe they have the responsibility to give back to their country and community for making that possible. That should be choice and done because it is the right thing to do, not because a government decides they should. But, personal and social responsibility are learned and cannot be mandated. And the more it is mandated, the less it will be taught.
I agree with your definition of responsibility. But the balance needs to be sought by the individual not the government.
It is extreme because it does not recognize that an advanced society is characterized by interdependence of its members. You have benefited from countless subsidies and aid from others throughout your life, yet you pretend that everything you have is independently “earned” and that you are solely responsible for your current condition.
I dont pretend anything. Our interdependence is exactly what I am focused on. But interdependence and dependence are not the same thing. The former requires all involved bring something to the table. If a team has players that dont make plays they sit the bench. I see redistribution proponents such as yourself as the Little League baseball parents who jump up and down and insist that their son, who really doesnt want to be there anyway, recieve a starting position. The coach (conservatives) refuses to sit one of the hard working players that earned their position and the parents scream that he is playing favorites.
You are reacting to what you consider the dire threat of the US government providing health care to its citizens, irrespective of economic status.
I havent seen a plan worth reacting positively to. We applaud Robinhood because he steals from the bad rich guys to help the good poor people in need. But this isnt Sherwood forest. In the real world stealing is stealing.
You seem to have a big chip on your shoulder regarding advanced education. I don’t have a PhD, but I respect PhDs. One of the benefits of advanced education is that it provides broad knowledge of cultures, systems, and history outside of one’s own community. You would benefit from some of this education.
Advanced education isnt the problem. My problem is with people who seem to think that knowledge and wisdom are the same thing. Like most everything else in life, it isnt so much what you have, but what you do with it.
You probably like apple pie too, but that doesn’t help me understand what changes you want to make to our society. Is there anything we can add or build to make things better, or do you believe only in tearing down and taking away?
I dont believe in taking away and tearing down at all. To eliminate something that is ineffective and counter-productive isnt taking away, it’s adding to. Something positive can fill the void left by it. I wasnt asked what changes I would like to make to society. There are many. They are all additions, built on what are already firm foundations. Im a builder. I believe that if youre going to do something, you should do it right. Ive spent my life tearing down and rebuilding things that were thrown together to make a buck. I call it eye-wash. It may look good on the surface, but without attention to every detail, it wont stand up to use and abuse.
It has been decades since I was in college, but I have never stopped learning. You should start. A good beginning would be to read some political philosophy. It will teach you that you are not responsible for everything that has happened to you, and that the decisions governing the organization of society influence the lives of the people living in that society.
I dont need a book to tell me what I am and am not responsible for.
You make a great many assumptions about me. First, because you recognize that I am politically conservative, you are incapable of actualy hearing what I am about. Your political philosphy is a filter that skews the picture before you. Second, I doubt you can take me seriously because you know I have no formal education. Because much of your own value is found in identifying as an educated intellectual, you devalue me because I am not. I judge a man by his heart because thats where I find worth in myself. We are words on a page here. I have always attempted to put *ME* on the page but you arent capable of seeing that. I cannot judge your heart only your intellect because thats all you offer. I wont bother interacting with you again because you only look to bolster your own self-image through confrontation with other intellects.
Wisdom comes as much from what we dont understand as what we do, and character comes with the ability to admit it
No, no offense to you Jose. I just think we’ve thrashed this clown half to death, and I’m bored of his inane and inept handling of the topic. If he was intellectually honest, he might learn a little bit about some of the lies he’s been clinging to, but I wouldn’t hold out for that. I think we should stop entertaining his foolishness, now that he has proven his foolishness, but if you feel the desire to glean more humiliation from him, by all means, have at it.
Meliorist has given it his best, and he has publicly caught himself in the web of his own ideology. He has articulated the Left’s best arguments for universal health care quite well, and he has come up empty handed.
Thus, he has proven to me without question that the Left’s best arguments for universal health care provided by the government and funded by compulsory taxation are vapid, inane, and Utopian fantasies dreamed up by people who can only be described as Marxists engaging in class warfare based on envy alone.
Please tell me where you got the 17 percent number noted above in bold. Please tell me what is the nature of the poll (time series, cross-section), and tell me whether poll’s subjects were tracked over time, or if it was a snapshot at a given point in time. Finally, can you tell me why the uninsured people in the poll were uninsured?
Please define health insurance, and tell me the difference between health care and health insurance.
My estimate of the uninsured was approximate, but studies show a range of 14% to 19%, depending on how you define uninsured. Even at the low end of the estimates, we are talking about tens of millions of people.
In 2006, 43.6 million persons of all ages (14.8%) were uninsured at the time of the interview, 54.5 million (18.6%) had been uninsured for at least part of the year prior to the interview, and 30.7 million (10.5%) had been uninsured for more than a year at the time of the interview.
Medical insurance is the only way people with low or middle-class incomes can afford medical care for non-trivial conditions, because medical care in the US is extraordinarily expensive. Although emergency care is available as a last resort, patients are still expected to pay for it, and hundreds of thousands of Americans are forced into bankruptcy each year by overwhelming medical bills.
We don’t have a private health care system in America; we have a reverse lottery, in which winning means not getting sick. Should you become seriously ill with a chronic ailment, you are likely to be ruined financially - for no fault of your own. Even middle-class Americans live in dread of losing their medical coverage, because it means likely impoverishment if they should become seriously ill.
Actually, the number that you cited (everyone uses it) came from the US Census Bureau (http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/hlthins/hlthin06/hlthtables06.html). You should go through it and try to break down the 48 million uninsured number, asking yourself who is uninsured; why are they unisured; what recourse do they have, and so forth. A few salient points emerge when you go through this exercise:
-many of the uninsured are only temporarily uninsured.
-many of the temporarily uninsured are moving between jobs.
-many of the uninsured are already covered by Medicaid and Medicare, but haven’t signed up.
-many of the uninsured are young (18 to 24), i.e., they are taking a chance that they will not get sick.
The fact is that health insurance is not the same thing as health care, and some people simply choose not to insure. This doesn’t mean that they don’t get care if they need it. Your definitions of health insurance are incorrect. This is a reasonable definition of health insurance:
Insurance against loss by illness or bodily injury. Health insurance provides coverage for medicine, visits to the doctor or emergency room, hospital stays and other medical expenses. Policies differ in what they cover, the size of the deductible and/or co-payment, limits of coverage and the options for treatment available to the policyholder. (http://www.investorwords.com/2289/health_insurance.html)
and this is a definition of insurance:
A promise of compensation for specific potential future losses in exchange for a periodic payment. Insurance is designed to protect the financial well-being of an individual, company or other entity in the case of unexpected loss. Some forms of insurance are required by law, while others are optional. Agreeing to the terms of an insurance policy creates a contract between the insured and the insurer. In exchange for payments from the insured (called premiums), the insurer agrees to pay the policy holder a sum of money upon the occurrence of a specific event. In most cases, the policy holder pays part of the loss (called the deductible), and the insurer pays the rest. Examples include car insurance, health insurance, disability insurance, life insurance, and business insurance.
What is the difference between what we say is health insurance in this country, and what health insurance really is? Why do we have today’s system as it is constituted? Why is health insurance tied to our jobs?
The world according to “Meliorist” et al. (h/t The People’s Cube):
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Liberalism
A normal state of a healthy person whose brain developed under the caring guidance of the progressive establishment. As opposed to the rigid and bigoted Republican / Capitalist / Conservative brain, a Liberal / Socialist / Democrat brain is hard to map because it undergoes perpetual reshuffling of its centers and synapses. Generally it can be characterized by a compassionate concern for not taxing the rich enough, combined with generosity in spending other people’s money. A liberal brain is known to have a well-developed “blame-America” synapse, a benign “Smarter Than Thou” tumor, a Global Warming Panic Center, the Entitlement Synapse, Moral Relativity Gray Area, and a “P.C. Lobe” responsible for speech codes, multiculturalism, racial quotas, and alternative lifestyles. The underdeveloped areas of a Liberal Brain usually include those that handle common sense, personal responsibility, sense of humor, patriotism, and work ethics. The eternal motivational force that keeps a liberal going is typically a daily doze of Starbucks coffee combined with the dialectical struggle of the opposites - the feeling of being a victim of oppression and the feeling of guilt for oppressing the others at the same time.
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Capitalism
A system that forces people, through a false concept of private property, to pay for the goods they already have the right to own. This pressures the masses to work for a living instead of organizing and representing (a.k.a. Fascism)
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Competition
Barbaric, insensitive ritual steeped in social Darwinism. We cannot allow the fittest to survive in our society. Your loss is someone else’s gain, and your gain is someone else’s loss. Therefore, losers contribute to the society and winners take away from it. Being a winner is unethical, while a society of losers is happy, moral, and prosperous as a collective. A progressive society of the future, steeped in diversity, inclusiveness, and collectivism, shall have no winners. Everyone will be a loser, which in our book means ethical team player.
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Exploitation
A coercive mechanism through which capitalists steal poor people’s food.
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Work
Any uncompensated activity that advances The Greater Good™. Any other activity is exploitation.
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Taxes
A form of redistribution of wealth in capitalist countries. In their current form, taxes are a half-measure aimed at self-preservation of the capitalist system. Bourgeois cliques quench the people’s wrath by confiscating small portions of money (40%) from the rich and returning it to the People who are the money’s rightful owners. In a just and equitable society of the future there will be no taxes as there will be nothing to collect. The State will be the People’s only employer and will keep all their earnings. Instead of salaries, the State will distribute goods and services based on one’s good conduct.
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Zero-Sum Principle
Cornerstone of progressive economics and ethics. Collectively, all losses and gains sum to zero. Your loss is our gain, and your gain is our loss. Whatever you own, it is at our expense. You owe your property to us by the virtue of you owning it. Losers contribute to the society and winners take away from it. Being a winner is immoral and selfish. A society of losers is happy and moral. In this sense, the Unites States is the worst society in the world. Americans eat because other people starve. On our planet with limited resources, the most ethical thing one can do is stop eating and starve to death. Bourgeois ideologues will lie to you that economy is a non-Zero-Sum game and that capitalism creates wealth without making others poor. Such lies must be silenced and mercilessly eradicated.
...
Good question. I think the reason is that corporations use it to help pin employees down and make them reluctant to quit or change jobs. It is just one more trick in a system rigged in favor of the wealthy.
No, that isn’t the reason. There is actually an historical reason why jobs and health insurance are tied together. I’ll give you a hint: It began during World War II. Why don’t you take another stab at these questions? These issues are all tied together, and they are related to the problems we are having in today’s health care market. There’s a good chance that you might learn something here…
What is the difference between what we say is health insurance in this country, and what health insurance really is? Why do we have today’s system as it is constituted? Why is health insurance tied to our jobs?
No, no offense to you Jose. I just think we’ve thrashed this clown half to death, and I’m bored of his inane and inept handling of the topic. If he was intellectually honest, he might learn a little bit about some of the lies he’s been clinging to, but I wouldn’t hold out for that. I think we should stop entertaining his foolishness, now that he has proven his foolishness, but if you feel the desire to glean more humiliation from him, by all means, have at it.
Meliorist has given it his best, and he has publicly caught himself in the web of his own ideology. He has articulated the Left’s best arguments for universal health care quite well, and he has come up empty handed.
Thus, he has proven to me without question that the Left’s best arguments for universal health care provided by the government and funded by compulsory taxation are vapid, inane, and Utopian fantasies dreamed up by people who can only be described as Marxists engaging in class warfare based on envy alone.
Oh no, I didn’t take offense! (I was grinning when I typed that last post to you. I forget how the non-verbal stuff doesn’t get communicated in these forums:)). And for for the record, I’m not trying to humiliate anyone. Meliorist seems genuinely uninformed on this subject (as many others are), and I want to give him a chance to learn something if he’s willing. Although I see where you’re coming from, I want to take a stab at this before I give up on him…
No, no offense to you Jose. I just think we’ve thrashed this clown half to death, and I’m bored of his inane and inept handling of the topic. If he was intellectually honest, he might learn a little bit about some of the lies he’s been clinging to, but I wouldn’t hold out for that. I think we should stop entertaining his foolishness, now that he has proven his foolishness, but if you feel the desire to glean more humiliation from him, by all means, have at it.
Meliorist has given it his best, and he has publicly caught himself in the web of his own ideology. He has articulated the Left’s best arguments for universal health care quite well, and he has come up empty handed.
Thus, he has proven to me without question that the Left’s best arguments for universal health care provided by the government and funded by compulsory taxation are vapid, inane, and Utopian fantasies dreamed up by people who can only be described as Marxists engaging in class warfare based on envy alone.
Oh no, I didn’t take offense! (I was grinning when I typed that last post to you. I forget how the non-verbal stuff doesn’t get communicated in these forums:)). And for for the record, I’m not trying to humiliate anyone. Meliorist seems genuinely uninformed on this subject (as many others are), and I want to give him a chance to learn something if he’s willing. Although I see where you’re coming from, I want to take a stab at this before I give up on him...
Jose he’s not uninformed,he took the time to get the info that suits him. He must have run across the info that did not support his agenda and of course discarded that.
He is just trying to twist it to a liberal agenda and is not getting away with it.
The gulf between us will never be bridged because there is so much resentment. You resent me because you find me patronizing and scornful of your beliefs, and I resent you because you cling to irrational motivations and simplistic ideas. The problem is that you have come to invest your identity in your way of processing information about the world. For you to change the way you see things and make decisions about them creates existential anxiety, and that is why you react angrily to people who encourage you to take a different perspective. You live in fear of becoming a different person. But I believe that different person would be a much better person.
It is a sad thing when a man reduces his identity to a set of inflexible dogmas and prejudices that he calls “wisdom.” The great difference between us is revealed in the test of pragmatism. If you could show me that your approach to providing medical care delivers the greatest good for the greatest number, I would adopt it. But if I could make the same demonstration to you regarding my views, you would still refuse to adopt my position, because you cannot accept anything that violates your mystical core beliefs. Even if national health care made most people better off, you would say that it is invisibly undermining the character of our nation, or state some similar fearful view.
In short, your views on all political matters are set in the concrete of mystical belief. You have decided your answer to evolution’s demand of change or die. I do not believe it is correct.
Evolution’s demand of change or die? LMAO!!!
I have mystical core beliefs, inflexible dogmas and prejudices, irrational motivations and simplistic ideas, I live in fear and anxiety, and my favorite… if I adopt your perspectives I could be a much better person.
I cling not only to my guns and my religion, but to irrational motivations and simplistic ideas. I am SOOOO fearful of the undermining of the character of this nation. And OMG, it’s invisible. If I run out of God’s rainwater I’ll die from thirst because Im an isolationist with an extreme view of personal responsibility. Maybe I should just crawl off into the wilderness and get it over with already!!!
Does anyone recommend any good political philosophy books I might read before I off myself? They might teach me that Im not responsible for everything that has happened to me. I may then be able to blame government and Christianity and rich people for all my woes. I might then FEEL GOOD enough about myself to suck off the increasingly socialistic government ###.
Why have I strived so long to be a productive member of society? How schtupid! Had I met with more success, I would have only been filled with so much guilt because others failed where i succeeded. I would just have had to ease that guilt by not only giving it up for others less fortunate, but to the complacent, lazy bastards who think the world owes them life served up on a silver platter, and to criminals who invade my country illegally.
OK, Im done. I need to go cling to my bottle of pain killers now and figure out who to blame when my twenty five plus years of sobriety goes down the tubes because even as Im not responsible for the abuse to my body over the years, I cant get off the damn things. Hmm, I guess Im not responsible for becoming an alcoholic and drug addict in the first place. Im sure glad Im now poor, cuz if I wasnt, it just wouldnt be right to go to a top notch treatment center would it. I could just say f**k it and go full blown, then I could get Anabuse or Methedone for free somewhere. Yeah thats the ticket!!
Bite me, Mel! Youre an educated moron. Now I gotta go cling to sh*t!!
Thanks to everyone else for the kind words. Ill be just fine. There is a reason for my situation. God will show me what that is and it will all work for good. Ive been wanting for so long to find a way to make a difference. A change will come that will provide that. But, as for PL… Im outta here. I have nothing to offer here and what there is to learn is just too hard to wade through and find. Thanks, IDP, and Oscar, and Hoads, and POP, and BigTex, and Faith, and even Rapt and others who have taught me so much. Keep on keepin it real.
Thanks to everyone else for the kind words. Ill be just fine. There is a reason for my situation. God will show me what that is and it will all work for good. Ive been wanting for so long to find a way to make a difference. A change will come that will provide that. But, as for PL… Im outta here. I have nothing to offer here and what there is to learn is just too hard to wade through and find. Thanks, IDP, and Oscar, and Hoads, and POP, and BigTex, and Faith, and even Rapt and others who have taught me so much. Keep on keepin it real.
Randy
So long, Randy. I hope you overcome your current troubles, even if you don’t take the path I would prefer. We would never have met and conversed in pre-Internet life, and these few encounters in which we distrustfully examined each others strange plumage may be early signs of the start of a new dialog in America. Good luck.
You really are a sanctimonious, self-important prick, aren’t you? Where do you get off, talking to people the way that you did to Randy? You owe him an apology. But I’m sure you won’t give it to him--you’ll concoct some half-baked pseudo-intellectual rationalization to justify your behavior. You socialist pricks are always the greediest bastards: Stingy with own, generous with everyone else’s.
You are now officially the charter member of my “ignore” list.
Thanks to everyone else for the kind words. Ill be just fine. There is a reason for my situation. God will show me what that is and it will all work for good. Ive been wanting for so long to find a way to make a difference. A change will come that will provide that. But, as for PL… Im outta here. I have nothing to offer here and what there is to learn is just too hard to wade through and find. Thanks, IDP, and Oscar, and Hoads, and POP, and BigTex, and Faith, and even Rapt and others who have taught me so much. Keep on keepin it real.
Randy
So long, Randy. I hope you overcome your current troubles, even if you don’t take the path I would prefer. We would never have met and conversed in pre-Internet life, and these few encounters in which we distrustfully examined each others strange plumage may be early signs of the start of a new dialog in America. Good luck.
You really are a sanctimonious, self-important prick, aren’t you? Where do you get off, talking to people the way that you did to Randy? You owe him an apology. But I’m sure you won’t give it to him--you’ll concoct some half-baked pseudo-intellectual rationalization to justify your behavior. You socialist pricks are always the greediest bastards: Stingy with own, generous with everyone else’s.
You are now officially the charter member of my “ignore” list.
It’s not his fault he just wasn’t hugged as a baby and this is the result. A lot of lonely nights.If he wasn’t a boy he would have nothing to play with.
You really are a sanctimonious, self-important prick, aren’t you? Where do you get off, talking to people the way that you did to Randy? You owe him an apology.
For God’s Sake, Will SOMEONE PLEASE Let the Dog Out?
