This is downright comical how illogical you are. Shrug. You have proven yourself to lack logical skill, and you have utterly failed to win any argument against me.
The assumption was that I have life. The rest is deducted. f = life p = rest (right to liberty, right to property)
assume: f conclusion: p
Tell me again how do you get p with f as the only assumption (f -> p)? The key word is "again." I already did it. Read.
It turns out you're just talking out of your ass when it comes to logic. Yawn. Tell me again you how you were not committing a textbook example of the appeal to authority fallacy.
I'm sorry Pudge, but you'll have to actually read up on symbolic logic this time. Yawn. Tell me again you how you were not committing a textbook example of the appeal to authority fallacy.
Hah, I shot holes in your logical proof Well, no, you didn't. Your very first claim about it was incorrect. The rest was built on a foundation of sand.
and you told me that your first statement (which is always an assumption) False. The assumption was that I have life. The rest is deducted.
Dude, Pudge, you don't understand how these things work. False.
If my two-column proof formatting was incorrect I already proved it was.
then please, provide your own, and outline your assumptions explicitly No. My prose statement was clear enough for anyone with half a brain.
The whole point of the exercise is to tease out your hidden assumptions by making everything explicitly and formally logical. I'm sorry. As long as you still maintain that it is not a logical fallacy to claim that you are qualified to discuss and I am not, you have no claim to know a damned thing about formal logic.
Moreover, when you're going to use terms like "necessarily deducted" while not in the context of modal logic and modal qualifiers, you're going to look like an idiot to any logician. How would you know, since you obviously have no grasp of logic, as you continue to maintain that you were not making an explicit appeal to authority logical fallacy, when, in fact, you were giving a textbook example of it?
Yes, I am in fact making an ad hominem attack here. But as long as you continue in your fallacies, I have no problem returning the favor.
And if you're going to use a modification of the term liberty I am not. Indeed, I already stated, quite clearly, that the right to liberty IS NOT restricted by the liberty of anyone else. However, their right to liberty affects our ability -- though not our right -- to act on that liberty.
Such things are not "self-evident" False.
Thirdly, your entire line revolves around the idea that insurance companies need the flexibility to decided what not to cover. False. Indeed, I never expressed any such thing. You are making false assumptions. Again. As usual.
Unfortunately, you set up a false dichotomy: the current system, or a national system. We can do much to lower costs, increase choice, and get broader health care access, in the existing (mostly) private system. It used to work. There is absolutely no reason it cannot work today. Great; then you should love the current system proposed by Democrats False.
either subsidized or mandatory health insurance for the current system I absolutely oppose both of those things. Both are unconstitutional, and the latter is literally a tax on being alive. Hillary wants to tax us for being alive, tax us when we die, and use that money to kill us before we are born.
Obama's plan allows a subsidy for lower incomes but does not mandate insurance. It mandates it for children. So only CHILDREN have a "life tax" under Obama. So much better!
Either way, the system does not appreciably change. Nonsense. I will end up paying MUCH more in taxes. That is an appeciable change in the system, from any rational perspective.
No disagreement about drug patents, but that's not about health care delivery, it's about patent policy that effects costs that then cost the insurance companies.
And COSTS is what I am talking about.
Secondly, it's not "designed" for the employer.
Yes, it is.
You can buy health insurance on the open market right now.
I never said anything different.
Are you saying the government intervenes to make employer coverage cheaper?
I said government regulation encourages employer-based insurance, which makes it harder to get inexpensive and quality insurance that is NOT through an employer.
That's intervention that keeps people insured where the market would tell them to get lost and they'd be fucked.
Only because it is hard for them to get quality insurance because of government intervention in the first place. In addition to what I mentioned above, in WA, they go even further: our insurance commissioner is working hard to further regulate individual insurance plans, which necessarily will mean more cost and fewer options for consumers.
If you think that "increased competition" would reduce costs
It's true.
you also don't seem to understand that insurance companies aren't the main drivers of increased health care costs
Dude. I have over and over again stated quite clearly that my main concern is the cost of HEALTH CARE, not insurance. I am talking primarily about competition in PROVIDING CARE. Jeez, follow along, willya?
increased technology and diagnostic tests capable of increasing diagnostic accuracy requiring things like vascular MRI scans for a couple grand a pop just to rule something out without running the machines full-tilt 24/7 to keep costs down
Nothing of the sort is "required." This is a huge part of the problem, though: we pretend that we have a right to all the latest and greatest technology. We do not.
This country is also extremely slow to implementing electronic medical records systems
Yes, thankfully. I consulted with a research group working on such a system. They had barely any thought at all given to privacy of the patients. They talked about security, but very little about privacy. I'll take privacy over efficiency every time.
What a universal system would do is ensure that: 1) drug prices can be set reasonably based on cost to recuperate expenses and public welfare, not fleecing people
Right. Price controls. Because THOSE always benefit everyone! Ha. What really happens is that it drives off competition, increases costs of other things to balance it out, and in the long run drastically decreases quality of the products.
Advertising of drugs would be eliminated again (that's the stupidest deregulation ever)
Yeah, exactly: fuck freedom of speech! Oh right, you don't believe in rights.
technology would be used consistently and more thoroughly
Thus increasing costs.
Standardized protocols and EMR would save paper
Paper is renewable. Don't care. If you mean decreasing COSTS, that is an assumption. It is well-documented that such moves often do NOT decrease costs.
single-payer system eliminates the process of manual EOB entry
At cost of my liberty. Don't care.
EOB auditing can be done programmatically due to a standard EOB format and interpretation
Ibid.
Deciding what is and isn't covered becomes a medical decision with less bias. Preauthorization would be eliminated.
Which also necessarily means that we have less options if something is decided to be NOT covered. At least Canadians -- for now -- can choose to go to the U.S. when that happens. Where we will go? Mexico?
Cost savings are just a tiny fraction of the importance of a universal he
Government doesn't require anybody to raise their prices for people without insurance, but everybody does it. Why?
Because they can. The way to keep costs down is competition, which is severely restricted in our current system due primarily to regulation.
If you don't have the ability to do collective bargaining through an insurance company, you have to do the bargaining on your own, and of course, most people aren't effective at negotiating on their own.
In a deregulated system where there is true competition, and more opportunity for competition, these insurance companies will have obvious incentive to lower prices without such negotiation, but also to make it easier for potential customers to get the information they need to make those choices.
Obviously, the system today is not conducive to this type of process, because it is not DESIGNED for the consumer: it's designed for the employer. This needs to change. This does not argue for a universal health care system, but against the current system of employer-centered health insurance.
Illness and medical bills caused half of the 1,458,000 personal bankruptcies in 2001, according to a study published by the journal Health Affairs.
Yes. This backs up what I have been saying about the need to cut costs through increased competition and deregulation.
Surprisingly, most of those bankrupted by illness had health insurance.
Exactly. As I have been saying, we should not try to lower the cost of insurance; we should be lowering the cost of health CARE.
None of that involves government intervention.
Yes, of course it does. Even Steve Novick agrees with me on that, as he talks about the drastically increased costs of drugs due to poor patent policies. More importantly, however, government regulation severely restricts who can provide what treatment and services, and under what circumstances insurance is available, and what that insurance can/must cover, and so on. ALL of this drives up the cost of health care, significantly.
It's also curious that you make a distinction between "being right" and "holding" of the law, while complaining that interpreting the law in disagreement with your idea of "rights" implies lawlessness.
I have stated it several times, so I don't know why you persist: lawlessness is not disagreement about interpretation. Lawlessness is denying that the law has validity, REGARDLESS of interpretation. This is what you do when you refer to "modern laws" as being more important, when you create arbitrary -- man-based, instead of law-based -- rules for which laws should be followed and which shouldn't. This concept of lawlessness has NOTHING to do with with disagreements over interpretation.
If what's right is not held, then their interpretation would be lawless
False. It's just wrong, not lawless. Lawlessness is when you disregard the law, which is what you do. They are merely disagreeing with the proper interpretation of the law.
Some of them, anyway. Justice Breyer actually wrote a book defending lawlessness, called "Active Liberty." He is in the minority, however. Thankfully.
How do you work yourself out of that antinomy?
There isn't any such thing, obviously.
For what it's worth, I've heard your shitty arguments from other right-wing idiots about the Supreme Court not being the final arbiter of the constitution.
Shrug. Swear all you want, but I am absolutely correct. Unless you actually believe the Supreme Court could order the President to only nominate new justices that they gave prior approval for. Do you believe that?
They simply don't hold water:
The judicial Power of the United States shall be vested in one supreme Court... The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, t
I go to an independent primary care physician, Health insurance isn't required, I can negotiate with them, and they make more than somebody in any other country by working here.
Yes. And? What's that got to do with anything? Obviously, you can do anything without health insurance, but you pay exorbitant rates. For most people, health insurance is required for most things, because they can't afford to it otherwise.
Nice straw man though.
Yes, in fact, you did: you said "we should have Universal Health Care because it is better than the current system."
I meant any other system, which is accurate because the current system includes all sorts of micro systems, none of which work as well as universal, single-payer health care.
False. All of them work BETTER than universal, single-payer health care.
We've tried pretty much every delivery system you can imagine besides universal health care in this country.
And all of them are better.
... you literally stated that every person who has worked in health care is qualified to speak on this, and NO ONE ELSE is, I'll eschew your counsel on what is, and is not, a good grasp of logic.
I didn't say nobody else. Yes, in fact, you did. You said I am not qualified BECAUSE I did not work in the system. That necessarily means that everyone who has not worked in the system is not qualified. You might have meant something else, but that is what you actually said.
You simply don't have any qualification there, nor any other qualifications.
False. My qualifications are the best possible: I have a brain, and I use it. None other qualifcation is required, and none is its equal.
It is amazing to me that you continue to defend your textbook example of an appeal-to-authority logical fallacy.
Considering you still assume that there will be an overall cost reduction, you're one to talk.
I pointed out why, but you still haven't addressed the reduced overhead numbers.
False. I did address it, quite specifically. What I said was that you cannot compare Medicare to a single-payer universal system. You cannot know that overhead would continue to be less than 25 percent, let alone as low as 5 percent as you implied it would be. Medicare offers limited procedures, for limited people. The comparison you made is invalid.
It didn't rely upon it.
Yes, it did.
You implied that liberty is the only goal
I did no such thing. But I will allow that you thought so. It makes absolutely no sense that you thought so, since I did not come anywhere close to implying it, but you have made many illogical claims, and this one would not be exceptional. If you had been actually addressing what I said -- which was that securing liberty was the PRIMARY goal of government, not the only goal -- then yes, you would have necessarily been implying that the order mattered. Since you apparently thought something I've never thought or expressed, let alone attempted to imply, that changes things.
Strawman my argument all you want, but people can see past it, Pudge.
That's really funny, since either you were misrepresenting Jefferson, or you were making a straw man attack on MY argument.
[Jefferson] believed they didn't have equal rights, otherwise he would have freed his own fucking slaves, idiot.
False. That is an illogical claim. And you admit it:
You should know that I campaigned against Al Gore and have criticized Gore's carbon credit scheming as a guilt-transfer economy. I think Al's just as much a hypocrite as Jefferson.
Good. At least you are consistent. You're right, Gore is a hypocrite. But that doesn't mean he doesn't believe what he says, just as clearly, Jefferson DID believe slaves had the same rights. He was just
Thanks for the rhetoric. Care to provide any real substance? That doesn't make much sense. I did provide a lot of substance, relative to the amount I posted. I discussed the option of deregulation; the fact that many people will pay more. What more do you want?
Since generally speaking, health care in the U.S. is better (there's just less access to it for many) Let's step back from insurance a second and think about the real problem. With a car analogy! Oo! I like cars! And analogies! Well, good ones, anyway. Of both.
So, back to healthcare. There is an enormous gap between charity clinics and paying top rates for "the best". The problem isn't that "there's just less access to it for many", it's that there's a large gap where there is no access to it, except for the legal requirement that hospitals accept uninsured patients into the ER. Right.
Of course, the situation is actually starting to improve, for instance if you've got a basic sniffle or redeye, several chains of drugstores are now hosting Nurse Practitioners (for instance, Take Care Health Systems at Walgreens in a few select cities) where you can get simple stuff fixed up quickly for under $100, but it's still a long way from something like competitively-priced healthcare in general. Exactly. I want to see a LOT MORE of this. We need to do many things to make good, low-cost, health CARE (not insurance, but actual care) available to a lot more people. We do not even have this basic first tier of quality care in this country, for many people, so we're not going to even begin to solve the problems of catastrophic care.
We should focus on deregulation and competition and providing a much broader and much cheaper array of quality care. See where that gets us.
If you're going to accuse me of a false dichotomy whenever I make a comparison between a proposal and the existing system, then I need to know what other system you actually think is better and where in the world it's been implemented.
I already did. A system that encourages competition through deregulation and other means. Where it's happened before? Here, in the U.S. It served us well for many years until the last few decades, when government regulation and lawsuits consolidated the power in the medical business into the hands of a few. Ever notice how family doctors don't exist anymore? And how health insurance is required for pretty much everything you want done? It didn't use to be that way.
Do you realize that all comparisons imply you're comparing two or more things? That's not a false dichotomy. A false dichotomy is when you say there are only two ways that aren't a full complement of each other and thus they don't cover the full range of possibilities. At no point did I say that you have to choose my way or the existing way.
Yes, in fact, you did: you said "we should have Universal Health Care because it is better than the current system."
Your grasp of logic is remarkably poor.
Um, since you literally stated that every person who has worked in health care is qualified to speak on this, and NO ONE ELSE is, I'll eschew your counsel on what is, and is not, a good grasp of logic.
Secondly, you are transferring my statement that an overall cost reduction implies that all will have cost reductions.
No. I addressed what you actually wrote. If you didn't mean to say what you wrote, don't blame me.
I told you where it could come from (multiple ways it could be done) and even said it would be an overall cost reduction due to reduced overhead.... There are lots of assumptions going around in your arguments, Pudge.
Considering you still assume that there will be an overall cost reduction, you're one to talk.
Thirdly, I made no such assumption that the order was meaningful
False. You did precisely that. Your argument relied on it. I said liberty was the most important goal, and you said -- in rebuttal -- that life is the first goal. That necessarily implies that because it comes first, that it is more important. Please, you are far too transparent, and I am far too good at this, for you to convince me you didn't say what you clearly said.
Jefferson also didn't think that slaves or women were entitled to the rights of white men, either
False. I am unsurprised you didn't know that fact, though. He was one of the most outspoken opponents of slavery, and said, "Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that [slaves] are to be free." He believed them to be inferior, as Abraham Lincoln did, but he believed them to have the same rights as all men. That he continued to own slaves is a sad thing, but it does not reflect his belief of what slaves were entitled to. Kinda like how Al Gore uses more oil than anyone else, despite believing it's a bad thing.
so, please, stop appealing to "authority" here
I am not, in the argument sense, appealing to authority. That would be what YOU did, where I would say something like, "Jefferson said something, so therefore it is right." I am not saying that. I am saying it is something I agree with, that formed the foundation of our government. I am stating facts.
I'm not a strict constructionist
Obviously; if you cared about following the law as written or intended, you would not favor the clearly unconstitutional federal health care plans.
and I don't think the intent of the framers is as important as more modern, progressive ideas that make the union more perfect
What matters is the intent of the people who wrote the law as it stands today, whoever and whenever they were
Oregon has not tried universal health care. It's voted on a version of it, but it never got around to trying it. What I was referring to is the fact that it has failed politically, thus far, mostly because of financial considerations. The proposal was outspent by millions of dollars to 20 thousand dollars Damn straight. As it should be.
Polls consistently showed that people wanted universal health care but were swayed by insurance companies that were the big losers in the system to not support it on false technicalities, so, no, it didn't fail politically. False. It DID fail politically. That is self-evident fact. It was tried, it failed. That doesn't mean it cannot succeed later, but it does mean that it is a fact: it failed.
Further, yes, it is the same old story: people say they want universal health care, but EVERY SINGLE PLAN to provide it is fatally flawed. What you call opposing for "false technicalities," most people call "damned good reasons." I have a lot of family in Oregon, and they know a hell of a lot more about it than you do: that you would imply they were ignorant only makes you look stupider.
But more importantly, if you mean something, next time, try saying it I did. I always say precisely what I mean to say. It's a curse.
... rather than making an untrue statement I made no untrue statement.
... that any normal reading would indicate that the program was tried and repealed due to public discontent. False. You don't read very well.
Polls of Canadians (and other western countries) show a much higher content with their system than USians do about their system, so any argument for a political failure of health care systems with government involvement is flatly contradicted by evidence. False. It is amazing you can string two sentences together while believing things that are so obviously untrue. Comparing different nations is fraught with difficulty: just because it works in one nation -- or even every other nation -- does not imply in the slightest that it will work here. I know this comes a shock, but it's true. So therefore the evidence does not contradict any such argument in the U.S.
The real problem is that people like you are corporate sheep, willing to go along with their manufactured consent. False. My only goal is rights: life, liberty, property. Period, end of story. I could care less about what any corporation thinks, unless it lines up with my principles. You are the one who called me a libertarian; if you know what that means, then you would not call me a corporate sheep. So you have some sort of disconnect in your thinking.
I see, however, that you are a Chomsky disciple (a religion like any other). Color me unsurprised.
All of your points may be valid, but it depends on exactly what sort of National health care system is implemented. There are quite a few systems that could be implemented that would actually improve health care for everybody, including those who would already have it. EXTREMELY unlikely. I've never seen such a system or reasonable proposal for one. Many Americans get GREAT health care, and the only thing that could be improved upon significantly for them is not having to deal with billing/paperwork so much; but that would not be improving their health care.
And most likely, for most of us, it would be worse, including myself. We've had some issues and have seen many specialists, usually without more than a few weeks of waiting, and almost surely we'd have less freedom to do that in a national system.
Some (not very many, but some) of the possible systems could even do that while lowering the actual cost of healthcare. Let's assume that no one's health care quality would decrease, since I reject that it is realistically possible to increase everyone's quality of care. Yes, this is theoretically possible, but also extremely unlikely, because the only real way to do with government regulation is with cost controls, which will in the long run result in decreased quality of care.
It is DEregulation that can cut costs without lowering quality: having true competition and choices that right now we don't have because of our messed-up health insurance system.
The problem is determining which potential systems can do this, implementing one, and keeping the elected officials from continuously messing with it. That last part sounds like a real problem. Even if we could find a system that could possibly do this, which I do not believe is possible, and then implement it... yes. The government absolutely would mess it up. No question about it.
Universal Health Care is cheaper than the current system due to economies of scale, less bureaucracy, more preventative care accessibility, and more, as it is everywhere else in the world. It will thus cost less than what we pay now.
Unfortunately, that is false, on several counts. The first is that it is a false dichotomy to say we should do Universal Health Care because it is better than "the current system," because there are other options to improve the current system.
I never set up a dichotomy. I think it's the best system of many alternatives.
You did. You compared it to the current system. If you think it is better than all other alternatives, fine, but your argument addressed this particular dichotomy.
Single-payer health care does not regulate the decisions of the AMA and other medical agencies composed of practitioners who would be delegated the role of making policy, just as it is done in many other western nations.
You're so cute. Of course it will. We already have Novick here trying to control what schoolkids eat, and many municipalities doing the same for entire populations. The government loves to try to control our health, when their costs are on the line, and when they are directly paying the bills, so much more so. We see government doing this in Medicare already.
Are you clumping one proposal with another?
No.
Clear your mind, first.
Already perfectly clear.
Another way that you're wrong is that you assume that bureaucracy will be smaller, or that we will necessarily pay less due to economies of scale. I see no reason to accept either of these assumptions.
I don't actually assume it.
Yes, in fact, you do.
Insurance company overhead is around 25%, but medicare is less than 5%.
Medicare is not a single-payer national health care system. The comparison is invalid. Plus, once again: false dichotomy.
Total cost of providing health care is greatly increased by private insurance.
By some forms of it, yes. Also, by most forms of single-payer health care (those that don't drastically decrease quality of care).
Since you haven't actually worked in the industry... you don't have a basis either in experience or research for understanding the problem.
See. There you go again. Look. This is called an appeal to authority logical fallacy. It is entirely invalid, and only makes you look like a prick. Again: if you can't win on the strength of your arguments, then you... can't win. Saying "I know better than you" instead of actually backing up your arguments is admitting you lost the argument.
If you like, I can forget about your terrible mistake, and let you try again. Would this suit you?
And most obviously, you are wrong because many people WILL PAY MORE, and will get no better care for it. It may cost less overall -- that is unknowable -- but we absolutely do know that many people will pay more. Even John Edwards, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton -- and even Dennis Kucinich -- admit this. Saying it will cost less is false.
Of course some people will pay more.
So you admit you were wrong. Thanks.
That's fine with me, particularly if they have the income to afford it.
Sorry, but it is literally impossible to determine whether someone can afford more taxes, by their income. The two are not directly related. This is a fundamental flaw in all progressive taxation schemes. It assumes that everything belongs to the government, and no one has any right to any property or possessions.
That's the entire basis for progressive taxation
Exactly.
and the role of all healthy, modern governments: to ensure a strong middle class by weal
If you guess I'd have been better off, well. Maybe, maybe not. Depends on the state. There's no way to know from the limited information you've provided. Since generally speaking, health care in the U.S. is better (there's just less access to it for many), your problem very possibly would have been solved in a lot less than six years.
The purpose of society isn't to serve the strong - it's to help the weak. Nope. The purpose of society is to provide a framework for protecting the individual rights of all.
I guess the basic concepts of having a democratic society just have escaped you. Nope. On the contrary, a system that respects the people (democracy) must respect therefore the individual person (hence, republic).
Next time? Think before you speak. I already did. Your turn.
I would suggest that Oregon's attempt at universal health care never got off the ground because major portions of it were blocked by the Republican-controlled legislature.
Yes, because of the obvious problems in PAYING for it. That the legislature blocked it is a good thing: universal health care does no one any good if everyone is broke. The proposed system was literally incapable of sustaining itself.
I think that experience underscores the need for us to address health care reform at a national level. The path our health care system is on is clearly unsustainable, with exploding costs and declining coverage. I think there are several comprehensive plans out there to ensure everyone has affordable health care, while tackling the cost of care.
None I've seen. All of them only discussed more regulation, and direct cost controls, to control costs, which either wouldn't work, or would only work in the short term, increasing costs and decreasing care in the long term (which always happens when you remove competition).
I see several problems. First, Medicare negotiating lower drug prices causes INCREASED prices for those not on Medicare. This will be a big hit to middle class and poor families. I agree with this in principle, but see no way around it harming others. The middle class especially is already subsidizing drugs to Canada and other countries; now they would be subsidizing drugs to Medicare recipients.
This does not actually reduce national costs, it just shifts them, from the taxpayer to the drug consumer, which seems to me to be the wrong direction that most Democrats who favor universal health care want to go.
I also absolutely disagree with federal school lunch standards. The federal government has no business of any kind in the local public schools. Period, end of story.
As to hospitals, similar story: the federal government should not be paying for this equipment, or restricting its purchase.
However, I ABSOLUTELY agree that we need to reform the drug patent system. Thanks for highlighting that. I don't believe government should be in the business of handing out monopolies JUST FOR THE SAKE of handing out monopolies. The Constitution is clear: the point of a patent is to encourage innovation. It is only worthwhile to the extent it does that, and patent terms should be tailored to provide the MINIMUM rights necessary to accomplish that goal.
Further, I agree that taxpayers should not be subsidizing drug companies' ads. Indeed, we should not be subsidizing drug companies at all, including money for research. This ties into the patent issue because we pay them to do research and then give them a patent, too! Any research we DO subsidize should be public domain.
Which brings me to farm subsidies: no, we should cut all of them. We do not need them. Yes, the cost of food may rise, but our taxes will be significantly less (assuming the government doesn't spend that money on something else... ha!), and individual states can increase food aid to needy families if necessary.
But all this put together will only begin to address the cost problems. The real big problem (other than tort reform, which is not a big issue for some, but a huge issue for others) is the lack of competition and choice that allows all kinds of health care providers -- from drugs to machines to hospitals -- to jack up the cost of health care. It's very similar to the patent issue. That is what government should be working on: finding ways to introduce more competition.
Providing insurance to everyone is not the answer. Reducing the cost of health care is the answer. And while you have some good ideas, it is only barely a start. Frankly, I think many people -- not sure if this includes
My only assumption is something everyone agrees with: that it will cost a lot of money. Therefore, how that money will be raised is a perfectly reasonable question. Universal Health Care is cheaper than the current system due to economies of scale, less bureaucracy, more preventative care accessibility, and more, as it is everywhere else in the world. It will thus cost less than what we pay now. Unfortunately, that is false, on several counts. The first is that it is a false dichotomy to say we should do Universal Health Care because it is better than "the current system," because there are other options to improve the current system.
For example: deregulating who can provide basic preventative care would make it far more accessible than the current system, and perhaps moreso than a universal system. Deregulation (along with other reforms) can also reduce the COST of health care, thus reducing the need for insurance to cover many things, thus reducing bureaucracy. And don't say it won't work, because this is how it used to be, and it still works for many people today.
Another way that you're wrong is that you assume that bureaucracy will be smaller, or that we will necessarily pay less due to economies of scale. I see no reason to accept either of these assumptions.
And most obviously, you are wrong because many people WILL PAY MORE, and will get no better care for it. It may cost less overall -- that is unknowable -- but we absolutely do know that many people will pay more. Even John Edwards, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton -- and even Dennis Kucinich -- admit this. Saying it will cost less is false.
If you're asking where the money would come from: the same place it comes right now: the existing health care system. Nope. Many people would have to put more -- far more -- into a universal health care system than they do into the existing health care system.
I've actually worked in the health care system in Oregon So have dozens of people I know personally, including members of my immediate family, who oppose single-payer. You won't win on an appeal to authority. Sorry: you have to try to win on the strength of your arguments themselves.
Single-payer systems would be the best way to approach the problem: the government is the single payer. Single-payer systems would be the WORST way to approach the problem: the government is the single payer.
A progressive income tax that treats payroll and capital gains similarly is the best way to pay for such a system. A progressive income tax -- well, any income tax, really -- destroys liberty, which is, without any question, the most important goal of the United States government.
You're already paying for it. National healthcare would simply redistribute the load more evenly across the entire populace. No, that's just not true. It would do a hell of a lot more than that. Some of us would have to pay even more; regional cost differences would be obliterated, punishing some people for living in an area with a lower cost of living; most likely, choice and quality of care would be reduced for many; and so on.
I understand it's a bit of an oxymoron to advocate an efficient national healthcare system, however when you look at the raw number of what we spend as a country currently and the level of service provided compared to nation healthcare system similar to our friends up north have, the term would apply. Unfortunately, you set up a false dichotomy: the current system, or a national system. We can do much to lower costs, increase choice, and get broader health care access, in the existing (mostly) private system. It used to work. There is absolutely no reason it cannot work today.
I'm not aware of any governmental system that legislates fat, lazy, and stupid both fairly and effectively. Are you going to discriminate against people who eat oreos? Be prepared for retaliation legislation ad naseum. One of the best reasons to be absolutely against national healthcare.
Absent of that, the only thing left is to reduced the problem to pure economics to reach the best logical system. If the goal is efficiently, a national program wins by raw numbers alone. No, it does not. It loses because it ruins healthcare for those of us who have it already, destroys liberty, and costs more money.
This is a politically heated debate began by someone making a baseless assumption that Novick will raise taxes to reform healthcare! Apparently, you did not read what I wrote, as I did no such thing. Asking someone if they will raise taxes is not assuming they will. My only assumption is something everyone agrees with: that it will cost a lot of money. Therefore, how that money will be raised is a perfectly reasonable question.
Perhaps you should not accuse me of a straw man, by using one yourself.
Oh, I see, you're an anonymous coward. Carry on, then.
Oregon has not tried universal health care. It's voted on a version of it, but it never got around to trying it. What I was referring to is the fact that it has failed politically, thus far, mostly because of financial considerations.
Steve, your state already tried, and aborted, an attempt at universal health care. Do you want federal universal health care because Oregon needs to take money from other states to make it work? Would you raise federal income taxes to make it work? How much?
The proposed bill is perfectly reasonable and acceptable on its face, but it won't be implemented as written. Well THERE'S your problem. Not to make this "partisan", but this is what liberals get when they continually try to have a government of men instead of a government of law. Me? I would rely on the clear meaning of the words, and if someone violates that clear meaning, hold them accountable for it. But we live in a society where we have a Supreme Court Justice (Steven Breyer) who has actually written a book ("Active Liberty") where he explains why he regularly ignores the Constitution. Laws don't matter anymore: only the high and exalted priests in their black robes with their blessed gavels of wisdom matter.
I won't contribute to this by taking laws at other than their plain meaning: instead, I will fight to uphold the plain meaning of the law.
This is not intended as a criticism of you: you may believe as I do -- that is, correctly:-) -- but also recognize that it doesn't always work this way, and prefer to operate in terms of how things work rather than trying to focus your efforts on improving things. Nevertheless, the fact that the plain meaning of this law is something that John Scopes absolutely supported is an irony that should not be lost on us.
It's not intended to be, and I think you know that. Nope. I have no idea. I only know what was written. The rest is pure supposition, as far as I know. Maybe the person who wrote it or sponsored it is a well-known pro-creationism or pro-I.D. advocate, or has made a statement to that effect; I could not fathom a guess. Unlike most people, I generally do not make assumptions. I am too scientifically minded.
We've seen these kinds of shenanigans again, and we're not fooled. Actually, you have been fooled before, and you will be fooled again. When this was "tried" in that school district that put a sticker -- with completely inoffensive and absolutely true words -- in a textbook that was ruled unconstitutional because of its "intent," you declared the judicial removal of that sticker a victory, but that is very short-sighted: you not only lost the right of teachers to teach real alternatives if they come along, and the right of a school district to say absolutely true things, but you also handed over to JUDGES the power to define "science," which is an idea those of us who know and love science should universally abhor. And you applauded it the whole way.
When absolutely true statements, explicitly supporting open-mindedness and scientific and academic freedom -- no matter the "intent" of those statements -- are panned in the name of science, it doesn't say much for the state of science in the nation.
The pro-evolution forces used to be in favor of academic freedom. No longer. You're kidding, right? Um. Only as much as Scopes was.
Is it ok, then, to teach alchemy, astrology, Holocaust denial, and flat earth if the teachers believe in those things? Shrug. That's what the people of Dayton said to Scopes. You are basically making the argument that Scopes was wrong.
Creationism and Intelligent Design don't belong in the public school curriculum because they're not scientific. You're confused. That has nothing to do with the subject at hand: the bill explicitly states that the teacher has a right to present scientific information. If information is not scientific, then it does not fall under this topic.
Now, if they did come up with solid, testable hypotheses, rigorous methods, and honestly followed the trail of evidence, and if tests of their hypotheses began to show significant results, they would be welcomed into the corpus of scientific knowledge. So you therefore agree that this proposed bill is perfectly reasonable and acceptable.
Why? This is a great idea, one that I'd like to see pushed nation-wide. It's people like you that drive people to vote for Ron Paul.
Fat people cost everyone else greatly increased health costs - and I don't mean increased insurance costs, since insurance companies can just raise insurance rates for fat people. No, I mean costs like ambulances, paramedics, and emergency room costs. To the extent government is involved in those costs, it shouldn't be. And if government decides to be involved in those costs, it cannot use that as justification for taking away someone's liberty. That's utter nonsense. "Here, we are going to give you X... and now, since we gave you X, you have to give up Y." Utter bullshit.
Since being fat is a personal choice (losing weight is easy: stop eating so much!), and fat people have chosen to burden everyone else with their choice... False. EVERYONE ELSE CHOSE to be so burdened, by participating in paying for those costs in the first place.
it's a simple solution to forcibly make them stop eating so much. Yes. Simple, and utterly fascist. A simpler, and far better, solution is to NOT PAY FOR THOSE COSTS. Then there's no problem.
The entire point behind government regulation is to protect society from people who actively harm it. False. The entire point of government is to protect individual liberty. Government has absolutely no business whatsoever giving a damn about how fat anyone is.
I'm glad that you have that sense of intellectual contentment (dare I say idealism?). It must be lonely there, as it seems Hamilton and the anti-Federalists have had the last word! Would you say the same to someone who, if we had decades of erosion of all free speech rights, said that those laws abridging free speech were unconstitutional? I am simply asserting civil liberties here, of no less importance, value, or legal right than free speech rights.
I personally think that your reading is even narrower than Madison's Nah.
in Federalist 41, he wrote a great deal about the necessities of funding for defense Yes, which is specifically mentioned in Article I, Section 8. It's an enumerated power.
Had Madison been around long enough to read Szilard and Einstein's letter warning of a nuclear threat from Germany & had he guaged such a threat as realistic, I have little doubt that Madison would have approved of the Manhattan project and the modern national labs that were commissioned to that end. And I would too. I did not imply that ALL science funding is unconstitutional; if it has a specific Section 8 purpose, then it is not unconstitutional, as per the "necessary and proper" clause.
The overwhelming majority of government-funded science research, however, does not have such a legitimate purpose.
Indeed, no less than Supreme Court Justice Frankfurter explicitly denied this notion, saying, "the ultimate touchstone of constitutionality is the Constitution itself and not what we have said about it." I do love the precision of language & I only wish (in your eloquence) that you always had the same.
Throughout this thread, you've argued that allocating public monies for science and the like is "unconstitutional." What was clearly meant was "Pudge's interpretation is that this is unconstitutional." You are mistaken in the notion that my language is imprecise. I believe my interpretation -- well, James Madison's -- is the correct one. It is no less reasonable for me to say that federal money for public schools is unconstitutional that it is for anyone else to say that warrantless wiretapping or prior restraint on the press is unconstitutional. Obviously, it refers to one's interpretation of the Constitution.
Indeed, though I quote Justice Frankfurter and agree with what he said, I disagree with many of his rulings. He says the selective incorporation of the rights clause of the 14th Amendment is constitutional. I say it's not. Neither of us is being imprecise; that we are speaking of our own opinion of proper interpretation is necessarily implicit.
Until you leave slashdot for the high court, your individual reading won't get you very much! Since I agree with Madison, that's fine, because his words on the subject carry more weight than those of anyone else who has, or ever will, exist.
Slashdot Mirror
p = rest (right to liberty, right to property)
assume: f
conclusion: p
Tell me again how do you get p with f as the only assumption (f -> p)? The key word is "again." I already did it. Read. It turns out you're just talking out of your ass when it comes to logic. Yawn. Tell me again you how you were not committing a textbook example of the appeal to authority fallacy. I'm sorry Pudge, but you'll have to actually read up on symbolic logic this time. Yawn. Tell me again you how you were not committing a textbook example of the appeal to authority fallacy.
Yes, I am in fact making an ad hominem attack here. But as long as you continue in your fallacies, I have no problem returning the favor. And if you're going to use a modification of the term liberty I am not. Indeed, I already stated, quite clearly, that the right to liberty IS NOT restricted by the liberty of anyone else. However, their right to liberty affects our ability -- though not our right -- to act on that liberty. Such things are not "self-evident" False. Thirdly, your entire line revolves around the idea that insurance companies need the flexibility to decided what not to cover. False. Indeed, I never expressed any such thing. You are making false assumptions. Again. As usual.
No disagreement about drug patents, but that's not about health care delivery, it's about patent policy that effects costs that then cost the insurance companies.
And COSTS is what I am talking about.
Secondly, it's not "designed" for the employer.
Yes, it is.
You can buy health insurance on the open market right now.
I never said anything different.
Are you saying the government intervenes to make employer coverage cheaper?
I said government regulation encourages employer-based insurance, which makes it harder to get inexpensive and quality insurance that is NOT through an employer.
That's intervention that keeps people insured where the market would tell them to get lost and they'd be fucked.
Only because it is hard for them to get quality insurance because of government intervention in the first place. In addition to what I mentioned above, in WA, they go even further: our insurance commissioner is working hard to further regulate individual insurance plans, which necessarily will mean more cost and fewer options for consumers.
If you think that "increased competition" would reduce costs
It's true.
you also don't seem to understand that insurance companies aren't the main drivers of increased health care costs
Dude. I have over and over again stated quite clearly that my main concern is the cost of HEALTH CARE, not insurance. I am talking primarily about competition in PROVIDING CARE. Jeez, follow along, willya?
increased technology and diagnostic tests capable of increasing diagnostic accuracy requiring things like vascular MRI scans for a couple grand a pop just to rule something out without running the machines full-tilt 24/7 to keep costs down
Nothing of the sort is "required." This is a huge part of the problem, though: we pretend that we have a right to all the latest and greatest technology. We do not.
This country is also extremely slow to implementing electronic medical records systems
Yes, thankfully. I consulted with a research group working on such a system. They had barely any thought at all given to privacy of the patients. They talked about security, but very little about privacy. I'll take privacy over efficiency every time.
What a universal system would do is ensure that: 1) drug prices can be set reasonably based on cost to recuperate expenses and public welfare, not fleecing people
Right. Price controls. Because THOSE always benefit everyone! Ha. What really happens is that it drives off competition, increases costs of other things to balance it out, and in the long run drastically decreases quality of the products.
Advertising of drugs would be eliminated again (that's the stupidest deregulation ever)
Yeah, exactly: fuck freedom of speech! Oh right, you don't believe in rights.
technology would be used consistently and more thoroughly
Thus increasing costs.
Standardized protocols and EMR would save paper
Paper is renewable. Don't care. If you mean decreasing COSTS, that is an assumption. It is well-documented that such moves often do NOT decrease costs.
single-payer system eliminates the process of manual EOB entry
At cost of my liberty. Don't care.
EOB auditing can be done programmatically due to a standard EOB format and interpretation
Ibid.
Deciding what is and isn't covered becomes a medical decision with less bias. Preauthorization would be eliminated.
Which also necessarily means that we have less options if something is decided to be NOT covered. At least Canadians -- for now -- can choose to go to the U.S. when that happens. Where we will go? Mexico?
Cost savings are just a tiny fraction of the importance of a universal he
Government doesn't require anybody to raise their prices for people without insurance, but everybody does it. Why?
Because they can. The way to keep costs down is competition, which is severely restricted in our current system due primarily to regulation.
If you don't have the ability to do collective bargaining through an insurance company, you have to do the bargaining on your own, and of course, most people aren't effective at negotiating on their own.
In a deregulated system where there is true competition, and more opportunity for competition, these insurance companies will have obvious incentive to lower prices without such negotiation, but also to make it easier for potential customers to get the information they need to make those choices.
Obviously, the system today is not conducive to this type of process, because it is not DESIGNED for the consumer: it's designed for the employer. This needs to change. This does not argue for a universal health care system, but against the current system of employer-centered health insurance.
Illness and medical bills caused half of the 1,458,000 personal bankruptcies in 2001, according to a study published by the journal Health Affairs.
Yes. This backs up what I have been saying about the need to cut costs through increased competition and deregulation.
Surprisingly, most of those bankrupted by illness had health insurance.
Exactly. As I have been saying, we should not try to lower the cost of insurance; we should be lowering the cost of health CARE.
None of that involves government intervention.
Yes, of course it does. Even Steve Novick agrees with me on that, as he talks about the drastically increased costs of drugs due to poor patent policies. More importantly, however, government regulation severely restricts who can provide what treatment and services, and under what circumstances insurance is available, and what that insurance can/must cover, and so on. ALL of this drives up the cost of health care, significantly.
It's also curious that you make a distinction between "being right" and "holding" of the law, while complaining that interpreting the law in disagreement with your idea of "rights" implies lawlessness.
I have stated it several times, so I don't know why you persist: lawlessness is not disagreement about interpretation. Lawlessness is denying that the law has validity, REGARDLESS of interpretation. This is what you do when you refer to "modern laws" as being more important, when you create arbitrary -- man-based, instead of law-based -- rules for which laws should be followed and which shouldn't. This concept of lawlessness has NOTHING to do with with disagreements over interpretation.
If what's right is not held, then their interpretation would be lawless
False. It's just wrong, not lawless. Lawlessness is when you disregard the law, which is what you do. They are merely disagreeing with the proper interpretation of the law.
Some of them, anyway. Justice Breyer actually wrote a book defending lawlessness, called "Active Liberty." He is in the minority, however. Thankfully.
How do you work yourself out of that antinomy?
There isn't any such thing, obviously.
For what it's worth, I've heard your shitty arguments from other right-wing idiots about the Supreme Court not being the final arbiter of the constitution.
Shrug. Swear all you want, but I am absolutely correct. Unless you actually believe the Supreme Court could order the President to only nominate new justices that they gave prior approval for. Do you believe that?
They simply don't hold water:
The judicial Power of the United States shall be vested in one supreme Court ... The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, t
I go to an independent primary care physician, Health insurance isn't required, I can negotiate with them, and they make more than somebody in any other country by working here.
Yes. And? What's that got to do with anything? Obviously, you can do anything without health insurance, but you pay exorbitant rates. For most people, health insurance is required for most things, because they can't afford to it otherwise.
Nice straw man though.
Yes, in fact, you did: you said "we should have Universal Health Care because it is better than the current system."
I meant any other system, which is accurate because the current system includes all sorts of micro systems, none of which work as well as universal, single-payer health care.
False. All of them work BETTER than universal, single-payer health care.
We've tried pretty much every delivery system you can imagine besides universal health care in this country.
And all of them are better.
... you literally stated that every person who has worked in health care is qualified to speak on this, and NO ONE ELSE is, I'll eschew your counsel on what is, and is not, a good grasp of logic.
I didn't say nobody else. Yes, in fact, you did. You said I am not qualified BECAUSE I did not work in the system. That necessarily means that everyone who has not worked in the system is not qualified. You might have meant something else, but that is what you actually said.
You simply don't have any qualification there, nor any other qualifications.
False. My qualifications are the best possible: I have a brain, and I use it. None other qualifcation is required, and none is its equal.
It is amazing to me that you continue to defend your textbook example of an appeal-to-authority logical fallacy.
Considering you still assume that there will be an overall cost reduction, you're one to talk.
I pointed out why, but you still haven't addressed the reduced overhead numbers.
False. I did address it, quite specifically. What I said was that you cannot compare Medicare to a single-payer universal system. You cannot know that overhead would continue to be less than 25 percent, let alone as low as 5 percent as you implied it would be. Medicare offers limited procedures, for limited people. The comparison you made is invalid.
It didn't rely upon it.
Yes, it did.
You implied that liberty is the only goal
I did no such thing. But I will allow that you thought so. It makes absolutely no sense that you thought so, since I did not come anywhere close to implying it, but you have made many illogical claims, and this one would not be exceptional. If you had been actually addressing what I said -- which was that securing liberty was the PRIMARY goal of government, not the only goal -- then yes, you would have necessarily been implying that the order mattered. Since you apparently thought something I've never thought or expressed, let alone attempted to imply, that changes things.
Strawman my argument all you want, but people can see past it, Pudge.
That's really funny, since either you were misrepresenting Jefferson, or you were making a straw man attack on MY argument.
[Jefferson] believed they didn't have equal rights, otherwise he would have freed his own fucking slaves, idiot.
False. That is an illogical claim. And you admit it:
You should know that I campaigned against Al Gore and have criticized Gore's carbon credit scheming as a guilt-transfer economy. I think Al's just as much a hypocrite as Jefferson.
Good. At least you are consistent. You're right, Gore is a hypocrite. But that doesn't mean he doesn't believe what he says, just as clearly, Jefferson DID believe slaves had the same rights. He was just
Care to provide any real substance? That doesn't make much sense. I did provide a lot of substance, relative to the amount I posted. I discussed the option of deregulation; the fact that many people will pay more. What more do you want?
Rock. See you in Portland ...
We should focus on deregulation and competition and providing a much broader and much cheaper array of quality care. See where that gets us.
If you're going to accuse me of a false dichotomy whenever I make a comparison between a proposal and the existing system, then I need to know what other system you actually think is better and where in the world it's been implemented.
I already did. A system that encourages competition through deregulation and other means. Where it's happened before? Here, in the U.S. It served us well for many years until the last few decades, when government regulation and lawsuits consolidated the power in the medical business into the hands of a few. Ever notice how family doctors don't exist anymore? And how health insurance is required for pretty much everything you want done? It didn't use to be that way.
Do you realize that all comparisons imply you're comparing two or more things? That's not a false dichotomy. A false dichotomy is when you say there are only two ways that aren't a full complement of each other and thus they don't cover the full range of possibilities. At no point did I say that you have to choose my way or the existing way.
Yes, in fact, you did: you said "we should have Universal Health Care because it is better than the current system."
Your grasp of logic is remarkably poor.
Um, since you literally stated that every person who has worked in health care is qualified to speak on this, and NO ONE ELSE is, I'll eschew your counsel on what is, and is not, a good grasp of logic.
Secondly, you are transferring my statement that an overall cost reduction implies that all will have cost reductions.
No. I addressed what you actually wrote. If you didn't mean to say what you wrote, don't blame me.
I told you where it could come from (multiple ways it could be done) and even said it would be an overall cost reduction due to reduced overhead. ... There are lots of assumptions going around in your arguments, Pudge.
Considering you still assume that there will be an overall cost reduction, you're one to talk.
Thirdly, I made no such assumption that the order was meaningful
False. You did precisely that. Your argument relied on it. I said liberty was the most important goal, and you said -- in rebuttal -- that life is the first goal. That necessarily implies that because it comes first, that it is more important. Please, you are far too transparent, and I am far too good at this, for you to convince me you didn't say what you clearly said.
Jefferson also didn't think that slaves or women were entitled to the rights of white men, either
False. I am unsurprised you didn't know that fact, though. He was one of the most outspoken opponents of slavery, and said, "Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that [slaves] are to be free." He believed them to be inferior, as Abraham Lincoln did, but he believed them to have the same rights as all men. That he continued to own slaves is a sad thing, but it does not reflect his belief of what slaves were entitled to. Kinda like how Al Gore uses more oil than anyone else, despite believing it's a bad thing.
so, please, stop appealing to "authority" here
I am not, in the argument sense, appealing to authority. That would be what YOU did, where I would say something like, "Jefferson said something, so therefore it is right." I am not saying that. I am saying it is something I agree with, that formed the foundation of our government. I am stating facts.
I'm not a strict constructionist
Obviously; if you cared about following the law as written or intended, you would not favor the clearly unconstitutional federal health care plans.
and I don't think the intent of the framers is as important as more modern, progressive ideas that make the union more perfect
What matters is the intent of the people who wrote the law as it stands today, whoever and whenever they were
Further, yes, it is the same old story: people say they want universal health care, but EVERY SINGLE PLAN to provide it is fatally flawed. What you call opposing for "false technicalities," most people call "damned good reasons." I have a lot of family in Oregon, and they know a hell of a lot more about it than you do: that you would imply they were ignorant only makes you look stupider. But more importantly, if you mean something, next time, try saying it I did. I always say precisely what I mean to say. It's a curse.
... rather than making an untrue statement I made no untrue statement.
... that any normal reading would indicate that the program was tried and repealed due to public discontent. False. You don't read very well. Polls of Canadians (and other western countries) show a much higher content with their system than USians do about their system, so any argument for a political failure of health care systems with government involvement is flatly contradicted by evidence. False. It is amazing you can string two sentences together while believing things that are so obviously untrue. Comparing different nations is fraught with difficulty: just because it works in one nation -- or even every other nation -- does not imply in the slightest that it will work here. I know this comes a shock, but it's true. So therefore the evidence does not contradict any such argument in the U.S. The real problem is that people like you are corporate sheep, willing to go along with their manufactured consent. False. My only goal is rights: life, liberty, property. Period, end of story. I could care less about what any corporation thinks, unless it lines up with my principles. You are the one who called me a libertarian; if you know what that means, then you would not call me a corporate sheep. So you have some sort of disconnect in your thinking.I see, however, that you are a Chomsky disciple (a religion like any other). Color me unsurprised.
And most likely, for most of us, it would be worse, including myself. We've had some issues and have seen many specialists, usually without more than a few weeks of waiting, and almost surely we'd have less freedom to do that in a national system. Some (not very many, but some) of the possible systems could even do that while lowering the actual cost of healthcare. Let's assume that no one's health care quality would decrease, since I reject that it is realistically possible to increase everyone's quality of care. Yes, this is theoretically possible, but also extremely unlikely, because the only real way to do with government regulation is with cost controls, which will in the long run result in decreased quality of care.
It is DEregulation that can cut costs without lowering quality: having true competition and choices that right now we don't have because of our messed-up health insurance system. The problem is determining which potential systems can do this, implementing one, and keeping the elected officials from continuously messing with it. That last part sounds like a real problem. Even if we could find a system that could possibly do this, which I do not believe is possible, and then implement it
Universal Health Care is cheaper than the current system due to economies of scale, less bureaucracy, more preventative care accessibility, and more, as it is everywhere else in the world. It will thus cost less than what we pay now.
Unfortunately, that is false, on several counts. The first is that it is a false dichotomy to say we should do Universal Health Care because it is better than "the current system," because there are other options to improve the current system.
I never set up a dichotomy. I think it's the best system of many alternatives.
You did. You compared it to the current system. If you think it is better than all other alternatives, fine, but your argument addressed this particular dichotomy.
Single-payer health care does not regulate the decisions of the AMA and other medical agencies composed of practitioners who would be delegated the role of making policy, just as it is done in many other western nations.
You're so cute. Of course it will. We already have Novick here trying to control what schoolkids eat, and many municipalities doing the same for entire populations. The government loves to try to control our health, when their costs are on the line, and when they are directly paying the bills, so much more so. We see government doing this in Medicare already.
Are you clumping one proposal with another?
No.
Clear your mind, first.
Already perfectly clear.
Another way that you're wrong is that you assume that bureaucracy will be smaller, or that we will necessarily pay less due to economies of scale. I see no reason to accept either of these assumptions.
I don't actually assume it.
Yes, in fact, you do.
Insurance company overhead is around 25%, but medicare is less than 5%.
Medicare is not a single-payer national health care system. The comparison is invalid. Plus, once again: false dichotomy.
Total cost of providing health care is greatly increased by private insurance.
By some forms of it, yes. Also, by most forms of single-payer health care (those that don't drastically decrease quality of care).
Since you haven't actually worked in the industry ... you don't have a basis either in experience or research for understanding the problem.
See. There you go again. Look. This is called an appeal to authority logical fallacy. It is entirely invalid, and only makes you look like a prick. Again: if you can't win on the strength of your arguments, then you ... can't win. Saying "I know better than you" instead of actually backing up your arguments is admitting you lost the argument.
If you like, I can forget about your terrible mistake, and let you try again. Would this suit you?
And most obviously, you are wrong because many people WILL PAY MORE, and will get no better care for it. It may cost less overall -- that is unknowable -- but we absolutely do know that many people will pay more. Even John Edwards, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton -- and even Dennis Kucinich -- admit this. Saying it will cost less is false.
Of course some people will pay more.
So you admit you were wrong. Thanks.
That's fine with me, particularly if they have the income to afford it.
Sorry, but it is literally impossible to determine whether someone can afford more taxes, by their income. The two are not directly related. This is a fundamental flaw in all progressive taxation schemes. It assumes that everything belongs to the government, and no one has any right to any property or possessions.
That's the entire basis for progressive taxation
Exactly.
and the role of all healthy, modern governments: to ensure a strong middle class by weal
If you guess I'd have been better off, well. Maybe, maybe not. Depends on the state. There's no way to know from the limited information you've provided. Since generally speaking, health care in the U.S. is better (there's just less access to it for many), your problem very possibly would have been solved in a lot less than six years. The purpose of society isn't to serve the strong - it's to help the weak. Nope. The purpose of society is to provide a framework for protecting the individual rights of all. I guess the basic concepts of having a democratic society just have escaped you. Nope. On the contrary, a system that respects the people (democracy) must respect therefore the individual person (hence, republic). Next time? Think before you speak. I already did. Your turn.
I would suggest that Oregon's attempt at universal health care never got off the ground because major portions of it were blocked by the Republican-controlled legislature.
Yes, because of the obvious problems in PAYING for it. That the legislature blocked it is a good thing: universal health care does no one any good if everyone is broke. The proposed system was literally incapable of sustaining itself.
I think that experience underscores the need for us to address health care reform at a national level. The path our health care system is on is clearly unsustainable, with exploding costs and declining coverage. I think there are several comprehensive plans out there to ensure everyone has affordable health care, while tackling the cost of care.
None I've seen. All of them only discussed more regulation, and direct cost controls, to control costs, which either wouldn't work, or would only work in the short term, increasing costs and decreasing care in the long term (which always happens when you remove competition).
Here's a fuller explanation of what I think that will take and several measures we need to take to control costs.
I see several problems. First, Medicare negotiating lower drug prices causes INCREASED prices for those not on Medicare. This will be a big hit to middle class and poor families. I agree with this in principle, but see no way around it harming others. The middle class especially is already subsidizing drugs to Canada and other countries; now they would be subsidizing drugs to Medicare recipients.
... ha!), and individual states can increase food aid to needy families if necessary.
This does not actually reduce national costs, it just shifts them, from the taxpayer to the drug consumer, which seems to me to be the wrong direction that most Democrats who favor universal health care want to go.
I also absolutely disagree with federal school lunch standards. The federal government has no business of any kind in the local public schools. Period, end of story.
As to hospitals, similar story: the federal government should not be paying for this equipment, or restricting its purchase.
However, I ABSOLUTELY agree that we need to reform the drug patent system. Thanks for highlighting that. I don't believe government should be in the business of handing out monopolies JUST FOR THE SAKE of handing out monopolies. The Constitution is clear: the point of a patent is to encourage innovation. It is only worthwhile to the extent it does that, and patent terms should be tailored to provide the MINIMUM rights necessary to accomplish that goal.
Further, I agree that taxpayers should not be subsidizing drug companies' ads. Indeed, we should not be subsidizing drug companies at all, including money for research. This ties into the patent issue because we pay them to do research and then give them a patent, too! Any research we DO subsidize should be public domain.
Which brings me to farm subsidies: no, we should cut all of them. We do not need them. Yes, the cost of food may rise, but our taxes will be significantly less (assuming the government doesn't spend that money on something else
But all this put together will only begin to address the cost problems. The real big problem (other than tort reform, which is not a big issue for some, but a huge issue for others) is the lack of competition and choice that allows all kinds of health care providers -- from drugs to machines to hospitals -- to jack up the cost of health care. It's very similar to the patent issue. That is what government should be working on: finding ways to introduce more competition.
Providing insurance to everyone is not the answer. Reducing the cost of health care is the answer. And while you have some good ideas, it is only barely a start. Frankly, I think many people -- not sure if this includes
For example: deregulating who can provide basic preventative care would make it far more accessible than the current system, and perhaps moreso than a universal system. Deregulation (along with other reforms) can also reduce the COST of health care, thus reducing the need for insurance to cover many things, thus reducing bureaucracy. And don't say it won't work, because this is how it used to be, and it still works for many people today.
Another way that you're wrong is that you assume that bureaucracy will be smaller, or that we will necessarily pay less due to economies of scale. I see no reason to accept either of these assumptions.
And most obviously, you are wrong because many people WILL PAY MORE, and will get no better care for it. It may cost less overall -- that is unknowable -- but we absolutely do know that many people will pay more. Even John Edwards, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton -- and even Dennis Kucinich -- admit this. Saying it will cost less is false. If you're asking where the money would come from: the same place it comes right now: the existing health care system. Nope. Many people would have to put more -- far more -- into a universal health care system than they do into the existing health care system. I've actually worked in the health care system in Oregon So have dozens of people I know personally, including members of my immediate family, who oppose single-payer. You won't win on an appeal to authority. Sorry: you have to try to win on the strength of your arguments themselves. Single-payer systems would be the best way to approach the problem: the government is the single payer. Single-payer systems would be the WORST way to approach the problem: the government is the single payer. A progressive income tax that treats payroll and capital gains similarly is the best way to pay for such a system. A progressive income tax -- well, any income tax, really -- destroys liberty, which is, without any question, the most important goal of the United States government.
Perhaps you should not accuse me of a straw man, by using one yourself.
Oh, I see, you're an anonymous coward. Carry on, then.
Steve, your state already tried, and aborted, an attempt at universal health care. Do you want federal universal health care because Oregon needs to take money from other states to make it work? Would you raise federal income taxes to make it work? How much?
I won't contribute to this by taking laws at other than their plain meaning: instead, I will fight to uphold the plain meaning of the law.
This is not intended as a criticism of you: you may believe as I do -- that is, correctly
When absolutely true statements, explicitly supporting open-mindedness and scientific and academic freedom -- no matter the "intent" of those statements -- are panned in the name of science, it doesn't say much for the state of science in the nation.
Insert something about babies and bathwater here.
The overwhelming majority of government-funded science research, however, does not have such a legitimate purpose.
Throughout this thread, you've argued that allocating public monies for science and the like is "unconstitutional." What was clearly meant was "Pudge's interpretation is that this is unconstitutional." You are mistaken in the notion that my language is imprecise. I believe my interpretation -- well, James Madison's -- is the correct one. It is no less reasonable for me to say that federal money for public schools is unconstitutional that it is for anyone else to say that warrantless wiretapping or prior restraint on the press is unconstitutional. Obviously, it refers to one's interpretation of the Constitution.
Indeed, though I quote Justice Frankfurter and agree with what he said, I disagree with many of his rulings. He says the selective incorporation of the rights clause of the 14th Amendment is constitutional. I say it's not. Neither of us is being imprecise; that we are speaking of our own opinion of proper interpretation is necessarily implicit. Until you leave slashdot for the high court, your individual reading won't get you very much! Since I agree with Madison, that's fine, because his words on the subject carry more weight than those of anyone else who has, or ever will, exist.