Problem is these days we got stuff like postmodernism, which assume that our interpretation is 100% "more or less" and 0% "real world".
It's beyond ridiculous how easy it is to disprove postmodernism, and yet everyone seems to buy into it. These days actual policies are defended using postmodernism.
Not necessarily. Lots of things have happened to socialist revolutions. Stalin, Kim Jong Il, Mao, and Hitler are a few examples, but there are lots. What has never resulted though, is a stable, just society.
Or even an existant, lasting society, for that matter. One that's even vaguely like the socialist ideal... never happened.
Ironically capitalist revolutions, which have also happened did, in general (though not always) bring that society a lot closer to the socialist ideal.
I don't mean to imply that those capitalist society had everlasting life either.
I, on the other hand, think that there are a few other things that the government ought to take care of too.
No you don't. You realize that your proposals are outside the realm of possibility. They cannot happen, and they won't happen. You are however stealing other's money, so you don't care whether you or I can pay for it. After all, you can always steal more, now can't you.
Of course if the law can do that, then how could nazi germany ever fail ? How could the Soviet union ever fail ? Both put national health care and the state's existence in law. Both failed.
But we finally get to the point : you're going to steal, and you think you have the power to do so despite my objections. You do not care about my reasons, and you do not intend to live together and/or to compromise, you are going to take away dozens of my freedoms in pursuit of your fantasy, "and I can do nothing about it", is the main justification.
You are a "liberal", aren't you. The word being necessary because in reality you are the very opposite : a totalitarian thief, who steals, because he can.
You're a moral abomination, and lying about it. There is nothing liberal about your policies, they massively reduce freedom. They are theft, plain and simple. And they WILL fail, no matter how many congresscritters or even how many Americans stand behind them. Like changing the laws of physics your policies won't work no matter how many people try to do so.
But arguments like that don't matter. After all, you don't have to be realistic : you're FORCING others to do this, you're not attempting to do it yourself, so you don't have to be realistic. You can always whip harder, now can't you ? The soviets and nazis and Chavez and Kim Jong Il, of course, use exactly the same argument. In fact you have admitted that attempting to do it yourself will not work, no matter how many Americans cooperate. So instead you attempt to steal using physical force and theft, to get your fantasy anyway.
You still have not explained how that could possibly work, except by throwing absurdities around, and sorry, you cannot "prove" health care can work by pointing out that US mail still exists. That's beyond dumb. You have not answered my questions about the group of dependants, about the demand, nor about the fact that the groups not covered will be exactly the same groups as now. Those arguments do not matter, because you are only after power, nothing else. You're a totalitarian, and your reason for pushing idiotic policy is because you can.
You're a thief, plain and simple. Like other thieves who steal for their fantasies, or drugs, you need to hear you're morally good, even while stealing, forcing, and using violence against unwilling victims. You will get no such satisfaction from me. And your idiotic policy will not work, not even with the force of law behind it.
"This is because a private company needs to make PROFIT. A government entity need only break even"
Strange... a government entity only needs to generate political goodwill. Generally this is done by bribes, comfy jobs, illusions and worse. Just look at Obama's career and tell me where the break even is ? The bribes, comfy jobs for cronies and illusions are trivial for all to find.
Nor does a private entity need to aim for profit. Especially in the health care sector there are thousands of entities that do not aim for profit, churches and aid organisations being the most obvious examples, but there are many others, including health care insurers.
So both parts of your reason are utterly wrong. The government does not run on "break even", it hasn't done so in a long time. You might want to look up the word "deficit".
The reason the US Mail has all those very nice properties you cite is that it's a monopoly, and without subsidy it would run a deficit DESPITE BEING A MONOPOLY. It's like a microsoft, but instead of making billions it's losing billions.
Furthermore, the US Mail is not just a monopoly but has many other preferential legal treatment rules in force protecting it.
It is a horrible company that may have been a necessity for creating the (again government subsidised) legal system, but should have been obliterated and privatised long ago.
None of this explains why you want other people's money backing your fantasy. That's because you're trying the 2 year old's tactic : deflect attiontion to idiotic details.
According to you -> monopolies stimulate competition -> public companies are, in general, profitable -> private enterprise doesn't work, example : the postal system... -> evolution does not state populations will grow when not under stress, after all such a thing would stand in the way of socialist utopia, therefore it cannot be. Such a thing would mean socialist utopia's are doomed to result in the deaths of massive numbers of humans... which is, obviously, exactly what happened. -> history, especially the last hundred yearrs, has seen the success and lasting glory of public-sector-first governments, presumably this references soviets, nazis, north korea,... who are the smashing success we all know them to be
And all this we are to accept as truth, just so you'd feel justified in stealing. Just so you'd be able to buy your fantasies using other people's money. Just so you'd feel good about stealing.
By the way, I still want to buy my brother that car using your money. It's a good deed, nay, a moral obligation. Obviously, therefore, I'll be using your money. Fork it over. After all doing so isn't theft... just look at the US postal service !
Oh the old "communism is perfect, it's just never been tried correctly argument". You'd think people would stop parotting themselves after being proven wrong sometimes.
But never underestimate human stupidity. What better definition of stupidity exists than "if something fails, try it again expecting different results" ?
yes socialism was the ideal. Stalinism, nazism, north korea, venezuela,... are the real world results.
This is ludicrous. Allow me to just point out the obvious fallacies : (and this are merely the very blatantly obvious ones)
But I think [a health care reform package] would be better with a public option to help keep costs down for members of private plans. Since, in many markets, there is only one health insurance provider, we need to do something to break up the monopolies and bring competition back to the market to keep prices down. (though I might be open to other ways of breaking up the monopolies as well)
"A public option will be cheaper"... that's not true, for if such a thing existed the private market would have done it already. It hasn't.
Suppose this existed, this magical method, don't you think a private company would copy it and then beat the public plan ? Don't you think someone would have picked up the idea... you know... 50 years ago... and created such a company ?
Why can't you just tell the public sector this magical secret you hold for making health care cheaper ? Are you one of those "the private sector is just one big conspiracy by the Joooos" guys ?
And obviously this is an ABSURD "explanation" for wanting this to be public. Absurdities don't count. It flies in the face of common sense, and obviously of economic theory, and history.
You just want the "public" "option" because you know you'll have to steal money to make it run. You have your fantasy and you know it won't work, so you want to use other people's money. People who, needless to say, aren't prepared to fund your insanity except under military threat.
You're going to increase competition and keep prices down by creating a legally advantaged entity and have it compete in the market with money that doesn't come from it's customer.
Nobody, and I mean nobody, needs an explanation why such an act will not create competition.
The obvious problems with this statement have been brought up more than enough, and it is a ludicrous idea that you actually believe this statement.
Give me the password to your bank account. I will create a company with it that will do *so* much better than anything you could do yourself. THAT's what you're asking of me, after all. If you can't trust me with your money, how could you expect the reverse ? How could you expect all of America to do so ? Of course, thieves like you are not interested in equitability, just in the next fantasy around the corner. And of course, you'll refuse this, as thieves are known to be obsessive about securing their own money. It's natural I suppose, and, big surprise, you show the same reaction. You're a thief, plain and simple.
A thief claiming I should be glad to let you take things I own, and then proclaims his own moral heroism for stealing.
Your post is as pitiful a defense of stealing as your past posts. You have still not given one iota of explanation why your cheap, low quality insurance package has to be public. Of course we both know that is because you only intend to use that as a way to steal other people's money, as any thief does.
The idiocy is that you're describing thievery as a moral necessity.
1. "lower quality" insurance. Which is the same as bad, as far as medical insurance is concerned. Cheap, low quality medical insurance, which still excludes millions of Americans, and further millions of people who live in America. 2. don't you think "underwriting research" is... you know... not a cost but a profit center ?
The problem I keep having with your posts is that the arguments you make are so weak someone who's ever heard the basics of economics immediately sees holes you can float the USS enterprise through comfortably.
Your both "problems" are excuses. You merely want to spend my money on your fantasies. I don't steal your money to visit hookers, can you please stop doing the same thing ?
The idiocy is that you're describing thievery as a moral necessity. Would you understand if I stole your car to drive an orphan to a dental exam, paid by your money of course, which I stole from your house while threatening your wife and kids ? You'd call me a thief.
No, that's just false. Ghost pain really is pain! This is a fundamental philosophical point about perception. The illusion of pain hurts just as much. In every way that matters, it's pain, from prompt neural activity to long term psychological consequences. The fact the limb that is in pain is no longer actually there is wholly unrelated.
Funny, the only way your sentence makes any sense whatsoever is if you assume "real world = illusion" AND "illusion = real world".
Science means creating hypotheses and then checking them. So let's check your assumption : I am currently imagining I have 1 trillion dollars next to my, you know, Obama's weekend spending money.
A very wise man must once have said (in other words I'm just making this up) : "Never underestimate the stupidity of humans". Let's not forget there are suicide-cults, people who enjoy watching "neighbors" AND well... there are religions, even horrible ones. I mean religions by itself are not an especially good sign of intelligent life, but killing little girls and/or homosexuals because in some desert ages ago some massacring thief told some people to do so... I mean... we humans defineatly are pretty fucking stupid.
Of course your entire sentence means nothing. "Your own definition of free will"... is never elucidated. Nevertheless this non-existent definition is supposed to prove all sorts of things. That's not how it works. First you make a definition of something, then you combine that with axioms and other definitions and then you get an exact conclusion. Everything else is just random babblings of philosophers.
And this is my thoughts about philosophy. In history, you always had empiricists, and you had philosophers (or proto-philosophers, called theologians, or proto-theologians like the village priest). They generally argue in opposite directions. Guess who always turned out to be right ?
Hmmm game of life "code". That must be about as clear as brainfuck or befunge code.
This also throws the whole "determinism means all your actions are fixed" idiocy where it belongs, in the loony bin. It may be technically correct that strictly speaking your free will does not choose totally random, and it does not choose "pure" unpredictable things...
BUT it is nevertheless impossible to predict, in any reasonable timeframe and with any accuracy what a given human will decide in a specific situation. Given, of course that humans can implement turing machines, which seems to me a pretty well established fact.
Which is both by itself a choice, and the denial of intention. It's a psychological tool, not a valid moral position. It will have the same effect of a choice. It is, in other words, merely a lie. Just like "neutrality" in a war does not exist. It is merely a device people use to feel good about their choices, usually when those choices are more than just a bit self-serving and egoist.
Neutrality is a choice, despite the name "not choosing", and just like any other choice it has repercussions in the real world. It advantages some parties, and sabotages others. Think about it, neutrality or "not making a choice" favors the agressor in a war, for example. It favors the status-quo in government, or in a social situation. It favors... and so on, and so forth.
That's so common amongst liberals. They are supposedly pro-freedom. But if anyone were to dislodge Chavez, oh dear God, you'd hear the screams 2 states away from the DNC.
In reality, at the very least the actions of liberals are not pro-freedom. Then again the "nazi"'s full name ends with "party of the people", as did the full name of the soviet party.
So now you're going to save money by having a bad insurance. One that will save money, by, amonst others, sabotaging medicine by "saving" on research ?
Why do we need a bad public option that won't cover the 2 largest groups of people that go uncovered today ? (meaning illegal aliens and those that just don't get insurance for whatever reasons)
This policy won't change a thing, will not cover the uncovered, BUT it will cost massive amounts of taxpayer money if it fails to live up to your fantasies.
Given that there are entirely new viruses every year, you know what stopping research should be called ? "Mass suicide".
Current predictions are that about 5-10 years without a flu vaccin and we'll see a repeat of that little event of 1918.
If you're in favor of other ways of increasing competition, why not lobby for dropping the state border thing for insurers ? That would do a lot more than your other options, especially for less populated states this could make a huge difference. Of course your party will fight that tooth and nail, due to massive contributions of the beneficiaries of said legislation.
This is not to mention that it requires a VERY revisionist reading of history to claim that either of these men were liberals. I believe that "fascist" is the more orthodox term.
Oh, so NOW we're attempting to throw the meaning of the word "liberal" in MY face ? You, the "liberal", who dislikes choice so much you can't tolerate people having another option than asking the state for treatment. You who push a proposal were terms like "single payer" run rampant ?
Are you claiming you're a liberal ? You scolded me for wanting the option NOT to pay for your plan. You scolded me, at first, for wanting the option NOT to subscribe to your plan. You were scolding people for wanting a priest's (or buddhist faith healer) services in healing. You keep scolding me for having faith in actual science, like economics or evolution.
Also, there is not a single socialist and pro-liberty government in the world. Not historically either. Of course, I'm sure YOU are entirely different.
Yes these men weren't liberals. Neither are you. You're a thief, like the communists and nazis were before you. And for the exact same reasons (supposed "moral necessity" which turned out to be nothing more than a desire for power at any cost, for them including the cost of exterminating millions of people. Well, actually neither party of socialists considered it much of a cost).
By that standard the Soviets weren't socialists either. Neither were the Bolsjeviks, nor was Mao, nor Chavez or Kim Jong Il.
Hitler's stated purpose was to improve the lives of the German laborer, who was being ruthlessly exploited by capitalists.
Of course, all were doing this thing called "socialist revolution" and all were implementing central control of the economy. There were doing it in the name of improving "society's worker's" lives (well the "worthy ones" at least, after all they mostly destroyed the lives of "capitalists", "workers", or Jews for that matter. Both Soviets and Nazi's comitted a holocaust against Jews and actually the Soviets killed more of them).
That is 20th century socialism. That is why lefties need their own version of the truth.
You see a certain... extreme left... newspaper berates European countries for not being as Nazi as Obama (I'm not kidding, read the article)
More than any other country, Germany â" Nazi Germany â" then set out on a serious stimulus program. The government built up the military, expanded the autobahn, put up stadiums for the 1936 Berlin Olympics and built monuments to the Nazi Party across Munich and Berlin.
The economic benefits of this vast works program never flowed to most workers, because fascism doesnâ(TM)t look kindly on collective bargaining. But Germany did escape the Great Depression faster than other countries. Corporate profits boomed, and unemployment sank (and not because of slave labor, which didnâ(TM)t become widespread until later). Harold James, an economic historian, says that the young liberal economists studying under John Maynard Keynes in the 1930s began to debate whether Hitler had solved unemployment.
(note that all left-wing governments are diametrically opposed to independant unions, you see this in the Soviet union, nazi germany, and in today's Venezuela)
Since when is any public company cheaper than a private version of the same company ? That contradicts economics, and you admit as much, several times. Not that you've ever let that stop you before. Please explain why economic theory is wrong here.
The monopolies only exist because the lefty democrats voted in "regulations" prohibiting competition over state lines.
Obviously, you're the typical lefty, the solution to too much regulation prohibiting competition is... (tadaaa) MORE regulation. This is supposed to be a "liberal" position, despite obviously reducing freedom for everyone involved.
So what do you have to say about the public-private difference ? You admit that a private option would work IF there are no cost overruns, and yet you STILL DEMAND a public option (not request, not think about, not "I'd be happy with a private option too", you DEMAND a public option).
There is only one explanation : you know there'll be massive cost overruns and you don't care, after all you're spending (stealing) other people's money. You're stealing, so why would you care about your spending habits ?
You know perfectly well what has happened historically when those cost overruns happened, and you know perfectly well that it was lefties that started those genocides in the 20th century. But you don't care. After all you're soooooo much better intentioned than those russians and germans so the mighty atheismo will bend the laws of nature to your fantasy.
How exactly does one promote "capitalism" as in the free and unfettered enterprise of individuals... while eliminating individualism. That's a contradiction. How does the state "get out of the way" AND destroy personal liberty ?
And how come all examples of what you say are all left-wing. The ONLY example of a truly oppressive "right-wing" government is... (<tadaa>) the national socialist party of Germany.
Oh wait I'm probably doing this wrong. Were they in favor of private enterprise ? Well... no. Were they in favor of individualism ? Well of course not. Were they for or against massive government interference in the market ? Well they were FOR massive government interference. Say... what exactly makes them right wing ? Well just about the only thing is the fact that they opposed the "true" left wing... meaning bolsjevism.
So what makes the nazi party right-wing is the fact that they were slightly more center than Stalin (or Chavez), you know in the way that Osama bin laden is more tolerant of non-muslims than the taliban.
This is probably why all lefties are postmodernist. After all, if they are not entitled to "their" version of the truth, they must be very very bad people indeed.
Perhaps people who like the specs might consider the openpandora. It's the same hardware, and has a hardware keyboard, but it has no 3G connectivity. It's also a machine focused on emulating old games, and has pretty amazing emulators for that, including a type of joystick.
If that is what you require, though, it supports 3G usb sticks perfectly well. I'd go with a usb stick personally. Why ? It's upgradeable.
Again you evade the questions. Not a single answer. You must work in politics. So many words. No content whatsoever. Especially the last question. I asked a question that clearly looked at COST of treatments, and you answer without mentioning ANY cost.
We have a *lot* of treatments that are effective, as long as they are continuously applied, and extremely expensive. That, of course was the point of the question. And obviously you evaded it.
ANSWER THE SPECIFIC QUESTION :
Please, also not a few reasonable cases that you will deny treatment... say a baby born with leukemia, will you cover her ? Without treatment, she dies in 2 months tops. With treatment, she dies in 5 years, and this costs several million dollars. Where do you draw the line and based on what principles ?
Let me put the question differently : HOW WILL YOU CONTROL COSTS ?
This is another false choice. It will be a public plan, without massive cost overruns. You have done nothing to show that this is impossible.
If you honestly believe this, then why are you not advocating a private plan ? A private plan would GUARANTEE no cost overruns.
Cost overruns in national health care, are obviously the real reasons for both the Nazi holocaust (the first people attacked were the long-term ill people and the immediate effect of the holocaust was a 41% drop in health care expenditure. Are you seriously claiming that's a coincidence).
AND it's the cause of the equivalent of the holocaust in Russia.
Please explain what you will do if there are massive cost overruns (like in medicare and medicaid).
And please, I re-iterate the most important part of my question : please explain why you would you oppose that any plan that does not expect massive cost overruns to be private ? Of course, there is only one reason : you DO expect massive cost overruns.
Unless you give an answer, I'm obviously going to assume you're lying. I don't think that's a dishonest thing to do.
And so far my answer remains : you're stealing money to pay for your fantasies. Please stop the innocence act, because you're not innocent. You're a thief. Please pay your fantasies with YOUR OWN money.
Please keep in mind that China has a billion people living within it's borders, Iran is -barely- the size of a single state in terms of people.
It's normal that China has more executions in absolute numbers. Relatively speaking :
China : 1,718 executions / 1,338,612,968 people = 1 person executed per 780,000 people per year Iran : 348 executions / 66,429,284 people = 1 person executed per 190,000 people per year (at least 30 were executed for the crime of being gay, another 15 at least were girls below the age of 14 according to amnesty international. You'd wonder why girls are so much more deserving of the death penalty, but they're muslims, apparently that's normal*) (note that since the election this has risen to 115 executions / 66,429,284 * (365/50) = 1 execution per 80,000 people, nearly all of them for political opposition)
(for comparison : the US for 2008 : 37 executions / 307,212,123 people = 1 execution per 8 million people, or 1/10th of china's proportion, or less than 1/100th the amount of people Iran executes. Not a single woman was executed, nor any minors. Nobody was executed for political opinions, religious opinions, or sexual orientation).
* you may disagree with the thesis that islam orders the killing of minors. But it is not for us to assign motives to Iranian acts, it's for Iranians to do so. Why were these people executed ? For "violating" islam ("sharia" translates to "the path of the righteous", and is not a law as we know it). How were these minor girls executed ? By stoning, hanging and throwing them off buildings, exactly as islam dictates (there is no section of islam that is called sharia, just like jewish law is nowhere to be found in the torah (by contrast you will find canon law in the bible*), what muslims claim you violate when you "violate sharia" is not a penal code, but a story)
* of course that's one of the very last parts that were added to the bible, so you could have a serious discussion about it... but at least it's in there
And then when there are organ shortages, it "just so happens" that a lot more people get convicted to the death penalty. People who just happen to have rare bloodtypes stand a lot bigger chances of getting convicted to death... that sort of thing.
You can't risk this. It'd be an extremely dangerous conflict of intrest.
You've answered exactly 1 question : that you intend to steal resources to execute your fantasies, and that you don't care about the amount you steal, ignoring the specifically mentioned case that all you can steal from ALL americans is not enough.
All other questions you've evaded. Eloquently, but merely evaded.
Price will not be $0! You will have to pay premiums to buy into the public plan, just like any other plan.
By your way of thinking this means that -at least some- people will be "priced out of the plan", and therefore the plan does not match your "moral demands" of it.
1. people can't pay for it (for various reasons : given that nearly 50% of "uncovered americans" are illegal aliens... this plan will not help them obviously) 2. people don't want to pay for it (ever talked to a 20-year old just-started-working guy about health insurance, or generally at any time before their first child...)
The whole point of this exercise was to cover both groups. Obviously the plan you propose does not do any such thing. Therefore your plan is useless ? Unless of course you explain how both groups will be covered.
And you keep claiming that the plan will have "almost" zero cost to the government. Meaning there can't be all that many persons covered "for free". Therefore you're gonna have to deny a lot of people.
You didn't ask me who will chose what is covered.
I did, and your answer boils down to "someone", which is exactly the answer you claim you didn't give. By the way your claim is wrong. There actually are several health insurance companies here that will cover expenses to have a priest (or other spiritual healing worker) flown over (you can name one at the time of signing the policy, and there's a procedure for changing that name) if your disease could result in death. Buddhism was not specifically mentioned, but I doubt it's a problem. And if you want to insure yourself for a full treatment with them, I'm sure you can go and talk to them.
So please ANSWER THE QUESTIONS. You're proving particularly obnoxious, constantly making contradictory claims and exposing beyond merely surreal predictions as excuses for stealing other people's money for your own ends.
1) is the coverage 0$ or will the poor be denied (for some level of poor). Also, note that if the price is different from that EXACT PRICE (0$) illegal aliens will not be covered, for obvious reasons (obviously they don't want to enter into a contract with the government they're trying to avoid, that's a few dozen million people not covered at all right there) (there is no third option) 2) do you deny people for not paying enough OR are you creating a new group of government dependants that you agree will grow until all money is consumed. (there is no third option) 3) does your "nice" plan intend to have massive cost overruns (= "public" plan) OR is it a private plan (there is no third option) 4) WHO EXACTLY decides what is covered, and what recourse do I have if I don't agree ? (and any public plan is paid by taxes, obviously, so that means you cannot leave it, by definition, since it is NOT possible to NOT pay to a public company, by definition) Please, also not a few reasonable cases that you will deny treatment... say a baby born with leukemia, will you cover her ? Note that without treatment she dies in 2 months (tops). With treatment, she dies in 5 years, and this costs several million dollars. Where do you draw the line and based on what principles ?
Can you now please write a response comprising 4 paragraphs, each one responding to a single question. Please start each paragraph with the option you choose, and feel free to commit any number of further sentences to the reasons why.
I'd like to talk to you like a reasonable way, but you simply don't respond in a realistic way. Your answers can only make
*sigh* so who, exactly *DOES* decide what gets covered ? You keep alluding that the impossible will happen, and every time again you deny it.
WHAT is covered ? WHAT is not covered ? What guarantee do I have that I get to have a private plan WITHOUT paying a single dime to another (public) plan, which is not rendering me ANY services whatsoever ?
I believe there is no such guarantee, and you will steal my money ("tax" it) to pay for people who won't take care of themselves in any way, and obviously pay for the hundreds of thousands of new bureaucrats.
In order to alleviate this fear, I demand that your "public option" is incorporated, and, obviously is allowed to go broke like any other company if is doesn't perform and is NOT replaced for at least several years if it does, that the people working for it (both upper and lower level) do NOT immediately get transferred to whatever new entity gets created in it's place, but lose their jobs and their investments in the case of bankruptcy like the rest of us.
As I said, the only reason you demand a public option is that you have *ZERO* faith in the feasability of this plan. Yet you wish to steal other people's money in a foolish attempt to pay for your fantasies.
Why can't you just go to a hooker with your own money ? That'll accomplish better fantasies and not bankrupt Americans.
And as you so conveniently have forgotten, you have failed to answer all of my questions : 1) you're creating a group of people dependant on direct payouts from the government. Evolution dictates that this group will grow until the government cannot pay for it anymore (and this has actually happened in both nazi germany and soviet russia and is happening all over europe). Please explain why this will not happen to this plan, or else explain what gives you the power to suspend evolution ? 2) at price = $0, the demand will be infinite (growing towards unlimited with a rate at least the population growth that currently stands at a little over 1% per year, but generally bigger than that due to, oh, a crisis, new technology,...). You state that you're going to prevent this... how ? WHO are you going to deny healthcare to ? Or WHERE are you going to find unlimited resources ? (if you say "tax", or you imply that, you might as well shut up in shame) 3) WHO decides what is covered and what is not covered ? WHAT will be covered at the start and what will not ?
And let's not forget your current answers do less than inspire confidence : to 1) you answer "we're not slaves to evolution", and just to remind you you're not God, this is not your decision, and no parliament on earth has that power. to 2) you actions speak volumes : you FIGHT the suggestion of limiting the maximum cost of the plan (you fight to make it public), so it can be paid with stolen resources, which you, like any good communist, assume implicitly to be infinite (which did however, always turn out to be finite, and furthermore a hell of a lot less than initially expected) to 3) you're answer is "not CHORE"... great answer man. Great answer. If I ask you who designed the next Toyota model, is your answer "not Tom Cruise" ? Real informative.
Please, for once, give a single decent response. Liberals never answer any of the inconvenient questions, of course, but I always assume that's because they don't have any answers, only fantasies. You have done little except confirm this, and I will admit readily that you're one of the more rational amongst them (ie. you're not the kind of liberal you see on tv, and I'm guessing you're male, and over 30).
If you have so much faith in your "basically paid by premiums" then why does it have to be the government that implements said plan ? I would be perfectly prepared to let even the government do a *limited* donation of a few millions or even tens of millions yearly to such a company. But I cannot find peace with letting the government run such a company.
Your plan, as you describe it, would work perfectly well in the private sector, in competition with "profit maximizing" companies, IF you're not lying about that one crucial part.
Since you are indeed pushing government enforcement of the plan, I can only surmise that you do not, in fact, believe your plan can be funded by premiums.
Of course the actual bill does not have language on who will be denied treatment. It does, however, specify an organization to determine that : CHORE (Center for Health Outcome Research something something), which does indeed decide who gets denied coverage. Putting in the bill what will not be covered would be political suicide, as you know very well. Besides, Obama wants to decide who doesn't get covered himself, so he's asking for an executive branch to be put in charge of that.
The HR bill proposed also outlaws private health insurance, also in direct contradiction with your claims.
Of course that's the reality : either something is market based, in which case it's availability will be decided by supply and demand, or it's rationed. Your health care proposal is nothing more than rationing health care, for everyone. The first crisis of government will cut it's coverage in half, without *ANY* legal recourse by those paying for it, and probably without any possible escape from the plan.
You state several high-minded ideals in words, but again, your actions, your support for a plan that is close to the diametrical opposite of what your words say you support, speak volumes. This is very typical of liberals imho. Your words sound reasonable on the surface, but once you get the delusions out of them and compare words to actions... nothing's left.
Perhaps that's what they mean with the road to hell being paved with good intentions.
I have given you a fine argument as to why the free market is not, in fact, the best mechanism for distributing health care. It is because markets work by pricing some people out of them.
You keep talking about how unfair it is that some health care is denied. Tell me, will government deny health care ?
You must understand, even though you deny it, that taking care of people takes resources. It takes docters, it takes medicine, it takes (extremely expensive) research, it takes... and so on and so on.
Taking care of essentially unlimited people takes unlimited resources. But of course you don't mind that since you're going to steal those resources, you *think* that it's not going to be your money, incorrectly of course, but the delusional are happy (if liberals did want to use their own money they would have done it on the private market of course).
So tell me, who are you going to deny health care ? The criticism of Obama's plan is right (well the non-alarmist part), he advocates a plan that denies treatments to the elderly, on multiple levels. Both research to prolong life, and actual existing treatments will get axed.
In addition to that he will deny health care to extremely young infants. You see, here's a comment about what his health adviser published in the lancet:
Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, Obama's key advisor for health care reform, writes about rationing health care for older Americans that "allocation (of medical care) by age is not invidious discrimination." (The Lancet, January 2009) He calls this form of rationing, which is fundamental to Obamacare goals "the complete lives system." You see, at 65 or older, you've had more life years than a 25-year-old. As such, the latter can be more deserving of cost-efficient health care than older folks.
I don't fully understand how this way of reasoning applies to young infants, but apparently it's got something to do with protecting the state's investment in a person. In a newborn, there's no investment to protect, so no health care. Btw : this is MY OWN assessment after reading the lancet article. Perhaps I'm wrong about the investment thing (he does want to deny health care to newborns though).
So now we have, your policy : -> requires suspension of economics to keep operating in anything but the extremely short term -> requires that we are not "slaves" to human evolution (meaning that we find a way to prevent human evolution from occuring. Heh. Good luck with that) -> does *not* in fact, extend coverage to everyone, and does *not* provide each individual with whatever health care is best suited to his condition
Needless to say this policy will fail. But whether that's a certainty or not, answer me this question :
When this policy fails, and the state has to limit budgetary expenses, because it raised taxes to absurd levels (the nazi government started the holocaust when taxation level required for social programs reached 98%. Somehow I doubt that's a coincidence. And in the first year of the holocaust social expenditure actually dropped). What will you do ?
-> let the system collapse, meaning there's no more America, and no more health care. In the end this option will result in even more corpses than the next option -> deny health care to people, needless to say this will result in massive riots, and lots of death -> invade pakistan (Obama suggested this, so I include it here)
Needless to say your remarks on other countries' health care systems are uninformed. You would find, for example, that health care in the Netherlands is private.
Sweden's health care system is indeed collapsing. Furthermore more than 50% of Sweden's population is dependent (directly) on state support. It doesn't take a genius to deduce what's going to happen next.
I must say I know little about Switzerland's health care system but I'm quite sure (I've got family with a very, very sick kid living there) there is no national health care system.
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Problem is these days we got stuff like postmodernism, which assume that our interpretation is 100% "more or less" and 0% "real world".
It's beyond ridiculous how easy it is to disprove postmodernism, and yet everyone seems to buy into it. These days actual policies are defended using postmodernism.
Not necessarily. Lots of things have happened to socialist revolutions. Stalin, Kim Jong Il, Mao, and Hitler are a few examples, but there are lots. What has never resulted though, is a stable, just society.
Or even an existant, lasting society, for that matter. One that's even vaguely like the socialist ideal ... never happened.
Ironically capitalist revolutions, which have also happened did, in general (though not always) bring that society a lot closer to the socialist ideal.
I don't mean to imply that those capitalist society had everlasting life either.
I, on the other hand, think that there are a few other things that the government ought to take care of too.
No you don't. You realize that your proposals are outside the realm of possibility. They cannot happen, and they won't happen. You are however stealing other's money, so you don't care whether you or I can pay for it. After all, you can always steal more, now can't you.
Of course if the law can do that, then how could nazi germany ever fail ? How could the Soviet union ever fail ? Both put national health care and the state's existence in law. Both failed.
But we finally get to the point : you're going to steal, and you think you have the power to do so despite my objections. You do not care about my reasons, and you do not intend to live together and/or to compromise, you are going to take away dozens of my freedoms in pursuit of your fantasy, "and I can do nothing about it", is the main justification.
You are a "liberal", aren't you. The word being necessary because in reality you are the very opposite : a totalitarian thief, who steals, because he can.
You're a moral abomination, and lying about it. There is nothing liberal about your policies, they massively reduce freedom. They are theft, plain and simple. And they WILL fail, no matter how many congresscritters or even how many Americans stand behind them. Like changing the laws of physics your policies won't work no matter how many people try to do so.
But arguments like that don't matter. After all, you don't have to be realistic : you're FORCING others to do this, you're not attempting to do it yourself, so you don't have to be realistic. You can always whip harder, now can't you ? The soviets and nazis and Chavez and Kim Jong Il, of course, use exactly the same argument. In fact you have admitted that attempting to do it yourself will not work, no matter how many Americans cooperate. So instead you attempt to steal using physical force and theft, to get your fantasy anyway.
You still have not explained how that could possibly work, except by throwing absurdities around, and sorry, you cannot "prove" health care can work by pointing out that US mail still exists. That's beyond dumb. You have not answered my questions about the group of dependants, about the demand, nor about the fact that the groups not covered will be exactly the same groups as now. Those arguments do not matter, because you are only after power, nothing else. You're a totalitarian, and your reason for pushing idiotic policy is because you can.
You're a thief, plain and simple. Like other thieves who steal for their fantasies, or drugs, you need to hear you're morally good, even while stealing, forcing, and using violence against unwilling victims. You will get no such satisfaction from me. And your idiotic policy will not work, not even with the force of law behind it.
"This is because a private company needs to make PROFIT. A government entity need only break even"
Strange ... a government entity only needs to generate political goodwill. Generally this is done by bribes, comfy jobs, illusions and worse. Just look at Obama's career and tell me where the break even is ? The bribes, comfy jobs for cronies and illusions are trivial for all to find.
Nor does a private entity need to aim for profit. Especially in the health care sector there are thousands of entities that do not aim for profit, churches and aid organisations being the most obvious examples, but there are many others, including health care insurers.
So both parts of your reason are utterly wrong. The government does not run on "break even", it hasn't done so in a long time. You might want to look up the word "deficit".
The reason the US Mail has all those very nice properties you cite is that it's a monopoly, and without subsidy it would run a deficit DESPITE BEING A MONOPOLY. It's like a microsoft, but instead of making billions it's losing billions.
Furthermore, the US Mail is not just a monopoly but has many other preferential legal treatment rules in force protecting it.
It is a horrible company that may have been a necessity for creating the (again government subsidised) legal system, but should have been obliterated and privatised long ago.
None of this explains why you want other people's money backing your fantasy. That's because you're trying the 2 year old's tactic : deflect attiontion to idiotic details.
According to you ... ... which is, obviously, exactly what happened. ... who are the smashing success we all know them to be
-> monopolies stimulate competition
-> public companies are, in general, profitable
-> private enterprise doesn't work, example : the postal system
-> evolution does not state populations will grow when not under stress, after all such a thing would stand in the way of socialist utopia, therefore it cannot be. Such a thing would mean socialist utopia's are doomed to result in the deaths of massive numbers of humans
-> history, especially the last hundred yearrs, has seen the success and lasting glory of public-sector-first governments, presumably this references soviets, nazis, north korea,
And all this we are to accept as truth, just so you'd feel justified in stealing. Just so you'd be able to buy your fantasies using other people's money. Just so you'd feel good about stealing.
By the way, I still want to buy my brother that car using your money. It's a good deed, nay, a moral obligation. Obviously, therefore, I'll be using your money. Fork it over. After all doing so isn't theft ... just look at the US postal service !
Oh the old "communism is perfect, it's just never been tried correctly argument". You'd think people would stop parotting themselves after being proven wrong sometimes.
But never underestimate human stupidity. What better definition of stupidity exists than "if something fails, try it again expecting different results" ?
yes socialism was the ideal. Stalinism, nazism, north korea, venezuela, ... are the real world results.
This is ludicrous. Allow me to just point out the obvious fallacies : (and this are merely the very blatantly obvious ones)
But I think [a health care reform package] would be better with a public option to help keep costs down for members of private plans. Since, in many markets, there is only one health insurance provider, we need to do something to break up the monopolies and bring competition back to the market to keep prices down. (though I might be open to other ways of breaking up the monopolies as well)
"A public option will be cheaper" ... that's not true, for if such a thing existed the private market would have done it already. It hasn't.
Suppose this existed, this magical method, don't you think a private company would copy it and then beat the public plan ? Don't you think someone would have picked up the idea ... you know ... 50 years ago ... and created such a company ?
Why can't you just tell the public sector this magical secret you hold for making health care cheaper ? Are you one of those "the private sector is just one big conspiracy by the Joooos" guys ?
And obviously this is an ABSURD "explanation" for wanting this to be public. Absurdities don't count. It flies in the face of common sense, and obviously of economic theory, and history.
You just want the "public" "option" because you know you'll have to steal money to make it run. You have your fantasy and you know it won't work, so you want to use other people's money. People who, needless to say, aren't prepared to fund your insanity except under military threat.
You're going to increase competition and keep prices down by creating a legally advantaged entity and have it compete in the market with money that doesn't come from it's customer.
Nobody, and I mean nobody, needs an explanation why such an act will not create competition.
The obvious problems with this statement have been brought up more than enough, and it is a ludicrous idea that you actually believe this statement.
Give me the password to your bank account. I will create a company with it that will do *so* much better than anything you could do yourself. THAT's what you're asking of me, after all. If you can't trust me with your money, how could you expect the reverse ? How could you expect all of America to do so ? Of course, thieves like you are not interested in equitability, just in the next fantasy around the corner. And of course, you'll refuse this, as thieves are known to be obsessive about securing their own money. It's natural I suppose, and, big surprise, you show the same reaction. You're a thief, plain and simple.
A thief claiming I should be glad to let you take things I own, and then proclaims his own moral heroism for stealing.
Your post is as pitiful a defense of stealing as your past posts. You have still not given one iota of explanation why your cheap, low quality insurance package has to be public. Of course we both know that is because you only intend to use that as a way to steal other people's money, as any thief does.
The idiocy is that you're describing thievery as a moral necessity.
1. "lower quality" insurance. Which is the same as bad, as far as medical insurance is concerned. Cheap, low quality medical insurance, which still excludes millions of Americans, and further millions of people who live in America. ... you know ... not a cost but a profit center ?
2. don't you think "underwriting research" is
The problem I keep having with your posts is that the arguments you make are so weak someone who's ever heard the basics of economics immediately sees holes you can float the USS enterprise through comfortably.
Your both "problems" are excuses. You merely want to spend my money on your fantasies. I don't steal your money to visit hookers, can you please stop doing the same thing ?
The idiocy is that you're describing thievery as a moral necessity. Would you understand if I stole your car to drive an orphan to a dental exam, paid by your money of course, which I stole from your house while threatening your wife and kids ? You'd call me a thief.
I'm calling you a thief for the same thing.
No, that's just false. Ghost pain really is pain! This is a fundamental philosophical point about perception. The illusion of pain hurts just as much. In every way that matters, it's pain, from prompt neural activity to long term psychological consequences. The fact the limb that is in pain is no longer actually there is wholly unrelated.
Funny, the only way your sentence makes any sense whatsoever is if you assume "real world = illusion" AND "illusion = real world".
Science means creating hypotheses and then checking them. So let's check your assumption : I am currently imagining I have 1 trillion dollars next to my, you know, Obama's weekend spending money.
Checking ... ... ... ...
Checking
Checking again
Re-checking
Nope reality and illusions are totally different things it seems. Can you spare 500$ ?
... than if you think you're in pain you can be wrong.
of course you can be pretty obviously wrong about being in pain
A very wise man must once have said (in other words I'm just making this up) : "Never underestimate the stupidity of humans". Let's not forget there are suicide-cults, people who enjoy watching "neighbors" AND well ... there are religions, even horrible ones. I mean religions by itself are not an especially good sign of intelligent life, but killing little girls and/or homosexuals because in some desert ages ago some massacring thief told some people to do so ... I mean ... we humans defineatly are pretty fucking stupid.
Of course your entire sentence means nothing. "Your own definition of free will" ... is never elucidated. Nevertheless this non-existent definition is supposed to prove all sorts of things. That's not how it works. First you make a definition of something, then you combine that with axioms and other definitions and then you get an exact conclusion. Everything else is just random babblings of philosophers.
And this is my thoughts about philosophy. In history, you always had empiricists, and you had philosophers (or proto-philosophers, called theologians, or proto-theologians like the village priest). They generally argue in opposite directions. Guess who always turned out to be right ?
Hmmm game of life "code". That must be about as clear as brainfuck or befunge code.
This also throws the whole "determinism means all your actions are fixed" idiocy where it belongs, in the loony bin. It may be technically correct that strictly speaking your free will does not choose totally random, and it does not choose "pure" unpredictable things ...
BUT it is nevertheless impossible to predict, in any reasonable timeframe and with any accuracy what a given human will decide in a specific situation. Given, of course that humans can implement turing machines, which seems to me a pretty well established fact.
I choose NOT to make a choice!
Which is both by itself a choice, and the denial of intention. It's a psychological tool, not a valid moral position. It will have the same effect of a choice. It is, in other words, merely a lie. Just like "neutrality" in a war does not exist. It is merely a device people use to feel good about their choices, usually when those choices are more than just a bit self-serving and egoist.
Neutrality is a choice, despite the name "not choosing", and just like any other choice it has repercussions in the real world. It advantages some parties, and sabotages others. Think about it, neutrality or "not making a choice" favors the agressor in a war, for example. It favors the status-quo in government, or in a social situation. It favors ... and so on, and so forth.
That's so common amongst liberals. They are supposedly pro-freedom. But if anyone were to dislodge Chavez, oh dear God, you'd hear the screams 2 states away from the DNC.
In reality, at the very least the actions of liberals are not pro-freedom. Then again the "nazi"'s full name ends with "party of the people", as did the full name of the soviet party.
Leftist names are just camouflage.
So now you're going to save money by having a bad insurance. One that will save money, by, amonst others, sabotaging medicine by "saving" on research ?
Why do we need a bad public option that won't cover the 2 largest groups of people that go uncovered today ? (meaning illegal aliens and those that just don't get insurance for whatever reasons)
This policy won't change a thing, will not cover the uncovered, BUT it will cost massive amounts of taxpayer money if it fails to live up to your fantasies.
Given that there are entirely new viruses every year, you know what stopping research should be called ? "Mass suicide".
Current predictions are that about 5-10 years without a flu vaccin and we'll see a repeat of that little event of 1918.
If you're in favor of other ways of increasing competition, why not lobby for dropping the state border thing for insurers ? That would do a lot more than your other options, especially for less populated states this could make a huge difference. Of course your party will fight that tooth and nail, due to massive contributions of the beneficiaries of said legislation.
This is not to mention that it requires a VERY revisionist reading of history to claim that either of these men were liberals. I believe that "fascist" is the more orthodox term.
Oh, so NOW we're attempting to throw the meaning of the word "liberal" in MY face ? You, the "liberal", who dislikes choice so much you can't tolerate people having another option than asking the state for treatment. You who push a proposal were terms like "single payer" run rampant ?
Are you claiming you're a liberal ? You scolded me for wanting the option NOT to pay for your plan. You scolded me, at first, for wanting the option NOT to subscribe to your plan. You were scolding people for wanting a priest's (or buddhist faith healer) services in healing. You keep scolding me for having faith in actual science, like economics or evolution.
Also, there is not a single socialist and pro-liberty government in the world. Not historically either. Of course, I'm sure YOU are entirely different.
Yes these men weren't liberals. Neither are you. You're a thief, like the communists and nazis were before you. And for the exact same reasons (supposed "moral necessity" which turned out to be nothing more than a desire for power at any cost, for them including the cost of exterminating millions of people. Well, actually neither party of socialists considered it much of a cost).
By that standard the Soviets weren't socialists either. Neither were the Bolsjeviks, nor was Mao, nor Chavez or Kim Jong Il.
Hitler's stated purpose was to improve the lives of the German laborer, who was being ruthlessly exploited by capitalists.
Of course, all were doing this thing called "socialist revolution" and all were implementing central control of the economy. There were doing it in the name of improving "society's worker's" lives (well the "worthy ones" at least, after all they mostly destroyed the lives of "capitalists", "workers", or Jews for that matter. Both Soviets and Nazi's comitted a holocaust against Jews and actually the Soviets killed more of them).
That is 20th century socialism. That is why lefties need their own version of the truth.
No I explain where they were located in the "political spectrum" ... slightly more to the center of Stalin ... massively to the left of everyone else.
Socialist theory was racist (look up "eugenics") for the better part of the 20th century.
And as for the "right-wing" nature of nazis ... why don't I just let liberals themselves do the talking ?
You see a certain ... extreme left ... newspaper berates European countries for not being as Nazi as Obama (I'm not kidding, read the article)
More than any other country, Germany â" Nazi Germany â" then set out on a serious stimulus program. The government built up the military, expanded the autobahn, put up stadiums for the 1936 Berlin Olympics and built monuments to the Nazi Party across Munich and Berlin.
The economic benefits of this vast works program never flowed to most workers, because fascism doesnâ(TM)t look kindly on collective bargaining. But Germany did escape the Great Depression faster than other countries. Corporate profits boomed, and unemployment sank (and not because of slave labor, which didnâ(TM)t become widespread until later). Harold James, an economic historian, says that the young liberal economists studying under John Maynard Keynes in the 1930s began to debate whether Hitler had solved unemployment.
(note that all left-wing governments are diametrically opposed to independant unions, you see this in the Soviet union, nazi germany, and in today's Venezuela)
Since when is any public company cheaper than a private version of the same company ? That contradicts economics, and you admit as much, several times. Not that you've ever let that stop you before. Please explain why economic theory is wrong here.
The monopolies only exist because the lefty democrats voted in "regulations" prohibiting competition over state lines.
Obviously, you're the typical lefty, the solution to too much regulation prohibiting competition is ... (tadaaa) MORE regulation. This is supposed to be a "liberal" position, despite obviously reducing freedom for everyone involved.
So what do you have to say about the public-private difference ? You admit that a private option would work IF there are no cost overruns, and yet you STILL DEMAND a public option (not request, not think about, not "I'd be happy with a private option too", you DEMAND a public option).
There is only one explanation : you know there'll be massive cost overruns and you don't care, after all you're spending (stealing) other people's money. You're stealing, so why would you care about your spending habits ?
You know perfectly well what has happened historically when those cost overruns happened, and you know perfectly well that it was lefties that started those genocides in the 20th century. But you don't care. After all you're soooooo much better intentioned than those russians and germans so the mighty atheismo will bend the laws of nature to your fantasy.
Or else you'll call him very, very mean ...
Just wondering ...
How exactly does one promote "capitalism" as in the free and unfettered enterprise of individuals ... while eliminating individualism. That's a contradiction. How does the state "get out of the way" AND destroy personal liberty ?
And how come all examples of what you say are all left-wing. The ONLY example of a truly oppressive "right-wing" government is ... (<tadaa>) the national socialist party of Germany.
Oh wait I'm probably doing this wrong. Were they in favor of private enterprise ? Well ... no. Were they in favor of individualism ? Well of course not. Were they for or against massive government interference in the market ? Well they were FOR massive government interference. Say ... what exactly makes them right wing ? Well just about the only thing is the fact that they opposed the "true" left wing ... meaning bolsjevism.
So what makes the nazi party right-wing is the fact that they were slightly more center than Stalin (or Chavez), you know in the way that Osama bin laden is more tolerant of non-muslims than the taliban.
This is probably why all lefties are postmodernist. After all, if they are not entitled to "their" version of the truth, they must be very very bad people indeed.
Perhaps people who like the specs might consider the openpandora. It's the same hardware, and has a hardware keyboard, but it has no 3G connectivity. It's also a machine focused on emulating old games, and has pretty amazing emulators for that, including a type of joystick.
If that is what you require, though, it supports 3G usb sticks perfectly well. I'd go with a usb stick personally. Why ? It's upgradeable.
Again you evade the questions. Not a single answer. You must work in politics. So many words. No content whatsoever. Especially the last question. I asked a question that clearly looked at COST of treatments, and you answer without mentioning ANY cost.
We have a *lot* of treatments that are effective, as long as they are continuously applied, and extremely expensive. That, of course was the point of the question. And obviously you evaded it.
ANSWER THE SPECIFIC QUESTION :
Please, also not a few reasonable cases that you will deny treatment ... say a baby born with leukemia, will you cover her ? Without treatment, she dies in 2 months tops. With treatment, she dies in 5 years, and this costs several million dollars. Where do you draw the line and based on what principles ?
Let me put the question differently : HOW WILL YOU CONTROL COSTS ?
This is another false choice. It will be a public plan, without massive cost overruns. You have done nothing to show that this is impossible.
If you honestly believe this, then why are you not advocating a private plan ? A private plan would GUARANTEE no cost overruns.
Cost overruns in national health care, are obviously the real reasons for both the Nazi holocaust (the first people attacked were the long-term ill people and the immediate effect of the holocaust was a 41% drop in health care expenditure. Are you seriously claiming that's a coincidence).
AND it's the cause of the equivalent of the holocaust in Russia.
Please explain what you will do if there are massive cost overruns (like in medicare and medicaid).
And please, I re-iterate the most important part of my question : please explain why you would you oppose that any plan that does not expect massive cost overruns to be private ? Of course, there is only one reason : you DO expect massive cost overruns.
Unless you give an answer, I'm obviously going to assume you're lying. I don't think that's a dishonest thing to do.
And so far my answer remains : you're stealing money to pay for your fantasies. Please stop the innocence act, because you're not innocent. You're a thief. Please pay your fantasies with YOUR OWN money.
Please keep in mind that China has a billion people living within it's borders, Iran is -barely- the size of a single state in terms of people.
It's normal that China has more executions in absolute numbers. Relatively speaking :
China : 1,718 executions / 1,338,612,968 people = 1 person executed per 780,000 people per year
Iran : 348 executions / 66,429,284 people = 1 person executed per 190,000 people per year (at least 30 were executed for the crime of being gay, another 15 at least were girls below the age of 14 according to amnesty international. You'd wonder why girls are so much more deserving of the death penalty, but they're muslims, apparently that's normal*)
(note that since the election this has risen to 115 executions / 66,429,284 * (365/50) = 1 execution per 80,000 people, nearly all of them for political opposition)
(for comparison : the US for 2008 : 37 executions / 307,212,123 people = 1 execution per 8 million people, or 1/10th of china's proportion, or less than 1/100th the amount of people Iran executes. Not a single woman was executed, nor any minors. Nobody was executed for political opinions, religious opinions, or sexual orientation).
* you may disagree with the thesis that islam orders the killing of minors. But it is not for us to assign motives to Iranian acts, it's for Iranians to do so. Why were these people executed ? For "violating" islam ("sharia" translates to "the path of the righteous", and is not a law as we know it). How were these minor girls executed ? By stoning, hanging and throwing them off buildings, exactly as islam dictates (there is no section of islam that is called sharia, just like jewish law is nowhere to be found in the torah (by contrast you will find canon law in the bible*), what muslims claim you violate when you "violate sharia" is not a penal code, but a story)
* of course that's one of the very last parts that were added to the bible, so you could have a serious discussion about it ... but at least it's in there
And then when there are organ shortages, it "just so happens" that a lot more people get convicted to the death penalty. People who just happen to have rare bloodtypes stand a lot bigger chances of getting convicted to death ... that sort of thing.
You can't risk this. It'd be an extremely dangerous conflict of intrest.
Have I missed anything?
You've answered exactly 1 question : that you intend to steal resources to execute your fantasies, and that you don't care about the amount you steal, ignoring the specifically mentioned case that all you can steal from ALL americans is not enough.
All other questions you've evaded. Eloquently, but merely evaded.
Price will not be $0! You will have to pay premiums to buy into the public plan, just like any other plan.
By your way of thinking this means that -at least some- people will be "priced out of the plan", and therefore the plan does not match your "moral demands" of it.
1. people can't pay for it (for various reasons : given that nearly 50% of "uncovered americans" are illegal aliens ... this plan will not help them obviously) ...)
2. people don't want to pay for it (ever talked to a 20-year old just-started-working guy about health insurance, or generally at any time before their first child
The whole point of this exercise was to cover both groups. Obviously the plan you propose does not do any such thing. Therefore your plan is useless ? Unless of course you explain how both groups will be covered.
And you keep claiming that the plan will have "almost" zero cost to the government. Meaning there can't be all that many persons covered "for free". Therefore you're gonna have to deny a lot of people.
You didn't ask me who will chose what is covered.
I did, and your answer boils down to "someone", which is exactly the answer you claim you didn't give. By the way your claim is wrong. There actually are several health insurance companies here that will cover expenses to have a priest (or other spiritual healing worker) flown over (you can name one at the time of signing the policy, and there's a procedure for changing that name) if your disease could result in death. Buddhism was not specifically mentioned, but I doubt it's a problem. And if you want to insure yourself for a full treatment with them, I'm sure you can go and talk to them.
So please ANSWER THE QUESTIONS. You're proving particularly obnoxious, constantly making contradictory claims and exposing beyond merely surreal predictions as excuses for stealing other people's money for your own ends.
1) is the coverage 0$ or will the poor be denied (for some level of poor). Also, note that if the price is different from that EXACT PRICE (0$) illegal aliens will not be covered, for obvious reasons (obviously they don't want to enter into a contract with the government they're trying to avoid, that's a few dozen million people not covered at all right there) (there is no third option) ... say a baby born with leukemia, will you cover her ? Note that without treatment she dies in 2 months (tops). With treatment, she dies in 5 years, and this costs several million dollars. Where do you draw the line and based on what principles ?
2) do you deny people for not paying enough OR are you creating a new group of government dependants that you agree will grow until all money is consumed. (there is no third option)
3) does your "nice" plan intend to have massive cost overruns (= "public" plan) OR is it a private plan (there is no third option)
4) WHO EXACTLY decides what is covered, and what recourse do I have if I don't agree ? (and any public plan is paid by taxes, obviously, so that means you cannot leave it, by definition, since it is NOT possible to NOT pay to a public company, by definition) Please, also not a few reasonable cases that you will deny treatment
Can you now please write a response comprising 4 paragraphs, each one responding to a single question. Please start each paragraph with the option you choose, and feel free to commit any number of further sentences to the reasons why.
I'd like to talk to you like a reasonable way, but you simply don't respond in a realistic way. Your answers can only make
*sigh* so who, exactly *DOES* decide what gets covered ? You keep alluding that the impossible will happen, and every time again you deny it.
WHAT is covered ? WHAT is not covered ? What guarantee do I have that I get to have a private plan WITHOUT paying a single dime to another (public) plan, which is not rendering me ANY services whatsoever ?
I believe there is no such guarantee, and you will steal my money ("tax" it) to pay for people who won't take care of themselves in any way, and obviously pay for the hundreds of thousands of new bureaucrats.
In order to alleviate this fear, I demand that your "public option" is incorporated, and, obviously is allowed to go broke like any other company if is doesn't perform and is NOT replaced for at least several years if it does, that the people working for it (both upper and lower level) do NOT immediately get transferred to whatever new entity gets created in it's place, but lose their jobs and their investments in the case of bankruptcy like the rest of us.
As I said, the only reason you demand a public option is that you have *ZERO* faith in the feasability of this plan. Yet you wish to steal other people's money in a foolish attempt to pay for your fantasies.
Why can't you just go to a hooker with your own money ? That'll accomplish better fantasies and not bankrupt Americans.
And as you so conveniently have forgotten, you have failed to answer all of my questions : ...). You state that you're going to prevent this ... how ? WHO are you going to deny healthcare to ? Or WHERE are you going to find unlimited resources ? (if you say "tax", or you imply that, you might as well shut up in shame)
1) you're creating a group of people dependant on direct payouts from the government. Evolution dictates that this group will grow until the government cannot pay for it anymore (and this has actually happened in both nazi germany and soviet russia and is happening all over europe). Please explain why this will not happen to this plan, or else explain what gives you the power to suspend evolution ?
2) at price = $0, the demand will be infinite (growing towards unlimited with a rate at least the population growth that currently stands at a little over 1% per year, but generally bigger than that due to, oh, a crisis, new technology,
3) WHO decides what is covered and what is not covered ? WHAT will be covered at the start and what will not ?
And let's not forget your current answers do less than inspire confidence : ... great answer man. Great answer. If I ask you who designed the next Toyota model, is your answer "not Tom Cruise" ? Real informative.
to 1) you answer "we're not slaves to evolution", and just to remind you you're not God, this is not your decision, and no parliament on earth has that power.
to 2) you actions speak volumes : you FIGHT the suggestion of limiting the maximum cost of the plan (you fight to make it public), so it can be paid with stolen resources, which you, like any good communist, assume implicitly to be infinite (which did however, always turn out to be finite, and furthermore a hell of a lot less than initially expected)
to 3) you're answer is "not CHORE"
Please, for once, give a single decent response. Liberals never answer any of the inconvenient questions, of course, but I always assume that's because they don't have any answers, only fantasies. You have done little except confirm this, and I will admit readily that you're one of the more rational amongst them (ie. you're not the kind of liberal you see on tv, and I'm guessing you're male, and over 30).
If you have so much faith in your "basically paid by premiums" then why does it have to be the government that implements said plan ? I would be perfectly prepared to let even the government do a *limited* donation of a few millions or even tens of millions yearly to such a company. But I cannot find peace with letting the government run such a company.
Your plan, as you describe it, would work perfectly well in the private sector, in competition with "profit maximizing" companies, IF you're not lying about that one crucial part.
Since you are indeed pushing government enforcement of the plan, I can only surmise that you do not, in fact, believe your plan can be funded by premiums.
Of course the actual bill does not have language on who will be denied treatment. It does, however, specify an organization to determine that : CHORE (Center for Health Outcome Research something something), which does indeed decide who gets denied coverage. Putting in the bill what will not be covered would be political suicide, as you know very well. Besides, Obama wants to decide who doesn't get covered himself, so he's asking for an executive branch to be put in charge of that.
The HR bill proposed also outlaws private health insurance, also in direct contradiction with your claims.
Of course that's the reality : either something is market based, in which case it's availability will be decided by supply and demand, or it's rationed. Your health care proposal is nothing more than rationing health care, for everyone. The first crisis of government will cut it's coverage in half, without *ANY* legal recourse by those paying for it, and probably without any possible escape from the plan.
You state several high-minded ideals in words, but again, your actions, your support for a plan that is close to the diametrical opposite of what your words say you support, speak volumes. This is very typical of liberals imho. Your words sound reasonable on the surface, but once you get the delusions out of them and compare words to actions ... nothing's left.
Perhaps that's what they mean with the road to hell being paved with good intentions.
I have given you a fine argument as to why the free market is not, in fact, the best mechanism for distributing health care. It is because markets work by pricing some people out of them.
You keep talking about how unfair it is that some health care is denied. Tell me, will government deny health care ?
You must understand, even though you deny it, that taking care of people takes resources. It takes docters, it takes medicine, it takes (extremely expensive) research, it takes ... and so on and so on.
Taking care of essentially unlimited people takes unlimited resources. But of course you don't mind that since you're going to steal those resources, you *think* that it's not going to be your money, incorrectly of course, but the delusional are happy (if liberals did want to use their own money they would have done it on the private market of course).
So tell me, who are you going to deny health care ? The criticism of Obama's plan is right (well the non-alarmist part), he advocates a plan that denies treatments to the elderly, on multiple levels. Both research to prolong life, and actual existing treatments will get axed.
In addition to that he will deny health care to extremely young infants. You see, here's a comment about what his health adviser published in the lancet :
Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, Obama's key advisor for health care reform, writes about rationing health care for older Americans that "allocation (of medical care) by age is not invidious discrimination." (The Lancet, January 2009) He calls this form of rationing, which is fundamental to Obamacare goals "the complete lives system." You see, at 65 or older, you've had more life years than a 25-year-old. As such, the latter can be more deserving of cost-efficient health care than older folks.
I don't fully understand how this way of reasoning applies to young infants, but apparently it's got something to do with protecting the state's investment in a person. In a newborn, there's no investment to protect, so no health care. Btw : this is MY OWN assessment after reading the lancet article. Perhaps I'm wrong about the investment thing (he does want to deny health care to newborns though).
So now we have, your policy :
-> requires suspension of economics to keep operating in anything but the extremely short term
-> requires that we are not "slaves" to human evolution (meaning that we find a way to prevent human evolution from occuring. Heh. Good luck with that)
-> does *not* in fact, extend coverage to everyone, and does *not* provide each individual with whatever health care is best suited to his condition
Needless to say this policy will fail. But whether that's a certainty or not, answer me this question :
When this policy fails, and the state has to limit budgetary expenses, because it raised taxes to absurd levels (the nazi government started the holocaust when taxation level required for social programs reached 98%. Somehow I doubt that's a coincidence. And in the first year of the holocaust social expenditure actually dropped). What will you do ?
-> let the system collapse, meaning there's no more America, and no more health care. In the end this option will result in even more corpses than the next option
-> deny health care to people, needless to say this will result in massive riots, and lots of death
-> invade pakistan (Obama suggested this, so I include it here)
Needless to say your remarks on other countries' health care systems are uninformed. You would find, for example, that health care in the Netherlands is private.
Sweden's health care system is indeed collapsing. Furthermore more than 50% of Sweden's population is dependent (directly) on state support. It doesn't take a genius to deduce what's going to happen next.
I must say I know little about Switzerland's health care system but I'm quite sure (I've got family with a very, very sick kid living there) there is no national health care system.