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Landmark Health Insurance Bill Passes House
theodp writes "A hastily-crafted amendment imposing tough new restrictions on abortion coverage in insurance policies helped pave the way for the House to approve the Democrats' bill to overhaul the nation's health insurance system. 'It provides coverage for 96 percent of Americans,' said Rep. John Dingell. Rep. Candice Miller disagreed, calling the legislation 'a jobs-killing, tax-hiking, deficit-exploding' bill. The 1,990-page, $1.2 trillion legislation passed by a vote of 220-215 and moves on for Senate debate, which is expected to begin in several days."
Update — 11/08 at 13:45 GMT by SS: Changed vote totals above to reflect the actual bill vote. The 240-194 number was for the abortion restrictions amendment.
I'm not from the US, but isn't that the main bit of you guys' healthcare system that's most in need of fixing?
In my country, pre-existing conditions just mean that you can't claim anything for 12 months after joining. It doesn't affect premiums or anything, and no health insurance provider can reject your application.
So, I guess, welcome to the 20th century!
"Einstein argued that [...] God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software engineer." ~ Brooks
Maybe the US will finally join the rest of the industrialized world in actually providing medical care to its citizens, instead of taking the, "find your own care" attitude.
Palm trees and 8
I would like to offer our congratulations to US of A.
That said, I don't know why this is on /.. This has nothing to do with technology, geeks, etc... And everyone interested in this can read about this from every other news source in the world. I live in Finland and our massmedia caught this before Slashdot. In addition to that, this isn't even final yet (still needs to be signed by a lot of folks, if I understood correctly, so this still might not pass) so we will certainly be able to read about this numerous times more, even in /..
Every single argument that will appear in this comment section will be repeated in almost identical manner when the senate signs (or doesn't sign) the bill, etc...
Unfortunetly the luck favors a terrible outcome And no amount of hope will change that.
The final vote was a lot closer: 220 to 215. Which seems like a mid-20th century vote total. It really is quite remarkable that, in 2009, in the United States, there's still widespread debate and disagreement over the proposition that health care should not be rationed on the basis of ability to pay.
Final vote count is 220-215.
I thought "news for nerds" would be accurate about stuff like numbers.
Let's see... Buy insurance, or go to jail. It sounds like Massachusetts.
How would this get paid for, I wonder? It's written by the same people that brought you "Cash for Clunkers" and the "Stimulus Package", and we know what came of THEM.
The Senate isn't expecting to make a vote on their version until next year. Hopefully it will die a horrible death. This bill has no business at ALL being the Law of the Land.
When politicians are involved, everyone loses.
I think you're referring to the abortion amendment vote.
1990 pages? Maybe this is a clue as to why health care is so expensive?
What's with the remaining 4%? How come not everyone will be covered?
Yandelvayasna grldenwi stravenka
I think every one agrees that health care needs reformed. What a lot of people disagree on is that you need a 1,990 page bill with sections not clearly defined to do it.
I would support a system that made HSAs more attractive, and allowed me to buy insurance across state lines, so long as they complied with my state's minimum coverage requirements. Sure, go ahead and remove insurance companies from anti-trust protection. I don't want mandatory insurance, nor do I think this program will cost the $1.2 trillion they're estimating. It will cost much more.
Don't force me to buy something because you're the government (whether you're forcing me to buy it from a private party is irrelevant), and don't tax me because what I'm buying is better than the other guy's (the so called Cadillac insurance plans).
I believe this bill is fundamentally flawed, and completely unconstitutional.
So surely this bill, which makes it illegal to charge more for being a woman, also makes it illegal to charge more for being a man with car insurance and life insurance. Right? I mean, god forbid the democrats come up with a good idea and poorly execute it or create unfair exceptions that favor special interest groups that voted them in like they always do. So who read more than 100 of the 1,990 pages of this thing before voting? How do you even summarize something so simply in a matter of a few paragraphs, then someone manage to bloat that to 1,990 pages? Obviously there is a LOT more to this bill than what has hit the press releases.
Well, countdown until this article gets over a 1,000 comments and only the top few become the ones actually read...
I'm of the opinion that even the current system of private coverage is fundamentally a violation of doctor-patient confidentiality. You've got these insurance companies just itching to monetize any piece of data they can get from their paying customers, such that the half-assed nature of HIPAA really provides no assurance that your medical information won't be used in one way or another that is ultimately against your well-being.
The only way to be sure your information (any info, not just medical records) won't be systematically abused is to make sure it isn't entered into a file or a database in the first place. Unfortunately, there seems to be a real focus on doing just the opposite with these healthcare changes - some sort of magical computer worshipping cargo cult thing where too many people think that if they can just get all our personal info into a database it will be the best thing since sliced bread. I'm tired of sacrificing privacy for the promise of increased efficiency and convenience and I am doubly tired of those promises failing to pan out in the long run. But that's exactly what I expect is going to happen here too.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
It seems public health insurance works in other communist(?) states, like (in no specific order) Norway, France, Sweden, Canada, the UK and so on... Insurance companies are evil by default, they want to KEEP your money.
/tb
Glad I dont live in the land of the free. Article from the BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/8345341.stm
I am a webdeveloper. I know waitresses, construction workers, etc. who are getting paid a lot less than I am despite working longer days.
But if our society lost every webdeveloper, it would be no worse off than it would be if it lost every construction worker.
Your wage does not correlate with how necessary you are to our society. Nor does it correlate with how hard you work.
To thunderous applause.
I guess we're all in the crab bucket now.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Please die for me, then.
The 4% are the "uncooperative" ones.
Where am I going to get the extra cash to pay $15K? These over stuffed asshole millionaires in office are totally disconnected from reality, but then they probably can get the best psychiatric care on THEIR far superior health plan. Which we ALSO pay for.
->Rep. Candice Miller disagreed, calling the legislation 'a jobs-killing, tax-hiking, deficit-exploding' bill.-
*sigh* Why does my representative have to be such a moron? I've been trying every time I vote to get her out of office....
Michigan has been in a recession since 2001. Lots of people are out of jobs and can't afford to get health care (let alone the basics: food, shelter, clothing). And she thinks it's a job-killer? The only thing that's killing jobs in Michigan are the representatives who aren't doing anything about trying to create them.
Let's be clear: 1.2 Billion is the cost for 10 years, not 1 single upfront cost (like bailouts or emergency war funding supplementals)
so health care reform bill has passed it first step - actually a move forward even if you dont like the bill, everyone (except the fat insurance companies) admitted that things had to change, and so this is a start. however, the amendment restricting abortion coverage is HUGE step backwards and another reminder just how much the lunatic Religious Right has taken hold in the US. Hopefully this does not force people into coat hangers and whiskey again. so close, but yet so far still to come.
1. Calling something fascism doesn't make it so.
2. Social welfare is used basically to make nobody go dead broke and end up in so much debt they're better off killing themselves. The idea is that if you have somebody who is close to flat broke to pay him enough so he/she can find a new job, and no more than that. No guarantee if the thing you label as "social welfare" actually resembles this or if it's just a "everyone who earns less than 100k gets teh rest for free!!!" law.
What makes it worse is that most of the lawmakers didn't even read the bill before they voted on it.
I am sure this bill will certainly help many of those who cannot afford insurance and will now recieve it. However that does not mean i think it is the perfect bill, however we will be better off with it. It does not regulate insurance companies enough, included in the bill should have been a CEO pay cap, to open p the finances of private companies to be audited and requiring them to reduce their overhead, eliminate advertising budgets, and use all of the money for providing health insurance coverage and capped salaries to their employees. Only then can we be certain that money being paid into these companies is not going to some fat cat CEO while the companies deny claims for life saving treatments as they do now. Private insurance today is pretty scammy and worthless, you often have to fight with the companies to get things covered. Hopefully the bill does set a basic coverage standard which covers everything essential. I have also always been a little skeptical of ideas of linking insurance to employment unless the insurance can continue seemlessly after employment or persons are transferred instantly to a government plan. The Public Option even in this bill is too weak and should have been set according to medicare's cost alignment rather than an average of private insurance. It is unclear whether it will survive the senate. Without the public option I would be concerned that the private companies will ruthlessly jack up rates and massively exploit the people, which could be controlled by the pay caps i mentioned above however and perhaps setting some price control or requiring that as i said the money be spent on actually providing health care. Better yet still would have been single payer, which ironically would be the most efficient, would have saved enough money considering that private insurance is 30% inefficient while medicare is 4% to provide insurance to everyone without spending any more money than we do now. That would save the lives of 40,000 children who die annually so some capitalist pig CEO can get rich. The single payer in progressive plans would be the least beauracratic, you would not have insurance company beauracrats deciding what health care you can get or deciding to deny stuff to help improve the profit margin. The single payer would gaurantee coverage of essential care, and not deny things to improve profit margins.
As far as rationing, the single payer and this bill both fight rationing. To be honest, any system contains rationing. However, it is important to make sure that highest urgency treatment is giving first priority, regardless of the patients income. Our current system rations in the worst possible way, according to ability to pay. It is genocidal to the poor since it guarantees health care to the rich and denies it to the poor. I don't want to hear this idea that people who make money contribute more. that is a lie. Try telling that to the overworked factory slave laborer or field worker who harvests the food you eat who works out in the hot sun all day making $5 an hour. It is usually the case that the hardest working people who do the most essential thing, bringing food to your table, make the least.
On a related note:
http://www.rights.com/2009/10/08/health-care-plantation/
I applaud this move heartily and am glad to see America finally catch up with the rest of the developed, Western world. Forcing citizens to enter patronize particular corporate entities IS the way forward, and I'm glad Obama and the House can see that. Once the citizen realizes he has to give up a large portion of his ability to make selfish INDIVIDUAL choices and act in accordance with that of the leaders of his or her nations, can they develop into a more moral, self-actualized human being. I think this is also an indication that there is a shift towards America having less of this "me, me, me!" attitude and the country is starting to realize that freedom isn't individual greed, but something greater than they are--sacrifice and adherence to ones' governing body. A more moral human being is one that follows the edicts of the body that rules it. A good dog, after all, is not one that jumps the fence and goes where it pleases but one that runs to its master with leash in its mouth, wagging its tail.
Quoting a tedious, bad sci-fi novel again, eh?
Just because you are paranoid does not mean that no-one is out to get you.
Insurance industry practices such as denying coverage on the basis of pre-existing medical conditions would be banned, and insurers would no longer be able to charge higher premiums on the basis of gender or medical history. In a further slap, the industry would lose its exemption from federal antitrust restrictions on price fixing and market allocation.
So this sounds like a good thing to come from the bill, but does this mean that Insurance companies are going to pull a lot of new nasty tricks to increase their profit... What tricks exactly would they pull? There's bound to be a loop hole somewhere in the bill...
Considering only around 12 million US citizens aren't covered today (4%) (the same that isn't covered in this bill) it seems all that happened is Government took further control of the system.
the adults are trying to make things better.
The adults know that you can't fix the problems of a mostly government-controlled mess by making it fully government-controlled. Keynesians are infantile morons.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Your entire argument is in doubt based on the fact that you have no idea how long the bill is. It is actually less than 600 pages long. I can only assume you've just been accepting what you've been told about it and have never looked at it yourself.
I am scientifically inaccurate.
Just my prediction, but I think it will be taken to court and ruled unconstitutional (since the court is still majority conservative)
Denying social welfare dooms people to that behaviour.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/09/understanding_the_cause_of_hea.html
They're the ones that started cost inflation in the 1970's that has gotten us to this point. They don't even know they screwed it up...and we expect them to fix it?
It makes me think of the classic demotivator: http://www.despair.com/government.html
Sigh.
Oh well, at least we don't have any money to pay for it....(not that it matters, apparently)
And this is why Ayn Rand was a useless bitch. Take your broken pop philosophy somewhere else, please; the adults are trying to make things better.
If you're going to toss around words like "useless bitch" you really need something more to back it up than "the adults are trying to make things better." You can start by explaining how a multi-trillion dollar government program is going to make things better. Perhaps, you can cite the dozens or perhaps hundreds of other programs the government has run that efficiently made things better? You can also elaborate on exactly how trying to make health care/insurance a government mandated "right" doesn't effectively enslave those who provide such services?
In short, if all you've got are insults, you need to take your socialist government loving self somewhere else. Real adults take care of themselves and don't look to the government for handouts. Understood?
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
We already have a 12 TRILLION dollar debt, 10.2% unemployment, and fiat money. Now we want to increase the deficit, and print out another trillion dollars? Face the facts: Keynesian economic DON'T WORK. Our money is WORTHLESS, and our government is driving it further into the ground. We haven't had a 'free market' in a hundred years, progressive policies will be the ruin of this country. Goddamn.
Hard times ahead as the economy continues to tank, inflation hits hard, and unemployment continues to rise.
Tax and spend is an economy killer. So is "redistribution of wealth". Heinlein fans might remember the acronym "tanstaafl".
The voter's reaction in 2010 and 2012 will be quite a shock to the clueless Washington establishment. Time to "drain the swamp" for real.
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
Once the government is paying for your health care, they can pretty much mandate what you eat, what you smoke, what you drink, how long you live, etc. Hey, the repercussions of "bad" behavior are on their nickel, right? Government-sponsored health care pretty much covers control of the individual. The next step -- control of the corporation -- is accomplished through cap-and-trade and other such "green" and "environmental protection" legislation.
The problem is, it was supposed to be different in America. The government here was never supposed to be an entity apart from "We the People." We are, BY DESIGN, "not like the rest of the world." That is changing now, in leaps and bounds.
For my wallet ...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I love how the same people who quote the bible, saw things like this, uh I don't know where cain could have gone? Humans have always survived in communities! When I saw always, I mean since we have existed. How about no man is an island? What is the point of family given your statement? It is a broken and anti human way of thinking.
Quoting a tedious, bad sci-fi novel again, eh?
Whether the book was tedious or not, the idea that one should be self-sufficient and not demand that others provide for you is sound. Unless, of course, you mean to advocate for Mother and Father government to take care of us? If that is the case, why is it that /. gets all up in arms when the government wants to regulate the internet, or free speech, or any of that stuff and yet when the .gov wants to muck about with healthcare or other social services it's all "yay!! spend zillions of dollars and regulate the hell out of it!"
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
Seems the adults also know that you cannot rely on the private sector to provide for people. Capitalism isn't about compassion.
You will pay for the health care of illegal aliens - period.
Let me repeat that. Whether they come to the ER without coverage or are enrolled in a government subsidized insurance program, you will pay. At least, in the latter case, they will contribute something and, perhaps, get some earlier care that will avoid expensive hospitalizations.
The bone-headed reflexive anti-immigrant nonsense that passes for debate in the US just saddens me. We really need to upgrade our educational system.
Tax and spend is an economy killer. So is "redistribution of wealth".
We should never let anyone get away with calling robbery "redistribution". Wealth isn't "distributed" in the first place; it's created, and it belongs to those who create it.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
...when did "health insurance" become conflated with "health care"? You buy insurance to ensure that you can get past some kind of catastrophic event, say, if you total your car. I don't expect AllState to pay for my gas, tune-ups, etc. It's about spreading risk, rather than a mechanism to take money from one guy and give to another to that you can buy what you want. HSAs for routine procedures is the way to go. Keep the insurance markets competitive and targeted towards what "insurance" actually means IN EVERY OTHER INSTANCE WHERE IT IS APPLIED!
Did you even bother to look at what I was replying to? No, clearly not, since it wasn't even on the subject of the health care bill. It was some idiot AC yammering on about one of the tenets of his religion of objectivism. If everyone followed his idiotic little maxim, we would not have a military, let alone a government.
I am scientifically inaccurate.
"Tax and spend" is more responsible than "Borrow and Spend". Unfortunately the Dems are not raising taxes which makes them just a irresponsible as the previous Reaganistic government.
In Massachusetts, it works like this:
if you don't have insurance, and if you can afford it*, then you pay an extra tax. This is to help offset the aggregate financial strain that you and other like you put on the state government who reimburses hospitals for the free care you take despite being able to afford insurance.
Now, I don't like the law, mainly because I don't like the idea of a gov't requiring me to enter in to a deal with a private company**. But, you don't go to jail... not even close. Don't let the facts get in the way of your rhetoric my friend.
* Yes, we can quibble about just how high the bar of "afford" should be.
** No, it's not like car insurance. I don't have to own a car -- I can choose to walk, cycle, ride mass transit, and bum rides. I do just that. I'm not legally even allowed to end my life in order to avoid being mandated to carry health insurance. I'm not quibbling with the wisdom of carrying insurance, but rather the gov't forcing me to enter a contract with a third party.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
Except in this case, measurements of consumption and production are very obscure.
People will 'consume' healthcare when they go to the hospital or see a doctor. Yes, there is a small hypochondriac percentage of the population that will abuse this privilege, but for the most part, people will only go to the hospital when they are sick. I can't imagine wanting to disrupt my schedule to go sit in a waiting room just because I don't have to pay for it. That's absurd.
The population becomes more productive as a whole when they don't have to worry about the day-to-day problems of food and shelter. It's Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.
If the default state of people was "sick," then yes: they can certainly consume more healthcare than they produce. For an example of this, consider the disabled and the elderly. However, the default state of most of the population is "healthy." This means that when you do get sick, treatment can be had and you can return to your default, healthy (productive) state quicker. If you're sick, and your insurance doesn't cover your condition, you can't return to work until you've had it treated. If you can't afford treatment, then you're an unproductive member of society, no matter how badly you want to get back to work.
This is why nationalized healthcare works. Everyone pays taxes to support the health care system, but not everyone is sick all the time. When you are sick (on occasion), the taxes you have paid and that others have paid cover your costs. When you are healthy (most of the time), you're providing the same safety net that you enjoy to everyone else. And before everyone screams "socialism," note that socialism is not all bad. Military, fire, police, community centres, libraries: all of these are iconic images of American life, and all of them are funded by the idea that collective payment benefits everyone eventually, if not immediately.
"Tax and spend" is more responsible than "Borrow and Spend".
Tax and spend, borrow and spend, and inflate and spend are all the same evil. They just have different time delays before the damage is apparent.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Can anyone show me where in the U.S. Constitution it says the government can force you to buy health insurance? On this basis alone this bill should never have come to fruition. We have this thing call enumerated powers in our Constitution and nowhere does it say the government can compel anyone to buy health insurance just because they are alive.
Also, if you honestly find that your concern for corporate incomes trumps your compassion for your fellow human beings, I pity you . Health care is a right. If you think that people who provide for things that are rights are somehow enslaved by the fact that they're rights, you're out of your mind. People always choose what they do.
I am scientifically inaccurate.
Given that women make up more than half of the population of the United States, and more than half of the voting population of the United States, they are most certainly not a special interest. They are the majority.
I hope you don't think of women as being a special interest, short of finding them especially interesting.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
The close vote is intentional. The leaders realize that this is a once in a generation opportunity to reform healthcare, so they're going to push that reform as far as they can. They could propose some really minor changes that everybody agrees with. They could propose some really radical changes that almost nobody agrees with. Or they could push the biggest change they could get without failing.
As for the party split, the Constitution does not entitle all political parties to equal happiness. In a time when reality has a liberal bias, the wishes of the electorate are reflected in the composition of the legislative bodies. Aside from their role in achieving a majority of votes in Congress, the Republicans are no more entitled to appeasement than are the Greens, Libertarians, or Communists.
Health care is a right.
You have no more right to force another person to provide you with medical care, than you do to force them to pick your crops or clean your house. You do not gain such a right by delegating the force to a third party.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
And that is unqualified bullshit, because THE PEOPLE PROVIDING HEALTH CARE HAVE CHOSEN THEIR PROFESSION. I don't know why that is so DIFFICULT to understand. You are not FORCING them to become doctors. They do it OF THEIR OWN FREE WILL.
I am scientifically inaccurate.
And yet, Keynsian economic model is the only one that works...
Except for every time Keynesian remedies have been tried, you mean?
The first great depression, the Japanese lost decade, the second great depression that we're heading into right now...
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Right, because providing police for free protective services ( police ) increases crime. Providing better fire protection encourages fires.
Universal Health Care is a profit loosing scenario, that is a fact. The market can not provide a solution to a problem that is not profitable.
"A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism."
Dictator? Check, the President has been collecting more and more power since the 20th century. Stringent socioeconomic controls? Check. Supression of the opposition through terror and censorship? Check, look at white house taking on fox news. Belligerent Nationalism? Check.
2. Those on welfare tend to not look for a job. Why look for a job when the government sends you money and foodstamps? Why look for a job when you can join a gang or sell drugs? Welfare doesn't work, it encourages lazyness.
"You can also elaborate on exactly how trying to make health care/insurance a government mandated "right" doesn't effectively enslave those who provide such services?" No, YOU need to explain how affordable health care for everybody has anything to do with "enslaving" people. Or, if you'd like, you can start by explaining why you are NOT a child molester. Turn off Fox News and learn how to think.
I don't respond to AC's.
Build your own roads. And, if someone seriously wrongs you, don't go to the "Socialist" court system.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
I rely on me to provide for me. Government isn't about compassion either. It's about control. We've pretty much abandoned the intent of the constitution. The federals were never supposed to have this much power. I think it's time for the States to step up and take some of this power away from them.
Either they don't know or they don't care.
I want to see Pelosi wait in line at a VA hospital for Psyhc care.
Healthcare in the US is f'd up but the gov is no answer. Remember Walter Reed? Take care of our GI's first before you move to the whole country. It is sad. We will have a tier'd system.
Politicans and the Rich will fly to the islands for care while we are stuck with the left overs.
If I was a sharp heart surgeon I would say f you to gov rates and set up shop in the Caymans and cater to Americans elite while the serfs get stuck in long lines and overworked left over docs.
Government is inept at solving problems like this.
You just set fire to your own Constitution.
Congress can now assign itself any rights it wishes. Get ready for anything that might affect the health of the population to be regulated.
Wow, the caps lock makes your arguments so persuasive.
So, if someone chooses to be a farmer, do I have the right to compel them to feed me? Also, what do you intend to do about the large number of physicians who've said that they intend to leave the profession if socialized medicine passes?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The adults know that you can't fix the problems of a mostly government-controlled mess by making it fully government-controlled. Keynesians are infantile morons.
And recent events on the world's financial markets have demonstrated that the free market evangelists are right? They deserve that even more than the Keynesians do.
Capitalism is the worst...except for everything else.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
I do not understand what $1.2 trillion is supposedly obtaining for us.
There's no public option, it's not going to cover signinificantly more people than the system already in place (96%, leaves about 28 million people uncovered right? It doesn't assist anyone in buying insurance that already has it, it does not actually buy insurance for that that don't have already (except maybe moving people off medicare/medicaid to some other method. The "reform" portions of the bill, as they are don't look like they'll cost the Gov anything, it's a mandate.
What does the $1.2 Trillion get us that we don't already have in some form or another?!?!
Except that there's no such thing as self-sufficient. You'd be lucky to survive the first winter if you really did have to provide everything for yourself.
"Perhaps, you can cite the dozens or perhaps hundreds of other programs the government has run that efficiently made things better?"
The Post Office.
Road/Highway System.
The Coast Guard.
The FBI (though some may debate this).
Cash for Clunkers was successful; if it made things BETTER is a bit unclear.
Schools.
Just off the top of my head. I don't know why people so love the idea of being under the finger of faceless cartels of multinational companies, who not only make their decisions completely in private, but don't even pretend to let you have a say in what they do, over having an elected government with at least some oversight provide the basic necessities to living a productive life. Why is it we cannot use the same system that has worked just fine for the majority of Europe, when ours has clearly failed?
You do not gain such a right by delegating the force to a third party.
Unless the third party is the government. Each and every government throughout history have had this power since the first civilization was formed. Libertarian handwaving and/or whining doesn't change this basic fact.
Alice is sick and has no money. Bob is a doctor. If Bob does not agree to treat her for free does the government force him to? If the government agrees to pay Bob for Alice's treatment then it needs to tax Carol for the money. If Carol does not want to pay for Alice's treatment will the government punish her with asset confication and/or jail time?
[Citation Needed]
I used upper-case text because your reading comprehension apparently involves "stop reading once you see something you disagree with", and I wanted to make sure you saw the point.
Regarding the farmer, what an insipid question to ask. Since when did you have a right to eat farm produce?
Regarding the physicians, you're the free market guy here, right? Wouldn't you just assume that they'd be replaced by people willing to do the job?
I am scientifically inaccurate.
Greedy private sector taxing the employers way beyond what reasonably implemented health care really should cost... Is the real Evil.
US health care expenditure is higher per capita than anywhere in the world by a large margin, does not cover a large portion of your population nor encourage preventive health care... yet while it might be the 'best' in the world for those who can pay out their asses, it's still just by a small margin compared to other well-off industrialized countries.
Which is kinda weird, cause you guys have a pretty low cost of living compared to e.g. Norway, yet use more money and have worse coverage. Bite the sour apple and admit you guys fucked up, it's quickly over and then you can move on.
- These characters were randomly selected.
Still hungover from last night's party eh?
It's not about doctors, it is about forcing one group to pay for another group. Same old Bullshit from the Left. "Spreading the wealth around".
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The 1950s called, they want their red scare back.
Seriously though, you need to get a grip. People who are ill are by definition less able than those around them. Why should it fall to them to help themselves? Do you actually just strive for the destruction of society? If so, there's a group of people in the Middle East who'd love to hear from you.
We have national healthcare in the UK, and, having had both parents working within it for 25 years apiece, it's not slavery. Are the police slaves? The fire department? Your logic is flawed.
Laukei
Socialism:
1. A theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.
2. Not Fire and Police protection.
3. Government owning GM and Chrysler.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Presumably, in the same way that any other tax evasion will. Does the police force, military, court system, fire brigade etc. enslave people?
I don't agree with the Keynesians but Keynes shouldn't be blamed for every vote purchase that congress comes up with. He would NOT have supported all the dumb-ass perpetual spending that's going on.
You can start by explaining how a multi-trillion dollar government program is going to make things better. Perhaps, you can cite the dozens or perhaps hundreds of other programs the government has run that efficiently made things better?
Sigh.
Has it occcurred to you that the argument implicit in your questions, the One Argument To Rule Them All (or, to use Ronald Reagan's words, "Government is the problem"), is not an argument at all? It's an idealogy. And one that's been gradually discredited since the 1980s, and especially so of late.
That said, the following quotation should address your questions about governemnts programs that run efficiently or make things better:
Credits to the orginal poster or writer.
The "federals" also allowed slavery when the constitution was written. The point of it is that it can be changed through amendments as changing times require changing purpose. Wrongs that couldn't originally be righted can through time be resolved.
The adults know that you can't fix the problems of a mostly government-controlled mess by making it fully government-controlled. Keynesians are infantile morons.
1. America has a "free" market for health insurance/care
2. America pays more than most Western countries for health insurance/care
3. America gets worse results than most Western countries
4. Most States have one insurer that has >40% of the insurance market
I'd like to hear your theory on how the current free market de facto monopolies are "a mostly government-controlled mess".
And how those facts, taken together, do not suggest a failure of the current "free" and "competitive" market.
But if you're not actually going to explain your position, don't bother responding.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
What part of recent events represented free markets? BTW, freer markets are recovering and us Keynesians are still bleeding jobs.
"Except for every time Keynesian remedies have been tried, you mean?"
WTF?
"The first great depression, the Japanese lost decade, the second great depression that we're heading into right now..."
WTF cubed?
These are examples where Keynsian remedies WERE NOT tried (at first). During the first great depression Keynes has not even formulated keynsianism.
During the 'lost decade' Japan tried the 'fiscal conservatism' policy, by raising the interest rates and stopping the flow of money. So economy ground to a complete halt. Only after many years of low interest rates and various stimulus packages the Japanese economy started to grow again.
You simply don't understand economics.
Wanna to take bet that there will be the second great depression? Say, if in 2 years DOW falls below 7000 for period of more than 1 month then I'll give you 10 grams of gold (or its equivalent in the currency of your choice).
The previous administration was far from perfect, but its worst feature was spending more than it brought in. Too much compromise with the Dems and liberals.
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
Until you run out of other peoples money.
Greedy private sector taxing the employers way beyond what reasonably implemented health care really should cost... Is the real Evil.
The private sector doesn't do it alone; that's my point. It buys interference in the market from politicians. That interference is power that we never gave to the government in the constitution. It's been usurped gradually, in very small steps since the second world war.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Same old bullshit from the right, "me first, fuck everyone else."
I am scientifically inaccurate.
"Perhaps, you can cite the dozens or perhaps hundreds of other programs the government has run that efficiently made things better?"
That would be hard to do since the opposition puts checks and double checks and red tape like you wouldn't believe into most government programs to try to prevent 'abuse' and limit their spending as much as possible. This bill is no doubt more of the same.
Since when did you have a right to eat farm produce?
So, you're in favor of national health insurance, but not national lunch insurance? Not very big on consistency, are you? After all, we need lunch far more urgently than we need medical attention most of the time.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The Post Office.
Currently operating at a loss thanks to market inefficiencies, high labor costs and rising prices forcing people to seek other means (why spend 44 cents to mail in my bill when I can do it online for free? Ditto for a letter and whatnot. People use the net more, USPS raises its prices in response, which causes people to use the net more).
Road/Highway System
Falling apart in most states as the money is diverted to other projects. Bridges are collapsing, levies fall down and many federally funded highways are simply falling apart due to neglect and disrepair.
The Coast Guard.
Guarding the borders are a mandated federal responsibility. Shall we consider the many other ways border control is messed up?
The FBI (though some may debate this).
You already admit its debatable, but you list it in your enumeration of government programs done right... I'd say you're reaching
Cash for Clunkers was successful; if it made things BETTER is a bit unclear.
It pushed up sales at a cost of billions of dollars. Those sales won't come over the next few years now, meaning the jobs will dry up anyway. As an added bonus, we took perfectly good used cars off the street, driving up the cost to get to work and the doctor for the working poor, students, etc. Definitely a WONDERFUL program. /cough
Schools.
Seriously? The US has some of the worst schools in the first world despite the fact that it costs significantly more to educate children here.
Just off the top of my head. I don't know why people so love the idea of being under the finger of faceless cartels of multinational companies, who not only make their decisions completely in private, but don't even pretend to let you have a say in what they do, over having an elected government with at least some oversight provide the basic necessities to living a productive life. Why is it we cannot use the same system that has worked just fine for the majority of Europe, when ours has clearly failed?
Just off the top of my head. I don't know why many people so love the idea of being under the finger of faceless bureaucrats and Congresscritters (you know you're 1 of about 650k other faces in the best scenario, right?), who not only make their decisions completely in private (see the closed door meetings on health care), but don't even pretend to let you have a say in what they do (see people like Rep Eric Massa (D-NY) who said he will vote for the health care bill even if his constituents don't support it), over having an elected business (you vote with your dollars) with at least some ovresight (government, you, interest groups, etc) provide the basic necessities to living a productive life (so you're giving me a free house, a $50-100k salary, a vehicle, etc too right?). Why is it that we cannot use the same system that has worked just fine for the majority of Europe (where France has people rioting because they can't get jobs, the UK tells people that they're too old/sick to get needed health services, etc), when ours has so clearly failed (since adopting more and more European philosophy over the last century)?
Didn't we fight a war to separate ourselves from Europe so that they couldn't dictate our way of life to us?
Stop Koolaid Politics
Indentured servitude should be OK, too, right? Lefty's believe people can be property but things can't.
The States can make amendments too. They can take away power from congress or limit it. The States wrote the constitution to give birth to the federal government. Two thirds of them together can take any and all of the authority away from the federals.
Just because this is "a bill" doesn't mean it is a good bill or it will work. I was in this industry before so I will offer a grossly simplified explanation.
People are forgetting the dire state of the economy now, and most people have no idea how health insurance really works. Right up front, most people still think the premiums they pay go into a pool and claims are then paid out of that pool. Well, that's nonsense, that only covers administration costs and commissions and so forth for the most part. It is laughable to think your premiums in some pool cover health claim payouts, it isn't even close now.
Claims are primarily paid out of the profits the other aspects of the insurance companies engage in, the "market", they take premium monies and reinvest them in the same sort of speculation any other financial concern does, buying stocks bonds and then onto complex and mostly retarded financial products.
Now, anyone who has been paying attention the last two years can see that this system is seriously flawed, and that a lot of these "profits" were no more than theoretical profits and were mostly complete BS, and unfortunately still way too many people sill remain in complete denial of this, hanging on to some fairy tale illusion you can just magically print up wealth.
This economic reality impacts the insurance companies and everyone else, ie, most current claims that are being paid *now* are already way over the top into unreality land, and this level of paying is completely unsustainable. Adding additional levels of payments out will therefore be even more unsustainable. The system is already bankrupt
Easy to see with basic math why the whole system-europe included-is headed for epic fail in the near future. (and in the socialized systems the people there never really *see* an itemized bill so they have no idea what medical care costs except at some vague gross national levels, but they fail to take into account their national debt load to sustain that, it is borrowed money, even at a maximum 100% tax rate they would still run in the red).
It's only been sustained to this point, both private and socialized, with massive future load indebtedness. Look at what medical care really costs, now look at premium levels, or tax levels, now add in that everyone is going to want to have a claim at least once, more likely numerous times. Money paid in to money needed to come out is no where near the same level. It has been teetering for years now, along with a lot of other factors in this massive voodoo econmics bubble economy that national leaders and business people push, sustained by inflation and book keeping tricks. You haven't been paying for what exists, just issuing IOUs.
There is only ONE way for true national coverage to be affordable on a pay as you go notion, and that is if the entire medical industry, all of it, top to bottom from pharmcos to doctors to hospital employees to insurance company workers and owners, medical device makers, all the stockholders, all of that, a huge list, to governmental administrators,etc, take a HUGE drop in income, and there are created 5 times (some large number like that) as many people working in that industry, all at global lower payscales.
There's NO free anything on this planet. It just doesn't exist.
This is a basic fact of reality that is just lost to millions of people. If your nation is not constantly operating in the black, if they are running in the red every year, BOTH your internal debt load and international debt load (and very few nations are in the black with both those figures now) all your services including your "free" healthcare are being borrowed, you aren't "paying for it" no matter your tax rate or what private premiums you cirrently pay. You can only do that for so long before you are bankrupt and the whole thing collapses.
This new bill, not really law yet but what just passed in the US House, is trying to create a fur
"Spreading the wealth around".
If spreading the wealth around is such a bad idea, why does everyone seem to want health insurance?
which is totally what she said
Sorry, but no, it's not sound at all, particularly when applied to life and death situations. We're not talking about some self-entitled "right" to own a big screen TV or a PS3, we're talking about human lives.
Other countries can manage a much better return on the dollar (or euro, yen, etc) for health care. If the US government is so terrible that it cannot do what other governments have already done, then maybe people should try to reform government instead of fighting health care reform?
And how many dollars is "zillions" anyway? Certainly significantly less than the "zillions" paid to transform Iraq from a secular dictatorship into a theocratic one...
see a Text Widget
Knight Koxp
Another fantastic example of /.'s excellent meta-moderation.
Want to tell me all about how well the Cuban government provides for people, Pendejo? I kind of like living in a country where the poor people are fat. There's a reason why my family escaped to Florida.
Why don't you move to North Korea?
A bet on the DOW is foolish as long as the Federal Reserve keeps printing bank reserves to prop up the stock market.
Nothing about public insurance prevents private operators - we don't want Canada's system after all - but there are real economic benefits to cutting people who do nothing but run interference against our own productivity out of the economy. Basic math: A rescission worker uses her own labor to interfere with the labor of both the doctor and the patient. Even ignoring the loss of efficiency due to ill laborers, and even assuming the doctor is not spending any time on hold (ha!), every unit of work you pay the person authorizing care interferes with a minimum of two people, for effectively no gain.
This ignores the moral problems involved in paying companies to deny care - denying a straight A surgical student preventative care for cancer, for example (a friend of mine). That only makes sense if you intend to restrict care to society.
Plenty of money available for health providers after we slaughter the hogs in the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. There could easily be a 15% gain in efficiency and a 15% gain in efficiency turns America into a net exporter again.
I am a science fantasy fan
Sorry, not going to be trolled. Have a nice day.
I am scientifically inaccurate.
Throughout most of human history governments have justified their authority by nakedly appealing to "might makes right" or else by claiming that "God made me king so do what I say" Just because government have more gun (swords, spears) than the average person doesn't make them legitimate.
And so you'll steal works from private sector whenever YOU deem THEY aren't providing enough for YOUR plans?
What compassion is this? As much as you can take from someone else
Fire and police protection are indeed socialized. Just because it is a service does not mean that it isn't controlling the "production". Sometimes private entities supplement the production with their own private police (ie, rent a cop), but I contend that this occurrence is rare because the government's socialized police system works very very well.
The "federals" also allowed slavery when the constitution was written.
They also offered to let the south keep slavery in perpetuity, if they'd rejoin the union and pay the tariffs. This offer was made several times during the war. The northern claim to moral ascendancy on the slavery issue is a load of crap.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
OK. Let's bet on inflation-adjusted DOW (using the Nov 1 value as a base), my offer still stands.
Tried that a century and a half ago. Unfortunately we coupled "state sovereignty" with "states' rights to allow slavery." So we lost that one. We all lost. Even the freed slaves lost.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Someone "under the finger" of multinational company is not compelled to buy from them. They can buy from someone else, wait for a lower price, or not buy at all. When the government provides a service you have no choice but to pay for it. If I'm sick and down to my last dollar I will still be compelled to "buy" government services I don't need through tax dollars.
There's the minor fact that he's 100% correct in the cognitive dissonace inherent in your position.
Mr. Troll, who is going to study their (the government's) ass off for years to be a slave? In ten years we're going to have half as many doctors. Then people will have a 'right to health care' but they just won't be able to get it.
These are examples where Keynsian remedies WERE NOT tried (at first).
What's your next guess?
Most of the "new deal" was continuation of Hoover's interference in the economy. Hoover was the secretary of the treasury in 1920, and he was incensed that he wasn't allowed to interfere in the depression of 1920 (which was over in about a year and a half). When the crash of 1929 came on, he got to try out all of his clever "progressive" ideas and turn the crash into an unmitigated disaster. Roosevelt then dragged it out for the rest of his life.
We didn't get out of the first great depression until 1946, when a million men were released from military service, the federal budget was cut by 2/3, and most of Hoover and Roosevelt's insane economic policies were lifted.
During the 'lost decade' Japan tried the 'fiscal conservatism' policy, by raising the interest rates and stopping the flow of money.
No, the Japanese government refused to let failed banks go out of business. They poured money into them, just as the congress did in the TARP program.
You simply don't understand economics.
Project much?
Keynes didn't understand economics, either. He understood how to curry favor with politicians by lending an air of "scientific" justification to their power-grabbing. He was the Lysenko of economics.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Spreading risk is != to spreading wealth.
This is how I would fix the problems:
1.Eliminate company health plans (the providers of these plans have little to no incentive to offer any actual benefits to the employees as the companies cant change to someone better due to lock-in contracts and the huge costs of changing, nor can the employees generally switch without paying a lot more)
2.Give every citizen a certain amount of tax-free money they can use to buy health insurance. i.e. the first $x of their health insurance costs are tax free. This makes up for the loss of company health plans (which are generally tax free)
3.Make it super-easy for people to switch to another health provider anytime they choose without penalty (i.e. if they switch to a similar plan from a different provider, the new provider cant suddenly deny coverage for all your pre-existing conditions just because you switched providers)
4.All health care providers must charge the same amount for the same treatment no matter who is paying. If a hospital charges $2000 for a procedure to one person, they must charge the same $2000 to everyone who gets the procedure (no matter if its the government via medicare, a large health plan, a small insurance company, an individual paying out of pocket or whatever else). Obviously they can increase the price anytime they want but again they need to charge the same new price to everyone
5.Take away all incentives for doctors and hospitals and others to order "unnecessary" tests (including a reform of medical malpractice law so that lawyers cant argue "I sue the hospital for $$$$$ for failing to carry out when carrying out would have saved my clients life/heart/kidney/good looks/whatever")
6.Remove any laws and red tape that make it harder to start up a health fund. Making it easier to run one (and reducing the administrative costs) may encourage new players into the market who offer better value much the same as what companies like Jet Blue did for air travel)
7.Remove any rules/laws/etc that in any way restrict what health insurance companies are allowed to offer coverage for. If an insurance company wants to offer coverage for prescription glasses (for example), they should be allowed to do so.
8.Low income earners and the poor (who cant afford health insurance) would get subsidized cover. Not government run cover but money from the government paid to the individual to cover part or all of their health insurance costs
9.Health insurance companies would be banned from doing deals with specific hospitals or doctors (i.e. "you will only get coverage if you go to OUR hospital"). Further to this, companies that own health insurers would be prohibited from owning any operation involved in the provision of health care (e.g. hospitals, drug companies, medical equipment makers etc). Also, Health insurance companies would be banned from dictating treatment terms to doctors (i.e. if you want us to give coverage for this heart operation, you will do it the way we specify)
and 10.Health insurance companies would be required to disclose upfront how much they will pay on a given treatment before the treatment is carried out and they must pay up. No more cases of saying one thing before you go into hospital and then changing their mind and denying payment AFTER the patient has racked up the big medical bills.
The only reason that some of the characters were able to be self-sufficient is that they were able to invent magic technologies, like force fields, super-metals, and invisible battleships, to support them. What happened in the book would not work in real life. If you are allowed to postulate arbitrary technology then you can make anything happen.
Just because you are paranoid does not mean that no-one is out to get you.
No shit.
It's "politically correct" to say the civil war was "about slavery" today. It is, however, nearly total bullshit.
The civil war happened because the North had been grumbling about wanting higher tariffs (in their mind, more $ to pay for an increasing budget) and wanting to implement them on the South's main agricultural products. The South saw that this was almost inevitable and wanted out when a President was elected without the electoral votes of a single Southern state.
The civil war was about economics pure and simple. Slavery, and decrees to abolish it, were simply a weapon used by the North for the purpose of psychological warfare via the creation of domestic troubles (loss of farm workers) for their opponents.
Except not at all, because "lunch" isn't a goddamn right, and you aren't enslaving anyone by requiring a service, because people choose to work in service industries. He's a troll.
I am scientifically inaccurate.
I believe that the US taxpayers are already paying when illegals with no money end up in Emergency Room ( and get some treatment there, eventually). That means the cost is not that different, it's just if the system is fixed more people actually get to live longer for about the same amount of money spent. Rather than just getting stabilized and dying soon after (wasted $$$) or making regular visits to ER since they don't get proper healthcare and just "emergency care". And here's another thing to think about - the more people cluttering up the ERs = the less ER resources for you if you ever need it. Even if the hospitals don't treat them, their dead bodies could get in the way of your critically injured body.
To me, it just shows how ignorant most US people are. They are already _paying_ lots of money for their broken system (more per capita than UK's NHS). They pay for Medicare, Medicaid. They pay for illegal immigrant ER. They pay to HMOs, etc. And then when stuff happens, way too many of them don't get much after all that paying (the number of healthcare related bankruptcies is very high in the USA). And then the US people scream "No!!!" when their President actually tries to fix it. Maybe he's trying to fix it the wrong way, but plain "No!!!" isn't going to help much, since the system is clearly broken. Why not just come up with better suggestions? If most of the US people don't think it can be fixed or don't want it fixed, that actually reflects rather poorly on the USA and the US people.
Look, if it's all about economics and "who cares about the health of 'stupid people'", then Governments shouldn't really try so hard to discourage people from smoking. Most smokers live till near retirement age then die around then or not long after, add enough tobacco taxes and they're good for the economy. And if they take down a few nonsmokers with them via secondhand smoke, that's good too. Since on average those nonsmokers will still live past their main productive years - after that they're taking more out than they're putting in (they may be entitled to "take out" after all their contributions but hard economic fact is the longer they live the more they'd take out).
Stupid people will say "But dying from lung cancer is expensive!". Here's the bad news, you will eventually die of something. And the odds are it'll be about as expensive, or even more expensive. And if you follow all those health tips on eating well and keeping fit, you'd lower your odds of dying of heart disease and stroke, but that means the odds of dying from cancer (and other stuff) go up.
Oh and if you live really long, keeping a person in a nursing home for a decade or more isn't cheap. Your body or/and mind[1] will fall apart and you'd need help.
So if people want to talk hard economics, that's some hard economics for them.
My suggestion is there should be subsidized healthcare for everyone. BUT it's limited to a finite quota per person. e.g. stuff like max of 400K every 2 years, with a max of 1 million per lifetime, adjusted for inflation and country's finances. Figures are just for example - let the actuarists and economists work it out.
Once you run out, too bad so sad - the country and taxpayers have done what they can reasonably afford for you. If you have money or other source of money, you can still pay full rate at hospitals (private or otherwise). No more taxpayer money for you.
But what if you are some poor but "exceptionally deserving" person?
OK, here's one workaround (I'm not sure how good and practical it is)- other people can choose to apply to sacrifice some of their quota for you (subject to regulations so that stupid and illiterate people don't get conned too much - hey there's no 100% when it comes to stupidity ok?).
How do you stop people from blowing away their quota on useless treatments? I don't know. It depends on how much freedom you want the system to have. I'd say you wouldn't want to allow people to spend their quota on quack doctors.
I think we should really look at the women and minorities truly hurt by a lack of national lunch insurance. Clearly all other civilized western societies provide this basic need.
So come on, and lets pass reform!
So tell me which all professions are these that come with prisoner shackles around my neck?
So what? Who defines "legitimate"?
It's part of human nature. Governments spontaneously form in every situation where population density passes a certain threshold, "legitimate" or not. Governments always collect taxes, therefore forcing people to "labor for others".
The government decides what objectives your "forced labor" will be used for. Luckily, we live in a representative democracy. If a majority of the people decide that "forced labor" will be used for health insurance, then that's what it will be used for.
Legitimately.
If only you could experience how unbelievably hair-pullingly infuriating you are. Almost every other western nation has socialised heathcare, and *SPOILER* Their economies are still intact. I'm begging you, please - look at what you're saying! How can you claim socialised healthcare cannot work when reality has shown that it does? You are like a creationist - no matter how much evidence anyone presents, you cling to your beliefs founded on blind speculation and hearsay.
inb4
I'm not going to do a bulleted rebuttal of the programs, but I will say that for any inefficiencies or problems, I cannot imagine life if they were controlled by private interests, which is what we are talking about; if healthcare is on the level of roads, schools, and mail, and should be at least available to anyone who needs it.
"Just off the top of my head. I don't know why many people so love the idea of being under the finger of faceless bureaucrats and Congresscritters"
Because it is at least marginally better than being under unelected CEOs and millions of nameless managers and directors, whose only goal in life is to suck more money out of the economy for their own gain.
"even pretend to let you have a say in what they do (see people like Rep Eric Massa (D-NY) who said he will vote for the health care bill even if his constituents don't support it)"
They elected a democrat, fully aware of what that would probably mean. Cry me a river.
"over having an elected business (you vote with your dollars)"
Yeah, I'll vote with my dollars when I have none, penniless because my job went over to China. I'll vote with my dollar when every choice in town is a member of the same cartel, just like ISPs, phone companies. I'll vote with my dollars when no one wants it, because of a condition that makes me "not worth" selling to. I'll vote with my dollars when my coverage is dropped because I wasn't quite as profitable as the guy next door, and profits had to be raised this quarter.
Yeah, my dollars may be powerful, but how about my voice instead? How about the other things the founders of the country gave me?
"with at least some ovresight (government, you, interest groups, etc)"
That is really the issue here, isn't it? The government putting in some oversight, and the fat cats not liking it one bit. So your argument is at best paradoxical; at worst, hypocritical.
"so you're giving me a free house, a $50-100k salary, a vehicle, etc too right?"
Ever hear of unemployment, social security? Probably; those are evil socialist systems designed to rob you of your hard earned money, too..
"where France has people rioting because they can't get jobs"
Right on topic.
"sick to get needed health services"
You mean like the vast majority of those with "pre-existing conditions" in the US? I'd say they are probably still better off than us!
"Didn't we fight a war to separate ourselves from Europe so that they couldn't dictate our way of life to us?"
There is the spirit! The not-made-here, blindly nationalistic spirit that permeates US politics. Because at one time we had a war with them, no matter what they do, we are superior and should do things even when they are proven to be wrong just to avoid being like them.
Is it any wonder why we are quickly headed towards third world status?
This thread looks like it could make a lot of use of this.
So if I decide to become a doctor then I have irrevocably chosen to treat any person, on any terms that they or the government mandate, for the rest of my career? If I decide to become an artist then I MUST produce paintings for anyone who wants one no matter if they can pay or not? My only other choice is to stop being a painter?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
1. America has a "free" market for health insurance/care
What in the world gave you that idea?
4. Most States have one insurer that has >40% of the insurance market
Doesn't that tell you something? It's very hard to get into the health insurance business. The biggest players have been greasing politicians for a long time. Look up how much campaign money they gave to Hillary and Obama.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Socialized medicine may be bad but socialized insurance will be an order of magnitude worse in terms of care and expense.
The stench of Randroid droppings is thick in the air today.
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
The previous administration was far from perfect,
It was the worst one since Roosevelt, until the current administration.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Start here.
So slavery is legitimate if a majority of the voters agree?
So, if someone chooses to be a farmer, do I have the right to compel them to feed me?
You, as an individual, do not. Society as a whole? Of course it does.
Also, what do you intend to do about the large number of physicians who've said that they intend to leave the profession if socialized medicine passes?
Generally people work for money. If there aren't enough physicians, subsidizing education and raising wages will probably work. If anything, physicians seem to be MORE motivated by money than the average person.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
The jury is still out on how long it will last.
Yep. Tell you what, you let me know when the Amendment gets passed that allows for this sort of thing....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
"Most of the "new deal" was continuation of Hoover's interference in the economy."
No. There was a crucial difference - abandonment of the gold standard. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Depression#Gold_standard It was pretty much required by the Banking Act, which was drafted by the Hoover's administration, true. But it had been enacted by Roosevelt.
"No, the Japanese government refused to let failed banks go out of business. They poured money into them, just as the congress did in the TARP program."
Later. After the economy hit the wall and entered the vicious cycle of deflation.
"Keynes didn't understand economics, either. He understood how to curry favor with politicians by lending an air of "scientific" justification to their power-grabbing. He was the Lysenko [wikipedia.org] of economics."
Nope. He knew economy quite well to understand that simple 'fiscal conservatism' is meaningless in the growing economy.
I see you don't want to take my bet?
the adults are trying to make things better.
The adults know that you can't fix the problems of a mostly government-controlled mess by making it fully government-controlled. Keynesians are infantile morons.
-jcr
Precisely. As it says in the summary, "hastily-crafted amendment." What's the rush? Congress, enough with the Clinton-style "crises" (whose raison d'être is ramming pork and bad law through without adequate oversight.) We want you to take your time, dot the i's, cross the t's, and check the nuts and bolts. If this truly is as important as you say, then it's worth doing right, and that takes time. We're talking over a trillion dollars (again!).So, you're not doing it right, you simply cannot be, because it simply is not possible to perform a job so hideously complex in a couple of weeks. Mark my words, it will come out, after all the dust settles and Americans begin to see how government, big pharma and the insurance companies have screwed them yet again, that this health care "reform" will be anything but. Remember, a complex bill can look very good on the surface, but the Devil truly is in the details, and you can bet there are going to be some highly profitable details buried in those pages: a single paragraph snuck in at the last minute can be all it takes.
This is a crock, and it shows pretty clearly that Obama has delusions of grandeur. Personally, I want a President to manage the country: do as little damage as possible along the way, and perhaps improve a few things here and there. What I don't want are sweeping changes like this, under any circumstances short of outright war with another superpower. That's because Congress gets involved and grabs even more money and power for the government and themselves, and leaves us with even less than we had before. That's how it works. Think about the damage those 434 people have done in the past fifty years since World War II, and tell me that we should trust those pricks with another penny of our money.
This whole thing is a crock. If you really believe the insurance companies are worried about this bill (as they should be, if it were truly what Congress says it is) I have a bridge to sell you. It won't help treat your illness, but it will make me a whole lot of money.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Why?
In the words of an infamous congressman: you LIE.
The bill provides mandated coverage for the health insurance industry - only a small handful of people will quality for the reduced "public option" plan. If you freelance, or are self employed, or otherwise fall above the cutoff -- you are required to buy full priced health insurance from a private firm.
This is NOT the change I voted for.
A more obvious solution would be to regulate Medical and Insurance industries. Why not? Other industries are regulated. The same old argument about R & D shutting down or going offshore doesn't wash as no one is going to exclude the U.S. as a market for fear of industrial embargo affecting it on some other level.
This is just another Democrat bid at buying votes and gaining control over previously free people.
Quit voting for Democrats and Republicans. Quit sticking your fingers in light sockets and meat grinders. Options outside these are plentiful yet invisible due to the same old blinders and rumours like " there are no other sound choices. The complete truth is exactly the opposite. Other fatal mistakes in political philosophy include assuming the majority is right, assuming the majority are informed ( only by mass distribution of disinformation) , assuming that since these parties have been in power too long they have the only workable feasible solutions and that we are a democracy. If you haven't figured out any of this yet , you aren't informed enough to vote on a flavor of popcicle.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
1. http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/107xx/doc10710/hr3962Dingell_mgr_amendment_update.pdf, pg. 1.
2. http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?c111:1:./temp/~c111j3JbX9:e330194:,SEC. 347. NO FEDERAL PAYMENT FOR UNDOCUMENTED ALIENS.
Our corporate overlords (those who own Congress) won't allow it.
Call me cynical, but I think that our overlords (one of my friends calls these people "the owners", and she has that right) let the House pass this bill to keep people's hopes alive and distracted.
I am basically against large government expenditures, but the cost of our military industrial complex is so much more that what a reasonable medical bill would cost, that I have softened my position and now I do support health care reform.
BTW, we could save a lot of money by trimming our ""defense"" costs but that is not going to happen because a relatively few people make so much profit that any reform there is not going to happen.
I guess you've never been robbed.
The rest of us, those who work from home or are otherwise self employed - will have to pay for insurance whether we need it or not.
This bill is a bailout for the health insurance industry, not socialism.
I suggest that you take up your argument with Merriam-Webster.
You may want to call file and police protection a socialist scheme, but that doesn't make it so.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Start here
"We hold these truths to be self evident." That's the definitive circular argument. As I said, circular arguments are all that any government has, or needs. At the end of the day, the Colonists had more guns and force in North America than the British could deal with, scraps of paper notwithstanding.
So slavery is legitimate if a majority of the voters agree?
It essentially was in most places throughout history until the industrial revolution. After that, majorities of voters almost everywhere decided that it was no longer necessary, and therefore not legitimate.
Peoples' ideas of exactly what constitutes "inalienable rights" have constantly changed throughout time. Ironically, the very document you point to silently tolerates slavery, despite all its high-minded language.
Technology has been one of the largest factors influencing just what an "inalienable right" is. Mechanization eliminated slavery, for example. Right now, many people are looking at the rise of expensive lifesaving medical procedures, and are concluding that access to health insurance should now be an "inalienable right". More rights will be added and detracted from this definition as history marches on.
In this case, me first, fuck you.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Socialised Medicine = Government setting aside money to pay for facilities and physicians, and qualified people willingly taking those employment opportunities.
Slavery = Forcing people to work for you against their will.
Simple enough?
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Despite the scare tactics from the right, this bill is NOT national healthcare. It is another fucking welfare check written to corporate America.
I am an independent, freelance software developer. I am the primary earner in a family of five. Universal medical care helped allow me to take the opportunity to make the jump, and in 6 years, there has been no looking back. Without it, fear would likely have kept me at my last employer.
I think your moves in this will be liberating; and there will be many unforeseen benefits. I hope you have the stamina to hold out over the rough patches.
And this is why Karl Marx was a cocksucking faggot. Take your broken, useless mid 19th century pop philosophy somewhere else, please; the adults are trying to make things better.
Odd then that every other country in the developed world mananaged a UHC system with heavy government involvement that works fine, maybe it's that American exceptionalism I keep hearing so much about.
And it's hard to call Keynesians morons when their methods are being adopted world-wide to bail out the failures of capitalism. Even Reagan believed in Keynes.
Because a majority of the people have decided that society should have that right. That the right to not starve is more fundamental than the right to keep all that you produce.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Where does the money come from, and what happens to people who do not agree to cooperate?
Simple enough?
"Look up how much campaign money they gave to Hillary and Obama."
Wow, are you a shill, or what.
How about the truth? Try it sometime.
The truth is: both the democrats and republicans take obscene amounts of money from the health industry.
But in a free market people can easily produce enough value to be able to buy what they need and much of what they want through voluntary transactions instead of force. US workers produce about $50/hour worked. The US government collects about $15/hour. Most of that for social services. Is there anyone who has worked the majority of their adult life who has come out ahead on government services? Force is bad. Free will is good. http://www.bls.gov/
And when people decide to stop producing?
Since this will be mandatory, everyone will of course need a card to verify who they are. Probably not called Real ID though. That might worry some people.
Golden. Epic. Awesome.
Send us a postcard from Stockholm.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
But your solution is going to take a country with a higher cancer survival rate and lower it. The same applies to other diseases that required expensive and innovative care.
Can you give us some examples of how government interference in the Health Industry helps medical insurers hike prices higher than they ought to be?
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity
generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the U.S. Department of
Energy.
[Electricity was generated before there was a public monopoly. Most electric power is still generated by private companies. I own stock in many utility companies. You don't think government involvement degrades the efficient generation and delivery of power?]
I then took a shower in the clean water provided by a municipal
water utility.
[Local government is greatly preferred over federal government. Water was clean before government got involved.]
After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC-regulated
channels
[What exactly has the FCC done for you?]
to see what the National Weather Service of the National
Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration determined the weather was
going to be like,
[These are very small government organizations linked to one of the legitimate functions of government - provide for the common defense]
using satellites designed, built, and launched by the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
[There are more private satellites than public. NASA doesn't design anything. Northrop Grumman, and Lockheed, and Boeing, and raytheon design and build satellites to meet Nasa specifications.]
I watched this while eating my breakfast of U.S. Department of
Agriculture-inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined
as safe by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
[USDA is one of the most dysfunctional government agencies. It does not inspect a statistically significant amount of food, and it is horribly inefficient at regulating drugs.]
At the appropriate time, as regulated by the U.S. Congress and kept
accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the
U.S. Naval Observatory, [provide for the common defense]
I get into my National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration-approved automobile [what is better because it is "approved"?]
and set out to work on the roads build ...
by the local, state, and federal Departments of Transportation,
[Local and state are one thing. The federal highway system has been a mixed blessing]
possibly
stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the
Environmental Protection Agency, [Think about that one for a moment]
using legal tender issued by the Federal
Reserve Bank. [for which a constitutional amendment was required and which was complicit in every financial scandal since inception.] On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to be
sent out via the U.S. Postal Service [Shining example right there] and drop the kids off at the public
school. [Another shining example]
The reason jobs went overseas is greed. Most plants that shut down here and pop up in Asia were profitable beforehand. Corporations see their competition raking in far greater profits due to lack of regulations in third world state, so they manufacture reasons why plants have to close down in America. Hell, most of them are pretty clear about their intentions and reasoning.
And stupid American workers buy into it, or the other PR technique -- guilt. Let's show pictures of starving children in Ethiopia.. Have to move our factories there, got to lift the third world out of poverty they tell us. But the money saved from cheap third world labor winds up in corporate earnings portfolios. Very little trickles down into the hands of third world peasants (sic).
Great point! I would mod you up if I had any points.
I do wonder what part of the constitution is going to be used to force people to buy health insurance. This question was asked to Peloski but brushed aside. Further emails from her office say it's part of Interstate Commerce and the general welfare clause. How long before it's challenged in court?
we drive more than anyone else, and the WHO includes accidents in "life expectancy."
Few people will actually be covered under the reduced "public option". This bill was another payout to corporate America, on the taxpayers' dime.
Clown comments like that are why libertarianism will always be a joke philosophy, confined entirely to Internet conspiracy theorists and anti-social hillbillies.
Remember all that Ron Paul crap that infested the Internet all the way up to the last election? You'd have thought the absolute trashing of their candidate would have silenced the Randroids, but they're back like a really stubborn weed.
Real adults realise the benefit of society and the welfare state over 'fuck you got mine' anarchy. Libertarians want to turn the US into Brazil, or Victorian England. Maybe they should re-open the workhouses, or is that too much government interference?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Big gov't has such a great track record of success...
- U.S. Post Service, 234 years later, well not so much.
- Social Security, 74 years later, well no.
- Fannie Mae, 71 years later, na
- War on Poverty, 45 years later, naa
- Medicare and Medicaid, 44 years later, no
- Freddie Mac, 39 years later, no
- Department of Energy 32 years later, no
- Gov't run health care, hell no
"I rely on me to provide for me."
You wouldn't help your family, friends, so you don't expect them to help you?
Or if you do, why not expand that 'strength in numbers' to all Americans?
It is currently illegal for the government to pay for abortions.
Ah, inability to precisely predict the future invalidates the arguments, right? The last forty years of socialised health care hasn't destroyed the economies of the UK, Germany or France yet, but it might do any second! Just hang on! Okay - any minute now! Honestly, do you not recognized how poor your comment works as an argument? Given that health care per capita in Canada costs about 2/3rds of what it does in the USA (with a much higher satisfaction rate amongst Canadians with their service compared to the same survey carried out in the USA), then the logical question to ask is how much better the US economy would be in all that money were being spent more efficiently and freely by the US public?
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
The "states"? Oh my, and what are those states other than other form of government? They also tax and spend - they aren't at all the bastion of freedom.
If you mean "the people", that would mean something different indeed. But as you see in referendum after referendum "we the people" cannot agree on anything, and even getting 60% on something requires lots of monies to be poured into advertising.
The truth is: both the democrats and republicans take obscene amounts of money from the health industry.
No argument there. I'm quite aware that there's only one ruling party. I mentioned Hillary and Obama because they made the most noise in the last campaign about wanting to "reform" health care.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Some states rights issues make a lot of sense - drug law reform, setting speed limits, Individual States setting standards for insurance.
Some are more ambiguous - The arguments for more local standards for education are not very convincing, despite No Child Left Behind being a pretty screwed up 'fix'.
Some states rights are part of the problem. Sometimes, states rights really does get used as a code for nothing more than racism.
Here's the real problem though: The federals were never supposed to have this much power (in theory) - The big financial institutions were never supposed to act against their own interests and take so many incredibly stupid risks (also in theory, particularly Rand's and Greenspan's).
If you're an Objectivist, the burden is on you to explain why so many of our financial institutions ended up controlled by worthless moochers when we had been de-regulating for over a generation - shouldn't most of the top banks have been in the hands of rational individualists after 20 years of more and more freedom? I know we weren't at total deregulation yet, and a small percentage of the worst financials were actually subject to rules such as CRA, but compared to. say the Carter years, we were a lot closer to every one of the conditions Rand advocated for Capitalism. The guys who ran the big banks during the seventies must have been exaggerated, super-stereotyped versions of Elsworth Toomey and Wesley Mooch, for so much of that to survive til now. Why didn't any Midas Mulligans get into banking since the Reagan years?
If you're on the political right, how the hell can we get a small government where we spend this much on defense, prisons, and the war on some drugs? If we cut all social programs, the whole department of agriculture, federal DOT and NASA out of the mix, we'd still have a huge, bloated government.
Who is John Cabal?
What does "right" mean? So long as enough people agree on what rights we have, those are the ones we have. If we generally agree that everyone should get free ice cream on prime-numbered days in odd-numbered months, we have that right. In most western countries around the world, people generally agree that any medical care one receives should not be tethered to their ability to pay for it. We kinda half-ass it since we have EMTALA and Medicaid.
At this very moment, I can walk into an emergency room for a common cold, have them evaluate me, send me home with some NyQuil, and never pay a dime. So we already have such a right in "emergency" situations. Even your conservative friends in Congress aren't calling for the repeal of EMTALA.
I'm not really sure why you're asking such a non sequitur. There is no socialized medicine bill that has seen so much as a hearing in committee, much less a vote on the floor of either body. If you're trying to confuse the issue by calling increased government regulation of private insurers and a government-run insurance option (that only a very small amount of people can buy) "socialized medicine", I will point out that "socialized medicine" is what the NHS is in the UK. And even if we take your definition, Medicaid and Medicare already account for over half of all health care spending. These doctors would have quit a long time ago.
I am in my thirties and have been sick for most of my life until a few months ago. My mother has MS and can't walk more than five feet. My friend has MD and goes to work every day. We all paid much more than our share of taxes. Please tell me why raising our taxes to give insurance to healthier people who choose not to work is just?
Until they finish taking all your moneys. Socialism is a dog eat dog world, man. And capitalism is just the other way around.
Every developed country has tax and spend policies. Every single one. In a recession, your only other option is to cut taxes and spend, i.e. Keynes.
What's your solution, cut spending during a recession?
It was also a way to keep England from supporting the south militarily. They had been leading the world in fighting slavery, and they couldn't jump into a war on the side that had slaves.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
All right... all right... but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order... what have the Romans done for us?
Did you miss the economic crises that is going on right now? Let's see how this works out before you declare how sustainable the welfare state is. Just because the various government have been able to keep the actual magnitude of losses relatively hidden doesn't mean that they don't exist.
I love all these comments praising this bill as "providing health care! YAYAYAYAY!!!!!" Nothing in this bill provides anyone with health care - what it DOES provide is a MANDATE that YOU MUST PURCHASE health care of some form (baseline plan is $15k) or you go to PRISON. Now would you care to explain how that is "compassionate" or "affordable" to ANYONE?
If your definition of worked includes selling lots of 12 MPG pickup trucks.
There are plenty of incentives to keep producing. Living in abject poverty isn't particularly compelling for most people, even if it means "sticking it to the man".
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
You mean, like the bankrupt state of California? If one is forced to chose, you may wish to live free, but I prefer not dying.
You are correct, they aren't enslaved, they can quit at any time. Well... crap, what happens when we have all this insurance, but the health providers no longer do any work, because they can't lose money and provide a service at the same time. Extreme situation, yes, but that's why there is rationing in the british healthcare system and it takes 6 months to get service in Canada.
Not really. Humans are not cacti - we don't just sit in a desert and suck up moisture. We build, we relocate, we work and produce and farm and organise. The notion that a human being should be self-sufficient is a very unlikely one. We need to co-operate. And just as trade between nations enables both nations to be more efficient, so everyone contributing a little of their money to create a social health care service can lead to a greater efficiency within the nation.
Government censoring free speech = bad outcomes for us. Government providing health care at less cost than the Private US Health Care Industry = good outcomes for us.
/. is against "Internet regulation" ? Talking about privacy infringing an censorship? Sure - against it! Talking about mandating net neutrality? Great! Argument through vagueness is no argument at all, atrius.
There you go - the answer was quite simple. It's based on whether the result is good or bad, rather than on a gross simplification of what people are talking about for the purposes of trying to win an argument. I mean who says that
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
The point of it is that it can be changed through amendments as changing times require changing purpose.
Yes, if the government cared at all about the rule of law, they'd be trying to amend the constitution to permit this kind of blatant power-grab. The problem is that the people let FDR get away with all kinds of things that should have gotten him hanged, and now the power-grabbers see no need to even consider the constitutionality of anything they want to do.
When someone asked Pelosi where in the constitution the authority for this monstrosity could be found, she asked "are you serious?", and then fobbed the question off with the old commerce clause excuse. The commerce clause exists to prevent the states from erecting trade barriers against each other, not to give the federal government authority over anything and everything that is bought or sold. If the commerce clause gave that kind of power, then the rest of the constitution would be moot.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Trust Dr Obama with the knife!
http://rocknerd.co.uk
It's not a lie; it's using a different metric. US Health Care is usually the best in the world, if (1) you can afford it, and (2) you know how to navigate it. Sometimes you also need to be capable of reading the studies yourself so you can ask intelligent questions.
US Health care is far from the best in the world if you are talking about on-the-average as measured by life expectancy. There are also a few areas where--although there are phenomenal surgeons here--you are usually better-treated elsewhere. For example, Stomach cancer, because it occurs more frequently in Japan, because they're more aggressive about screening for it, and because they'll do the right operation for it--whereas here, many surgeons are either too lazy or too uncertain to do the complicated operation required.)
Interesting that his first point is electricity. The same electricity, that when interfered with by the California government cause the power companies to nearly up and walk out and now cause rolling blackouts. How's that working for ya?
I think that most people forget that the money has to come from somewhere to pay doctors.
If doctors want money more money, do they unionize and strike?
If the taxpayers want to pay less, what choice do they have?
The problem with socialized "one-payer" systems, is that there's no choice. Basically all this will do is turn into another "edumacation" situation.
Teachers have tenure -> Doctors have tenure
Teachers can't be fired -> Doctors can't be fired
Teachers demand more resources -> Doctors demand more resources
Teachers convince students/parents to advocate for them -> Doctors convince patients to advocate for them
Students/parents demand more resources -> Patients demand more resources
Then after this huge lobbying capacity builds up...
Teachers' unions demand gold-plated benefits -> Doctors' unions demand gold-plated benefits
Teachers demand fewer hours, fewer students -> Doctors demand fewer hours, fewer patients
So when there's no choice left, nobody can opt-out. Who ends up paying, well, the taxpayers end up paying...
Of course this bill doesn't do any of these things, and it's isn't necessarily a slippery slope, but socializing medicince is not the same as trying to reign in health insurance companies. Note that this bill will still purchase health care services from the private sector just like medicare and medicaid.
Of course this bill doesn't reign in health insurance companies either. It's just an expensive exentension of medicare-advantage to people under-65. Probably the main accomplishment of this bill (if it were to pass the senate in substantially the same form which by all accounts right now is unlikely), it would basically create an insurance mandate (similar to car insurance) and require insurance companies to provide insurance (similar to the way that car insurance companies are "required" to provide insurance to otherwize uninsurable folks), and for companies to provide health care.
These are somewhat desireable goals, but they aren't the same as providing insurance to "everyone" as people have mistakenly mis-interpreted. The only thing this bill really does is to force people to -pay-into-the-pot- (which is what insurance is all about anyhow).
The bad side of this bill is that it's not self funded, it relies on two really poor funding techiques: an additional sur-tax of 5+% on high-income people (not necessarily rich, but just high-income), and that some young/healthy 20-39 under-employed people and some lower-middle class folks can't afford insurance and will instead pay the fine of not having insurance. Of course this a political calcuation by the dems that high-income folks either won't care or aren't part of their voting base anyhow, and the young/healthy 20-39 under-employed and lower-middle class folks don't vote and if they do, they vote democratic by default anyhow...
If (and I say IF) we wanted to go down the socialized route for insurance, a much better way to do this is to socialize catastrophic insurance (basically so people don't go broke owing +100K medical bills), but leave the rest of insurance to the free market. If insurance companies didn't have to actualize for the extreme medical bills, they would become by default more affordable for people. The problem with the current scheme is that it dabbles in the less clear cut areas of medicine, but socializes their costs (acupunture, prayer medicine, on the questionable side and abortion on the political side). That part should have real free-market choice, not part of a one-size-fits-all public option.
Anyhow... That's my 2-cents worth... :^)
California could solve its budget problems by seceding. If the money we fork over for federal taxes stayed in California, the budget would be well in the black. Of course, knowing this state's legislature, I'm sure they'd piss away that surplus within five years.
Just sayin'...
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
You are at a loss. We do not have capitalism, CERTAINLY not a free market, in the US, which I assume is your country of origin. We have corporatism. Even your guru (I'm assuming, but I bet I'm close) Michael Moore has admitted the same in interviews, but to bash capitalism sounds so righteous. Take some time and bone up on your world, you have little time before this Greater Depression sets in very deeply.
Well, that's not true. If a company fucks something up, like take stock value over efficient delivery of the goods they provide, or prefer short term profit over long term investments, there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. Sure, you can go to a "competitor" who is equally bad because their bottom line is stock value as well, not consumer satisfaction or crap like that. How is that free market thing working out for you?
At least with a government run utility, you can vote them out of office. I totally agree that that's not working out for most Americans either, but at least you can theoretically change that with your vote.
Also, you don't really think you're not paying for the private companies' investments, right? You're paying for them after the fact, which is good, but you keep on paying for them even when they're paid off. Which bad, unless you own stock in the company... which you're funding by yourself, partly.
You are under corporatism, not capitalism. Need a reading primer? I can supply.
We rank 37th in infant mortality
The US ranks 37th in *reported* infant mortality. The main difference is what is considered a live birth vs. still birth. Most countries don't count it as an infant death if the baby dies within 24 hours of birth, and in countries with less capable neonatal intensive care that happens a lot. Premies simply die and don't get counted, except in the US.
I suppose you will not be happy until we see our first trillionaire. The top 1% of this country already have more power than the bottom 95%. We will find a way to reduce the high cost of health insurance when the need to do so is overwhelming. Only when the need is so great will we invest enough money to increase the healthfulness of people and the efficiency of the health care system. It can and will be done. This health care bill will only hasten its arrival. I see this as nothing more than making the rich solve this problem to maintain their wealth. I have confidence that they will be able to solve it as soon as they feel the need to do so.
Illegal aliens: This is a non-issue, made up to inflame the ignorant.
How ignorant do YOU have to be to not see the issue here. This is covering tens of millions of people who are not citizens, all of the burden of which is shouldered by the taxpayer.
Forget any of the arguments about covering people that have been here for a long time and working and paying into the tax system. Instead focus singly on the FLOOD of people coming in from fairly weak borders with Mexico and Canada, and you can see that the system will be swamped with non-U.S. citizens eager for a handout at the expense of a country that cannot afford to cover fully even the citizens they have.
I have no tolerance for illegal aliens. If we need that many workers here, then lets open up the gates of immigration and let the hundreds of thousands of people from Mexico and other places that have legally applied for immigration and are waiting patiently in. I don't see why a line-jumper should be given preference or favors over people who seek to follow procedure and come to the country legally.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Clown comments like that are why libertarianism will always be a joke philosophy, confined entirely to Internet conspiracy theorists and anti-social hillbillies.
Remember all that Ron Paul crap that infested the Internet all the way up to the last election? You'd have thought the absolute trashing of their candidate would have silenced the Randroids, but they're back like a really stubborn weed.
Real adults realise the benefit of society and the welfare state over 'fuck you got mine' anarchy. Libertarians want to turn the US into Brazil, or Victorian England. Maybe they should re-open the workhouses, or is that too much government interference?
So you're saying that "real adults" want the government to be Mommy and Daddy? As such anyone who says you should take care of yourself and kindly keep your hand out of my pocket book is what? A child?
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
-- formerly Socialist 3rd world -- and every time I hear this blather about the US being "3rd world", I can just shake my head. What utter ignorance. Truly, Americans have *no idea* of what lies beyond their borders, even if they think they do. In my experience, this affects the so-called "progressive" Americans *worse* than others.
The quickest way for the US to plummet to 3rd world level is through more "public" services that eliminate choice. The "public" school system is already a shambles, a gigantic waste of students' time and resources. Pray that health care does not follow.
The last I heard is that everyone would be forced to buy in, or be fined or face jail time. Some option that is.
The only reason that some of the characters were able to be self-sufficient is that they were able to invent magic technologies, like force fields, super-metals, and invisible battleships, to support them. What happened in the book would not work in real life. If you are allowed to postulate arbitrary technology then you can make anything happen.
Are you saying it is impossible to be reasonably self-sufficient in real life and that requires "magic"?
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
that's great, until you can't, or otherwise fail to. Then what?
Then we all have to deal with you, one way or another. Most of us have decided we're not ok with letting people die on the streets, or more accurately we have to deal with people who are faced with either dying on the streets OR doing other stuff that is unpleasant to others to avoid dying in the streets. Such as fraud, theft, murder, etc.
it would be great if, having failed to provide for yourself and all of your needs (including health care no one can afford), you just would decently wander off and shoot yourself in the head so as not to cause any more problems for anyone. Oddly though, that's not what people DO when they are faced with either bad luck or the results of their own bad decisions. No, they typically try to survive by any means necessary.
and if they fail, I am STILL not ok with watching them die in the streets. I guess I'm just one of those frail, lily-livered human beings, who thinks maybe the world is improved by reducing desperation as much as possible. There are downsides to that as well, but none as bad as the alternative.
you run your own health insurance company?
Oh. So I guess you rely on you to provide for you, except when you rely on other people to provide for you.
Nobody wants to talk about health insurance in cost terms. By this I mean people aren't willing to say what is and is not worth the money. They aren't willing to say "This treatment costs too much for its expected return, and thus shouldn't be covered, even if it means someone will die sooner." Well the problem with that attitude is, of course, that costs get huge. But they don't want to admit that is why, so instead they want to find someone else to blame, someone who's being an evil profiteering bastard that is clearly the reason things are too expensive.
However that's just not the case. What it comes down to is health care will either be very expensive, or very slow (as is seen in Canada) unless we are willing to start doing cost/benefit on it. There are treatments, in particular end of life treatments, that are expensive and have a low ROI. You spend six figures to extend someone's life 6-12 months. This is not a good use of money.
The idea that a public health system will fix everything shows a rather large amount of ignorance of countries that actually have public health systems. You can have all the case, but you'll spend a ton on it in taxes. You can also have reasonable spending, but then something has to get cut. In Canada it is unfortunately often quality of life things. You can wait half a decade on something like a hip replacement that will drastically improve your quality of life because it isn't critical.
And that's the rub, isn't it. Even the UK, with its hybrid system, shows far better universal results than the US. The US is pretty much a half a century behind the rest of the industrialized world, and yet what's the arguments I'm seeing here against it? Ayn Rand? Keynes was a moron? The Constitution is shredded? The rest of the First World is watching the US with their jaws on the ground.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Sorry, but no, it's not sound at all, particularly when applied to life and death situations. We're not talking about some self-entitled "right" to own a big screen TV or a PS3, we're talking about human lives.
Other countries can manage a much better return on the dollar (or euro, yen, etc) for health care. If the US government is so terrible that it cannot do what other governments have already done, then maybe people should try to reform government instead of fighting health care reform?
And how many dollars is "zillions" anyway? Certainly significantly less than the "zillions" paid to transform Iraq from a secular dictatorship into a theocratic one...
How many of those counties create innovative new health care as opposed to merely implement what we come up with? Creating is far more expensive than maintaining. As has been said elsewhere, a government run system isn't likely to come up with innovative new systems. Whether or not one can do it efficiently isn't even the point when it comes down to it. You cannot create a "right" that imposes obligations on others to deliver that right without effectively enslaving those others or at least being willing to enslave them when they refuse to provide that "right" at the price the government is willing to pay.
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
Comment removed based on user account deletion
is this on Slashdot? Quite unusual...
in all free countries, people are free to choose other vocations should they wish. Doctors in england, france, germany, canada (and on, and on, and on..) are hardly "enslaved". They freely chose the profession, knowing the situation and the cost/benefit situation. Apparently it's not too bad.
that doesn't mean it's right... "Company Stores" worked well for the elites back in the day too... but given the hurdles to becoming a doctor in most civilized nations, the compensation better be pretty good (whether financial or otherwise) for people to work that hard to do it. apparently it still is.
Health Care Mythology
7/22/2009
Clifford S. Asness, Ph.D.
What We Know That Ain’t So
Will Rogers[1] famously said, “It isn't what we don't know that gives us trouble, it's what we know that ain't so.” So it is with the health care debate in this country. Quite a few “facts” offered to the public as truth are simply wrong and often intentionally misleading. It seems clear that no truly productive solution will emerge when these false facts represent our common starting point. So, this essay takes on the modest task of simply disabusing its readers of some untrue notions about health care.
I do not take on the harder task of prescribing how we should (and if we should) reform health care, though I offer a few thoughts. Important work must be done here by those who understand, far better than I, the details of health care provision. However, no details are necessary for this essay, and no animals (though perhaps some egos) were harmed in its creation. The fallacies I present are basic and it takes only a rational economic framework to expose them
There are large groups of people in this country who want socialized medicine and they sense that the stars are aligning, and now is their time to succeed. They rarely call it socialized medicine, but instead “single payer health care” or “universal coverage” or something that their public relations people have told them sounds better. Whatever they call it, they believe (or pretend to believe) a lot of wrongheaded things, and they must be stopped. Step one is understanding how and why they are wrong. Step two is kicking their asses back to Cuba where they can get in line with Michael Moore for their free gastric bypasses.
Finally, please read my standard disclosure (though it’s more designed for something that might be construed as financial advice, it can’t hurt) and my admission of non-originality.[i],[ii]
Myth #1 Health Care Costs are Soaring
No, they are not. The amount we spend on health care has indeed risen, in absolute terms, after inflation, and as a percentage of our incomes and GDP. That does not mean costs are soaring.
You cannot judge the “cost” of something by simply what you spend. You must also judge what you get. I’m reasonably certain the cost of 1950’s level health care has dropped in real terms over the last 60 years (and you can probably have a barber from the year 1500 bleed you for almost nothing nowadays). Of course, with 1950’s health care, lots of things will kill you that 2009 health care would prevent. Also, your quality of life, in many instances, would be far worse, but you will have a little bit more change in your pocket as the price will be lower. Want to take the deal? In fact, nobody in the US really wants 1950’s health care (or even 1990’s health care). They just want to pay 1950 prices for 2009 health care. They want the latest pills, techniques, therapies, general genius discoveries, and highly skilled labor that would make today’s health care seem like science fiction a few years ago. But alas, successful science fiction is expensive.
In the case of health care, the fact that we spend so much more on it now is largely a positive. The negative part is if some, or a lot, of that spending is wasteful. Of course, that is mostly the government’s fault and is not what advocates of government control want you to focus upon. We spend so much more on health care, even relative to other advances, mostly because it is worth so much more to us. Similarly, we spend so much more on computers, compact discs, HDTV, and those wonderful one shot espresso makers that make it like having a barista in your own home. Interestingly, we also spend a ton more on these other items now than we did in 1950 because none of these existed in 1950 (well, you could have hired a skilled Italian man to live with you and make you coffee t
The only thing more annoying than the religious right is the whiny left, of which you seem to be a member. These are the people who blame the republicans for all their ills and do nothing but cry and whine about how they can't do anything. Oh shut up and hold the parties responsible to account. The republicans control jack and shit at the federal level any more. The President is a democrat, and a rather socialist democrat by all accounts. Well that accounts for the entire executive branch, since he has the power to appoint the people who run things. Now, in terms of making laws that's the House and Senate of course. In both cases the democrats have not just a majority, but a commanding majority. The house has 257 democrats, 178 republicans. That is a 59%/41% advantage. In the Senate it is even bigger 60%/40% which is a supermajority that can override filibusters.
So you have a situation where the republicans have no power to make laws at a federal level without a large amount of democrat support. The democrats on the other hand can pass legislation without even a single republican supporter, and can do so even if procedural tactics are used to attempt to block it,
Thus we are now in what would be called "Put up or shut up," time. But they aren't.
Well part of the reason they may not be is because of people like you that refuse to hold them to account. You bitch and whine about The Right(tm) causing problems and don't hold any democrats to account for this.
I swear that during Bush's terms the democrats got so used to doing nothing but bitching that they now just keep doing the same shit. Well bitching time is over. You've got the power, use it.
As usual, I think the Daily Show really nailed it http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-september-30-2009/democratic-super-majority.
You're probably looking at the print-friendly version from the THOMAS site, which is about 584 pages for me. Pasting the text into Word and stripping out the double paragraph breaks puts it at 859 pages and more than 315,000 words.
But I also have the PDF file from the Government Printing Office loaded right now, and Adobe Reader's paging function says that I'm on page 1 of 1990. Given that the GPO's printing guidelines are very consistent, referring to the 1990 pages of this bill provides a useful comparison to other bills, including past health care reform bills.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
You can start by explaining how a multi-trillion dollar government program is going to make things better.
What the invasions and occupations are now programs? Because they are the ONLY thing that was multiple trillions. The health program will be less than 1 trillion over a decade. Now, I have major issues with it, but out and out lying about it solves nothing and will only change the mind of idiots.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
If you decide to become a road builder, you will get at least the vast majority of your work by contracting with 'the government', or you will starve. If you form a long haul trucking corporation, you will run on roads 'the government' controls (and they can set the terms, such as telling you your trucks can't use certain routes). If you become an architect, your buildings will meet the government's standards. If you become an electrician in the USA, you will meet at least one of three very broad codes, each applicable to 10 states or more, in all your work. If you become a dairy farmer, the government will inspect your product and put its seal of approval on it, or your avenues of sale will be limited at best (and if you refuse to let the govenment test your cows for BSE, they will shoot Old Bessie right in front of you, if necessary.).
As the law stands now, and as it will stand if all the most liberal of the new health care referendums pass, if you accept insurance as a payer, you must accept the rules that insuror sets. If government becomes one of the insurors (which it already has, by Medicare), you must accept their terms to take their money. Don't like it, don't accept their insurance, and don't treat the patients they cover. Stay in private practice. Oooohh! That's so Socialist!
Now, there are a few laws for exceptional, uncommon circumstances, requiring you, as a doctor, to make reasonable attempts to save lives in the event of immediate risk. That's cases where people have a heart attack right in front of you, not providing free ongoing care for even the most lethal chronic conditions. Those laws are bundled as part of 'Good Samaritan' laws that protect you (as a medical professional), from being sued if you try to render emergency assistance. They also match the first oath all doctors swear - there's more to the Hippocratic Oath than just "First, do no harm...". So do you want to be a special kind of doctor who doesn't respect the oath?
Who is John Cabal?
The infant mortality statistic has a lot of things that affect it and make it appear much worse in the U.S. than it really is, if you actually read the scientific literature on the topic, such as the CDC's infant mortality data rather than just regurgitating propaganda. First, not all industrialized countries even calculate infant mortality the same way. Secondly, American doctors are much more likely to deliver the infant in a pre-term threatened pregnancy, while in Europe they are more likely to not intervene and the fetus is miscarried. A delivered infant that dies counts in the stats, while a miscarriage generally does not. The U.S. has the some of the lowest pre-term infant mortality rates in the world according to the literature, but that fact is certainly NOT being publicized. Yes, term infant mortality rate could use a little work here, but some of the biggest risk factors for that one are solved culturally (i.e. reducing the number of teen pregnancies, which are correlated with higher infant mortality rates) rather than medically.
Just "gittin-r-done," day after day.
My understanding is that inflation was caused in the 1970s because of the United States rampant spending in Vietnam and subsequent dropping of the gold standard. Not the Europeans "Socialism". In fact there seems to be a direct correlation between most problems in the world and the U.S. Speaking on behalf of the rest of the world, we'd like to say thank you for all the insight and entertainment this issue has raised about your country. Reagan a good President ... indeed! We don't want health care
for our children! Hilarious, just hilarious. Keep up the good work.
We're moving in the direction of socialized insurance more than socialized medicine. The difference is significant. BTW, do you think Canada and the UK have enough doctors?
Any abortion except in the case where the mother has to chose their life or the baby's is an elective procedure and as such is not a health issue.
If the government wants to pay for non-health related (aka elective) surgeries then they should cover boob jobs as well.
If people want to cut up their perfectly healthy bodies in an unsafe manner because the government won't pay for it then that's their own stupidity.
Work Safe Porn
"Perhaps, you can cite the dozens or perhaps hundreds of other programs the government has run that efficiently made things better?"
That would be hard to do since the opposition puts checks and double checks and red tape like you wouldn't believe into most government programs to try to prevent 'abuse' and limit their spending as much as possible. This bill is no doubt more of the same.
True, but doesn't that just prove my point?
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
You can also elaborate on exactly how trying to make health care/insurance a government mandated "right" doesn't effectively enslave those who provide such services?
Having competent legal representation is also a right in this country. My dad is a public defender and applying your analogy to his situation, that means he's "effectively enslaved" as well. However, he's never thought of himself as a slave, because after passing the bar he took an oath to uphold the Constitution and realizes that in a system where people don't have access to proper legal representation, they effectively lose the right to a fair trial. Similarly, those in the medical profession take an oath in which they pledge to help people. While it might be all well and good to apply the egoist/Objectivist approach to procedures like breast implants and liposuction, when you consider that there are a lot of people (not just those who are irresponsible or lazy) out there with serious illnesses and are unable to afford the treatments they need, the promise to help rings hollow if people in the medical trade are going to cry foul on ideological grounds.
Real adults take care of themselves and don't look to the government for handouts.
Ever go to public school (including public universities)? Ever drive on public roads? Ever call the cops? How about social security? Will you have this opinion when it's time for you to get a check from the gov't each month? My aunt is a psychiatrist. She graduated in the top of her high school and college classes and attended Yale med school. She was recently diagnosed with cancer despite never smoking or drinking and being in good shape (she participated in several triathlons in her youth) and was almost unable to get treatment due to the current medical system in this country. When a productive, intelligent and otherwise healthy person is put in such a predicament, it's pretty clear that the system needs to be changed.
When it comes to health care, even the insured don't "take care of themselves" 100%. Most folks are pretty well dependent on their employer for insurance. If I'm seriously ill and don't like the care I'm getting, I can't take my business elsewhere because I will have a preexisting condition. People stay with jobs they hate so that they can take care of their spouses and children. This sort of "he-man" libertarianism works fine until you end up in the hospital right before you intend to change jobs.
Plenty, thanks. The money comes from taxes and the same thing happens to people that don't cooperate that happens with tax that goes towards the police, fire service, road maintenance, government administration, embassies, etc. etc.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
No, we don't. Half or more of the health care dollars are spent by the government through various programs, and the industry is heavily regulated.
Health insurance is not health care. The fact that the government has so horribly conflated the two through various perverse incentives is a big part of the problem.
Because competition is not presently allowed over state lines. The monopolistic behavior of the insurance market is a direct result of government regulation.
Government regulation is fucking healthcare, the answer to broken regulation fucking healthcare is more regulation on healthcare? Puh-lease.
The sad thing is that you think that one or the other is a "solution."
The only control the government has over the economy is manifest in its abilities to ruin it.
It is not the governments purpose to "save" or "fix" the economy, nor does it have the ability to do so. It never had that ability, and it never will. An economy is nothing more than the peoples free will to trade with each other. If I am not willing to trade my services then the only way to make me is to make me a slave. If I am not willing to trade my goods then the only way to make me is to steal from me. The ultimate result of making these things happen is the loss of free will, ergo the loss of an economy.
"His name was James Damore."
"Fail in a different manner" is the issue.
Enron is gone and no one will ever lose another dime to them. Madoff's going to rot in jail for the rest of his life.
When the government screws something up, it doesn't die and go away, it tends to get bigger and more expensive for the (increasingly small) portion of the population expected to pay for it. I can stop buying food grown with Monsanto products. I can choose not to patronize or invest in poorly conceived internet startups. I can't (without serious social/legal/financial consequences) wake up and stop paying taxes.
Merely pointing out that the government does lots of things and provides lots of services does not in anyway prove that they are doing it efficiently or all that well compared to other options and methods. Even if you can say that some of those services have made things better in someways, that doesn't mean that government is always the answer to every problem.
Further, pointing out that the world is sliding towards bigger and bigger government since the 80's does not say it is a good thing, just that it is happening.
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
Wow, you must not read slashdot very much. Every time I hear mention of police force, its usually the dailyKOS slashdotters ranting and railing against the "oppressive" police officers.
No. Police, fire, and military are not "socialized", and have nothing to do with "socialism". Keep spreading the lies. these are "civic services" not "socialized" services. They do not provide a measure of "wealth" to any other man. These services ensure the maintenance of civil society. Universal, socialist, health care is not required for a civil society, as proven by the existence of our Republic for the past 200+ years.
But keep it up, your distortion of the truth is right out of the communist manifesto.
20th century Marxism is not progress...
I thought it was interesting that Associated Press published an article recently on the profits of the health insurance industry, something railed against persistently by various politicians. They found that the usual average profit margin for health insurance companies was 6%, and last year it was only 2%. From 2003 to 2008, the growth in their costs exceeded the growth in their profits.
But then, as the article itself notes, no one seems interested in the actual facts of the debate.
How much are the executives making?
The profits for Wall Street have also been sucky, but that hasn't stopped people from getting "performance" and retention bonuses.
You're assuming that the ones at the top are actually trying to run things to reward investors, and not simply trying to do the minimum amount of work for the maximum way to line their pockets. (Woohoo! Go capitalism! ;)
Yes. How many people here would willingly pay to hurt other people because they like to inhale the smoke of certain burning plants? Or willingly pay to hurt brown people overseas just because they are brown?
If you are unwilling to pay for these government "services," then I must ask, why are you paying for them, dummy?
You might say, "because I'm afraid the government will hurt me by seizing assests/arresting me/killing me or my family."
If you could travel back in time, and ask blacks why the stayed on the plantation, what do you think they might say?
Haha! No! I didn't miss the economic crisis that's going on. Did you notice how it's hit even the US with its private health care system? In fact, the dollar has now hit pretty much 1 to 1 against the Euro, so it appears the USA is being hit harder than most of Western Europe. Did you miss that the crisis was ignited by a massive housing bubble and unsecured loan powder keg that originated in the USA? What has this to do with socialised health care? And stop trying to generalise the issue to "the welfare state" - that just makes you sound like you're arguing on preconceived ideology rather than logic. And even though you are arguing on preconceived ideology, I'm sure you don't want to sound like it.
Given that we have actual facts and figures that show that per capita, the cost of the USA's health care system is higher than socialised systems like the UK's, Germany's and Canada's, do you want to tell me how countries with socialised health care are going to be less resiliant than the USA? Unemployment hit 10% in the USA this past week. Everyone getting their healthcare through their employers might be sustainable in the good times, but how do you think it's going to work out now?
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
The states did get together and write a fairly restrictive agreement called the constitution. Read Federalist 41. Madison clearly defines that the General Welfare clause does not give the Federal government unlimited authority to tax us for our own good. Passing even more ammendments is a BAD idea, as it gives the "living and breahting constitution" crowd even more room to fudge our society ever deeper into the progressive (read: marxist) utopia that they falsely believe is possible.
20th century Marxism is not progress...
If the government insurance is as good as the private insurance but cheaper, what's the problem? If the government insurance is worse than the private insurance, well the business was free to buy cheap and crappy insurance anyway. Or not provide any insurance at all.
A smart business factors employee contentment into their assessment of "cost". They won't choose to save $100 a month on health insurance if it means losing employees that brought in $10,000 a month in business.
The way the bill has it is that if you don't buy insurance, you pay a tax to make up for the cost of it. Refusing to pay that tax leads to fines, levies, and possible prison time -- just like any other tax evasion.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Because there's a cap on how long you can be on welfare. I know that it's there, because I have a couple of friends who have hit the caps and been dropped. And while children are often exempted, the welfare benefits that are paid out for children are absolutely not enough to live on, even in Section 8 housing.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Seriously though, you need to get a grip. People who are ill are by definition less able than those around them. Why should it fall to them to help themselves? Do you actually just strive for the destruction of society? If so, there's a group of people in the Middle East who'd love to hear from you.
Really? Arguing for self-sufficiency is the same as a terrorist? Really?
We have national healthcare in the UK, and, having had both parents working within it for 25 years apiece, it's not slavery. Are the police slaves? The fire department? Your logic is flawed.
My logic is not flawed, you failed to understand it. I said nothing about all government employees being slaves. Further, I said "effectively enslaves". What is the solution if those providers refused to provide the new "right" for the price offered? There is no right to police protection nor to fire services. Those are services provided but you do not have a "right" to them. Thus, no obligation is foisted on to others to provide it. If we say that health care is a "right" on par with Freedom of Speech and such then we are also saying that those who are skilled and able to must provide those services whether they want to or not. It's your "right" after all, isn't it?
One of the central problems with society at large these days is this inflated idea of what constitutes a "right". You cannot create a "right" that imposes obligations on others. Period. No exceptions.
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
Except that there's no such thing as self-sufficient. You'd be lucky to survive the first winter if you really did have to provide everything for yourself.
What you're referring to is absolute self-sufficiency and you're right in that is a rare thing. Surely you also realize that isn't what I meant.
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
Undocumented aliens are explicitly prohibited from benefiting from any subsidized health insurance programs created in this bill.
Please see: Title III, Subsection C, Section 347
SEC. 347. NO FEDERAL PAYMENT FOR UNDOCUMENTED ALIENS.
"Nothing in this subtitle shall allow Federal payments for affordability credits on behalf of individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States."
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:H.R.3962:
Your mere existence is now taxable.
People who like to claim that "there are no illegal aliens because people aren't illegal" are about to find their words ringing hollow in an especially perverse way.
You can be a monk meditating on a mountain somewhere for 5 years and be gang raped by the government's black and hispanic prison gangs for doing so.
Seastead this.
They're the ones that started cost inflation in the 1970's that has gotten us to this point. They don't even know they screwed it up...and we expect them to fix it?
They know they screwed it up, it was part of the plan. See Cloward-Piven strategy.
This whole thread is so full of mind-numbingly self-indulgent American pseudo political philosophy that was debunked by the rest of the world 50 years ago, that it is actually quite painful to realize some people still think there is a debate here to be waged.
Anyway, welcome to the 20th Century, American friends. Next on the list of major social experiments to be hostly debated by your intellectually gifted elites:
When apply your rugged individualism and constitutional wanking to figure out the answers to these important questions, do let us know. We're dying for your leadership here.
You sound like my 80-something mother.
"How can it be optional if they are going to fine you when you say no???" She comes from the World War 2 generation, when freedom actually meant something. I don't think today's Generation Hippy, Generation X, or Generation Me have any idea of the concept. Many of them think if they want something, it's okay to ask the government to raid their neighbors' wallets and get it.
It's a lot like how the Roman Empire's government operated.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Personally, I don't see why you want to bring up the past administrations mistakes, but since you did...
Compromise with Dems and liberals caused the Bush administration's mistakes? Because it was the Dems and Liberals who wanted two wars at once? The Dems and Liberals who wanted to escalate the war against drugs? The Dems and Liberals pushed to bail out the banks with no strings attached? (I know the Dems and Liberals continued to bail out the banks once they got more power, but since they did at least add a few conditions, the no strings at all part was obviously the 'Repubs' and 'Cons' idea.).
Hey everybody, Bush 43 didn't really want to fake the claims of WMD in Iraq, the Dems and Liberals made him do it. They wanted to get Saddam to prove they were better than their daddies. Those CIA officers who kept reporting secretly to Dick Cheney after he left office? They secretly reported, and still report to Barney Frank, who also forged Gonzales signature as needed.
Who is John Cabal?
Really? This is got to be the most pervasive, and dangerous bit ideology in our culture. The idea that an individual, alone against the world, can provide for themselves is ridiculous. You live in an interconnected web of people. Because you can't see through this ideology I assume you benefit from it greatly. You eat cheaply and well because of farm subsidies, underpaid and abused farm laborers, and a failure to realize all of the costs in our current agricultural systems. The government or your parents paid for your education. Giant corporate subsidies and a trillion dollars worth of bail out money are the only reason we still have enough of an economy to keep you employed. What ever "contribution" you make to the world, it in no way justifies the discrepancy between your lifestyle and that of those who work in the factories and the fields that supply your cheap goods. You rely on a construct of your imagination to keep you blind to the fact that your existence is entirely dependent on the blood, sweat, tears and goodwill of billions of other people.
Are you being sarcastic here? My detector's busted.
More seriously, we have plenty of counterexamples. Most of humanity provides for itself in that they work and the payment for that work pays in turn for their needs and wants. Sure, almost nobody is self-sufficent in that they make everything they use. But it's a great, long stretch to go from that observation to claiming that we need a nanny government. The contribution I make to the world is paid for by the people it benefits. Same goes for those factory and field workers. Why should we think that those people are motivated by "goodwill" to pick beans or monitor an auto line rather than by a steady paycheck?
Further, your statement about giant corporate subsidies and a trillion dollar bailout are made in complete ignorance. For example, during the Victorian/Gilded Age, such bailouts and massive subsidies were unheard off and bank crashes commonly inflicted as much damage as occurred in the recent real estate and financial crash. But somehow the economies of the world continued to exist and people continued to work. My view is that you can't even claim that these bailouts and subsidies are actually helping. It's probably correct to say that in the short term there are more people employed than there would be in a more laissez-faire government. But in the long term, we are damaging the future economic capability of the developed world.
All the businesses and people who need rescuing this season, will need it again when another economic mess occurs. And they'll likely be the cause as they were this time. Much of the developed world is turning into nations of delicate children, unable to think or provide for themselves ruled by fools who keep making the same basic mistakes over and over again.
In the sense that it is hard to get very expensive operations for non-life threatening conditions quickly. Not in the sense that only rich people can get treatment - like the rationing in the USA. "Rationing" here is certainly not in the sense we had food and fuel rationing when I was young, as some people make out. I know someone who had cosmetic surgery privately - and within 3 months, and someone else who had it free, but had to wait a year. There is certainly no suggestion that "you cant have a hip replacement now, cos you already had one this year".
If you pay for private insurance, USA style, you can get USA style treatment - its not banned - it just costs almost half as much as in the USA - a terrifying thought few of us can face!.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
California could solve its budget problems by seceding. If the money we fork over for federal taxes stayed in California, the budget would be well in the black. Of course, knowing this state's legislature, I'm sure they'd piss away that surplus within five years.
I am so glad the people who bankrupted Social Security and Medicare will finally have their hands in everything to do with our health care. This bill doesn't lower prices, but only shifts the actual insurance from 1100 competing private companies to one big government bureaucracy. Each year, less and less doctors are accepting Medicaid and other government health insurances because their payments stink. Of course liberals don't seem to mind because doctors are all rich people anyway who can afford to work for low wages. Nevermind that they pay hundreds of thousands in malpractice insurance, rent, electric and other business expenses. Who cares about business anyways? It's only math and numbers! Truth is, all of that doesn't matter when people are sick. In fact, I heard that the laws of gravity cease to exist when people get sick. Seriously, it seems only the lawyers are allowed to charge $500/hr because democrats love litigation, especially litigation that brings down private companies so that ill-funded and high taxing government programs can step in. I feel all future doctors should be forced to spend 10 years in medical school, come out with hundreds of thousands in school loans and do this to get paid low wages because the government says so. That will give the future doctors of America something to look forward too! However, there is one way to remedy this. Make medical school only 1 year, this avoids a lot of the expensive school loans, but gives us tons of uneducated shitty doctors who will work for government pay. I'm sure liberals don't mind that as long as everyone is covered, right?
The next thing we should do is force pharmaceutical companies to lower prices for all drugs to 1 cent a pill. That's right! Where do these big pharm companies get their nerve spending billions on new life saving drugs and then charging us a dollar or more a pill so they can keep funding their research?? Why can't these people simply work for less money? In fact, the engineers and the construction workers who build the pharmaceutical buildings, the electric companies that power the research departments and the companies that supply all the medical testing equipment should all take a pay cut because these pills are just too important! All pills that can save lives should be free, and the people who helped develop those pills shouldn't complain. If they do, then throw them out and hire cheaper chemists and scientists. If that doesn't work, we can always unionise the chemists and scientists so that instead of making drugs, they can be sipping more coffee and can keep their job even if they suck at it . That'll fix these rich pharmaceutical bastards! Right??
I love the fact that the people who scared us into getting the H1N1 vaccination and then couldn't even deliver 1/8 of the vaccines it promised are now going to run our health care system. Of course, liberals love free things. They love when someone else has to pay for their problems and they certainly couldn't care less about quality as long as everyone gets something. Something is better than nothing, right?? It's better that all 300 million citizens end up with crap than $270 million end up with good health care. Who cares that no one has read all 2,000 pages of this bill? Who cares if good doctors can't make a living and are forced to find other lines of work? Who cares if Big Pharm can't create life saving drugs because they can't fund research? Who cares if taxes go way up? Just as long as we have Hope & Change. Because without Hope & Change there is no reason to go on living.
Welcome to socialism my friends. Enjoy. :-)
This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the U.S. Department of Energy.
I then took a shower in the clean water provided by a municipal water utility.
After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC-regulated channels to see what the National Weather Service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration determined the weather was going to be like, using satellites designed, built, and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
I watched this while eating my breakfast of U.S. Department of Agriculture-inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
At the appropriate time, as regulated by the U.S. Congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the U.S. Naval Observatory, I get into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration-approved automobile and set out to work on the roads build by the local, state, and federal Departments of Transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve Bank.
On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the U.S. Postal Service and drop the kids off at the public school.
After spending another day not being maimed or killed at work thanks to the workplace regulations imposed by the Department of Labor and the Occupational Safety and Health administration, enjoying another two meals which again do not kill me because of the USDA, I drive my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads, to my house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and Fire Marshal's inspection, and which has not been plundered of all its valuables thanks to the local police department.
And then I log on to the internet -- which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration -- and post on Freerepublic.com and Fox News forums about how SOCIALISM in medicine is BAD because the government can't do anything right.
With the first link, the chain is forged.
One problem is that we have too many people who are lazy and irresponsible and therefore want the government to run their lives. For that you need a big government and you need the upper class to help pay for the programs enacted by that big government.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
Seems the adults also know that you cannot rely on the private sector to provide for people. Capitalism isn't about compassion.
Well thank god for our compassionate government and armed bureaucracies, which will now be able to jail people for 5 years for failure to buy health insurance.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
I rely on me to provide for me. Government isn't about compassion either. It's about control. We've pretty much abandoned the intent of the constitution. The federals were never supposed to have this much power. I think it's time for the States to step up and take some of this power away from them.
That effort has already begun.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Congress is neither qualified nor empowered to decide the constitutionality of the bill. Nor are we Slashdot commenters. It's the duty of the Supreme Court to decide that.
We already impose many conditional taxes that vary depending on whether you're married, have children, or own a house. It's not such an astounding stretch to impose a tax that depends on whether you have health insurance. And imposing a tax on those without health insurance so that everyone has access to affordable health insurance could be construed as providing for the general welfare of the United States.
you run your own health insurance company?
Oh. So I guess you rely on you to provide for you, except when you rely on other people to provide for you.
I don't run my own space program. Or my own race car circuit. Does that mean I'm not providing for me?
And as an aside, anyone and I do mean anyone who doesn't pay insurance is self-insured. In other words, they run their own health insurance company.
"You can also elaborate on exactly how trying to make health care/insurance a government mandated "right" doesn't effectively enslave those who provide such services?" No, YOU need to explain how affordable health care for everybody has anything to do with "enslaving" people. Or, if you'd like, you can start by explaining why you are NOT a child molester. Turn off Fox News and learn how to think.
Wow, first I'm called a terrorist by one person and now I'm a child molester. That's neat.
Anyway, it has to do with the fact that if you create a right which requires that some people provide a service to others, what are you going to do if and when those people refuse to provide the service for the money the government wish to pay? Will you force them to? It is your "right" isn't it?
I've said it before, I'll say it again. You cannot create a "right" that imposes an obligation on others. Period. Full Stop.
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
Not really, the meaning of "self sufficiency" is fairly clear. "Self sufficiency, apart from the bits where I make use of other people's labour" doesn't really follow.
Since self sufficiency is quite impractical, we devise systems for how to manage the division of labour. Capitalism is one such system, but not the only possible one, and I don't see why making use of a government resource is any less self-sufficient than hiring someone to do a job for you. There's no reason to believe that the outcomes of free market capitalism (which needs government to work in any case) are fundamentally the correct ones in terms of moral worth and rewarding the right people for their contributions - and quite compelling evidence that they aren't. It works fairly well in practice, but that's a different issue entirely.
Presumably, in the same way that any other tax evasion will. Does the police force, military, court system, fire brigade etc. enslave people?
Sigh... No. Because you do not have a right to those services. They are provided by the government but that does not mean you have an absolute right to them. No one will be forced to be a cop or a fire fighter or any of that other stuff. I suppose one could stretch and say that the right to a fair trial creates a need for someone to be forced to be a judge, but only if you accept that the state "must" prosecute. Since it has discretion, the forced obligation does not exist.
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
Except not at all, because "lunch" isn't a goddamn right, and you aren't enslaving anyone by requiring a service, because people choose to work in service industries. He's a troll.
Wait a minute.. food isn't a right, but bloody health care is? Are you high? If your logic is that health care is a right because you'll die without it then exactly why isn't food a right? Or a house?
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
Then we all have to deal with you, one way or another. Most of us have decided we're not ok with letting people die on the streets, or more accurately we have to deal with people who are faced with either dying on the streets OR doing other stuff that is unpleasant to others to avoid dying in the streets. Such as fraud, theft, murder, etc.
That isn't the problem. The problem occurs when someone spends my money on a morale crusade and then takes away my freedom because of unintended consequences of that crusade. As I see it, if I'm trying to provide for myself, then I'm not being as much of a burden on other people as if I'm trying to mooch what I can from them.
With the US gov't becoming more involved in health care, the US is becoming more like a 11th province of Canada.
As I read many of these comments, I am struck by the almost pathological and paranoid fear of government displayed by their writers. It doesn't seem to have any real intellectual basis. It feels like someone has been reading stories about "the government BOOGEEEMAAAN" to these people, and they have internalized it, and don't question it anymore.
Say this after me: "Every major industrialized country in the world has some significant government role in their health care system." And they end up with better health outcomes for LESS MONEY!!
Health care bureaucracies will always exist. In America, our health care bureaucracies are privately run and largely unregulated. The mission statement of our private bureaucracies is to maximize profit. Period. Actual health outcomes are largely irrelevant if they do not overlap with the main purpose of the organization. And so our health bureaucracies will use every trick they can to deny people coverage. They employ some very smart people, whose sole purpose is to deny coverage.
When bureaucracies are government run, or are more tightly regulated, the mission statement changes. It becomes something similar to "maximize patient health". The government bureaucracies can actually become more efficient, because they are given a fixed amount of money, and are then told to maximize health as much as possible. This becomes the main purpose of the organization, and employees know it. They focus their attention on health outcomes. They feel that it is their duty to the public. They will often make due with less pay because they feel their job is so important.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
Also, if you honestly find that your concern for corporate incomes trumps your compassion for your fellow human beings, I pity you . Health care is a right. If you think that people who provide for things that are rights are somehow enslaved by the fact that they're rights, you're out of your mind. People always choose what they do.
Fine, if health care is a right, what else is a "right"? Food? Cars? Homes? Internet? How far does it go? And yes, people choose what they do right now. However, once you start defining all these rights who's going to provide those services? If no one is willing to for the price the government will pay, shall we force them? That's where the enslavement comes in. If you say a service or good is a "right" then ultimately you are saying that you are in favor of providing that service by any means necessary. Follow your logic.
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
The "states"? Oh my, and what are those states other than other form of government? They also tax and spend - they aren't at all the bastion of freedom.
Well, those running the Federal government have exposed themselves clearly now as tyrants, as there is no other description for a group of people that would throw people in jail for not buying stuff they want them to buy - no matter what it is.
So far, most state governments have not displayed this level of despotism. And please do not make some bogus claim about auto insurance. It's far different asking somebody to take some responsibility if the want to drive a car on public roads, it's quite another to require participation in some bureaucratic and/or corporate scheme because you are alive.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Did you even bother to look at what I was replying to? No, clearly not, since it wasn't even on the subject of the health care bill. It was some idiot AC yammering on about one of the tenets of his religion of objectivism. If everyone followed his idiotic little maxim, we would not have a military, let alone a government.
Assume much? I did read it, and I know exactly what it means and what it doesn't mean. I suspect you do not, as it does not proscribe being in the military nor the existence of any government.
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
I suppose you will not be happy until we see our first trillionaire.
It's just an amount of money. I have no problem with people being trillionaires or even higher orders of magnitude of wealth. How they make that much money is the issue. If they make it by redirecting a trillion dollars from some country's GDP, then that's theft. If they do it by creating far more than a trillion dollars of value, then that wealth is adequate compensation. If one looks at billionaires of the world today, we have both. We have people like Bill Gates or Warren Buffet who create immense wealth and we have people like certain heads of state, who do a combination of stealing and creating wealth (even thieves can be interested in making value).
And how long does it take the government to enact the associated laws for the various governmental agencies to provide those goods and services? The government is innately slow and inefficient. That doesn't mean that *nothing* gets done but it means that it takes a very long time for something to get done and at a cost much higher than if it was done privately. Guess where that extra money must come from? Taxes. You want more government services and goods to be provided? Pay more taxes. You want more incentives to be given to people to trade in their vehicles or get money for buying a house? Pay more taxes. Bigger government isn't the answer unless you are of the lower class that believes the government should be their parents.
Most, if not all, of the items listed in that quoted text were regulations and laws instituted by the government with very little tangible items or services actually provided by the government. The government exists to institute laws and regulations. It does not exist to provide healthcare and many other social services. That is not their role and never has been (that doesn't stop them from still providing it though). Allowing the government to provide healthcare doesn't change how much it costs to provide that from the hospitals, doctors, etc. perspective. It only changes it from the customer's perspective which means the cost difference must be made up elsewhere (hence the need for higher taxes). Oh, and with all these people able to be insured now, where will all the doctors and nurses and surgeons come from to give them that service they are now paying for?
Obama wants socialized medicine to be instituted under the guise it will fix the underlying cost problem. Giving healthcare to everyone doesn't make the fundamental costs of goods and services magically cost less. It will just be subsidized by the government (through taxes) which totally misses the mark of making it cheaper. And people are falling for that just like they fell for everything else he said to fundamentally change this country into one that will fall faster than it was already. There are too many people in this country who believe people should have their wealth spread *by the gov't* rather than under their own control (through charity). No country using that model has ever been successful or a world superpower or with the freedoms that the U.S. began with 200+ years ago. I don't know why people think the U.S. would be any different by using the socialist model.
If Pelosi, Obama, et al. prefer a socialist state then let they be the first to have their salaries spread to the poor before they want many others' salaries revoked to be redistributed. Then we'll see if they still believe that spreading the wealth is good for everybody. In a socialist state it is only the government that thrives. If we ensure they do not thrive then maybe they won't be so adamant about instituting that economic model.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
Nope, California tried that and got rolling black-outs. Turns out it is cheaper for private companies to have occational black-outs than have a sufficient buffer of over-production.
Makes sure you can watch TV and radio. Radio-waves are very suceptible to interference, and thus competing stations could easily block each other out meaning it would impossible to watch anything but the nearest station.
[There are more private satellites than public. NASA doesn't design anything. Northrop Grumman, and Lockheed, and Boeing, and raytheon design and build satellites to meet Nasa specifications.]
In order of sentences: No, there isn't, there are none. Yes they did. When you order something from someone else, who is paying and taking the risk. No one ever said federal agencies can't hire contractors.
Do you prefer to be poisoned?
And why are you separating local and federal, are government bad or not? Why are one type good and one type bad, and why do you prefer the most corrupt one?
My understanding is that inflation was caused in the 1970s because of the United States rampant spending in Vietnam and subsequent dropping of the gold standard. Not the Europeans "Socialism". In fact there seems to be a direct correlation between most problems in the world and the U.S. Speaking on behalf of the rest of the world, we'd like to say thank you for all the insight and entertainment this issue has raised about your country. Reagan a good President ... indeed! We don't want health care for our children! Hilarious, just hilarious. Keep up the good work.
So the US is responsible for European inflation? And your acne? Near zero dating? And the fact that your cellar dwelling hasn't been cleaned in two years? As a US citizen, I feel so empowered by that. It's such a heady feeling knowing that I've helped to fuck up so many peoples' lives for the better.
Long rant on why LanMan04 is such a tool for the Man.
Summarized that for you.
The health program will be less than 1 trillion over a decade.
$1.2 trillion and only if the CBO is right for once in its existence. Plus who here thinks they'd stop running it ten years from now?
Can ANYONE show me a SINGLE multi-trillion or even multi-billion dollar government program in ANY sector which has been run efficiently, without corruption, or fraud, instituted by either party, that has not had it's costs explode over time?
This will be like every other big government program. The costs will spiral upwards, and if anything is done about them, they will be dealt with just like high costs in any other program, by trimming services or raising taxes, not by fixing the inefficiencies. And once it is in place we will never be able to get rid of it or change it!
This health care reform is also a massive breeding ground for unintended consequences. If anyone thinks this has been thought through in the short amount of time it took to put this monstrosity together, pass me the crack pipe.
-Future Serf in servitude of the US Government.
You go on and on about "compelling" others to do things for you. And yet that's exactly what is happening with so many government services. Right now you are compelling someone to build roads for you. Oh my god! Better privatize that because government services are like slavery! Or maybe you're just spouting bullshit you heard on Fox.
"Also, what do you intend to do about the large number of physicians who've said that they intend to leave the profession if socialized medicine passes?"
First of all, this is complete and total bullshit. Where is the list of physicians that will actually leave? And where are they going? Into magical fairy land? How is it that highly socialized countries like Denmark, Sweden, Norway don't have a problem getting physicians. By your braindamaged logic there shouldn't be a doctor in sight.
I don't see how he was out of line at all, it is pretty well documented that Ayn Rand was a horrible bitch in her personal life.
Why don't you step up again on your soapbox and explain to us unwashed masses the difference between a forced "lunch insurance" and forced "healthcare insurance" or forced "apartment insurance".
Healthcare insurance forces all those who have jobs, income or wealth to pay for healthcare of themselves and those without jobs, income or wealth.
"Those who are able, pay for the healthcare of everyone, able or not".
Healthcare is important for life, but still a whole lot less important than food, clothing and housing.
Now why do all able adults need to provide everyone with free healthcare, but not free housing, food or clothing?
Is government-enforced clothing-insurance, housing-insurance and food-insurance needed? And furniture?
The key question is:
How can anyone be forced to hand over some of their wealth to provide for other people with less wealth?
I hate to sound cold and cruel, but how can it be rightful, lawful and morally okay to force anyone, even a billionaire, to hand over even one Dollar for someone else to provide a nicer life?
I can see how everyone needs to spend some of their private funds for public infrastructure, public safety, public everything. But the transfer of personal wealth from one person to another, private funds to private funds, is an entirely different thing.
Just because someone has a billion Dollars lying around while another one has less than one hundred does not make it a right. It is still transfer of wealth from one person to another, under the threat of force, jailtime and violence. A robbery, plain and simple.
Is it right that I rob Bill Gates because he has so much money and I have none?
If it isn't, then mandated health care is a crime. If mandated health care still sounds great for you, I think you're either a socialist - or a common criminal, except you let the professional law enforcement commit the robbery.
If by "interfered with" you mean "heavily deregulated so the corporations could do whatever price fixing, expense cutting and supply shorting dick moves they wanted" you have a point. Ever heard of ENRON? Go swing by Wikipedia. They have a whole series of articles on how corporations behave in a truly deregulated market.
In short, if all you've got are insults, you need to take your socialist government loving self somewhere else. Real adults take care of themselves and don't look to the government for handouts. Understood?
It's amusing that you admonish the GP not to use insults while red-baiting in the same sentence.
What definition of "socialist" are you using?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism
Because Conservatives have abused the term to the point where it now means "anything the government does that I don't agree with".
Rather useless article from the AP, there. It doesn't cite enough numbers to determine insurance co. income versus what they arbitrarily call "expenses". I.e., if the base pay for a manager in the insurance co's HQ is $1 million, and you ramp that up the closer you approach the C-level suite, those are "expenses" that make apparent profit decline rapidly. And there are many, many more ways to redistribute income so as to make what you report as "profit" shrink without ever revealing your true margins.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
It's funny because it's true. And no you are not responsible personally as I am quite sure that nobody with any power, influence or self respect would respond in the manner you did. You're probably more reponsible for Jerry Springer's high ratings. By the way I HAVE free health care, and it's great.
Oh yeah! That sounds like something HITLER would say!
And, in case your feeble mind does not grasp the sarcasm, calling something progressive that you disagree with "Communist" simply shows that you have shut down all rational thought.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
For a car, failing to buy gas or get an oil change won't increase the chance of an expensive accident. For a human, failing to get an EKG or an X-ray can leave that human at higher risk for a heart attack or metastatic cancer. So it's wise economics for a health insurer to pay for those little things when the insured might say "I feel fine. Why should I pay $200 for a silly test?" otherwise.
Also, the liability on a car is limited to the replacement cost. What's the replacement cost for your own body? The cost of health care over your entire life is so unpredictable that it's wise to pay into a pool of coverage even if it means that for most of your life you'll be paying for some other guy's health care. Because someday you might find yourself with an expensive chronic condition like diabetes that's not just a single catastrophic event and can't be fixed by just buying a new body.
Wow! So... let me get this straight: You are now advocating the following as "basic human rights":
That's going to cost a bundle. I wonder how high the deficit can go before the entire economy collapses.
What will happen to all those people in jail for not buying health insurance when the prisons can't afford to feed them?
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Your rights do not come from government. Rather, government authority comes from the people.
If you think your rights come from government, then you don't have any - they will take them all away. They are working very hard on doing that right now
When people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is freedom.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Same old bullshit from the left-right.
Freedom first. Government by the consent of the governed. Compassion from compassionate people, not from institutions or faceless bureaucrats, which consistently display a lack of compassion.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
My view is that the real problem with US health care is not the coverage. It is the cost. This plan adds roughly a trillion dollars in cost even under the highly unrealistic projections of the Congressional Budget Office. That is in the neighborhood of $3,000 per person. That means down the road, when costs continue to climb and the trillion dollar estimate is shown to be incorrect, then we'll have another health care reform to fix the fundamental cost problem that is aggravated here. I imagine the cycle will continue for some time, unless an economic collapse of the US brings that to an end.
Second, we're imposing a variety of taxes on rich people (I suppose just for the principle of it), and people and businesses that don't knuckle under and comply with the demands of the bill. Yes, that latter bit means not only do we keep the mandates on employers, but now everyone will suffer under a similar mandate. Insurers get massively screwed. Sure, they might get more customers (assuming the lost business to the public option doesn't offset the gain in customer base), but they lose most of their cost saving tools (such as charging old people more for health insurance and not having to insure preexisting conditions). Fraud will increase as will overall costs. I doubt the CBO even glanced at these issues.
Ultimately, I just don't see the point. The insurance companies are a big part of the current problem, but this bill just takes money from them in a way that I think is fundamentally unfair. It might address the problem of free emergency room care. It doesn't address the many other sources of cost in the US system: excessive malpractice liability, excessive restrictions on who can do medical work and training requirements, state level obstacles to providing health insurance by companies from outside the state, and the mandate that the employer has to pony up insurance of a certain mandated level (and hence, driving up labor costs and spurring enormous demand for health care services). It forces insurance companies to pay for nonessential health care like abortions. It completely ignores the democratic principle that the citizen is capable of providing for their own needs and acting responsibly. I mean, why let some sap vote when they can't even figure out how to get the "right level" of health care?
I don't recall anywhere in the Constitution where it says "Slavery is okay guys... carry on." Maybe you can enlighten me.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
I'm not sure where you get health care is a right. What entity bestowed that right upon all humanity?
The only societal rights that Americans possess are the rights laid out by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. I am unaware of any portion of those documents that gives a citizen the right to health care.
You may argue that it is a moral obligation to provide health care to all, but it is no more a right than it is your right to eat farm produce.
Those in the health care profession at this time did not go to college, medical school, internships and residencies over a period of years to then work in a job where they are bound by restrictive government mandates.
Right now, the market tells them how much they are going to earn for a given procedure. While there are definitely areas for improvement and reform within the health care and insurance industries, I don't think the government running things is going to provide that in a positive and efficient way.
There will always be health care professionals, but at what level of proficiency and skill? I think we will definitely see a drop off in these areas if they are not compensated properly and allowed to perform their jobs without overbearing government control.
By the way I HAVE free health care, and it's great.
If you do have "free" health care (free as in beer, that is), then that makes you the only person on the planet. Everyone else has costly health care that someone somewhere paid for.
What makes you think that the people who are in business for themselves are better at fixing things than those who are in government? Judging from healthcare and various businesses, people are incompetent and inefficient all over the place.
As for your dig about government handouts, I find it entertaining that this generally comes from people who are making average or above money.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
"The only societal rights that Americans possess are the rights laid out by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. I am unaware of any portion of those documents that gives a citizen the right to health care."
Bullshit. You clearly haven't even *read* the Constitution, because it goes into explicit detail about the fact that there are rights not enumerated there which are also protected.
I am scientifically inaccurate.
Are the remaining 4% REALLY, REALLY wealthy?
Or is it me, someone unemployed for over 2 years.
Once I am employed, will my premiums/taxes raise? Thanks Democrats. Good job.
If I look over to the far east, to China especially, I cannot help but say
- military spending and force projection can go a long way to national influence and with it, national wealth
- torture and execution perfectly fit into a society centered on acquiring wealth where it had none, keeping wealth once it accumulated some and where the moral high ground is still connected to the question on how to attain and keep it
- manufacturing can be the basis of the strongest rising economy of the world.
We over here in Europe - like the rest of the Western world - are completely underfunded and overtaxed. We are now several kilometers beneath the debt line and still tanking, sacrificing us, our way of life and our entire society for trying to improve the entire world while we still failed to improve the tiniest of our villages at home. We are committed to bankrupting ourselves to the moral high ground and within less than two decades we're bankrupt or in civil war.
Ironically, the two reasons of our complete and utter financial disaster and impeding downfall is our deeply-rooted belief that a) intelligence is not inherited but mostly learned and b) wealth of one person is always acquired at the expense of another. We're not only betting the farm on it, but the farm of our children, our inner city quarters, our suburbs and everything else.
We Europeans strongly opposed social Darwinism because of what the Nazis did. But I fear that we will be on the receiving end of social Darwinism soon, experiencing "might is right" the hard way. At least those of us who don't convert to Islam or hoard guns and ammo.
"I hate to sound cold and cruel, but how can it be rightful, lawful and morally okay to force anyone, even a billionaire, to hand over even one Dollar for someone else to provide a nicer life?"
How can it be morally okay for someone to prefer their own wealth to the health care they can provide another person without any harm to themselves? When did it become moral to say "So sorry that you're poor and sick and dying, but I love my money more than I like doing things to help people"? What kind of fucked up nation do you want us to live in?
If food supply was controlled by small group of companies who each got together to charge prices such as $10 for an orange, and excluded some people from being able to even enter one of their grocery stores, yes there would be legal reform with respect to food. We don't have that situation with respect to food, but a similar situation does exist with health care.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
I'll go further -
- If I see an illegal, and I'm jobless, I'll shoot the illegal in the head and take the job for myself. Illegals should not have jobs when Actual citizens are unemployed.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
That's right. Keep bitching about it and doing nothing else. Be as inactive as you can possibly be, but whine as noisily as possible about how you're not getting your way. You fucking infantile piece of shit.
For one thing, government prevents insurance providers from operating across state lines. Competition is what reduces prices, and when you eliminate competition in from the other 49 states you eliminate many opportunities for price reduction.
For another, it applies certain tax breaks only to employer provided insurance. This means companies provide insurance with their benefits package because it looks like a sweeter deal than if they give you the cash equivalent and expect you to buy insurance yourself. But it also means you aren't able to shop around (competition again) and much worse, it means the insurance company cant offer you discount rates for practicing preventative medicine, etc. (Preventative medicine makes healthcare much cheaper for everyone.)
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
Presumably, in the same way that any other tax evasion will. Does the police force, military, court system, fire brigade etc. enslave people?
Because there is no difference between public safety and public health? I would disagree. I think that the purpose of government is to secure inherent rights. (No, health care isn't an inherent right - it's a good). The police force does things I don't like, but its primary purpose is to protect people's life, liberty, and property from being impinged by others. Same thing for the court system (when it works properly). The fire brigade around here is all volunteer - it's not some giant faceless bureaucracy run from DC. And when they come around asking for donations I give generously.
This bill compels the purchase of health insurance. That's tyranny, because it will impose prison for not participating in an industry run by corporations, or some optional governmental bureaucracy run like a corporation. It's corporatism in its worst fascist form.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Just as "someone" had to pay for that free beer, someone of course, must pay for the health care. In Canada (yes, that one) I can go in to see the doctor or if I were to break my arm go to the hospital with no money,no deductible,no up front cost,nothing. Consequently our taxes are higher than yours, but we haven't been brainwashed to hate them as much as you have. As a result,overall our health costs are much lower per person than in the "free market" medical system. Try it, you'll like it.
- no competition over state borders - why bother with price cuts when nobody can interfere with your lucrative business?
- barrier of entry - it's not that easy and cheap to start insurance business, thanks to heavy regulation among the others. More players = more competition
- 3rd party paying for the insurance - it's doomed to have huge overhead, always. Employers pay for bulk insurance, but they don't care about the menu. After all it's the employees who use that insurance. Employee doesn't see the costs because somebody else pays, so he doesn't care and doesn't shop around to find better deal (that would force prices down). Employer doesn't care (he gets his tax break) so insurance company can jack up the prices safely. In a system when nobody cares prices will be high no matter what. When you want competition at work, it's the final consumer who is supposed to see the costs.
People should be personally responsible for their health plans, they would evaluate their needs and look for some deal that fits their projected gain/money spent.
Subsidizing some insurance and requiring ineffective insurance is an economic disaster. Rates or costs will rise, with no effective economic mechanism to prevent it or improve it. Good doctors that successfully break out of the current system's many ruts will be even more (over)regulated, stifled as "alternative".
This virtually guarantees the destruction of a large fraction of people who have, or are developing, chronic illness where insured, "standard medicine" does not have good, straight treatments or cures, but others do. Hence, such chronic illness sufferers will have an even greater economic barrier to survive and thrive. Obamacare virtually guarantees a deeper, more profound bankruptcy of the country, more quickly passing economic power to Asia, especially China.
Obamacare does not effectively cover me or my parent, and is a threat to doctors that do know what biochemically works - in this case, advanced, "alternative" therapeutic nutrition. I am moving to Asia to get the 4% solution, this month. The current medical system failed both my parents, one painfully long dead, the other balked and iatrogenically damaged many times. "Standard medicine" failed me, too, finally recognizing even part the problem *after* being solved.
This year, my remaining parent had multiple iatrogenic miseries, was dying and giving up. Since I took over the nursing supervision, medical literature search, consulted "alternative" doctors (MD+DO), integrated their advice, things have gotten much, much better for my remaining parent. I consider ordinary geriatric medicine and nutrition in hospitals and nursing homes barbaric. Their "standard practices" are generally so dangerous and miserable, I can't even call them "euth centers".
I pay over $8200 a month to keep my last parent alive, healthy and happy here, after a lot of medical interference. Medicare has been largely a waste of money the last 12 months. In Asia, my bills drop to under $2000 a month with superior nursing, and even house calls. I am dumping subsidized Medicare Part B & D "insurance" (outside coverage area). Asia is cheaper than any co-pay in most cases, if Medicare even covered it.
I never played doctor as a kid. A National Merit Scholar and off to an uber university at 16 where most valedictorians can't get in, then grad school, I had no interest in medicine. Circumstances have forced me to confront it, to research 75 years of massive literature, to figure out some of its errors, and to overcome these errors in real life, several years investment. I think our current medical system already has as much corruption and problems as Soviet history had in 1990. Pelosi-Obamacare will be raise the temperature and pressure of the core like a late stage, giant star progressing toward supernova.
You're an imbecile. The maxim is all about being selfish and concerned with yourself and not doing anything for anyone else. If everyone had that attitude, THERE WOULD BE NO MILITARY OR GOVERNMENT. Is that really so fucking hard to understand?
Can you provide some fundamental, inarguable definition of "inherent rights", and explain from first principles why health care isn't one but security is?
Volunteer fire brigade? Really? Bloody hell.
Of course it is, unless you live in some non-existent libertarian utopia. Governments continually bail out and stimulate economies, and their voters expect them to.
That's how modern society works, whether you like it or not.
Is that that really you? Well, your Slashdot UID is low enough...
I'm puzzled by all these arguments about the cost of health insurance. The $1.2 trillion is over a ten year period making it $120 billion per year of costs.
For comparison:
$3,000 BILLION ($3 Trillion) was the handout we gave the bankers, insurance companies, investors and automakers. Free money but only for the rich.
$300 BILLION a year is what we've been spending on average fighting the non-war in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. Free money but only for the big corporations who supply weapons.
$16 BILLION dollars a year in subsidies are given to Big Ag to over produce corn and a few other commodities. Free money but only for corporations big enough to qualify and eat up their competition.
$400 per citizen per year is what this will cost those who can afford health insurance. That means that EVERYONE has insurance creating a pleasant cycle where the cost of care goes down because less emergency room primary care is done and people work more raising the tide that all boats float upon. If you buy $1.10 of coffee a day you too can provide health insurance for someone. Imagine that.
Nobody wants to pay higher taxes but an awful lot of people, and the corporations they control, seem to want free handouts. I'm not particularly fond of creating new entitlements however the cost of universal healthcare is minimal and the benefit is great. The trick is there must be some rationing. There is room for universal basic health care and private insurance for higher level healthcare.
Capitalism isn't about compassion.
Neither is the Constitution, thankfully. There's still a chance we can kill this monster in its cradle.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
So you are against inheritance?
Governments continually claim to bail out and stimulate economies
There. Fixed that for you.
"His name was James Damore."
What in the world makes you think that the "unelected CEOs and millions of nameless managers and directors, whose only goal in life is to suck more money out of the economy for their own gain" as you describe them, aren't partners in this scheme? I've got some news for you: They are. It's a collusion.
The pharmaceutical companies where on board with this early in the game. The health insurance companies made an agreement with the White House not to oppose it months ago (which is why they were so incensed when Humana sent out a newsletter describing issues with the bill). With the threat of jail time in this bill for NOT buying health insurance, they will have lots of new victims - some supported by government largess.
This is not a government program where angels on The Hill will push back the dark forces and shower magic beans on the people. It's a takeover by the elites in government, on the boards of directors, CEOs and Wall Street executives. Those elites will not pay for this - the middle class will. Those 45% of the American people that pay federal taxes and have trouble making ends meet because those taxes and fees and tolls and charges and regulations etc. are eating up more and more of the resources they are able to produce.
Is it any wonder why we are quickly headed towards third world status?
No, not with people like you fooled into supporting this tyrannical oligarchy they want. Eventually there will be nothing but Serfs and Lords. And once this new Order is in place, if you're not a good little serf contributing to what the Lords want, what use will they have for you then?
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Nothing. They're pissed and lying.
How do I know? Every country that has passed a socialized medicine program heard the exact same tyrades by people with more passion than sense. When Canada passed it's system, there was a doctor's strike that lasted for several weeks. A few years later, most of the doctors involved in the strike grudgingly acknowledged that the socialized system had actually made their jobs better and not worse.
It ended up being win-win-win. Patients, doctors and the government won because patients ended up with more efficient and effective health care, doctors were able to see and treat more patients, and the government got a healthier workforce that pays more taxes because the workforce earns more money.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Thanks (also to the other poster). These are interesting and seem valid. I'd add a caveat that I'd need more detail about the regulation as a barrier to entry to evalutate whether it is good or bad - after all, you do want to enforce some minimum standards in such an important industry - but I understand your point.
I've read more thoroughly about this health care plan since this story was posted. Obviously I can't tell whether it is good or bad as it is over a thousand pages long. Quite frankly, it's hard to see how anyone can say whether it is good or bad when it's that long without spending a few weeks studying it and I'm not convinced that all the people reporting on this or voting on it have done so. I've been arguing in favour of a European-style socialist health care system and indeed, I am of the opinion that the model is better than what the USA has (though both are subject to implementation). But this health care act, it's not introducing such a model even though that is what its opponents seem to be railing against. Instead it's introducing what looks, to my uneducated eyes, to be a giant scaffold around a mess. I can't honestly tell if it's good or bad. I do know it's nothing like the European model that its opponents fear, however.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Here is a big surprise for you - there is an organization that is private that does a better job than the FDA on a daily basis - it guarantees the kashrut status of food. Ever notice the little k on boxes of food? That is a kosher standards organization. Protecting the content and quality of food can be upheld by private industry as well or better than through government institution.
You're right on the money, but what happens when you get cancer and have to pony up $500k for cancer treatments?
Easy. First pay most medical costs out of pocket, most doctors are willing to reduce their prices if the person is paying out of pocket, after all filing and waiting for medical reimbursements fro insurance cost money. Next buy catastrophic health insurance. I know GP said he doesn't have insurance, but catastrophic health insurance pays for cancer treatments and such. Such policies are cheaper than insurance policies that only require a co-payment and cover the rest of the medical bill.
That's the kind of thing health insurance should be for, the catastrophic events that there is no way the average joe would be able to pay for.
You're right in part. Catastrophic expenses, not everyday expenses which is how most health insurance is today, should be paid for with insurance. Actually it should be up to the individuals who pay, if one person wants full coverage then they should be able to buy it, and pay the associated high premiums, whereas someone else who is willing and can pay out of pocket for most expenses should be able to buy catastrophic coverage with lower premiums.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Time to brush up on macroeconomics before even more mod points hit a patently wrong statement with an insightful label.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivalrous
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_good_(economics)
Wiki Grandma knows best but here's the gist of it: There are different kinds of goods, but we're concentrating on the fact that they're excludable or not and if they're rivalrous or not.
The benefits of a universal Rule of Law are not excludable and not rivalrous. "Not excludable" means everyone can enjoy the Rule of Law without paying. We could draw a border around our territory and not any non-law-abiding people in, but that's another discussion. "Not rivalrous" means the a possibly unlimited number of people can enjoy the benefits of the Rule of Law without seriously impeding each other. - To get it on Nickelodeon level: No one can reasonably be excluded from enjoying a peaceful time in a crime-free inner city park - and a huge lot of people can enjoy it together.
Taxes in their purest form are, by definition, only admissible to provide for these non-excludable goods, because otherwise their funding would constantly be undermined by a huge moral hazard. In Nickelodeon-ese: if everyone enjoys the peaceful stroll in the park whether they paid for it or not, no one (or too few) would pay, resulting in an underfunding of park security.
Now enter health care: health care is an excludable AND rivalrous good. A doctor can count the patients treated and the doctor can also choose to not treat a sick person if that person doesn't pay.
In this regard, health care is absolutely equal to housing, food, clothing, furniture, cars and luxury jets: ownership of this service is rivalrous and excludable.
Ignoring the facts
- that forcelly transferring the rights of an excludable and rivalrous good by force is usually called theft or robbery in most countries.
- that this is the thin layer that separated taxes from robbery in the first place.
- that we shouldn't legislate morality because your moral heaven is my hell fire
we still have the problem that there are a thousand and more goods between housing, health care, food - and luxury jets. And I don't have the slightest idea on how to draw the line between them.
Should poor people die or live in horribly miserable conditions because they cannot afford
-health care
-food
-housing
-education
-clothing
-furniture
-TV sets?
-vacations?
Or who will now set the levels for
- minimum housing
- affordable housing
- spacious housing
- minimum food
- healthy food
- items not needed for survival but for keeping poor people from becoming mental zombies, like a book, a TV set, a flatscreen TV set or the full HDTV and Internet package?
I cannot. But I can tell you how it works in Europe: poor people usually vote for the party promising more amenities, more transfer of wealth and more inclusions to the already very long list of items and services absolutely required for a "humane existence".
I tell you: unemployed people here in Germany now have an unalienable right to a TV set and access to most mainstream TV stations, amongst a thousand other household items. Even if you have never worked a single day of your whole life, taxpayers are forced to provide you with a TV set and a couch. You can call that the morally right thing to do, but I call it forced labor.
Once you jump the barrier of transferring wealth from rich to poor just because one is rich and the other needy, you cannot roll back, you cannot limit the expenses and you surely cannot draw a line on where to stop. Worse, you just just legalized robbery as long as the robber is poorer than the robbed. Now you can rob and pickpocket me all day long and still feel morally superior. Great job, Stalin.
Note that this particular bill doesn't even look terribly good on the surface. Unless by "surface" you mean "title of the bill".
Things this bill is not even intended to do:
1) Lower healthcare costs.
2) Reduce the power of the Health Insurance Industry
3) Reduce prescription drug costs.
Personally, I can't see how this bill actually provides a real benefit to society by making expensive health care more expensive.
Of course, it's pretty clear how it's going to help the Health Insurance industry (all those new customers who are now required by law to buy their product every year, no matter the cost) and the Prescription Drug industry (all those people who won't be buying generic versions of our drugs for seven extra years, because we have legislation now that extends the period when name-brands are protected from generic competition).
Plus of course our Congress and President, who will have plenty of time to get reelected before we actually get any of the "benefits" of this bill.
Tell me, if Congress actually expected this bill to be a great thing, why didn't they write it so it would take effect before the next election cycle, so they could campaign on "See how we brought you cheaper and better healthcare!!"?
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
I mean, because if you are against redistribution and you think that wealth should belong to those who created it, you should be against your own right to redistribute wealth to your heir, right? Because your heir candidate did not create any wealth, he/she does not deserve any.
Moreover, government owns (in a sense) all money. They sign it. Things like money and real estate exist solely due to the state law. You are only able to secure billions of dollars because the government is guarding your right to have them. And they can guard it more efficiently if the unwashed masses are not revolting, which they would if they could not afford basic necessities while you are rolling in $100 bills in your inherited mansion.
Nonsense, capitalism is awful at things that don't make a profit and where value is not easily expressed in terms of money. This includes things like education, environmental protection, and health care. Quit spewing dumb soundbites.
We didn't get out of the first great depression until 1946, when a million men were released from military service, the federal budget was cut by 2/3, and most of Hoover and Roosevelt's insane economic policies were lifted.
Redefining history much? For everyone else the recession ended in 1933. It does not matter when the wealth levels came back to normal, it matters when they started to increase. The fact that the economy was back in shape at the end of the war means that it cannot be an effect of the end of the war.
Wow, I wonder then how other nations survive? I mean do they really have electricity, disease-free food, logistics, and vehicles/homes that catch fire w/ regularity? These events must be rampant outside nations like the US that have a stranglehold on everything we do, consume, and produce.
The citation reeks of paranoia and insistence that government is necessary in every aspect of what we do. Did it ever occur to you that, in the free market, safer cars are driven by consumer choice (e.g. Volvo in the 80's)? The same can be said about any good or service; the consumer will ultimately choose the product best for them w/o the government wasting billions in forcing the 'best' choice on them?
Consequently our taxes are higher than yours, but we haven't been brainwashed to hate them as much as you have.
The brainwashing has gone the other way, I see. "Free health care that you pay for!" What about that belief doesn't scream "Brainwashed!"?
As a result,overall our health costs are much lower per person than in the "free market" medical system. Try it, you'll like it.
That may well be true. But decades ago, the US has a health care system that worked. Maybe it'd be better to go back to that system.
Is why the insurance companies, and all the representatives that they contributed heavily to, didn't put more support behind this bill. In the end, this is a massive handout for for-profit insurance. The "public option" is a joke; it will end up just being assistance in buying insurance that is already in existence. Meanwhile more people who don't currently have insurance will be forced into buying insurance from the big companies that we already have.
What congress has done is given us penicillin for a gigantic gushing head wound. Sure, there is a chance of infection but this does nothing to stop the bleeding.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
You can start by explaining how a multi-trillion dollar government program is going to make things better. What the invasions and occupations are now programs? Because they are the ONLY thing that was multiple trillions. The health program will be less than 1 trillion over a decade. Now, I have major issues with it, but out and out lying about it solves nothing and will only change the mind of idiots.
I don't know what ill conceived foreign invasions and interventionist foreign policies that are still in place (I won't go into why need to start a pull out from Afghanistan right away - you can read Matthew Hoh's letter yourself) has to do with this health care bill, but you seem to have bought into the talking points about it, so let me educate you a bit.
That "trillion dollar" price tag is simply a CBO estimate of the treasury outlays required to support federally funded measures in the bill. It does not include the trillions and trillions of dollars in resources that will be required from industry (and ultimately, private citizens) to support the regulations, nor the unfunded state mandates it includes. Health care is approximately 15% of GDP. The GDP of the US is about $14 trillion. So that's $21 trillion spent on health care over 10 years. This bill will regulate every aspect of health care, purports to cover more people, requires more coverage by all "approved" health care plans, and as far as I can tell, does nothing to address the actual costs of health care (thanks, AMA).
In fact, there are several provisions that will necessarily increase health care costs. For instance, the bill has a nod to the trial lawyer lobby by rolling back the tort reforms that states have passed which lowered expenses for doctors.
So, yes, it will likely be many trillions of dollars in additional costs. Add to that the fact that this will be run as an entitlement, without caps, and that CBO estimate may turn out to be as laughably naive as their estimate of the cost of Medicare back in 1966. Back then, the CBO estimated Medicare (which cost $3 billion in 1965) would cost only about $ 12 billion by 1990 (a figure that included an allowance for inflation). This was a supposedly "conservative" estimate. But in 1990 Medicare actually cost $107 billion.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
I need to go to the doctor. Send me your credit card number or I will have the government send armed men to your house to throw you into a cage until you comply.
Guess what? No one asked you. You live in the country that panders to rich fuckheads and freedom-for-the-rich-loving fuckheads more than the rest of the world combined. If even that country can't pander to all your fuckheadedness, you are SOL.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
A police force is excludable. You don't have to attempt to prevent or prosecute robberies of particular people in the same way you don't have to provide medical service to particular people. Similarly for the fire brigade. They're both rivalrous too - if the police are investigating a crime affecting me, they're not free to do something else.
The military may be genuinely non-excludable and non-rivalrous, but what if I don't want it, or want less of it? I still have to pay for it. I think you're drawing rather arbitray lines here.
As for your last statement, of course you can draw a line. Free healthcare, but no free Playstations, for example.
When it comes to allocating ownership of an item, we have the problem of who deserves what. Since almost all of human wealth is due to trade and division of labour (consider how much you can do by yourself without trading), labelling who owns what is not a trivial task in the first place. Obvious unfairness of the results of capitalism during the Industrial Revolution was one of the motivations for socialist philosophy in the first place.
California secedes, has to assume 10% of current federal debt (forgot about that, hmmm?);
Says who? Did we assume the debt of the british crown when we left them?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
My dental insurance covered root canals! Nice. Except... when I called them to get the name of a local specialist that could perform the procedure they told me, "Oh, #4 tooth? We don't cover root canals on that tooth. Sorry." This is a direct quote.
There I was riding my bike after my classes in college when I was hit by a moving van. I was flown, yes flown by helicopter, to a hospital where I was treated while I was in a coma. What was the total in medical bills? More than $120,000. Did I have any insurance at all? No, not working and being a college student I could not afford health insurance. I still got the medical care I needed to save my life, though I'd rather have died.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I don't run my own space program. Or my own race car circuit. Does that mean I'm not providing for me?
Absolutely. Unless you have found a way to avoid getting any benefit, direct or indirect, from those things (ever used a car?).
And as an aside, anyone and I do mean anyone who doesn't pay insurance is self-insured. In other words, they run their own health insurance company.
Not unless you actually have sufficient amount of money set aside for any possible medical emergency. And somehow made it certain that you will immediately die if those costs will be exceeded. Otherwise you will incur costs on the rest of society, and therefore are absolutely not "self-insured".
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
For all practical purposes, yes, unless if you want to live in a cave on a mountain side and eat small animals that you snare yourself. If, however, you want the benefits of civilizations then you need to participate in civilization.
Just because you are paranoid does not mean that no-one is out to get you.
So you're in favor of a free(r) market in medical services and finance, more akin to American grocery stores than Soviet commissaries?
Me, too! :)
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Capitalism is the worst...except for everything else.
Even Churchill didn't dare to put "Capitalism" into this witty but meaningless sentence about democracy.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Wouldn't it be nice to go back decades ago, perhaps doctors could start making housecalls again and we can all drive Pontiac Catalinas. You're better off hoping that you don't get sick. Or shipped off to Afghanistan.
The dirty little secret of Europe's welfare states is that unless you close the immigration floodgates your negative birth rates will be then end of that experiment. At the rate you're going all of Europe will be under Sharia law before the century is over.
I might go to hell, but I will not go to jail. That is a difference like day and night.
Taxes are not admissible out of moral reasons, because your moral high ground could be my hell fire and vice versa.
You either have private property or you don't. When the government (or the electorate itself) can start defining "fair shares" and "fair transfers", you will soon find yourself in a demarcation problem the size of a continent on the question of what actually is fair.
All people consider different limits of fairness, especially when it comes to their wallet. When you start grabbing into some people's wallets to put it into other's, you will always treat everyone unfair. You either take too much or give too few, take to much from the hardworking and give too much to the lazy, take too few from the greedy and give too few to the disadvantaged.
You will never do it right because people are truly unequal, even valuing exactly equal things unequal. You can treat one symptom of inequality and open an entire cargoship of other issues. Leviathan can't do it and you cannot do, either.
Or you can start alleviating inequality. Comrades Mao and Lenin failed, but you can always try again, can you?
Due to being a bit more corrupt (earmarks etc), more likely to pander to religious nuts, a complete unwillingness to face reality and actually collect enough taxes to pay for expenditures the USA government is sometimes not as effective at making good law than other western nations.
BUT! Despite these problems the USA government actually has a long history of accomplishments:
Landed a man on the moon
World's most powerful military
Universal education
Functioning Police and Justice system
The idea that the USA government cannot do anything right is clearly false. Sure they screw up, but they CAN actually run large programs.
Why is it that so many USA'ians whine about being force to help people with medical problems, but are perfectly OK with forcing everyone to fund long, drawn out, wars with poorly defined goals that kill lots of their fellow citizens?
AND why do you think the government, who will not be driven by the profit motive to deny you coverage because that was an existing condition, could possibly be worse than the private insurance companies you now use? Private insurance cares about making a profit, not your health.
Anarchists never rule
I rely on me to provide for me.
If you're writing here, I very much doubt you provide for you. You do some pretty abstract "work" in a 21st century society, and get compensated with some abstract "currency", which you use to "buy" stuff you want and also stuff you need. You only rely on yourself to find somebody else to provide the "currency", but most likely you totally rely others to grow and transport your food, make and transport the things you use, keep bad people from taking your stuff and your life, etc.
And if you're some of those few who could actually rely on themselves and survive if the need arose, I'm sure you agree that most people wouldn't.
Universal health care is an entitlement, not a right. It is an entitlement I strongly support, but I don't pretend it is a right. Rights are things others cannot stop you from doing. Entitlements are things everyone provides, for example fire departments, police, schools, roads, etc...
Anarchists never rule
Art. I Sec. 9: "The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person." This refers to the importation of slaves. Also Art. I Sec. 2: "the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons." Ie. "free people... and others."
Revive the Constitution.
You obviously don't understand the concept of insurance.
It is inefficient to provide something which everyone needs: basically, you could imagine that everyone would pay some sum so that in the event you need to get lunch, you would be reimbursed. This is an insurance. As you can see, in this case, pretty much everyone pays and receives the same amount. You only added administrative overhead.
In the case of health care, insurance means that in the event of some expensive treatment, you do not go bankrupt. There is administrative overhead, but it is overall worth it. Because the costs of bankruptcies/deaths to society is greater than the amount paid for insurance.
So no problem of consistency from the GPs part, just your deep ignorance of the economics of insurances.
That's right.
I'd like a reason to oppose things
How about the Constitution of the USA? Can you point to one place in there where the federal government is given the power control health care and medicine? And remember if it does not give a power then government does not have that power, it is a document limiting what government can do.
Now if you believe the government should do something the Constitution provides a way for it to do that, via amending it. Amazingly it has been amended 27 tymes already.
I personally like our parks, roads, fire/police/military, medicare, public educational finding/grants,
First, the Constitution gives the federal government the power to build and maintain roads. It also gives the power to defend the people and nation. Next there is nothing in the Constitution preventing state and local government from providing all these other things. And generally they have been pretty good at it. Actually with the feds into so much it can dictate to states what they must do. No Child Left Behind ring a bell? If a school doesn't meet federal requirements it can lose funding. Now if the feds did not have as high of taxes as it does then states and local governments could raise their own taxes and spend it on what they want instead of the feds dictating to them. Another example is Real ID. The feds want to tell the states they either have an ID that meets federal guidelines or they lose road funding. That's what they did with the minimum drinking age.
Anyone who believes in the purity of their ideals is suspect.
Then apply that to government as well. I have never ever heard of businesses exterminating and massacring millions of people but governments have a history of doing exactly that. Yes, even the government of the US.
if the private path went further towards these goals I'd vouch for it instead. Right now the private path seems to be a complete failure, individual greed and the general well being seem to be diametrically opposed.
You're assuming that the private path has been tried when in fact it has not been tried in more than 60 years. Instead government has been interfering with medicine and health care all this tyme.
Your statement is against the text of the bill, so the burden of proof is upon you.
You're looking at it the wrong way. It's not the responsibility if citizens to prove someone is not needed, it's the responsibility of government to prove that something is needed and that it has the power. Governments exist for the people, not the people existing for the government.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
The definition of a government is: an organization that has a monopoly on using force to enforce its decisions over a defined geographical area.
It isn't a government if it doesn't keep the right to use force to itself. It is the key thing separating governments from clubs and other associations. Good governments simply use that force sparingly.
Anarchists never rule
And other states are working on similar proposals as 2010 referenda. Also, Montana and Tennessee are already in open defiance of the feds through their "Firearms Freedom Act"s, with Montana having just filed a lawsuit petitioning for a completely in-state gun not to be considered subject to "interstate commerce" control. We need to stand ready to defend our citizens peacefully against federal aggression, knowing that this might mean more than filing lawsuits.
Revive the Constitution.
Ahh, but see, Alice cannot pay for insurance. So Bob would not get paid. And Alice will die. So taxes will not be paid and goods and services not produced.
Carol will gloat, except her tax burden is still higher from Alice's demise -- because the dead do not produce not pay taxes.
Or worse. Alice will not die right away. She will die in the emergency room. This will cost Carol because her taxes are paying for Bob there. And still the burden increases from Alice's demise.
But again, Carol will gloat. And she might live so much in denial that she thinks she has the moral high ground.
Amen brother Well they do care about us liberals.. remember they want to foce their usually religious morals on the rest of us.
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
Let me put it this way. Have you seen the Berlin Wall? I have. In some places there were actually two walls, with a no-man's land in between. In that space were machine-gun towers, spaced so close that the guards could kill each other.
And people were willing to sprint through a machine-gun killing ground, just to escape from communism. That's how horrible it is when you let arrogant statists take over your life. Nor is East Germany unique. Cubans flee their country on deathtrap rafts so they can go clean toilets in America. The "national socialists" who let private property and corporations continue to exist were at least as evil as the outright communists, and the half-capitalist Chinese today continue to oppress their own people.
Arrogant, all-powerful governments abuse and murder their own people. There's no denying that. We don't want even a halfway, happy-faced version of that, thank you very much.
Revive the Constitution.
gapminder.org
Look at the stats on infant mortality, life expectancy, etc.
See how the US looks like a third-world country.
The market works when people make semi-rational decisions. No one is rational when it comes to health, so it can only end in market failure. Which in the case of health means loss of lives. The US has the worse system of any developed nation. This is a fact.
What a good health system looks like, I don't know, many things are possible, many compromise can be struck. But the current state of affairs is objectively, by any measure other than cost (if you are a health professional getting paid, that is), the worse.
You wouldn't be referring to the same organization that awarded a Nobel Peace Prize to both Al Gore and Barack Obama would you? That well respected, completely objective and totally noble organization?
I guess I should stop taking Ghandi seriously too since he could never have sent a post card from Stockholm.
Sorry, gotta say, Stockholm hasn't exactly done a bang up job on the recent prizes. It's really hard to take an organization seriously that's as hit and miss as they are. You might as well as base someone's credibility on a popularity contest.
Correction, it's like the Roman Empire's government opertated after things started going to hell. After centuries of relative personal freedom and stability (as best one could find it in the ancient world), by about 250AD, thanks to new policies functionally identical to those being pushed by modern liberals, Rome was right where we are now: swamped by fast-growing public assistance costs; citizens' freedoms being negated by invasive regulations; gov't services awash in corruption; rising taxes and expanding government.
And I'd like to shake your mom's hand for raising a kid with the sense to recognise what's going on in America today, cuz otherwise your post is dead-on.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
So, if someone chooses to be a farmer, do I have the right to compel them to feed me?
Well, yes, at least indirectly. A portion of our taxes go toward buying food for the poor. It's called "food stamps", and I believe every state has such a program.
And occasionally the government has a bright idea. When farmers are having pricing troubles, the government sometimes purchases a portion of their crops at a low cost to give to the poor. This raises the price of those crops and simultaneously feeds hungry folks. Society as a whole benefits (since farms create wealth and help provide security for the country, so it really is bad for them to fail).
Finally, the government gives tax breaks to people and companies that assist the poor through charity. Some of these charities help the poor get regular meals. Most folks, whether they agree with the above programs or not, seem to agree that this system is useful.
So, yeah, in our society I have the right to compel folks to feed me. I can't walk into farmers' homes and help myself from their fridges, no, but throughout the nation, at both the federal and state levels, we've voted to make sure people have access to food regardless of their financial circumstances.
We had a Constitution that defined what powers the federal government may exercise. When asked where health care is on that list of powers, Mme. Pelosi replied, "Are you serious?!"
Revive the Constitution.
I don't know what's wrong with you people... sheesh.
The socialist programs in this country have found a solution to this "money problem." They just print more. Hell, some of the really smart ones just make notes in ledgers. Add a zero here or a zero there and... poof! Health care funded.
I mean, what's the worst that can happen? People bringing wheel barrels of currency into the grocery store just to pay for a loaf of bread? Like that would ever happen!
Does the police force, military or court system enslave anyone?
Seriously? Is there something else that generally does?
Yes. You are right. You owe nothing to the country's infrastructure.
Nothing at all.
Because it would be _wrong_ to let other people use _your_ roads which _you_ built.
And this water you are drinking, why should anyone use your purification plant. You built it.
And schools? For you, your children or your employees? I mean, you are running them, they should purely benefit you.
BTW, these children of yours? None of anyone's business that they are basically your slaves: you gave them life, after all.
Courts? Ha. Vampires.
The police has the most profound effect not by actually investigating and solving a crime but by proving a credible deterrent to would-be criminals. Much like any other force projection or violent ultima ratio, I might add.
By apprehending someone who robbed YOU, the police also protects ME from the same criminal who could've mugged me (along with a dozen other people) in the course of just one afternoon. By visibly apprehending ONE robber, the police also deterred X less law-abiding citizens from trying a robbery, making YOU, ME and EVERYONE ELSE much safer in the process, even if only you were involved.
For health care, this is not the case. Much like a loaf of bread, the doctor's time YOU consumed is forever lost with no benefits for ME maybe expect my consciousness relieved from not having to see you suffer.
The fire brigade is also not exclusive and only partly rivalrous, because having the fire team throwing water on YOUR house also protects MY and SOMEONE ELSE's house standing next to it from getting burnt down as well. The fire team also fights forest fires that threatens OUR entire village, at the benefit of EVERYONE, even those who didn't pay.
By including health care and excluding a Playstation, you tiptoed around the line and merely allocated two items to two different fuzzy-defined sets. You especially shied away from taking a stand on the German situation, where a TV set is a guaranteed right for everyone living on welfare: precisely because it is extremely hard - and always unfair to one side or the other - to have the government or a bureaucracy defining what is humane, needed and what is not. With millions of people grown to be dependant on the state, erring left means millions in grief and misery and erring right means millions taxes spent undeservingly.
Which is what I told you about.
But you already stepped out of the Marxist closet declaring "who owns what" to be at the core of the problem - and merely to be a labelling issue.
When MINE and YOURS is no more than a label which could change at any moment, WE are only one step away from YOU exerting power over ME to protect MY property, because it could belong to YOU tomorrow morning. Which is socialism. One step later, WE only have OUR collective property. Which is communism.
Remember the old joke about communism:
Q: If we were to fairly divide our money, and you squandered your share - what then?
A: We fairly divide again.
We are in two wars that we can't get out of and can't pay for. Medicare and Social Security are two huge bills from generations past that we can't pay for. We have a financial system that is on an unsustainable course and the viability of our currency is in question. The numbers used to estimate the costs of this health bill came from the very people who promote it. It is most likely the same type of bill that we have seen for at least since the DMCA was passed with a voice vote in the House and unanimous consent in the Senate.
If anyone really thinks this bill is going to benefit people beyond big pharma, unions, lawyers, Wall Street, K Street, banks, and insurance companies, they're high on crack. It's the same game, same players, bigger steaks.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
The bill has a special cluase allowing them to sign up for the public option- section 330. The oridnary public cannot sign up unless they are not covered by employer insurnce for at least six months.
Poor old JCR he's an libertarian in a world that has realised that his politics have consitently failed.
So he thrashes about looking to defend the indefensible.
What an asshole.
Our introduction to the "20th century" will be paid for primarily on the backs of two groups. First anyone with the temerity to earn more that 500k a year will be rightfully punished with a fat new tax. Second, anyone that has foregone buying insurance for whatever reason (can't get it, don't "need" it, etc.) will be forced, on pain of criminal prosecution, to buy into the system.
The later group are primarily the young; 20-30 somethings. It is worth noting that we have a novel new definition of "child" for the purposes of health insurance. You are a "child" until your 27th birthday, before which you may leech off your parents insurance, whether they want you to or not. No mention of whether the children of these newly minted "children" (the parents grandchildren) must also be included.
In any case these "children" will have to buy insurance, either via their parents or all by their precious selves. It won't be cheap because it is "one size fits all" and include lots of mandated goodies they won't need in the next 20 years, if ever. The system needs them to pay in. There are votes to buy using their money to subsidize people that vote reliably.
Our "children" may find simultaneously paying for their education dept and their mandated health insurance a challenge. They may have to forego accumulating a down-payment on property or financing any tolerable vehicles.
I'd like to thank our youth for their newly mandated wisdom in obtaining health insurance they probably don't need; I'm well past my 20s and you can bet I'm going to take full advantage of their generosity as they and their kids subsidize my price-capped, uncancellable insurance for the rest of my life. I'll be sure (using my reliable vote) to prevent too much intervention regarding rationing; much easier to make them pay for what I "need."
ROCK THE VOTE Slashdot.
May I suggest something like this. It seems to work quite well.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
You should play closer attention to your constitution. Right there along states rights are citizens rights, and the state can not take away citizens rights which have precedence. You are only ever a temporary resident of a state, you are always a citizen of the federal government. Not state has the right to disenfranchise citizens or attempt to take away the rights of citizens granted by the federal government. No state can claim the right to disown or own any citizen and on the flip side all federal citizens at all times can claim ownership of all states.
States powers come second to citizens rights granted by the federal government. It is an always will be the responsibility to protect all citizens from corruption of government whether it be at state or county level. It is very apparent that some states are being run for the sole benefit of corporations who don't pay taxes, who can pollute at will, who can abuse the rights of workers, and who devalue the lives of citizens below that of their profits. The states can corruptly bitch and moan at the orders of the rich and greedy all they want, but they have no power over the rights of citizens granted by the federal government and the constitution.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Yet at the same time government programs have ended up causing massive numbers of people to die.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward
James Madison was correct when he said:
"If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary."
I guess you have to strike a balance somewhere.
I never said they did. In fact my response is in direct opposition to that statement:
In a state of nature, we have the right to do anything. We give up some of those rights in order to protect others when we join civil society. Which ones we give up and which ones we protect are hashed out via social contract.
All rights are up to a vote. Albeit some (for instance revoking freedom of religion) would require the affirmation by 38 state legislatures as well as by 290 House members and 67 Senators, but it's still up to a vote. To think otherwise is to delude oneself.
Really? And what exactly do you think is the end game of the progressive movement? Your inability to see the obvious shows you have shutdown all rational thought.
20th century Marxism is not progress...
I'm curious as to why the wording in your post is identical to the wording in jcr's post just above it?
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
But this do not explain maternal mortality
From wikipedia-
"Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." - W Churchill, 11-11-1947
Capitalism !=democracy
And there's the odd thing. For all the ideological ranting against socialised health care that the opponents of this bill are spewing forth, having looked at the bill it doesn't appear to actually be offering socialised health care at all - just a complex system that may actually turn out to be in the drug companies and insurance companies interests. This is weird. One faction arguing against socialised health care, one faction arguing for it (I am in this faction), and a health care bill that, other than on the surface, doesn't actually offer socialised healthcare. I'd say this bill requires people to take a closer look at it but at over a thousand pages, I don't think any of us have the time which is a victory against democracy for someone.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
For all practical purposes, yes, unless if you want to live in a cave on a mountain side and eat small animals that you snare yourself. If, however, you want the benefits of civilizations then you need to participate in civilization.
What you're saying is true. However, participating in civilization and depending on the government to take care of you are two very different things.
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
Says current international law. This was all hashed out when Quebec was proposing to separate from the rest of Canada. You can't just leave with the good parts and not take the bad parts as well.
So, current accumulated fed deficit of $12 Trillion, that works out to $1.2 Trillion. California has 36 million people, so that means the family of four will have an additional debt of $133,333.33
California bonds are already among the worst in the western world - they're 100% junk bonds. As a country, they'd be even worse. California is currently paying 5% on bonds, and that will go up.
So, that's $6,666.67 in taxes per family, provided that there is no increase in bonds because Cali is now no longer a US state.
Add that to the current budget deficits, and the need to service the previous accumulated deficits, and the accumulated shortfalls in various programs (pensions, etc), and you have a real problem. It's bad enough that California is on the watch list for default already, and that earlier this year is had to pay with IOUs.
So, in that perspective, is the $15 billion a year more that California pays out in taxes than it receives in federal spending ($416.17 per capita, or $1,666,67 per family of four) all that bad a deal?
HA! :)
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
You presume that people who are against socialized medicine are also in favor of things like the "War on Drugs" and the invasion of Iraq. Whereas I'm sure that is often the case, it isn't always. Myself for instance.
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
I didn't hit "preview" and must have forgotten to close a blockquote tag. My bad.
What makes you think that the people who are in business for themselves are better at fixing things than those who are in government? Judging from healthcare and various businesses, people are incompetent and inefficient all over the place.
As for your dig about government handouts, I find it entertaining that this generally comes from people who are making average or above money.
You find that entertaining that the productive members of society don't particularly enjoy supporting the freeloading parts? Why would that be surprising?
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
Maybe in some places they do what you say, but I can tell you for a fact that in Australia any baby born after 21 weeks is considered a live birth regardless of circumstance - eg: even if as a result of a termination procedure. Thus the Australian statistics are considerably inflated by abortions and even then, they still fare much much better than the US (something like a 50% lower rate).
Seriously, how do you figure that?
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Instead focus singly on the FLOOD of people coming in from fairly weak borders with Mexico and Canada,
I can't speak to Mexico, but in Canada, they've got great public health care. I know a lot of Canadians, and they don't understand this debate; many of them would never consider living here solely because of the crappy health care.
The CB App. What's your 20?
And don't try to tell me that Government health care is going to suddenly start covering midwives, especially when the plan is so well supported by big pharma and the AMA. You should watch The Business of Being Born.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
You do have a point that policing is (mostly) non-excludable and non-rivalrous and that healthcare is (again, mostly) not.
However, I don't think it changes the fundamental issue. Just because something is non-excludable and non-rivalrous does not mean it has to be done, and similarly because something is neither of those doesn't mean it shouldn't be done by government.
In the case of healthcare, I simply think that the right to life and decent health is more important than any other, including property. If any right is important, this one is. This is a bit arbitrary, but no more than the "property is more important than anything else" that libertarians are so fond of.
However, we don't have to go that far. Almost all wealth is created by trade rather than directly by labour. If something was only created by a single person, it would be easy to assign ownership [1], and indeed generally taxes only apply to transactions. But if someone has millions of dollars or even tens of thousands, it's safe to say that wealth depended on a large number of other people. In that context, a tax on it isn't redistribution so much as deciding the original distribution of the wealth generated by the division of labour.
I'm not a Marxist or any kind of socialist - there is a rather large gulf between fundamentalist free market capitalism and Marxism that it's possible to occupy. I don't object to private ownership of businesses, for example. Income taxes, typically used to fund things like universal health care, are not socialist.
I didn't address the TV point because the cost seemed rather trivial compared to welfare cost in general. But as it happens, no, I don't see the point in specifying TV as a right. Welfare makes more sense as a small living allowance that people can spend as they choose. Healthcare is different to TV in that it's more important, being directly related to the right to life and different to food in that the cost comes in huge, unpredictable bursts and is not well suited to a pay as you go model.
[1] But even then, who owned the natural resources you created it from?
We rank 37th in infant mortality
The US ranks 37th in *reported* infant mortality. The main difference is what is considered a live birth vs. still birth. Most countries don't count it as an infant death if the baby dies within 24 hours of birth, and in countries with less capable neonatal intensive care that happens a lot. Premies simply die and don't get counted, except in the US.
Citation needed. GP gave sources. Parent hasn't.
And why is that? Because the government forms rules that are not just for the public good. Cleaning up government (i.e. less) is the answer, not creating more rules that favor this group or that group.
Yup - I'm not a big fan of this.
However, it really is the only option if you're going to force coverage of pre-existing conditions. Otherwise people will just wait until they're sick to sign up for insurance. That would bankrupt any insurance company, since they'd have only sick customers and couldn't share the costs with the healthy. Why have insurance if you can just sign up from the hospital lobby and emergency care is otherwise guaranteed?
If you're going to require coverage for pre-existing conditions then coverage has to be mandatory. That's how every other government on the planet effectively does it...
I bet you loathe all those wheelchair ramps in front of restaurants.
Where? Article I. Section 8: "General Welfare". It's a phrase broad enough to drive a battleship through, including healthcare. Don't like it? Get an amendment passed to remove it.
Capitalism isn't about compassion.
Right. It's about freedom.
This bill is unconstitutional and will make a felon out of anyone who does not wish to have the government mandated health insurance. Section 7203 – misdemeanor willful failure to pay is punishable by a fine of up to $25,000 and/or imprisonment of up to one year. Section 7201 – felony willful evasion is punishable by a fine of up to $250,000 and/or imprisonment of up to five years.
This argument falls flat on its face. Why would the creators of the constitution go to all the trouble of all the various conventions throughout the colonies to make all the various stated limitations on Government and then make a loophole that negates all of it? No, clearly the intent of the general welfare clause is not what we think it is, and has more to do with understanding the English of the time and not dictionary.com.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
Hey, at least we don't have a President renaming all the months of the year after himself. Yet.
Slashdot is a for-profit website. They make money from advertisements and subscriptions. If you bought the company, you'd be able to remove articles like this easily. As it is, this is a posted article and will stay that way. Turns out, you can also comment on why it shouldn't be posted (you seem to have figured this out)--this does not require buying Slashdot.
Sorry if that disturbs your view of what Slashdot should be. Better save up before something like this gets posted again.
Absolutely. Unless you have found a way to avoid getting any benefit, direct or indirect, from those things (ever used a car?).
Going to be obtuse, eh? I pay for the things I use with money I earned. That is what providing for oneself means.
Not unless you actually have sufficient amount of money set aside for any possible medical emergency. And somehow made it certain that you will immediately die if those costs will be exceeded. Otherwise you will incur costs on the rest of society, and therefore are absolutely not "self-insured".
So what? Why should I feel gratitude for losing freedom and getting robbed simply because some day I might use up more health care than I can pay for?
Why would the creators of the constitution go to all the trouble of all the various conventions throughout the colonies to make all the various stated limitations on Government and then make a loophole that negates all of it?
I don't know. Maybe the same reason those slave owners went on and on about "liberty" and "created equal" and such. Anyway, they did it, and the wording is crystal clear. If you don't like it, lobby to get it removed.
Thing is that you can go back. Unlike say medical technology and drugs, there hasn't been serious innovation in the actual infrastructure of providing health care since the early 20th century.
You live in the country that panders to rich fuckheads and freedom-for-the-rich-loving fuckheads more than the rest of the world combined.
Well, I guess it doesn't pander enough.
...lawsuits only acount for 0.75 % (yes, 3/4 of 1%) of the costs of Health Care in this country.
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
Maybe it's because 40-60% of their wages go to paying taxes, and prices have risen precipitously from all the Government and Federal Reserve manipulations of the markets.
Raising a child is a full time job, and thus requires someone to be on call, full time, to manage. Two parents working 60 hours per week to pay their various debts cannot make up for the lack of not being around.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
I don't know.
I rest my case.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
Have you seen anyone create a company worth tens of billions of dollars for a salary of a few hundred thousand dollars? I haven't.
Warren Buffett only gets like $150,000 per year, but I believe he gets dividends.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
what pisses me off about the whole illegal imigration issue
What pisses me off about the whole "illegal immigration" issue is that those who have pushed it are the ones left after the native population was massacred. The conquerors used laws to bar others from immigrating as well. The Know Nothings in the 1840s and '50s tried to make it illegal for Irish Catholics to immigrate to the US. The Chinese Exclusion Act barred Chinese from immigrating in the 1880s. Southern Europeans, Eastern Europeans, and Africans have been discriminated against. Now it's Central and South Americans, some who's ancestors have been here longer than the European immigrants who settled in the New World.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I don't believe Californians want to provoke a war with (the rest of) the United States, so it's imprudent to suggest leaving in the same manner we left the UK.
It isn't capitalism that failed, it is the nonstop meddling of the federal government in the private sector which has distorted it to no end. Capitalism isn't even given a fair chance anymore, but oh the statists love their favorite scapegoat when things go wrong. Compassion is something you as a citizen are supposed to provide willingly of yourself, it makes for terribly inefficient government policy. Are YOU compassionate, or do you want credit for dictating like a monster, who gets to own what?
It's Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.
Especially interesting when you discover Maslow's theory is false. It's perfectly logical .. but it's not what drives people.
This is why nationalized healthcare works.
Again, perfectly logical, but .. well not false, but highly misleading. Nationalized health care provides service, but it's poor quality or to a limited percentage of the people, or both. Most, if not all, NHC plans impose both high taxes and long lines. American nationalized plans fail particularly badly.
... socialism is not all bad. Military, fire, police, community centres, libraries: all of these are iconic images of American life, and all of them are funded by the idea that collective payment benefits everyone eventually, if not immediately.
True, but again misleading. These services are all well defined. A fire is a fire, you dump water on it til it's out. There's a little research here (jaws of life, chemical foams) but not much has changed in the past 100 years.
This is not true of health care: almost everything has changed in the past 100 years. And yet there are many diseases that cannot be cured. Nationalized systems are not very good at dealing with things that need to change rapidly.
Not that this wasn't entirely predictable.
You don't know either.
They are not as different as many people think. Governments were created for a reason, and life was pretty miserable for most people in the days before governments provided basic social services. There is a reason that our grandparents gave their governments those powers.
Just because you are paranoid does not mean that no-one is out to get you.
So it's more moral to enslave Carol because she just doesn't realize that it's for her own good?
Seems the adults also know that you cannot rely on the private sector to provide for people. Capitalism isn't about compassion.
That's a very cogent point, no doubt delivered to us with the aid of a government-supplied computer. Well done, Comrade!
I want to know on what planet Keynes is considered a "Lysenko". Not the same planet that noted Chicago school economist and judge, Richard Posner, lives on: http://www.tnr.com/article/how-i-became-keynesian . Nor the planet that Milton Friedman lives on, the man who said that, in a certain sense, "we are all Keynesians now." Certain elements of Keynes's theory are the standard ways of approaching economics, used by everyone. That you think otherwise suggests you are profoundly profoundly profoundly ignorant of economics.
Though, I suppose, if you want to be an anti-Keynesian, I suppose you would accept Friedman's opinion that monetary contraction was the main cause of the recession, a point upon which most economists currently agree. What's that? You think HOOVER caused the recession? Oh, that's right, you know nothing about economics, but you insist on talking about anyway. For a second I forgot about that...
Finally, you claim that Hoover, of all people, was the source of depression-causing progressivism. This claim is too ridiculous to be believed. It's like blaming Democrats for the expansionary federal budget during 2000-2006. They didn't do anything! They were never given the chance!
It sickens me the ass-talking ignorance that passes for economic knowledge on Slashdot. It's not that people like you don't bother to do the research, but rather there is this pervasive sense of anti-government pseudo-Austiran countercultural conspiratorism that makes enema-bags like you think you are too good for economic knowledge. "Keynes is just another Lysenko!" If you had taken any intro to econ course, or read any intro to econ books, ever, you would not think this. Shut up.
"How can it be optional if they are going to fine you when you say no???" She comes from the World War 2 generation, when freedom actually meant something.
How ironic you say this. The problem with health insurance got it's start in WWII. Government passed wage control laws, employers weren't allowed to pay employees more. Because this made it hard to hire people the government later allowed employers to offer insurance and other benefits to employees. For doing so they were given tax deductions. People who bought their own insurance didn't then and don't now get those deductions though. It tremendously distorted the market for health insurance.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
That's why I read books on the topic. From The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History by Thomas E. Woods, Jr., Ph.D., page 32:
Madison dismissed the claim that the proposed legislation could be justified by the Constitution's clause authorizing the federal government "to provide for common defense and general welfare." To the extent that politicians today even bother to justify federal legislation on constitutional grounds, they appeal to this clause. But to argue this way, Madison said, would render "the special and careful enumeration of powers which follow the clause nugatory and improper. Such a view of the Constitution would have the effect of giving to Congress a general power of legislation instead of the defined and limited one hitherto understood to belong to them." If the "general welfare" clause of the Constitution authorized the Congress to do anything that tended toward the general well-being of the country, then why had the Framers bothered to specifically list the powers of Congress in Article I, Section 8? This very fact logically precluded the possibility that the general welfare clause constituting a broad, open-ended grant of power.
Madison continued to promote this view in the years that followed. In 1792 he argued:
If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every state, county, and parish, and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision for the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads,; in short, everything, fro the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress.
So if we take what Woods and Madison are arguing to the next logical step, every word in the constitution is overruled by the general welfare clause. This includes the right to free speech, the right to trial; everything.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
I care about my life expectancy. Does that sound selfish? It shouldn't. It should sound familiar. Every poor, unemployed, and bleeding heart individual clamoring for this has exactly the same objective. The difference is that I work my ass off to beat the averages, and I intend to reap the rewards of my hard work in better than average outcomes. My position is no more selfish than theirs. The difference is that they stand to gain at my loss, and I will not accept this outcome.
If this bill becomes law, within 10 years, a majority of posters on this forum will have reduced access to care and lower relative quality of care, while paying higher taxes to support it. The least well off may be slightly better off, but you will pay the price for it, not only in taxes, but also in your own health.
This bill will substantially increase the demand on our health care providers. At the same time this bill restricts the ability of health care providers to fund increases in capacity, and does nothing of substance to increase the efficiency, effectiveness, or productivity of health care providers.
The only way to increase quality of and access to care, while reducing costs, is to increase the efficiency, effectiveness, and productivity of health care providers. This means public investment in science and technology, coupled with reduction in regulations on new medical treatments and devices.
All they have to do is extend Medicare to cover everyone.
Medicare is not a single payer system. I know, being on disability I am on Medicare and it does not cover all my medical expenses.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
So perhaps it was unwise to include the phrase. BUT THEY DID! He can't argue it away with a slippery slope strawman any more than you can. I told you, if you don't like it, work to get it changed.
In the meantime, most the management of this advanced 21st century nation that goes beyond the immediate needs of an 18th century agrarian society works just fine under that phrase.
Everyone making over 500,000/yr.
If you make substantially less you can be granted a waiver.
If Democrats were a center leaning group the bill they passed would not have passed.
it was really Medicare/Medicaid that was the first ventures towards that direction, so i guess this is the getting in the first few feet phase when everyone else is already well in and not complaining about it the way we are.
Nobody complains about Medicare? Are you really that far out of reality? Googling complaints about medicare returns more than 2 million results. Putting it in parentheses, "complaints about medicare", still results in more than 60,000. I am one of those that complains.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
So you feel you are more an expert on the Constitution than the man who is quite commonly known as "the Father of the Constitution"? It is you who does not understand the meaning of the clause and are unwilling to learn, which is why your efforts anger so many who do take the time to read about these things.
It is those who are on your side of the argument who must change the document. And I must say you sound more like a despot than any I've seen on this site.
Believe it or not, the needs of the poor were much greater back then as the poverty rate in the U.S. was substantially higher. Certainly access to health care for a substantially higher percentage of the nation was completely non-existent, except for the fact that doctors changed their rates based on who they were serving. Instead of having a set rate for a particular procedure, they charged more to the wealthy and less to the poor. The wealthy knew this and were fine with it. It was a form of voluntary and direct wealth redistribution, whereby the services of the poor were directly subsidized without any middleman.
It is unfortunate that your dogged faith to an ideology is more important than the essence of our free society.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
I'm sure it'll be extra fun using his leaf blower to blow his brain bits off someone's lawn.
Self awareness - try it!
Gather guns and head for the hills, the revolution is coming!
Start building small militia armies to prepare.
This is the only way to ensure peace.
POWER TO THE PEOPLE!!!
Exception Duck - may or may not contain chicken.
it is about forcing one group to pay for another group
We're all one group. You know, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all? So, let's try and crown our good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea, if we can.
For a system like ours to work there has to be some support for its foundations, and public health is an issue that costs everyone. Either we do more on the side of care and prevention now, or we pay for it in treating disease later.
I swear, people just can't see the forest for all their gazing at the trees. More systemic thinking, less shortsightedness, please!
-- thinkyhead software and media
That is because there is little to no competition, nor is there a free market.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
All I ever here from people here, is how insurance companies deny claims and the huge amounts of co-pays
That is because there is no competition. In this post of yours you say you had employer provided health insurance. Guess what? Your employer got a tax deduction for offering the insurance. On the other hand if you, I, or almost anyone else goes and buys their own health insurance then we not get a tax deduction. That is a distortion of the market.
Also I have to pay $50 in co-pays for my meds every month while in Germany it would be capped at 10 euros irrespective of total amount.
Guess what? I am on Medicare right now and if it weren't for Walmart's commitment to offer thousands of drugs for $4 I couldn't afford my prescriptions, not that I can now.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Adults also know that the quality of their life is directly dependent on the quality of the community/civilization they live in. They understand that the "free market" is not capable of solving all of the problems of the community and that government is the means whereby we try to solve those problems. As Donne said "No man is an island".
I have to say, your Sig does inverse wonders for your arguments.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
"Government setting aside your money, so that it can be commingled with everyone else's money, and used to pay for someone else's hernia operation, and when you need your hip replacement, they tell you that they used up the money on cotton balls and alcohol swabs for the other guy."
this is what people see socialized medicine as leading to.
will that be what actually happens? probably,based on the fact i've yet to see the government not screw anything this complex up yet.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
There is no evidence to suggest that Government run programs have provided a long-term solution to anything. It is the proponents of the legislation who need to provide the supporting arguments, not the other way around.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
What about nuclear, you never hear about state wide blackouts in France.
You don't hear about how nuclear power is Hooked on Subsidies either. Or how "Nuclear power appeals to state planners, not market actors."
Sure you'll need a non-retarded grid to get that power everywhere but it seams like your grid is in need of a rework anyway
It's estimated that because of the poor condition of the electrical grid in the US it costs up to $83 billion a year in loses to business. No matter what generation technology is used the grid still has to be upgraded. That was one of the few things I agreed with Obama on, however he hasn't done anything about it yet. Like so many of his other promises.
do you really have DC power lines in places?
In Europe too. High Voltage DC current is terrific for transmitting electricity long distances, there is less loss of power with DC over long distances than with AC. DC is used widely by off gridders. If the electricity is generated as DC why convert it to AC?
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I don't know about 600 pages, but I was able to shave it down to approx 1400 by just copying and pasting the document from a pdf to a word processor then changing to single spaced.
It might have not been called Keynesian during the first great depression, but I'm pretty sure most people consider the the 'new deal' very Keynesian (afterall it just amounted to gov spending to try and 'stimulate' the economy.
Also don't mistake inflation for the illusion of growth. Just because the Japs kept interests rates low and flooded the market w/ money, doesn't amount to real growth. Actually if you think about it, rising prices, which is what happens w/ low interest rates and stimulus packages is a bad thing. You want prices to fall (very gradually) as production mechanisms before more efficient, so that more people can afford goods and services, and that money can be invested into different / more productive areas of the economy.
And we may never get back to 7000, because of the trillions the government has been printing will make all these nominal prices go up. It is you sir that has been completely brainwashed and have no understanding of economics.
Says current international law. This was all hashed out when Quebec was proposing to separate from the rest of Canada ...and how much of the Soviet debt did the Balkans assume?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
No, I think he was referring to the Nobel Prize in Economics which is a separate group from the Nobel Peace Prize. The Peace Prize is determined by a committee of Norwegians and awarded in Oslo.
Citing both Rand and Heinlein? You need to get out more.
-- thinkyhead software and media
On the scale of the USA mass transit will cost more. The density of population is too low.
Nationwide yes but most people in the US live in cities.
Another issue with mass transit is that it only carries people.
Mass transit also carries cargo, depending on how you define "mass transit".
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
The link you posted doesn't work when followed directly. What people must do is:
Go to http://thomas.loc.gov. The bill, HR3962: Affordable Health Care for America Act, should be clearly linked in the homepage, but if it isn't just search for bill number HR3962. From there, follow the link "Text of Legislation". That takes you to the table of contents, where getting to Title III, Subsection C, Section 347 is straightforward.
the recession ended in 1933
That's a bolder claim than even Roosevelt's propagandists were willing to make.
The fact that the economy was back in shape at the end of the war
That is not a fact. Ask any of your older relatives who lived through that period when rationing ended.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Maybe some adults know that a minority of adults act like children and don't know how to providing for themselves and refuse to pay for their childish behavior. Ask yourself this if you have no insurance ... are you putting 100-200 dollars a month into a savings account in case you have to go to the doctors?? After all, that is how much your insurance premium would be if your employer offered it. Have you looked into a high-deductible plan at least to protect you from major surgeries?? I had one that had a $5,000 deductible, and it only cost me $20/month through my employer. Granted, I now had to do this called called budgeting for my doctor visits, but that is MY responsibility, not the governments nor the private sector. If you have no insurance, aren't putting any money aside, and have never called Blue Cross for a quote, then shut the fuck up. You don't deserve to have anyone take care of you because you won't even try to take care of yourself.
Your employer doesn't offer a health plan?? Then they are selfish. ALL employers can offer health plans, they choose not to. Employers don't have to pay any of the premiums and can pass the whole thing onto the employees if they can't afford it. ALL employers can offer their employees a high-deductible health plan where the employees pay the entire premium, so if you employer does not he is lying to you about not being able to offer health care.
So because less than 10% of the population don't have insurance, the other 90% will now have to pay for it. And of that 10%, a large portion CHOOSE not to have insurance even when it's offered. I know this from personal experience, two people I know do not have insurance even though their employer offers it. These are not low paying jobs, these are mid to upper middle class incomes who choose to purchase expensive toys rather than carry insurance on themselves.
This furthers drives the US economy down the shitter, just as Obama has been doing since he was elected.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
The Post Office, the military, Social Security, Medicare, the Food & Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control, the National Institutes for Health, NASA, the USDA, NOAA...
They all have their problems but IMHO they all do more good than harm.
I suspect you'll probably sneer at my including Social Security and Medicare in there but without them millions of retired people wouldn't have a basic standard of living and reasonable medical care.
Since when is someone who makes less than average a freeloader?
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
We already have national lunch insurance. It's called food stamps.
You are absolutely correct: listing an assortment of agencies provides no evidence. You must compare them with their private industry counterparts and demonstrate that they are a more effective method of providing the service.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
States powers come second to citizens rights granted by the federal government
Stop right there. The Federal government does NOT grant any rights. We institute governments to secure our rights, which pre-exist any government.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
what better results?
the US leads in cancer survival rates by leaps and bounds. 60% for men vs 45% for that great UK system on a 5 year horizon. The US is number 1 in the world so I doubt you will burn too much time trying to find a country that beats this.
While the US does have a higher infant mortality rate than most other countries, a study just released attributes a vast vast majority of the difference to the US being more wiling to deliver and try to keep alive premature babies (who wants to guess we will find that a generally higiher birth rate and strong aversion to abortions in several poor populations possibly makes up the rest?). about 40% of those people who have a heart attack in teh UK die whereas the US death rate stands around 10% (on the 1 month horizon). (UK from Department of Health, US from Journal of the American Medical Association)
I'm just finding random stats. Europeans only have their jaws on the floor because for some reason they believe they receive better health care.
And keep in mind, health care is how you are treated once you are sick. If we corrected the the higher obesity and smoking rates in the US, I think the American medical system would look like a bunch of gods coming to work vs the care in the UK.
and for seniors, it looks even better for the US. if in the US you reach (I think), 70 years old, you now have the highest life expectancy of anyone in the world. In fact, this is quite surprising but reflects amazing end of life care in the US vs other countries.
I'm personally against socialized medicine or requirements for insurance. I'm also against the reagan era policy which says you have to treat people regardless if they can pay. Mainly, I hate the entire insurance system we have because it isn't insurance. insurance is a small premium paid against disaster, not the expectation that if you pay a small percent of your health care it suddenly all becomes free. people have spent so much time without having to take responsibility for their basic care that they have forgotten it is how everyone used to do things.
quoted from the WSJ: "What woman would buy a plan for an unplanned pregnancy?" said Ms. Rubiner of Planned Parenthood.
this was in regards to purchasing insurance. What idiot wouldn't buy insurance against the unexpected? that is what insurance is for. I don't buy insurance against the dealer getting blackjack when I KNOW he will get blackjack, I buy it to protect certain gains against the unexpected and unlikely occurrence.
And this is one of the big problems. The democrats that are crafting these policies don't understand what insurance is and what a buyer's cooperative is and they are mixing the two to the detriment of everyone.
What they mean by an insurance exchange is really a poorly crafted buyers cooperative (like sam's club) which, by getting buyers together, can push for cheaper pricing. This is unfortunately what everyone thinks insurance is for. Insurance should be a separate issue where we buy protection against real health care disasters. The separation of these two would be the greatest reform imaginable (that, along with fixing a really crappy tax code that is almost incomprehensible beyond the most basic return). Requiring insurance sounds great against disaster, but disaster isn't a program that covers my annual physical or my allergy medication.
and I know I've rambled a lot, but I'm tired. forgive the lack of clarity.
Yeah, coz the US is the only country in the OECD with "capable neonatal intensive care"? Get the fuck over yourselves! If you want to compare the figures with, say, the Philippines or Turkey on that basis, then go ahead. You'll be wrong, because infant mortality is recorded as a rate per 1,000 live births, but you can try and pretend all the same. However, don't try and pretend that your system is in any way superior to Canada, Australia, the UK, New Zealand, Japan... The simple truth is that your system is broken, and no amount of massaging of statistics will change that. You lead the world on cost, unquestionably, but the outcomes that are bought with that money are worse than the outcomes bought by all those nasty, socialist healthcare systems in other countries.
"God, root, what is difference?" - Pitr, userfriendly
Can you provide some fundamental, inarguable definition of "inherent rights", and explain from first principles why health care isn't one but security is?
Volunteer fire brigade? Really? Bloody hell.
What are you, English? We call them the "rescue squad" or the "fire department", but yea they are primarily staffed by volunteers. There are locality-supported fire departments not far from here, but they are funded by local government. Local governments are ... local. They are accountable to their community, and they can only spend what they bring in. If they issue bonds (debt) it must be approved by a plurality of the voters. I view this significantly different than a federal government, run from thousands of miles away, printing and spending money without the means to pay it.
You are born with inherent rights. They are part of you. They cannot be taken or given away, they are not supplied by governments. They do not require someone else to provide them for you.
I never said that "security" was an inherent right. I said the purpose of government is to secure inherent rights. That is, the only reason for that necessary evil is to ensure that individuals do not infringe on the rights of other individuals.
If you are really unclear on the concept, here is a good primer on inherent rights.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Maybe your rights come from some idea of groupthink or tyrannical majority. Mine do not.
If that's the way you view rights, then you don't have anything. Nothing. And as people vote away the rights of more and more minorities in order to get things for themselves, eventually even your life will be forfeit.
Good luck convincing the ruling tyrants that you didn't agree to this "social contract" when they come to cart you off.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
The last I heard is that everyone would be forced to buy in, or be fined or face jail time. Some option that is.
It beats having you skip buying insurance, then get in a car wreck and expect the rest of us to pay for your care out of our pockets. Anyone who can afford health insurance and chooses not to buy it is freeloading by making the rest of the country shoulder their share of the risk.
(And no, you don't have the option of simply promising to forego medical care if you get badly hurt -- when the accident came, you'd change your mind, and even if you didn't it would be unethical to leave you untreated)
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
In other words "you forgot Poland".
The point still stands: US health care is by far the most expensive in the world, and we get very little for our money by most measures of patient outcomes.
"We hold these truths to be self evident." That's the definitive circular argument.
Actually, I believe that is what is known as an axiom, or perhaps an observation. If a truth is self-evident, that isn't really an argument at all, so it can't be a circular argument.
but if you look at the statistics, americans have massively better health outcomes in those things that medical care does usually cover. Cancer and heart attacks are two I reference in an above post and in general, the survival rates are much much higher for cancer patients in the US. Our elderly also live longer (conditional probability so don't look at life expectancy at birth) so we must be doing something right. on the other hand, our higher rates of smoking and obesity make it a much harder country to come up with such great results vs. europe. I generally think we do pretty damn well. sure modular improvements can be great, but that is not what this change is about.
as I said above, the real solution is to separate the functions of a buyers cooperative (great by private sector) and absolute disaster insurance (generally requiring some govt intervention because of the unlikely chance a private entity can set aside enough capital to handle a real disaster).
What europe has is a govt mandated buyers cooperative and insurance and this is what we are doing. It's foolish because people can generally effectively form buyer's cooperatives in a more flexible manner to reflect everyone's desires.
the USA
So does Cuba, does that mean we should follow Cuba's lead?
There are waits for some procedures for stuff that won't kill you. If you have a serious illness you get to see a doctor and whatever specialist is required within hours in most cases.
Canada has no rationing? None at all? Waiting for surgery isn't as bad in Canada? Wait tymes weren't at an all-time high in Canada? Average waiting tymes in Canada for surgery isn't 16 weeks?
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Your employer doesn't offer a health plan?? Then they are selfish. ALL employers can offer health plans, they choose not to.
Ah, so you think it's the responsibility of all employers to offer healthcare rather then government. And this is better, how exactly?
So because less than 10% of the population don't have insurance, the other 90% will now have to pay for it. And of that 10%, a large portion CHOOSE not to have insurance even when it's offered. I know this from personal experience, two people I know do not have insurance even though their employer offers it. These are not low paying jobs, these are mid to upper middle class incomes who choose to purchase expensive toys rather than carry insurance on themselves.
I'm gonna speculate that these people are doing that because they're gambling that they could afford the treatment if ever they fell seriously ill. Seems you don't really give a shit about people who know they couldn't afford the treatment, but can't afford the insurance either.
This furthers drives the US economy down the shitter, just as Obama has been doing since he was elected.
I don't know if you've noticed, but the US is the only country in the developed world that doesn't (or didn't, rather) have universal health care, and none of the other developed countries have gone so far down the shitter that they're no longer considered developed. Let's ignore the fact that here in the UK we managed to build a more ambitious scheme than this one while still rebuilding from WWII, without going down the shitter. Also, let's just ignore for the minute that the US spends more per capita on healthcare while still having a relatively poor life expectancy. Sounds like a bit of government interference in this area might just help efficiency and lead to, of all things, economic growth, if that's your primary concern.
Nonsense, capitalism is awful at things that don't make a profit and where value is not easily expressed in terms of money. This includes things like education, environmental protection, and health care. Quit spewing dumb soundbites.
Actually, it seems that education is much better when it's paid for with private funds. Even publicly funded education was better before the Federal government got involved and created the Department of Education. Outcomes for public education have deteriorated significantly since.
Whether health care can be any good when no profit motive is involved remains to be seen. The vast majority of medical advances in the last century have been made by people hoping to profit from their discoveries. These include pharmaceutical companies, teaching hospitals, medical equipment manufacturers, etc.
When all medical care is control and rationed by government, it may just stagnate. Then again, there will probably plenty of billionaires walking around wanting to spend money on medical advances for themselves and their families. We may even still call them Senators, Congressmen, CEOs, board members, cabinet members, and bankers.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
1. America has a "free" market for health insurance/care
Lol. That's rich! The only thing "free" about it is that the states freely regulate health insurance.
2. America pays more than most Western countries for health insurance/care 3. America gets worse results than most Western countries
That depends on how you measure "results". Yes, the US has a slightly lower average lifespan and a higher incidence of, for instance, premature births. However, cancer patients in the US have a much higher survival rate, and premature infants have a better chance of survival in the US. If you separate general "health" issues from "care for the sick and injured", the US usually does much better. The US is also the country where most new, experimental drugs first become available, and they are sold here for higher prices than any other countries. This is done because generally Americans can afford to pay more for drugs, so they bear the brunt of making up the cost of R&D.
4. Most States have one insurer that has >40% of the insurance market
Because of state and federal regulations, and thus is not really a free market at all.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
I'm just finding random stats. Europeans only have their jaws on the floor because for some reason they believe they receive better health care.
Could be the higher life expectancy that makes us think that.
And keep in mind, health care is how you are treated once you are sick. If we corrected the the higher obesity and smoking rates in the US, I think the American medical system would look like a bunch of gods coming to work vs the care in the UK.
Ah, so that's where you're going wrong, lack of preventative health care. So that's what makes the NHS work so well - providing incentives to treat as early as possible rather than incentives to avoid treating at all.
I'm personally against socialized medicine or requirements for insurance. I'm also against the reagan era policy which says you have to treat people regardless if they can pay.
I guess you're in favour of doctors leaving people to die because they can't pay then?
You sound like my 80-something mother.
"How can it be optional if they are going to fine you when you say no???" She comes from the World War 2 generation, when freedom actually meant something. I don't think today's Generation Hippy, Generation X, or Generation Me have any idea of the concept. Many of them think if they want something, it's okay to ask the government to raid their neighbors' wallets and get it.
It's a lot like how the Roman Empire's government operated.
Generation Hippy is asking the government to do things? Gen. Hippy and the government are on speaking terms?? STOP THE PRESSES!!! HIPPIES AREN'T HIPPIES ANYMORE!
$ make available
In the UK, if you refuse to fund the healthcare system (via taxes) you go to prison. In the US, if you refuse to fund the healthcare system (via health insurance) you die. Why is the former theft and the latter not?
the proposed legislature is good enough to be worth passing
I couldn't disagree more.
There is a school of economic thought that says when the economy is bad, the best thing for the government to do is spend money to stimulate the economy. The Great Depression lasted for as long as it did in part because the US government did the "responsible thing"
There's a school of thought which says the Great Depression lasted as long as it did because the government interfered.
which it didn't do until World War II forced the US government to begin spending on materiel
Actually the nation was recovering from the Great Depression before WWII. The recovery started before the Recession of 1937-1938, which as the wiki article says "was a temporary reversal of the pre-war 1933 to 1941 economic recovery from the Great Depression in the United States."
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Ah, but the Commerce Clause DOES give that kind of power and the rest of the Constitution IS moot. The Supreme Court said so on June 6, 2005. I believe Justice Thomas said it best: "...the Federal Government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers."
Where were you when this decision was handed down? Pelosi was obviously paying attention.
DRM 'manages access' in the same way that a prison 'manages freedom'
why is this flagged science?
It needs to be noted, however, that the Federal Reserve is a private, not a public institution.
person
When you mandate a check for status when someone is injured before treatment is given you mandate citizens' death.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Ah, sorry! I realised after posting that the rest of your comment was actually in contradiction to the first paragraph and that is was therefore probably intended as a quote. Saw two paragraphs the same and figured either someone had cocked up with their sock-puppetry, astroturfing was going on, or there was some popular source being quoted that I wasn't aware of. Obviously not the case after reading the whole post more carefully.
Regards,
H.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Allow people to go across state lines to buy insurance. Right now each state can say who can and can not sell insurance in that state, I can not go across a state line and buy insurance in another state which may have lower insurance premiums. In other words there is no competition.
This isn't the reason there's no competition. There *might* be a brief increase in competition if you were to remove individual state's rights to regulate and create a national market, but it's pretty likely what would happen before too long would be the same thing that's happened in telecom, broadcast, newspapers, and a bunch of other industries: we'll consolidate nationally to 2-3 players. If anything, it'll happen faster: profitability as an insurance company depends strongly on what you can negotiate with providers, and when it comes to that, bigger is better.
Tweet, tweet.
So, health care should only be available for those who are at least slightly wealthy? Yeah you're right, just fuck all those poor people. It's probably better to be dead than poor anyway. While we're at it, roads should only be available to those who can afford to build their own roads and share with others, and if you want the police to come and help you out, you should definitely have to pay them for their time. Can't have those poor people mooching off of everyone.
which is totally what she said
If people can't get support when they need it, then it becomes practically impossible for them to dig themselves out of their slump, during which they will inevitably consume more than they produce.
Even a most theoretically callous government, extending exactly zero support to these people, even to the point of letting them die, couldn't prevent charity and humanitarian work, which distributes the costs over other channels, all which add to a significant impact on the economy.
The point is that there needs to be a balance. There's no point in saying "social welfare is bad". The fact is, without social welfare, you unavoidably do considerably worse economically.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Most people get treated.
There are certain circumstances were it is simply not cost effective, but even then you would be offer pain control or other paliative measures.
And under all circumstances you can still contract private insurance if you can afford it.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The US will collapse economically if something is not done.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
200 mg Irony, 3 times a day before meals.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
In the UK people are as capitalistic as anywhere else and dislike too much government intervention in many parts of their life, and at some points they will push very hard back, much more than US people ever would.
And nevertheless, it is pretty much a national consensus that socialized health care is the best, fairer solution for all the inhabitants of this country.
I have known of people in the US that where all gun-ho about socialized medicine, until their first insurance claim was rejected.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Racist drivel.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
For bunnies sakes, please move.
Modern medicine and research is what has increased life expectancy and quality of life everywhere, including Asia, even those parts where they will rip you off offering "alternative medicine" (i.e. not peer reviewed).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
could be. but then you are saying you'd rather be european because you are healthier, not because healthcare is better. there is a difference and the confusion of the two is unfortunate.
furthermore, I'm not sure what primary care doctor prevents you from smoking or getting fat. Many Americans (keep in mind, 85% have insurance and going to a primary care doctor isn't expensive compared to insurance or the taxes Europeans pay) already have great access to primary care doctors. Everyone seems to think Americans are basically waiting to get sick and then going to very expensive specialist.
But even if that is the case, it's not because our insurance plans don't cover trips to the doctor. For example, at my work place, the low deductible plan has a 15 dollar copay for me to go to a primary care doctor and the high deductible plan pays 100% of the cost.
and no, I'm not for doctors leaving people to die. that is just a stupid comment. it turns out we didn't have people dying in the streets for lack of doctors before the 80's. There are many doctors who build practices with a centerpiece being low cost services to the poor and hospitals generally helped. But what I'd rather see is if society actually wants to provide healthcare to the poor, then to share that very specific burden (a la Medicaid) rather than force 100% of the burden on hospitals.
We used to have that kind of system and I argue that it's a more fair way to do these things. Sure, the old system maybe wasn't perfect but the idea of letting 100% of the burden fall on your local hospital and the idea that the emergency room is free just creates perverse incentives and can really put an unfair burden on hospitals that are open in lower income areas where offsetting business from the rest of the community isn't there.
Yes, I am English. Not sure why that's relevant. Having a service like that depend on volunteers seems odd to me. I don't see any fundamental distinction between a local government taking taxes and providing a service and a national one doing the same.
You are born with inherent rights. They are part of you. They cannot be taken or given away, they are not supplied by governments. They do not require someone else to provide them for you.
That's an assertion, and a highly flawed one. There's absolutely no evidence for the existence of such a thing. Your link doesn't provide one, certainly. If you think there is such a thing, provide an example of one - I suspect I can find a case where it has been violated, thus proving that in fact they can be taken away.
I offered to use inflation-adjusted value of DOW.
It'll provide automatic correction against inflation. And if government is flooding the markets with trillions and they don't cause significant inflation, then what is the problem?
Yes, I am English. Not sure why that's relevant.
It's not, really, other than you may not understand our system of government, and you've already lost some of your basic rights.
I don't see any fundamental distinction between a local government taking taxes and providing a service and a national one doing the same.
That's funny because I thought I pointed it out pretty clearly. It's a fundamental aspect of our Republic: power flows upward. People, family, community, locality, state, federal. With the greatest authority as close to the people as possible. This provides a greater chance of freedom, requires more responsibility from the people, and resists tyranny from the faceless armed bureaucracies in DC.
That's an assertion, and a highly flawed one.
You can make that claim if you want, but that "highly flawed assertion" is what the entire US system of Federal government is based on.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
There was a crucial difference - abandonment of the gold standard.
Ok, I'll concede that Roosevelt compounded the damage, far beyond what Hoover had already inflicted. My point is that Hoover did not sit around and do nothing, as the standard mythology claims.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
"We hold these truths to be self-evident"? That's a statement, not an argument. The fact that it was used as a basis of government doesn't mean it isn't arbitrary. The bit about deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed is pretty accurate though, and is the basis of all democracies. So, if the population want government healthcare, it gets it.
In any case, I notice that life is listed but property isn't, providing further justification for taxes for healthcare even in the US.
Oddly, I've always found that the more local an authority is, the more petty and intrusive it tends to be. Give me a faceless bureaucracy any day.
Well, yeah. He did almost everything possible to increase the damage.
Folks, "fiscal conservatism" just doesn't work during crises.
Well, I have another example. During the onset of this crisis, Russia tried conservative monetary policy (_increasing_ the interest rate) to keep the currency exchange rate stable.
This caused a 'sudden stop' of the economy. Almost everything has crashed hard and only large reserves of foreign currency allowed to keep economy alive.
It did have a "nice" effect of stopping inflation.
Luckily, Russian government had stopped this idiotic policy fairly soon.
Okay, point, but ....
The problem is that social welfare never stops at giving 'em a *hand up*, "get people started on a better road" stage. It invariably becomes a *handout* instead -- "depend on us for everything", which has precisely the opposite effect -- it enforces poverty, because otherwise you don't get your handout. (The American deep south has been demonstrating this for 150 years -- if handouts worked so well, why is it still the poorest part of the country??)
It's like digging a ditch FOR someone, when instead you should have just loaned them a shovel.
Methinks required reading for all social welfare advocates should be Booker T. Washington's UP FROM SLAVERY, which is largely about this very issue.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Sorry to inform you, but this is the same old "Don't ask, don't tell" that has been the norm for years in most Federal programs. Seriously, as long as there is no specific requirement to verify citizenship, illegals will get benefits. That's the way it works in social security. That is the way it works with food stamps and housing subsidies. Get the forms and look at them. It states that it is unlawful for any aid worker to even ASK about an applicant's citizenship. Sure, the laws state that these benefits are not supposed to go to illegals, but it also prohibits verification.
This is a Catch22 that could easily be solved IF congress wanted to solve it. Obviously, they don't. They do not want the political damage that would ensue if they actually required some verification. So, once again the US taxpayer is going to foot the bills of freeloaders.
Normally I ascribe all life to intelligent design, but in your case I'll make an exception.
There's no denying that some people leech from social welfare. The real question is, what can we realistically do differently? We've established that there is such thing as too little welfare, so the game is optimisation. It's not so much about minimising welfare as it is about minimising impact on the economy.
That is, of course, leaving out morality issues about making life unbearably hard on the bottom line. I know that it's supposed to be hard, but there is such a thing as making too hard to be humane.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
There goes our chance as a nation to pay off our debt, there goes many private-sector jobs, there goes a lot of freedom and liberty from a nanny-state government. This is a sad-sad day. Instead of reforming healthcare with more government, why not look at tort-reform, getting rid of old and silly regulations in the industry, getting rid of the unfair tax credit towards companies providing health insurance, and many other things. Democrats are such a populist-kissing re-elect me at any cost party. It's really sad. And no, Republicans suck as well.
-> Sometimes, you just gotta break free from the shackles of proprietary code.
The northern claim to moral ascendancy on the slavery issue is a load of crap.
Tell that to John Brown.
And just to preemptively stop you from changing the subject, your comment was "The northern claim to moral ascendancy on the slavery issue is a load of crap." The northern claim most certainly had a moral foundation for a lot of people.
His zeal in the cause of freedom was infinitely superior to mine...
Mine was as the taper light;
his was as the burning sun.
I could live for the slave;
John Brown could die for him.
-Frederick Douglass
Ah, RoadID "was born in the fall of 1999". My accident was in 1996. A lot of good it would do for me.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
A democracy allows tyranny by the majority, which is what is happening now. That's why we are a Constitutional republic. The Constitution explicitly protects property rights.
If your family seems "petty and intrusive" to you, that's your problem to fix, and you should be able to do something about it. Changing the abusive behavior of a faceless armed bureaucracy is much more difficult. Just ask the children from the Branch Dividian compound, or the thousands of citizens sitting in jail for having the wrong kind of plant in their pockets (you know the US has the most prisoners in the world, right?) It's too late to ask most of the victims of our current 2 "wars", but I think I can guess which they would rather deal with.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
>>>It beats having you skip buying insurance, then get in a car wreck and expect the rest of us to pay for your care out of our pocket
I have car insurance dipshit.
Try again with a different example.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
A short history lesson:
http://books.google.com/books?id=WPhhLfp8huIC&pg=PA142&lpg=PA142&dq=balkans+foreign+debt+cis&source=bl&ots=mosuyMBj0-&sig=-lpR5DhEuqMIk67WEuXxqcXjRxQ&hl=en&ei=5ET4SvSJE8mn8AbJ9LTzCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9&ved=0CCIQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=&f=false
1. When the CCCP/USSR collapsed, Russia declared it was the successor to the USSR and announced it would honour the foreign debt.
2. Russia took the initiative to form the CIS
3. Russia subsequently defaulted, and needed an IMF bailout.
If you look at page 159, you'll see that Russia believed it could get the debt written off in return for political concessions - so it was a power grab that was supposed to be at zero cost. Nice work if you can get it, but it didn't work out that way.
>>>Gen. Hippy and the government are on speaking terms??
The hippies grew-up and found the government to be useful in getting free handouts like social security and medicare, and also useful for preserving the status quo (i.e. bailouts for companies that would otherwise go bankrupt; i.e. saved baby boomer jobs). Basically the 60s/70s-era hippies turned into pro-government sellouts.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
If you didn't mean what I said then I apologize.
However I see a problem with your post I replied to.
ANY reform on medical costs is worth it. several OB-GYN and and an anesthesiologist that I know (none with any previous issues) are paying over 100K/year for malpractice. That is outrageous.
According to more than one study medical malpractice adds little to the cost of health care, .5% is sited.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
The more I think about it, the more that seems to be a likely outcome. People think there's a gap right now between the insured and uninsured, just wait. I could very easily see the very wealthy going completely "off the grid" and hiring their own personal doctor. If I'm a doc, if things get bad with the government running the show I'd be very tempted to shop my wares to the folks at a country club. Charge a retainer plus expenses, COD.
Vote Quimby.
Can you name a country where a large proportion of the population was educated privately?
I'm not, by the way, necessarily advocating a monopoly of the non-profit. I think public education is better with private education always threatening to take the best students who can afford it. However, that doesn't mean private education alone will give you the result you need. If you look back in history, you'll clearly see what happened when only the rich were educated.
Who says there's no profit motive involved? The drug companies still sell drugs, the doctors and nurses still get paid. The question is whether the profits can be controlled to a reasonable level of growth, and for-profits have proven time and again that they are too short-sighted to not kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.
I'll be okay with a for-profit that thinks in terms of decades and centuries. The problem is all we seem to have are those that think in quarters at best.
You do realize that's already the case in the legal profession, right? Rich people hire the best lawyers, and can afford more experts and tests to help their case. Yet most people can afford a (lesser?) lawyer for our pedestrian needs, and the poorest can get a free one appointed by court. Now, the public defender generally will not have the same resources (and perhaps even skill), but it's probably better than defending yourself.
The same way, you'll still have highly-paid doctors catering to the rich, and the nicest among them might spare some of their time doing pro bono work. But broadened coverage allows the people who otherwise can't afford to get sick to at least see a doctor.
Now, if you're talking about forcing the rich to have exactly the same medical options as the poor, who's the communist now?
Did you know that the highest rated health care program is Medicare?
"Creating a company" is not the same as "creating value".
Company by itself usually does nothing but carve itself a piece of the market that otherwise would be served by other companies. The value it provides is merely the difference between what it provides and what would be provided by incumbent companies in its absence. This is usually zero (as if we need ANOTHER law firm, retailer, commodity importer, etc.), sometimes slightly positive (due to competition or eagerness to adopt new technology that incumbents don't initially see as useful), and often negative (due to customers absorbing risk, duplication of effort, poor resource management or new company being a thinly-veiled scam).
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
could be. but then you are saying you'd rather be european because you are healthier, not because healthcare is better. there is a difference and the confusion of the two is unfortunate.
I do appreciate the difference. My point is that (in the UK, at least, I can't speak for other countries) the NHS does invest heavily in preventative care, i.e. we are healthier precisely because our healthcare is better.
furthermore, I'm not sure what primary care doctor prevents you from smoking or getting fat.
An NHS GP will help you to quit smoking or lose weight, and the NHS also run public awareness campaigns, although I'll grant that the latter isn't primary care.
Many Americans (keep in mind, 85% have insurance and going to a primary care doctor isn't expensive compared to insurance or the taxes Europeans pay) already have great access to primary care doctors.
Taxes are taxes, you pay them regardless. NHS healthcare is still 100% free at the point of use, for 100% of the population. There is no financial incentive for patients to not seek treatment early.
Oh, and don't expect me to simply take your word for it that we pay more for our primary care than you, but my point here is that it wouldn't matter even if we did.
For example, at my work place, the low deductible plan has a 15 dollar copay for me to go to a primary care doctor and the high deductible plan pays 100% of the cost.
I have to say, the idea of depending on your employer for such things does not sit well with me. The low-paid and the unemployed seem likely to be put at a disadvantage by such a scheme. It also seems bizarre to link employment and healthcare in this manner; what has one got to do with the other?
and no, I'm not for doctors leaving people to die. that is just a stupid comment.
Yes, I apologize for that, it was a cheap shot. It's clear now that you were only objecting to one particular means of ensuring people aren't left to die
But what I'd rather see is if society actually wants to provide healthcare to the poor, then to share that very specific burden (a la Medicaid) rather than force 100% of the burden on hospitals.
Of course, that objection only makes sense within the context of a privatised healthcare system.
That's also a rather interesting 'if'. I would have thought that any reasonably compassionate society would want to provide healthcare to those that need it, and I see no reason why a typical American would be less compassionate than a typical European. We're all human, after all.
Sure, the old system maybe wasn't perfect but the idea of letting 100% of the burden fall on your local hospital and the idea that the emergency room is free just creates perverse incentives and can really put an unfair burden on hospitals that are open in lower income areas where offsetting business from the rest of the community isn't there.
What kind of perverse incentives did you have in mind? Driving hospitals away from poor areas? Because that would seem to disappear totally in a state system where the primary objective is healthcare, rather than profit.
"Creating a company" is not the same as "creating value".
It's a subcategory as I see it.
The value it provides is merely the difference between what it provides and what would be provided by incumbent companies in its absence. This is usually zero (as if we need ANOTHER law firm, retailer, commodity importer, etc.), sometimes slightly positive (due to competition or eagerness to adopt new technology that incumbents don't initially see as useful), and often negative (due to customers absorbing risk, duplication of effort, poor resource management or new company being a thinly-veiled scam).
If it takes market share without resorting to rent-seeker (coerced buying), then it is probably a considerable net positive benefit. Whoever that business replaces was less competitive. They probably were less efficient, cost more to make, provided a less valuable good or service, etc. And while we might not "need" new businesses, we do want the benefits that come from the occasional entry of new businesses into a market.
Self-preservation is a right. Carrying out self-preservation may require you to seek care from others.
But there is no right to force others to care for you. If you are forcing people to care for you, you are enslaving them.
There is no right to violate the rights of others
Maybe it would work if the whole world privatized...so royalty would stop coming to the US when they need some special treatment and raise the price for everyone here.
But really, you only have to look at college tuition. When the government provided loans (I think it was Reagan, actually) for students, suddenly college tuition went up because any student could get a loan. The more the government subsidized the more those greedy liberal colleges jacked up their prices. Remove the subsidy, remove the guaranteed loans, and in a few years, when the student applications dry up because no one can afford 100,000 a year for school without a government loan, colleges will have to lower their prices if they want to get any tuition money.
This is a good example why government should stay out of health care. Medicare fraud is bad enough. Imagine what crooks will do when no one has any other choice. I really doubt this is going to bring down any "cost" at all...
Since when is someone who makes less than average a freeloader?
They aren't. However, if they are making anything at all they aren't freeloaders, no? Even if they are getting assistance. Assistance wouldn't normally be thought of as a handout and most people in that situation would probably sooner not need the assistance in the first place, yes?
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
the recession ended in 1933
That's a bolder claim than even Roosevelt's propagandists were willing to make.
No, the recession by all definitions thereof ended in 1933, meaning for example that the demand of goods began to increase during that year.
The fact that the economy was back in shape at the end of the war
That is not a fact. Ask any of your older relatives who lived through that period when rationing ended.
I cannot, I am not a US citizen nor have relatives there so just tell me yourself.
BTW you said before that US got out of the depression in 1946. I thought you were referring to the fact that unemployment, GDP and industrial production rates were back to normal around that year. For me, that means that the policy enacted before then was beneficial.
You cannot possibly provide enough for yourself to cover your medical bills if you get cancer.
all you can say is that you have provided enough for yourself "so far".
If you can afford insurance, that's great: except it's still very possible to go broke with insurance, or not to be able to afford it at all, especially if it's accessible to all (and thus more expensive).
I guess you can call "not letting people die in the streets" a moral crusade. I put it up there with "not letting people kill other people in the streets" and "running a functional governing system" in terms of basic goals of civilization: without it, what is the point? Just stockpile guns and take what you want then, if it's "all about you".
Seems to me once social welfare becomes comfortable, it has gone too far. It needs to be UNcomfortable by design, so people do their damnedest to get up, out of, and beyond it, rather than slouching into it as a permanent way of life. It also needs to stop penalizing people who DO save and work to get out of it. (Frex, stuff like the limit on savings, commonly just $500, which isn't even a month's unsubsidized rent most places -- how the hell can you get out of public housing if you're not allowed to build up the funds to do so??)
In one of his books, Larry Elder writes of a Catholic mission that has a huge success rate on relatively little money, by requiring full effort from everyone in the program (pretty similar to how Booker T. ran Tuskegee back in the early days). Slackers get dumped, which is as it should be.
We can't save everyone, it's just not practical; and not everyone is worth saving, even from that standpoint of best net economic benefit to society. There's never been a perfect answer, at least not so long as there remains any personal choice, personal freedom, or fairness of impact. Egalitarian solutions just drag everyone down to the lowest common denominator.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Come on, man up and accept that you didn't even know that the article was there in the text of the bill, and that the first time you heard about it was from the GP post. You are just trying to rationalize because that post exposed your ignorance on the topic.
But all those laws did not. Just like then right now I can not go buy my own health insurance and get the same tax deductions employers get for offering their employees insurance. Government giving employers tax deductions but not giving individuals the same deductions is a distortion of the market.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
>>>It beats having you skip buying insurance, then get in a car wreck and expect the rest of us to pay for your care out of our pocket
I have car insurance dipshit.
Try again with a different example.
The GP means skipping-out on MEDICAL insurance! See below:
(And no, you don't have the option of simply promising to forego medical care if you get badly hurt -- when the accident came, you'd change your mind, and even if you didn't it would be unethical to leave you untreated)
Or do you think your auto insurance will pay your medical bills?
as to your two examples of preventative healthcare, there are 10's of millions of dollars spent every year on public education and work to reduce smoking and obesity. and I'm not sure you can say in the UK people are healthier (which is hard to measure when you consider only healthcare's impact on your health vs stress in life, etc).
In the UK, Obesity + overweight seem to hover around 63% for men while in teh US it is around 66%. Now, I will fully admit that 3% is a pretty big difference when conerted to pounds, but from a public perspective, it's not that much better of an outcome. And in the last decade, obesity rates have doubled in the UK (the US hasn't moved up nearly as fast, but then, it really couldn't without everyone becoming a complete cow).
so it is nice in theory that the NHS will help you, but as we see in the US, even when help is offered many people don't care to change their lifestyle to lose the weight.
these are all random factoids I searched for just now. nothing very interesting other than what I noticed when I was in London: the city didn't look thinner than what I've seen in the US.
now as to your point about perverse incentives and sharing the burden to take care of each other, because I took some time to think it through so I could respond in a coherent manner. To do this I am going to use the standard physicist mentality of extrapolating to the extremes and then doing the linear interp for my conclusions, which may seem harsh but I hope consistent:
In a system where everyone can receive 100% free care in the ER regardless of income level, insurance coverage, etc, an incentive is created for young professionals and those entering the middle class to forgo insurance simply because they know that they currently do not have the savings to pay a large medical bill, they do not want to reduce their standard of living to pay for this medical bill, and they know they can get the care they need in case of a major emergency.
These 3 points mean a large portion of the uninsured population is that way out of personal choice. There are those at my work that do not get health insurance even though the employer subsidizes the premiums massively. Many are earning more than enough to afford such a plan. A system which still offers these people good care for free means they are cashing a free option to get everyone else to pay for them. I have the absolute least compassion for those who act irresponsibly and am a firm believer of sleeping in the bed you make. Call this my theory on personal responsibility. And yes, I am saying if this person cannot either find a hospice to provide care for a reduced price or pay themselves, they are SOL.
An extension of this is my issue with universal publicly funded health care. The biggest problem (and this is exacerbated by what our current bill looks like) says that the person who acts the most irresponsibly will receive the most tax benefit.
Take two people. One man (yeah ,I'm a guy, so everything is framed from the male perspective) works hard at a low paying job but saves what money he can, does not smoke or drink, drives safely, but simply can't afford insurance (yeah, I know a guy like this, a very close friend and if he needed help with medical bills I'd be there for him). The second man smokes and drinks constantly, does not hold down a full time job or work hard, and refuses to save rather squandering money away. worse yet, he eats fast food super sized meals 3 times a day and refuses to control his calorie intake to at elast have a fighting chance at health.
Our proposed system, for some unknown reason, has decided the second person is deserving of massive subsidies for health insurance while the first only deserves modest. And worse yet, we will reduce our help for this second man severely if he cleans up his life and begins to live right.
I'm sorry but I don't agree with that. I believe society should help those people who try to improve their lot but for whatever reaso
and I would love a reply if you are so inclined as you seem to be a reasonable person with a different outlook.
rent-seeker (coerced buying)
Rent-seeking behavior and coerced buying are two different (though overlapping) ways of manipulating the market. Both constitute the overwhelming majority of "smart" business plans.
Whoever that business replaces was less competitive. They probably were less efficient, cost more to make, provided a less valuable good or service, etc. And while we might not "need" new businesses, we do want the benefits that come from the occasional entry of new businesses into a market.
After all this, the actual improvement compared to situation without a company (value created) is usually a tiny fraction of the amount of resources that are taken over the newly created company (the actual worth of the company), and that amount in its turn is usually a fraction of the resources tied up in investment and amplified by the perceived value and speculation (market cap). In other words, companies are overrated, overvalued and overpriced.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Going to be obtuse, eh? I pay for the things I use with money I earned. That is what providing for oneself means.
Do you? You have paid for value created by private company (car manufacturer) on top of public-funded research that the company got for free.
So what? Why should I feel gratitude for losing freedom and getting robbed simply because some day I might use up more health care than I can pay for?
It does not change the fact that you did not prevent yourself from incurring costs on the public in case your "self-insurance" will run out. No one, least of all any member of that public, has a reason to care how you feel about it.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Your history is a little off. The business of offering employees insurance instead of wages did indeed originate during WW II, but the tax-free aspect came later. This was done to undercut proposals for a government-run health plan.
Anyway, you're strawmanning my argument. I did not say there was no government interference in the health marketplace. Obviously that's not true (for any marketplace!). I did say that the marketplace had no incentive to solve the problem of people who can't buy insurance because there's no room for them in the insurance business model. And forcing people to pay taxes on their workplace insurance benefits wouldn't change that. Requiring everybody to buy insurance would.
Anyway, you're strawmanning my argument. I did not say there was no government interference in the health marketplace
Right here you said "Part of the problem here is that U.S. public policy since Reagan is dominated by the mantra, 'The marketplace can handle the problem'" as if a free market was given a chance when it has not. You're the one using a straw man argument and when that doesn't work you switch tactics.
And forcing people to pay taxes on their workplace insurance benefits wouldn't change that.
Did I say that? Hell NO!!! I did not. I said I can not get the same deductions when I buy my own insurance as employers get for offering it to employees. Straw man.
If you force everybody to buy insurance,
And where does the Constitution of the USA give the federal government the power to mandate everyone pay for health insurance? Hint, it doesn't. "Health" is found nowhere in it. And using the "General Welfare" clause does not work as has been pointed out already.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Does that make nuclear powerplants unconstitutional?
No, the plants themselves aren't unconstitutional, there's nothing in it to make them so. However now that you brought it up and I'm thinking about it I personally consider the massive subsides unconstitutional. As I do most subsides, including those for Water, Wind, and Solar (WWS). I have repeatedly railed against all sorts of subsidies, they distort the markets. I would let them all compeat on equal footings, no government subsidies. It's pretty likely the subsidies the various energy sources get can put a dent in health care costs. Alone coal, nuclear power, and petroleum each get billions of dollars in subsidies. Biomass, fuel biofuels, get billions more.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
The previous administration was far from perfect,
It was the worst one since Roosevelt, until the current administration.
-jcr
jcr, I respect your opinions in general, but I find it impossible to consider GW to be worse than:
1) Lindon Johnson
2) Richard Nixon
3) Jimmy Carter
I'm more than willing to debate any of the above versus GW. You?
Take care.
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
I'd respond if there was anything to actually respond to...
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
Right here you said "Part of the problem here is that U.S. public policy since Reagan is dominated by the mantra, 'The marketplace can handle the problem'" as if a free market was given a chance when it has not. You're the one using a straw man argument and when that doesn't work you switch tactics.
I don't follow your logic. You seem to be assuming that any government interference in the marketplace is the cause of all failures of the marketplace to do what you want. Correct me if I'm wrong.
My argument is that the business model of the health insurance industry has no place in it for most of the individuals seeking individual health insurance, and that removing the tax benefits for insurance sold to a completely separate group of people would not change that. If you think I'm wrong, then you must think there's some mechanism by which eliminating that tax break would solve the problem. So what's the mechanism?
And forcing people to pay taxes on their workplace insurance benefits wouldn't change that.
Did I say that? Hell NO!!! I did not. I said I can not get the same deductions when I buy my own insurance as employers get for offering it to employees. Straw man.
OK, I misunderstood you. And here's the reason I got your argument wrong: I assumed it was somehow relevant to my argument. You're not arguing with statement, you're just complaining about the unfairness of the current tax code.
I think I might agree with you on that point. I happen to think most tax deductions are unfair to those not eligible for them. So let's just say you've convinced me on this point. It still has nothing to do with the inability of the marketplace to meet the needs of most individuals seeking health insurance.
If you force everybody to buy insurance,
And where does the Constitution of the USA give the federal government the power to mandate everyone pay for health insurance?
Sigh. Neither of us is a constitutional lawyer. Maybe you're right, maybe you're not. (Though if you're right, why hasn't anybody challenged the mandatory coverage laws in Massachusetts and Hawaii?) Lets just assume you're right. Does the unconstitutionality of mandatory health coverage mean that it is economic to sell health insurance to individuals? Because that's the only argument I'm making.
I don't follow your logic. You seem to be assuming that any government interference in the marketplace is the cause of all failures of the marketplace to do what you want. Correct me if I'm wrong.
You're wrong. Government interference in the markets make those market unfree. Blaming failures on markets when there is government interference isn't right. Blaming the government interference instead would be the correct thing most of the tyme. Not all but most of the tyme. When the markets fail it's because they don't pay external costs when others have to pay them. For instance when a company pollutes and it does not pay for cleanup others have to pay. But guess what? Guess who's the biggest polluter, at least in the US? The US government is. The U.S. Department of Defense is the largest polluter in the world.
OK, I misunderstood you. And here's the reason I got your argument wrong: I assumed it was somehow relevant to my argument. You're not arguing with statement, you're just complaining about the unfairness of the current tax code.
No, No, and again NO! You argued the market can not handle the problem, Part of the problem here is that U.S. public policy since Reagan is dominated by the mantra, "The marketplace can handle the problem." I even provide the same link, using the same text for the link. I am saying the market was never given a change to handle the problem. Are you really that lacking in comprehension? This is the third tyme I've had to explain it.
Troll
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
This is getting tiresome. Instead of responding to my argument, you keep trying to find technical reasons why I'm contradicting myself. Your reasons don't make sense, but you don't want to hear that. So fine, whatever, I don't care.
My argument is extremely simple: I'm saying that making workplace insurance benefits taxable does not provide any incentive for insurers to offer individual insurance to everybody. That's what I'm saying, and that's all that I'm saying. If you can suggest a mechanism by which such a change would actually provide an incentive, let's hear it. If you don't know of such a mechanism, then you're just imitating that guy in the Monty Python parrot sketch.
I saw Cleese and Palin on Saturday Night Live. They did that sketch for what must have been the millionth time, and were obviously very bored with it. As am I.
I'm saying that making workplace insurance benefits taxable does not provide any incentive for insurers to offer individual insurance to everybody.
That's it!! I never ever said that!!! TROLL!!!
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
1. Please cite your references as to why you say Maslow's theory is false. I'm not an expert in it, but I can't find any valid opinions to the contrary.
2. Canadians pay only marginally more than Americans in taxes, but yet their health care system works. It has it's flaws, yes, but it's not as bad as the Americans seem to think it is. It's not of poor quality, it's universal, and waiting a month or two for a non life-threatening operation is much better, in the long run, than paying it off over several years.
3. The military certainly has changed over the last 100 years. Libraries have as well (the first public library wasn't until the late 1800s). Complexity of the task is not an argument against this.
There are many things in health care that have changed, but in the vast majority of cases that need a health care professional, it's issues that humans have been dealing with for thousands of years: broken bones, births, flu, injuries, etc. These need very little research, and what research does come out of a health care system is usually limited to a few institutions - not the majority of doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other health care workers.
Folks, "fiscal conservatism" just doesn't work during crises.
What utter crap. The central bank creates the crises in the first place, and the best thing you can possibly do when a crash comes is get the government the hell out of the way, as Zimbabwe has just finally done.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
"What utter crap. The central bank creates the crises in the first place, and the best thing you can possibly do when a crash comes is get the government the hell out of the way, as Zimbabwe has just finally done."
Uhm. Wrong.
There were crises and price bubbles even before the central banks (Tulip mania in Dutch, anyone?). Capitalism is more than capable of producing bubbles.
Of course, government can screw up everything. But being 'fiscal conservative' during crises is _guaranteed_ to screw everything up.
Let's take a step back for a minute. Imagine that I don't. Explain to me what a competitive free market it is
A free market "describes a market without economic intervention and regulation by government except to regulate against force or fraud."
and how the competition within it produces companies that provide effective services to their customers.
If those who are in a market do not make a product or provide a service people are willing to pay for somone will introduce competition and do so themselves. That applies whether it is profitable or not. Since the original post is about health insurance, let's use that. During the debate up to the House's vote on their bill there was mention of health co-ops. I didn't know it but not far from me there is a Health insurance coop. Health Partners has existed for almost 50 years.
Being a member, willingly and voluntarily, of 2 coops though neither being a health coop I know how they work. The members, owners, set the policy of the coop. Now there are three main types of coops I know of. One type is the employee or worker owned coop. Basque coops in Spain like the Mondragon Corporation are huge employers. A second type is the supplier owned coop. An example of it in the US is the Organic Valley Coop. The dairy farmers who supply dairy products to the coop are the owners. And the third type is the buyer owned coop such as the two I'm a member of, Lakewinds coop and The Wedge.
All of these types of coops meet the requirements of the free market, a willing and voluntary exchange.
Should there be a Law?
There were crises and price bubbles even before the central banks (Tulip mania in Dutch, anyone?). Capitalism is more than capable of producing bubbles.
Banks have over-issued their notes for as long as they've existed. This is not solved by gathering all of the counterfeiting and fraud into one central authority which is able to compel us to accept their notes. It's better for banks to fail individually.
But being 'fiscal conservative' during crises is _guaranteed_ to screw everything up.
Nope. More debt is not a solution to the problems of existing debt. It only postpones and increases the scale of the mess.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
"Banks have over-issued their notes for as long as they've existed. This is not solved by gathering all of the counterfeiting and fraud into one central authority which is able to compel us to accept their notes. It's better for banks to fail individually."
And before banks existed, there was virtually no economic growth. And it can be easily explained if you look in any good textbook of macroeconomics. Should I explain it for you?
"Nope. More debt is not a solution to the problems of existing debt. It only postpones and increases the scale of the mess."
You're just parroting republican idiocy.
"More debt" can very well be the solution for the problems of debt, if extra debt is offset by later economic growth. I.e. if an extra debt becomes an extra investment.
Case in point, USA during late 40-s: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USDebt.png
Notice the sharp drop of debt-to-GDP ratio while the absolute amount of debt has changed very little. That's because economy growth had offset the debt growth.
Also, late 40-s - 50s was a period with high income and corporate taxes and strong unions. Which should be very bad for business according to you.
Should I explain it for you?
Heh. No, you should go read Henry Hazlett, and try to explain it to yourself. The Keynesian nonsense has embedded itself very deeply into your tiny little mind, and you can't even tell the difference between money, currency and capital.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
But... nobody's forced to be a doctor. This isn't even like Britain's National Health Service, where doctors are employed by the state. (Even Britain may have doctors who work for themselves.)
Doctor's aren't forced to work for the government. I'm not aware of any requirement for doctors to see patients on government insurance. How on earth is anyone forced to do something by a government-run health insurance plan that they aren't forced to do by government establishment of firefighting services?
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Ok. I've read both "Economics In One Lesson" (several years ago) and "The Failure of the New Economy" (finished it today).
Well, nothing new there.
Hazlett's mindset is firmly in 1800-s, he's not capable to stop thinking about economy as a 'zero sum' game. His critique of Keynes is mostly extremely naive and misleading.
Hazlett's books are very 'light on facts'. I.e. almost no statistics or mathematical modeling is used. In contrast, new Keynesians try to operate on the real world data, which unambiguously validates the basics of keynsianism.
No wonder you like his books so much.
I agree that social welfare can't be made comfortable, but there's a limit as to how uncomfortable it should be that transcends economic concerns. We can set minimum conditions of living to be so cheap, yet so unbearable, that it becomes cruel to force people to live by them, even if they are only enduring a temporary setback. Social welfare is our lifestyle insurance. It makes sure that we don't have to suffer unbearably from a setback.
Besides, the same problems with no welfare scale to cruel welfare. If welfare becomes cruel, then charity will pick up the slack, and the economy will be drained all the same.
And, of course, as you say, we have invest enough to make it useful to those trying to get back on their feet.
We absolutely can't save everyone, but we can keep everyone living. I hope you realise that, even those who squander benefits, we can't allow to simply crawl into a gutter and die, right? Sure it costs us, but gives us a sense of security, and, by the same reasoning I've used over and over, letting them die won't actually positively impact on the economy. It certainly won't impact positively on our consciences.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Textbook "Fundamentals of Management: Essential Concepts and Applications", 5th edition, by Stephen P. Robbins and David A. DeCenzo. ISBN 0-13-148736-1. From page 322:
[6] See, for instance, E. E. Lawler III and J. L. Suttle, "A Causal Correlational Test of the Need Hierarchy Concept," Organizational Behavior and Human Performance (April 1972), pp. 265-87; and D. T. Hall and K. E. Nongaim, "An Examination of Maslow's Need Hierarchy in an Organizational Setting," Organizational Behavior and Human Performance (February 1968), pp. 12-35.
Now would you kindly provides some support for your own claims? We're under the impression that part of the Canadian success is due to American drugs. This may or may not be true, but I can't find anyone on either side of the argument willing to provide references. All we have is a government with a proven record of poorly managed social systems trying to grab control of health care as well, replacing broken socialism with more broken socialism.
Not that this wasn't entirely predictable.