Private insurance is legal, but would be pointless since privately funded delivery of services delivered by the public insurance is illegal.
Saying the insurance is legal, but that USING the insurance is illegal... it's not really insurance at that point, is it? Come on. At the very least it is illegal because then you'd be committing fraud by selling unusable insurance.
Maybe you think that describes the "typical conservative." It does not describe me. I am in favor of all civil rights and liberties, whether I agree with their use or not.
I believe, for example, that homosexuality is a sin, but am for universal civil unions (that is, getting government out of all marriage, and making every union equal in the eyes of the law). I have never smoked pot, and get angry whenever anyone smokes it around me, and am in favor of its legalization.
And so on. You could not find a civil right or liberty that I don't defend... for EVERYONE. Occasionally people accuse me of hypocrisy like you're doing, but they never do it by providing any substance.
It does hurt when the only healthcare you get is the one you can afford and the prices are set according to the financial resources of the higher paid 30% of the society.
No, it does not. How does getting something for free, that you have no right to, "hurting" you?
It does hurt when you say "I have money and I don't care if you die".
Then you need to get a backbone. For crying out loud, more than six billion people in this world do not care if you or I die, and probably a billion of those people have money.
That's why some people want universal healthcare - they're aware of the unpredictability of life's events.
That is a false statement. It is not because they are "aware" of the obvious. Everyone is aware of that. It is, simply, because they want to force other people to protect them from unpredictability, because they are selfish, envious, greedy, cowards.
Not to put too fine a point on it.
You see, I -- knowing full well that I might not have money when it comes time to pay bills for an unpredictable life event -- reject the notion that other people should be forced to bail me out. I cannot fathom selfishly using the power of government to force anyone to help me. I cannot even begin to be that greedy or fearful.
... was nothing more than an in-kind response to the ad hominem of the person I was responding to.
... is a funny accusation from someone who keeps classifying disagreements as inferiority.
I have never done that, let alone done it repeatedly. Please do not lie.
I guess we must resort to addressing you rather than those lofty concepts of yours
Um. That is precisely what YOU did. Wow. Did you so quickly forget that you called me a "dictator," without any such ad hominem toward you by myself? Please do not be so incredibly dishonest.
you're more interested in winning at slashdot commentary than actually comprehending the position of others within the debate
Nonsense. I understand everything of substance you wrote... which is very little. I simply disagree with it, and explained why, and then you resorted to ad hominems. Then you accused me of resorting to ad hominems.
Trying being a bit more clever next time.
Seriously. Everything that's been said about that untenable position...
Such as? No one has provided any serious argument against anything I've said, least of all yourself. You simply resort to ad hominem and then pretend you're above it.
It's insipidly stupid to think that just because someone can use their own resources to benefit themselves, that this somehow hurts anyone else.
Oh ok, so one person obtaining disproportionately more resources doesn't negatively impact everyone else?
Not when those resources are elastic, and the impact of the disproprtionate use is very small, no. It does not.
My father once told me that if magically everyone on Earth all became immortal instantaneously that, given a long enough time-line, eventually two people would own everything.
Your father was wrong.
As it is now, people like you would either force everyone into some sort of truly functional communism where everyone received the same amount of resources determined by the government, or rely on the hopes that people like Bill Gates who obtain disproportionately large amounts of resources reach their personal greed goals and morph into philanthropists.
Ummm. No. I would have a free market system where the overwhelming majority of people can afford their own needs, and those people collectively -- without government force -- provide for the needs of those who cannot.
This is how it worked before the U.S. government created HMOs, by the way. HMOs are a big part of the problem, and those were created by government, and now government -- instead of realizing it was going in the wrong direction -- is going forward toward making it worse.
Here are the problems with both ideas
Neither of which have anything to do with anything I've said, implied, or believe.
first, people like me that choose to do work to obtain resources will never be willing to sacrifice those earned resources to people who are unwilling to do work.
That is not a problem. That's a good thing. People who are unwilling to work SHOULD NOT get anything from anyone else. That's GOOD. It's forcing them to take responsibility for their choices. Every possible alternative is worse than this.
Second, one person like Bill Gates becoming a philanthropist gives a single person vast and unbalanced social power in a country that is supposedly democratic.
That is not a problem at all. It's natural, expected, normal, and perfectly fine. Democracy is not about social power, it's about self-determination. Gates cannot force me to buy health insurance, or Windows. Gates cannot disallow me from using rain barrels, or SUVs.
I propose some sort of happy middle ground where I still pay taxes to pay for very limited social services, but also that the federal government put a strict limit on earnings such that people can "win" the "game".
That is not a middle ground: that is irrationally destroying essential liberty. You cannot possibly identify how this would solve anything. No economists have any framework or theory for this notion. It's just villifying people you're envious of. It's unbridled, emotional, and unintellectual populism, that won't solve a damned thing.
Greed is ruining the world again.
Nonsense.
It is unchecked
Also nonsense.
and the weak and poor are becoming weaker and more impoverished.
Also nonsense.
Personal greed that comes at the detriment to others should be punished, not praised.
Defining "personal greed" in a way merely to punish people should be punished.
Regardless, let's be truthful here, disproportionate resource consumption hurts the majority, but only benefits the minority or who they choose the help.
First, again, it hurts no one. Second, liberty helps everyone.
You could make the same argument against free speech
Manitoba and Saskatchewan do not allow any form of private health insurance
I never said supplemental insurance is legal everywhere. So where am I wrong?
BC, Alberta Ontario and Quebec and some of the others allow private insurance.
Right, they allow private supplemental health insurance. That's what I said.
Exactly: but you cannot pay for some of those services with private insurance.
Did you not read my links? That's exactly what they are offered.
Incorrect.
A monthly fee, and they take care of all your medical needs, from checkups to diagnostics to surgery. Even if it's covered by the government.
You're mistaken. The normal covered services are not paid for with the private money, but by government "insurance." (It's more complicated than that, a bit, but still, that's basically how it works.)
In fact, if you had read my link, you'd have read that the hospital... was booked by Alberta Health Services...
You insist that we accept *your* definition of liberty.
I do not. I insist you do not violate my liberty, as it is clearly defined throughout American history. If you want to form a liberty-depriving commune like the Amish, feel free, as long as I am not forced to be a part of it.
You slam someone for showing frustration with your insistences and unwillingness to accept some moderation to your ideals.
The ideals enshrined in our law and tradition, yes.
I'm pretty sure you believe in checks and balances for government, but you clearly do not for business.
You're lying about me. Please don't. It's unbecoming. I said absolutely nothing that you could infer that from.
Is corporate rule that appealing to you?
I do not accept the way you would dictate my liberty.
Except, I wouldn't. You cannot identify a single liberty you would lose from my views as stated or implied. You're dishonestly just making things up so you can try to weirdly score points against me.
I'd rather put my interests in someone who's been elected and let them manage the checks and balances for the ones who're just interested in profit margins / share.
We have checks and balances: it's called a Constitution. The problem is that "ObamaCare" violates the Constitution, in many ways. The rule of law is ignored by the left controlling the U.S.
This is one of them, where business has decided to put an extra lock on something that I would otherwise be free to use after I've purchased it.
Let's be clear here. This thing you purchased is "a locked phone." That is what you sought, purchased, and now own. No, in fact, it would not be "free to use" if the company didn't "decide to put an extra lock on it," because if they didn't so decide, then they would have sold you a different product. Which you had the choice of seeking, purchasing, and owning instead of the product you DID buy.
You're pretending that you bought a "phone" but you didn't. Your argument is similar to saying, "I bought a phone that doesn't have 3G, and if they had only decided to put 3G in it, I could use it on a 3G network, so they are taking away my freedom." It's nonsense.
Liberty is a beautiful word and a stellar ideal. Understanding the limits of that ideal, that would be moderation.
The only moderation on liberty is harming the liberty of others. Period. And it is not harming anyone's liberty to sell them a locked phone (unless you don't tell them, directly or through clear implication, that it is locked).
Otherwise, you taint the word.
Pretending that it violates your "liberty" to have the locked phone you bought -- knowing full well what it was when you bought it -- turned into a different poduct by the company who sold it to you... that is what taints the word.
I know! But you could always choose to NOT be arrogant. Try it!
They are known to collude
So make (or enforce) laws against collusion, and stop whining about something that is NOT anti-competitive.
Look, I sank your argument that it is anti-competitive by pointing out the fact that you're misusing the term. If you have a counterargument, provide it. You don't provide any arguments; instead, you just attack me. Pathetic, man. But typical.
OECD data that shows countries with universal healthcare spend less and have better outcomes in quite a few important metrics.
First, that's misleading. The costs are high because so many of us get better care. The outcomes are brought down by the people who don't spend much and get worse care.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but libertarians live in a fantasy land. They talk theory, when hard data has been available for years.
Wow. Its bad enough your misread the data for what you think it says, but now you're saying that the U.S. health care system represents the libertarian ideal?! Wow. A system where HMOs are heavily subsidized, where insurance companies are heavily regulated... I mean, come on. You're just being silly now.
If you can pay for better healthcare, it doesn't take long for all the best doctors to move out of the public system and into the private one. That hurts everyone else.
I think you just have a misunderstanding of how the Canadian Health Care system works.
Nah. You just read "private insurance" and assumed I was referring to "supplemental insurance." In the U.S., supplemental is rare, and when we say "private insurance" most of us mean the primary care insurance.
I follow a bit of American news and have seen how they compare "Obama care" to the Canadian system and how it's going to bankrupt the country.
Nah, "ObamaCare" is almost nothing like the Canadian system. In terms of the potential for bankrupting us, "ObamaCare" is much worse than Canada's system, specifically because everything is still private, but government's going to be paying for it for many, many people.
Everyone, including the bums on the street, are covered for most things, which is pretty great if you ever end up going through a rough period (I.E. and economic depression) and lose your job for whatever reason.
So housing should be covered by government, and no one should be allowed to buy home insurance on any houses that they buy for themselves.:-)
We do have the option to get additional insurance, which most working class get through employers. There is no need for insurance companies to try and "compete" with the government system.
There's a growing number of private clinics that disagree with you.
I would say if it was allowed that would mean the government would have to give everyone who could get full private coverage the option to opt-out of the government plan
That would be a nice thing. Some countries allow that, some do not.
Anyone with a decent job would most likely do that, which wouldn't leave a large enough base to cover all the other people that for whatever reason don't have jobs.
Irrelevant, really. You do not have a real insurance system in Canada: it's just an entitlement at this point. Everyone who can, pays taxes, and everyone gets the services. If not enough people are in the system to pay for the people left in it, the government will simply raise taxes.
I and others have also mentioned it before, but another issue would be having insurance companies lobbying the government' to have public coverage cut down to nothing so they could rake in more money from anyone with two cents to rub together.
Then get rid of representative democracy, or seriously reform lobbying. Saying "we won't give you liberty because we don't want to have to deal with lobbyists" is... well, pretty damned evil, I think.
I do find the "I look out for number 1" attitude very common.
The problem is that our laws say that THE reason government exists is to secure INDIVIDUAL liberty. That is in the founding document of the United States, and it's the first part of my state's Constitution. It's not so much "I am looking out for number one" as it is "government's first responsibility is to protect my rights, and it's not doing it."
The media in the states plays off that to make people think that by pooling money to help others you'll be the only one working while the rest of society just leaches off you.
First of all, there's a lot of truth to that: more than half of the people in the country will qualify for free health insurance, by their income level, if I remember the numbers correctly (although if they are working, their companies will be forced to provide it). Already, half the country does not pay federal income tax, so it's not like this is an imagined thing.
Second, the part you kinda gloss over is "pooling money to help others." You make it sound like a charity. But there's no such thing as forced charity. Charity is always optional, never forced. It's FORCING people that is the problem.
It's not "looking out for number 1" to say "don't force me to help others."
Government supply's our basic insurance... Why would we need anything besides supplemental?
Because you want care at a non-government-approved clinic.
In some respects I'm glad private insurance is illegal. The last thing we need is a bunch of private insurance companies lobbying the government...
Yes, and in that same respect, you could be "glad" for a dictatorship. No lobbyists! But I'm glad neither the U.S. nor Canada has one, aren't you?
why would a doctor or nurse work for the public system, for what they would consider peanuts, when they could be working for the private system hacking peoples limbs off for payment?
You could make that same argument for privatizing EVERY industry. It's not a good one.
I think you need to take a minute to think this over.
I think you do.:-)
If I buy a subsidized phone from a carrier i have to sign a contract for x amount of months. After 6 of these months the phone is unlocked, how in your infanite wisdom do I not pay the cancellation fee?
Irrelevant. The cancellation fee will now, simply, be HIGHER. Before, the service provider says, "OK, sure, cancel, but you pay us, and your phone is STILL locked." (Unless you're one of the very few who unlocks it youself.) Now, they say, "OK, sure, cancel, but you pay us... and since your phone is now going to be unlocked, you're going to pay us even more than you would have."
Think about it: if there was no financial interest in keeping the phone locked, there'd be no law necessary. You could just ask them to unlock it after you've paid the cancellation fee, and maybe they would do it for a service fee. They don't, because they have a financial interest in keeping it locked. So why would you think they would not increase prices -- including the cancellation fee -- if they are forced to NOT keep it locked?
so you're saying that me not being able to see a doctor to get the cancer in my lung checked out for years because bill gates has bought all the doctors that I can go see to take care of himself somehow doesn't cause harm to me? (completely hypothetical here. but honestly, the tiered system DOES prevent people from being able to attend a doctor when thy need one.)
I'd like to see your evidence that any such preventions exist in a "tiered" system.
Not anti-competitive, no. Calling this anti-competitive is nonsense. It IS competition. "Anti-competitive" has a specific meaning, and it is not about engaging in competition and trying to gain a competitive advantage, but about trying to eliminate competition. That's obviously not happening here.
How so nonsense? Aside from claiming wildly, you're not applying much logic to the debate.
Um. I clearly described it. You didn't explain (at all) how it is "anti-competitive," so you didn't give me much to work with. So I simply noted the fact that it doesn't meet the definition of "anti-competitive," which is a pretty good argument on my part.
Locking a phone is specifically so customers cannot take that hardware they've purchased and use it on competiting carriers.
Yes: a phone subsidized by the carrier it is locked to. This is competition, not anti-competition. Every service provider can do this, so it does not prevent or reduce competition, unless one provider already has a massive advantage over its competitors, such that locking really does have the effect of reducing competition. But -- and I don't know about the Canada, but in the U.S. -- there's no evidence locking reduces competition: all the providers do quite well, even with their competitors locking their phones.
You are engaging in the equivocation fallacy: saying that because something in a micro sense reduces competition ("I can't use this phone with any other provider") that it is therefore anti-competitive, which is a macro claim ("competition, on a significant scale, between the various competitors is being reduced or prevented").
I think you're so blinded by your ideals
I think you're blinded by your ignorance about econommics.
Firstly, when anyone says 'Healthcare in Canada' they are probably wrong.
OK. But I am not wrong.
Private insurance is legal in Canada.
I was not referring to supplemental insurance, but insurance for the "covered services" the government pays for. It's illegal. You can, for example, go into a private Canadian clinic and get services the government would otherwise pay for, but you cannot use private insurance to pay for those services.
There are many places that will provide private care for a fee.
Exactly: but you cannot pay for some of those services with private insurance.
I was referring to buying insurance that replaces the government insurance. It's prohibited.
You also can't print your own Driver's License that replaces one issued by the government, or choose to pay taxes to your brother-in-law' private taxation bureau instead of to Revenue Canada. Why is this surprising?
I didn't imply it was surprising. I just said it was true. Why is my statement of truth "surprising" to you?;-)
All the hospitals, clinics, and labs are free, the drugs are subsidized
Not true. There are private clinics in Canada. But you must pay for them out of pocket, not with private insurance (where those services are covered by Canada's public system).
Health care is a right up here
No, it's not: it's an entitlement. There's a difference. A right cannot be something someone else is obligated to give to you. A right is something you can get for yourself. Saying "health care is a right" renders the word "right" virtually meaningless. It's like saying that I can force someone else to speak on my behalf, because I have a right to free speech. It's nonsense.
You're using the wrong word. s/realize/believe, without being able to demonstrate/g
That's what happens when ideals are extremes.
Nonsense. We have extreme "free speech" and "representative democracy" and "anti-slavery" and all sorts of extremes in this country.
One person's freedom and liberty often infringes on another's.
That's demonstrably not the case here: no one's liberty is being infringed upon by locked phones, or lack of universal health care. You would have to bend "freedom and liberty" to mean something they literally cannot mean. But forcing me to pay for universal health care, or forcing me to buy or sell unlocked phones, clearly does infringe on my freedom and liberty.
This is about phones that are bought and paid for, either via contract or outright.
Yes. You buy a locked phone from a provider, and because it is locked, the company can make more money from it. So by forcing them to unlock it, they will get less money from it, and won't be inclined to offer as much of a discount for it (not to mention the increased labor costs in unlocking phones for people that must be recouped with higher costs).
You're actually arguing for free market principles
I am always arguing for free market principles.
in favour of an anti-competitive practice?
Not anti-competitive, no. Calling this anti-competitive is nonsense. It IS competition. "Anti-competitive" has a specific meaning, and it is not about engaging in competition and trying to gain a competitive advantage, but about trying to eliminate competition. That's obviously not happening here.
You actually believe that this particular behaviour reduces prices to the consumer?
I didn't say that. I said that forcibly removing this free choice will result in increased prices.
Right, and if you even bothered to read the summary then you'd know that they don't have to unlock the phone until AFTER your contract is over, or after 6 months if you've paid full price for it anyway. There's no extra money to be made here.
You're not thinking.
If there's no money to be made there, then why wouldn't they just unlock it when the contract is over? Why need a law?
Slashdot Mirror
Private insurance is legal, but would be pointless since privately funded delivery of services delivered by the public insurance is illegal.
Saying the insurance is legal, but that USING the insurance is illegal ... it's not really insurance at that point, is it? Come on. At the very least it is illegal because then you'd be committing fraud by selling unusable insurance.
Typical liberal. You simply do not believe in civil rights or liberty, by your own admission. You only believe in what you think people should have.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror
Maybe you think that describes the "typical conservative." It does not describe me. I am in favor of all civil rights and liberties, whether I agree with their use or not.
I believe, for example, that homosexuality is a sin, but am for universal civil unions (that is, getting government out of all marriage, and making every union equal in the eyes of the law). I have never smoked pot, and get angry whenever anyone smokes it around me, and am in favor of its legalization.
And so on. You could not find a civil right or liberty that I don't defend ... for EVERYONE. Occasionally people accuse me of hypocrisy like you're doing, but they never do it by providing any substance.
It does hurt when the only healthcare you get is the one you can afford and the prices are set according to the financial resources of the higher paid 30% of the society.
No, it does not. How does getting something for free, that you have no right to, "hurting" you?
It does hurt when you say "I have money and I don't care if you die".
Then you need to get a backbone. For crying out loud, more than six billion people in this world do not care if you or I die, and probably a billion of those people have money.
That's why some people want universal healthcare - they're aware of the unpredictability of life's events.
That is a false statement. It is not because they are "aware" of the obvious. Everyone is aware of that. It is, simply, because they want to force other people to protect them from unpredictability, because they are selfish, envious, greedy, cowards.
Not to put too fine a point on it.
You see, I -- knowing full well that I might not have money when it comes time to pay bills for an unpredictable life event -- reject the notion that other people should be forced to bail me out. I cannot fathom selfishly using the power of government to force anyone to help me. I cannot even begin to be that greedy or fearful.
The ad hominem part ...
... was nothing more than an in-kind response to the ad hominem of the person I was responding to.
... is a funny accusation from someone who keeps classifying disagreements as inferiority.
I have never done that, let alone done it repeatedly. Please do not lie.
I guess we must resort to addressing you rather than those lofty concepts of yours
Um. That is precisely what YOU did. Wow. Did you so quickly forget that you called me a "dictator," without any such ad hominem toward you by myself? Please do not be so incredibly dishonest.
you're more interested in winning at slashdot commentary than actually comprehending the position of others within the debate
Nonsense. I understand everything of substance you wrote ... which is very little. I simply disagree with it, and explained why, and then you resorted to ad hominems. Then you accused me of resorting to ad hominems.
Trying being a bit more clever next time.
Seriously. Everything that's been said about that untenable position ...
Such as? No one has provided any serious argument against anything I've said, least of all yourself. You simply resort to ad hominem and then pretend you're above it.
It's insipidly stupid to think that just because someone can use their own resources to benefit themselves, that this somehow hurts anyone else.
Oh ok, so one person obtaining disproportionately more resources doesn't negatively impact everyone else ?
Not when those resources are elastic, and the impact of the disproprtionate use is very small, no. It does not.
My father once told me that if magically everyone on Earth all became immortal instantaneously that, given a long enough time-line, eventually two people would own everything.
Your father was wrong.
As it is now, people like you would either force everyone into some sort of truly functional communism where everyone received the same amount of resources determined by the government, or rely on the hopes that people like Bill Gates who obtain disproportionately large amounts of resources reach their personal greed goals and morph into philanthropists.
Ummm. No. I would have a free market system where the overwhelming majority of people can afford their own needs, and those people collectively -- without government force -- provide for the needs of those who cannot.
This is how it worked before the U.S. government created HMOs, by the way. HMOs are a big part of the problem, and those were created by government, and now government -- instead of realizing it was going in the wrong direction -- is going forward toward making it worse.
Here are the problems with both ideas
Neither of which have anything to do with anything I've said, implied, or believe.
first, people like me that choose to do work to obtain resources will never be willing to sacrifice those earned resources to people who are unwilling to do work.
That is not a problem. That's a good thing. People who are unwilling to work SHOULD NOT get anything from anyone else. That's GOOD. It's forcing them to take responsibility for their choices. Every possible alternative is worse than this.
Second, one person like Bill Gates becoming a philanthropist gives a single person vast and unbalanced social power in a country that is supposedly democratic.
That is not a problem at all. It's natural, expected, normal, and perfectly fine. Democracy is not about social power, it's about self-determination. Gates cannot force me to buy health insurance, or Windows. Gates cannot disallow me from using rain barrels, or SUVs.
I propose some sort of happy middle ground where I still pay taxes to pay for very limited social services, but also that the federal government put a strict limit on earnings such that people can "win" the "game".
That is not a middle ground: that is irrationally destroying essential liberty. You cannot possibly identify how this would solve anything. No economists have any framework or theory for this notion. It's just villifying people you're envious of. It's unbridled, emotional, and unintellectual populism, that won't solve a damned thing.
Greed is ruining the world again.
Nonsense.
It is unchecked
Also nonsense.
and the weak and poor are becoming weaker and more impoverished.
Also nonsense.
Personal greed that comes at the detriment to others should be punished, not praised.
Defining "personal greed" in a way merely to punish people should be punished.
Regardless, let's be truthful here, disproportionate resource consumption hurts the majority, but only benefits the minority or who they choose the help.
First, again, it hurts no one. Second, liberty helps everyone.
You could make the same argument against free speech
OK. But I am not wrong.
Yes you are.
Where?
Manitoba and Saskatchewan do not allow any form of private health insurance
I never said supplemental insurance is legal everywhere. So where am I wrong?
BC, Alberta Ontario and Quebec and some of the others allow private insurance.
Right, they allow private supplemental health insurance. That's what I said.
Exactly: but you cannot pay for some of those services with private insurance.
Did you not read my links? That's exactly what they are offered.
Incorrect.
A monthly fee, and they take care of all your medical needs, from checkups to diagnostics to surgery. Even if it's covered by the government.
You're mistaken. The normal covered services are not paid for with the private money, but by government "insurance." (It's more complicated than that, a bit, but still, that's basically how it works.)
In fact, if you had read my link, you'd have read that the hospital ... was booked by Alberta Health Services ...
Exactly my point. Thanks.
You're hypocritical about it though.
Obviously false.
You insist that we accept *your* definition of liberty.
I do not. I insist you do not violate my liberty, as it is clearly defined throughout American history. If you want to form a liberty-depriving commune like the Amish, feel free, as long as I am not forced to be a part of it.
You slam someone for showing frustration with your insistences and unwillingness to accept some moderation to your ideals.
The ideals enshrined in our law and tradition, yes.
I'm pretty sure you believe in checks and balances for government, but you clearly do not for business.
You're lying about me. Please don't. It's unbecoming. I said absolutely nothing that you could infer that from.
Is corporate rule that appealing to you?
I do not accept the way you would dictate my liberty.
Except, I wouldn't. You cannot identify a single liberty you would lose from my views as stated or implied. You're dishonestly just making things up so you can try to weirdly score points against me.
I'd rather put my interests in someone who's been elected and let them manage the checks and balances for the ones who're just interested in profit margins / share.
We have checks and balances: it's called a Constitution. The problem is that "ObamaCare" violates the Constitution, in many ways. The rule of law is ignored by the left controlling the U.S.
This is one of them, where business has decided to put an extra lock on something that I would otherwise be free to use after I've purchased it.
Let's be clear here. This thing you purchased is "a locked phone." That is what you sought, purchased, and now own. No, in fact, it would not be "free to use" if the company didn't "decide to put an extra lock on it," because if they didn't so decide, then they would have sold you a different product. Which you had the choice of seeking, purchasing, and owning instead of the product you DID buy.
You're pretending that you bought a "phone" but you didn't. Your argument is similar to saying, "I bought a phone that doesn't have 3G, and if they had only decided to put 3G in it, I could use it on a 3G network, so they are taking away my freedom." It's nonsense.
Liberty is a beautiful word and a stellar ideal. Understanding the limits of that ideal, that would be moderation.
The only moderation on liberty is harming the liberty of others. Period. And it is not harming anyone's liberty to sell them a locked phone (unless you don't tell them, directly or through clear implication, that it is locked).
Otherwise, you taint the word.
Pretending that it violates your "liberty" to have the locked phone you bought -- knowing full well what it was when you bought it -- turned into a different poduct by the company who sold it to you ... that is what taints the word.
You'd make a hell of a dictator.
You're an ignorant jackass.
Why would you? They're paid for...
Only if you go through the government-approved clinics and hospitals.
Based on your posts here, civil rights and liberty - when taken to extreme - result in obviously untenable positions.
Explain how. I won't hold my breath, because I am quite certain you can't, but I offer you the opportunity to explain it.
However, you're the stereotypical (atypical Republican?/ typical Libertarian) who constantly needs to prove how smart you are.
You're a typical smug person who feels "above it all" who resorts to mere ad hominem when he hasn't any actual arguments.
Again with the arrogance.
I know! But you could always choose to NOT be arrogant. Try it!
They are known to collude
So make (or enforce) laws against collusion, and stop whining about something that is NOT anti-competitive.
Look, I sank your argument that it is anti-competitive by pointing out the fact that you're misusing the term. If you have a counterargument, provide it. You don't provide any arguments; instead, you just attack me. Pathetic, man. But typical.
OECD data that shows countries with universal healthcare spend less and have better outcomes in quite a few important metrics.
First, that's misleading. The costs are high because so many of us get better care. The outcomes are brought down by the people who don't spend much and get worse care.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but libertarians live in a fantasy land. They talk theory, when hard data has been available for years.
Wow. Its bad enough your misread the data for what you think it says, but now you're saying that the U.S. health care system represents the libertarian ideal?! Wow. A system where HMOs are heavily subsidized, where insurance companies are heavily regulated ... I mean, come on. You're just being silly now.
If you can pay for better healthcare, it doesn't take long for all the best doctors to move out of the public system and into the private one. That hurts everyone else.
Except there's no evidence of that.
I think you just have a misunderstanding of how the Canadian Health Care system works.
Nah. You just read "private insurance" and assumed I was referring to "supplemental insurance." In the U.S., supplemental is rare, and when we say "private insurance" most of us mean the primary care insurance.
I follow a bit of American news and have seen how they compare "Obama care" to the Canadian system and how it's going to bankrupt the country.
Nah, "ObamaCare" is almost nothing like the Canadian system. In terms of the potential for bankrupting us, "ObamaCare" is much worse than Canada's system, specifically because everything is still private, but government's going to be paying for it for many, many people.
Everyone, including the bums on the street, are covered for most things, which is pretty great if you ever end up going through a rough period (I.E. and economic depression) and lose your job for whatever reason.
So housing should be covered by government, and no one should be allowed to buy home insurance on any houses that they buy for themselves. :-)
We do have the option to get additional insurance, which most working class get through employers. There is no need for insurance companies to try and "compete" with the government system.
There's a growing number of private clinics that disagree with you.
I would say if it was allowed that would mean the government would have to give everyone who could get full private coverage the option to opt-out of the government plan
That would be a nice thing. Some countries allow that, some do not.
Anyone with a decent job would most likely do that, which wouldn't leave a large enough base to cover all the other people that for whatever reason don't have jobs.
Irrelevant, really. You do not have a real insurance system in Canada: it's just an entitlement at this point. Everyone who can, pays taxes, and everyone gets the services. If not enough people are in the system to pay for the people left in it, the government will simply raise taxes.
I and others have also mentioned it before, but another issue would be having insurance companies lobbying the government' to have public coverage cut down to nothing so they could rake in more money from anyone with two cents to rub together.
Then get rid of representative democracy, or seriously reform lobbying. Saying "we won't give you liberty because we don't want to have to deal with lobbyists" is ... well, pretty damned evil, I think.
I do find the "I look out for number 1" attitude very common.
The problem is that our laws say that THE reason government exists is to secure INDIVIDUAL liberty. That is in the founding document of the United States, and it's the first part of my state's Constitution. It's not so much "I am looking out for number one" as it is "government's first responsibility is to protect my rights, and it's not doing it."
The media in the states plays off that to make people think that by pooling money to help others you'll be the only one working while the rest of society just leaches off you.
First of all, there's a lot of truth to that: more than half of the people in the country will qualify for free health insurance, by their income level, if I remember the numbers correctly (although if they are working, their companies will be forced to provide it). Already, half the country does not pay federal income tax, so it's not like this is an imagined thing.
Second, the part you kinda gloss over is "pooling money to help others." You make it sound like a charity. But there's no such thing as forced charity. Charity is always optional, never forced. It's FORCING people that is the problem.
It's not "looking out for number 1" to say "don't force me to help others."
Government supply's our basic insurance... Why would we need anything besides supplemental?
Because you want care at a non-government-approved clinic.
In some respects I'm glad private insurance is illegal. The last thing we need is a bunch of private insurance companies lobbying the government ...
Yes, and in that same respect, you could be "glad" for a dictatorship. No lobbyists! But I'm glad neither the U.S. nor Canada has one, aren't you?
why would a doctor or nurse work for the public system, for what they would consider peanuts, when they could be working for the private system hacking peoples limbs off for payment?
You could make that same argument for privatizing EVERY industry. It's not a good one.
I think you need to take a minute to think this over.
I think you do. :-)
If I buy a subsidized phone from a carrier i have to sign a contract for x amount of months. After 6 of these months the phone is unlocked, how in your infanite wisdom do I not pay the cancellation fee?
Irrelevant. The cancellation fee will now, simply, be HIGHER. Before, the service provider says, "OK, sure, cancel, but you pay us, and your phone is STILL locked." (Unless you're one of the very few who unlocks it youself.) Now, they say, "OK, sure, cancel, but you pay us ... and since your phone is now going to be unlocked, you're going to pay us even more than you would have."
Think about it: if there was no financial interest in keeping the phone locked, there'd be no law necessary. You could just ask them to unlock it after you've paid the cancellation fee, and maybe they would do it for a service fee. They don't, because they have a financial interest in keeping it locked. So why would you think they would not increase prices -- including the cancellation fee -- if they are forced to NOT keep it locked?
Really? not hurting the rest of us?
Absolutely true.
so you're saying that me not being able to see a doctor to get the cancer in my lung checked out for years because bill gates has bought all the doctors that I can go see to take care of himself somehow doesn't cause harm to me? (completely hypothetical here. but honestly, the tiered system DOES prevent people from being able to attend a doctor when thy need one.)
I'd like to see your evidence that any such preventions exist in a "tiered" system.
Not anti-competitive, no. Calling this anti-competitive is nonsense. It IS competition. "Anti-competitive" has a specific meaning, and it is not about engaging in competition and trying to gain a competitive advantage, but about trying to eliminate competition. That's obviously not happening here.
How so nonsense? Aside from claiming wildly, you're not applying much logic to the debate.
Um. I clearly described it. You didn't explain (at all) how it is "anti-competitive," so you didn't give me much to work with. So I simply noted the fact that it doesn't meet the definition of "anti-competitive," which is a pretty good argument on my part.
Locking a phone is specifically so customers cannot take that hardware they've purchased and use it on competiting carriers.
Yes: a phone subsidized by the carrier it is locked to. This is competition, not anti-competition. Every service provider can do this, so it does not prevent or reduce competition, unless one provider already has a massive advantage over its competitors, such that locking really does have the effect of reducing competition. But -- and I don't know about the Canada, but in the U.S. -- there's no evidence locking reduces competition: all the providers do quite well, even with their competitors locking their phones.
You are engaging in the equivocation fallacy: saying that because something in a micro sense reduces competition ("I can't use this phone with any other provider") that it is therefore anti-competitive, which is a macro claim ("competition, on a significant scale, between the various competitors is being reduced or prevented").
I think you're so blinded by your ideals
I think you're blinded by your ignorance about econommics.
your not Canadian are you? If you are, please leave, otherwise I may be inclined to infringe on your rights some more and punch you in the face.
Typical liberal. You simply do not believe in civil rights or liberty, by your own admission. You only believe in what you think people should have.
Firstly, when anyone says 'Healthcare in Canada' they are probably wrong.
OK. But I am not wrong.
Private insurance is legal in Canada.
I was not referring to supplemental insurance, but insurance for the "covered services" the government pays for. It's illegal. You can, for example, go into a private Canadian clinic and get services the government would otherwise pay for, but you cannot use private insurance to pay for those services.
There are many places that will provide private care for a fee.
Exactly: but you cannot pay for some of those services with private insurance.
I was referring to buying insurance that replaces the government insurance. It's prohibited.
You also can't print your own Driver's License that replaces one issued by the government, or choose to pay taxes to your brother-in-law' private taxation bureau instead of to Revenue Canada. Why is this surprising?
I didn't imply it was surprising. I just said it was true. Why is my statement of truth "surprising" to you? ;-)
All the hospitals, clinics, and labs are free, the drugs are subsidized
Not true. There are private clinics in Canada. But you must pay for them out of pocket, not with private insurance (where those services are covered by Canada's public system).
Health care is a right up here
No, it's not: it's an entitlement. There's a difference. A right cannot be something someone else is obligated to give to you. A right is something you can get for yourself. Saying "health care is a right" renders the word "right" virtually meaningless. It's like saying that I can force someone else to speak on my behalf, because I have a right to free speech. It's nonsense.
Most of us realize
You're using the wrong word. s/realize/believe, without being able to demonstrate/g
That's what happens when ideals are extremes.
Nonsense. We have extreme "free speech" and "representative democracy" and "anti-slavery" and all sorts of extremes in this country.
One person's freedom and liberty often infringes on another's.
That's demonstrably not the case here: no one's liberty is being infringed upon by locked phones, or lack of universal health care. You would have to bend "freedom and liberty" to mean something they literally cannot mean. But forcing me to pay for universal health care, or forcing me to buy or sell unlocked phones, clearly does infringe on my freedom and liberty.
This is about phones that are bought and paid for, either via contract or outright.
Yes. You buy a locked phone from a provider, and because it is locked, the company can make more money from it. So by forcing them to unlock it, they will get less money from it, and won't be inclined to offer as much of a discount for it (not to mention the increased labor costs in unlocking phones for people that must be recouped with higher costs).
You're actually arguing for free market principles
I am always arguing for free market principles.
in favour of an anti-competitive practice?
Not anti-competitive, no. Calling this anti-competitive is nonsense. It IS competition. "Anti-competitive" has a specific meaning, and it is not about engaging in competition and trying to gain a competitive advantage, but about trying to eliminate competition. That's obviously not happening here.
You actually believe that this particular behaviour reduces prices to the consumer?
I didn't say that. I said that forcibly removing this free choice will result in increased prices.
Right, and if you even bothered to read the summary then you'd know that they don't have to unlock the phone until AFTER your contract is over, or after 6 months if you've paid full price for it anyway. There's no extra money to be made here.
You're not thinking.
If there's no money to be made there, then why wouldn't they just unlock it when the contract is over? Why need a law?
Think on.
Ahhh yes, the famed quote... was this the Cato Institute or PRI, I can't recall?
In either event, it's complete BS: http://www.chsrf.ca/mythbusters/html/myth18_e.php
False. I was not referring to private supplemental insurance, but private primary insurance, which is illegal in Canada.
you talk about cell phone prices, claiming they're higher because they're lower.
No, I do not. Try again?