Your municipal tap water is "socialized", but it works pretty well, I think.
Not nearly as well as after the water's gone through the products of a capitalistic filter company, it doesn't.
Except when Atlanta privatized it's water the water quality dramatically decreased. The city issued water alerts frequently. Personally I have a 5 gallon bottle I fill with filtered water at my coop.
more liberal states like California or New York could pass a universal health care law without the massive fighting that's necessary to push something like that through at a federal level.
Massachusetts is trying this. It even fines people for not having insurance. The unfortunate thing is that not everyone can afford health insurance and by not buying any they risk being fined.
Because it forces some to pay for the bad choices others make. Because it drives up prices. If you think health care is expensive, wait until it's free. When people have to pay out of pocket they are more willing to reduces risks whereas those who don't pay out of pocket don't have the awareness of the costs of health care.
If you look at what France or Germany or Australia or the Scandinavian countries have as a "socialized" health care system, it's dramatically better.
Oh, and by the way - they all have better health care outcomes and healthier populations that the USA.
France is recognized as having one of the best national health care system in the world. Yet a man diagnosed with cancer in France has a lower 5 year survival change than a man in the US does according to a special report done by CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta.
but you're (presumably) not bothered about other socialized things like roads and firefighters and police
Roads are specifically mentioned in the Constitution of the USA. However most roads are local not national. Local roads can be paid for with a tax on fuel, you drive you pay out of pocket whereas if you don't drive you don't pay out of pocket. State and national roads can be paid for the same way, via a tax on fuel. Firefighter and police, which are mainly local, budgets can and should come out of property tax.
and the military?
I've said a bunch of tymes I'd rather have the military downsized, rightsized. There should be a small professional core then have all citizens between say 18 and 55 in the citizens' militia.
2) How can you ethically justify having people die because they can't afford treatment?
A free market in health care and insurance, which the US does not have, will reduce the costs of health care and therefore insurance. Then with the money saved people can freely help those who need help. I'd voluntarily help the person who had a string of bad luck and therefore can't afford medical care. But I'd hate to be forced to pay for the medical treatment of someone who's too lazy to work, eats 5 tymes a week at McDonald's, and smokes 3 packs of cigarettes a day.
To you, I'm imposing on you by telling you to bear the costs of society taking care of all its members, and to me, you're imposing on me by saying I must accept that the benefits from such a system will not be had.
There's one BIG difference, you would force others by gun or threat of imprisonment however no body's preventing you from helping others.
I just get a kick out of it every time people bemoan the loss of "mom & pop" Apple retailers because of "evil competition," like they were the last great thing from some golden era. I have a feeling that if anybody was to actually do some research, they'd find that pruning some weak or dead limbs makes the whole Apple tree healthier, for both the corporate shops and the independents =)
I hate to break it to you, but the courts have ruled otherwise
Yea, and the courts have also ruled the feds can prosecute Californians for medical marijuana, even though it has nothing to do with interstate commerce, it was the interstate commerce clause that the feds used as justification.
Again, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but a majority of Americans say the federal government should guarantee health insurance to every American, especially children, and are willing to pay higher taxes to do it.
And then you were either in the top 3% income-wise, will be paying it off for more than a decade, or filed bankruptcy because it's highly unlikely you had a 6 digit amount saved for medical expenses just on hand.
My family, parents, were low income. My older sister and I went into the military, which my father retired from, before going to college. When I went in I signed up to have money deducted from my pay to save for college. When I went in that was the only way I knew of that I could afford to go to college. Well, I knew another way I might of been able to pay, while on a school field trip to a research lab people there offered me a job and to help paying for college if I wanted to go. However it was a marine research lab, Mote Marine Laboratory, and I wanted to major in Computer Engineering. I didn't declare bankruptcy either.
You implied that it wasn't important for them to be able to afford preventive health care.
I did no such thing, if you read my previous posts you will see I believe a free market in health care and insurance will lower costs so most if not everyone could afford it.
That's not a real world example, it's a hypothesis. Do you have any evidence that a "free market in health insurance" actually results in lower prices and better outcomes in real life?
Are you ignoring economics? Or is it that you don't know it? People complain about how outsourcing drive US wages down but then refuse to believe competition will also drive health care costs down. On the other hand do you have evidence a free market won't drive costs down? Socialized medicine has already been shown to cause health care to be rationed.
There already is competition between health insurers; they have to compete for employers' business, and they also sell
There are way many more people than there are employers. By increasing competition among consumers costs go down. That's basic economics, don't they require economics in college now? Forget college, I learned this in junior and senior high school, in public schools.
But if a doctor doesn't treat you, you DIE. You don't get a chance to try to recover. You DIE. The closest analogy I have ever heard to medical insurance in the USA is "protection money". Instead of paying to avoid having a thug blow off your kneecaps, you're paying to avoid dying sooner.
By the same logic, if you don't have it you die, food should be nationalized. Try to national food though and watch productivity fall.
Fair enough. Though I doubt the original pictures even have that much colour information
One camera I want to get has 14 bit colour depths, so while not as much as what Photoshop supports, it's more than what GIMP supports. My scanner though has 24 bit colour depth and it's an old scanner.
Do you even get printers that can print at print at the equivalent of 96 bit colour, or are you just referring to the fact that the higher the quality of the source, the higher the quality of the final output
Higher end printers for offices can print high colour bit depths, Epson has printers with 8 and more inks, as can reprographics businesses.
If everyone only picks up their own garbage, eventually the ground will be covered in garbage, because everyone will drop something eventually, and not knowing it's theirs, they won't pick it up, and neither can anyone else. Imagine that principle carried over into all aspects of society.
Hey, that already happens. A few days ago I walked around picking up trash passersby threw down in the yard, including broken glass.
If nationalising food production cut the costs in half, I'd have no problem with it. Especially if millions of people had little or no access to food, the leading cause of bankrupties were food costs, and food companies could deny selling to people who were starving.
Of course Americans are in no danger of starvation so this is probably a poor analogy.
Actually food is a poor choice as an analogy because the government already gives farmers and agribusinesses billions of dollars of taxpayer money already. "House, Senate pass one-week farm bill extension".
Actually if the government didn't take so much money from tax payers they may be able to afford health insurance on their own.
(Also, while the NHS isn't perfect, I'll take it over the US "sorry, you don't have any insurance, come back on Thursday for the free clinic and pray you don't need surgery" crap any day of the week).
Been there, done that. Go to a hospital without insurance that is. Without any means of paying my medical bills, which came to more than $120,000, I was admitted to a hospital and treated. In the US.
As a college I was unemployed and without insurance, therefore unable to pay, when I was hospitalized. My medical bills totaled more than $120,000 yet I wasn't kicked out of the hospital.
(emphasis mine)
That's because you could reasonably be expected to pay a significant amount of your medical bills (plus interest) after you finished college.
In no way, shape, or form could I have been expected to pay my medical bill after finishing college. Because of my injury, a Traumatic Brain Injury or TBI, I wasn't expected to finish college. Actually the docs expected me to die, that's what they told my family while I was in a coma.
... or not be offered insurance at all due to being to much of a risk, or be offered insurance at a premium that clearly says "we don't want to do business with you".
That's what we have now. I know because I have been denied health insurance. And not because I couldn't afford it, premiums never came up, all it took was a look at my medical records.
Actually I should be a poster child in support of socialized medicine however I am totally against it and instead want a free market in health care and insurance.
An upgrade only needs the previous version as a kind of validation, not because it uses components of the previous version.
But the previous version needs to be installed and if the new OS isn't compatible then you're stuck paying full price instead of simply upgrading.
I went through a photography phase and the GIMP was always enough for anything I wanted to do. Usually it was just modifying the levels, but I even edited some wedding photos for a professional photographer friend (cloned out a statue that she thought was ruining the composition). There's not much at all to touching up photographs.. definitely not worth spending $1000/£500 on unless you need some funky filters that only Photoshop has, or you are incapable of learning a different interface.
Can GIMP do 24 bit colour channels? Nope it does 24 bit total, 8 bits per channel. However Photoshop does 32 bits per channel. And professional photographers need the colour depth.
In America people do not wait months for basic services.
Of course people wait. They wait to get that little problem looked at until they get a job with health insurance and the pre-existing condition exclusion period is over. Or they wait - wait forever - because they can't afford the services.
Without any insurance I was admitted into a hospital immediately and spent almost a month there before being moved to a rehab house.
In America people do not wait months for basic services.
True enough, if you don't have health insurance or enough money to pay out of pocket, you don't get the basic services. Period.
As a college I was unemployed and without insurance, therefore unable to pay, when I was hospitalized. My medical bills totaled more than $120,000 yet I wasn't kicked out of the hospital.
If you think the US health care system is the "best in the world", you either are delusional or you simply don't interact with the system much.
My mom is close to retirement as a lab tech in a hospital and I have a sister who's a nurse.
Of course, most people would have a hard time paying the full price out of their own pocket even while they were still employed. How exactly are they going to pay for it while they're between jobs?
If there were a free market in health insurance people would be able to afford it.
Gosh, you're right, none of those people deserve to live.
Prey tell, when did I say they didn't deserve to live?
Any real-world examples of a "free market in health care" actually leading to lower prices and better outcomes?
Yes, just as outsourcing lowers salaries and wages, a free market in health insurance would lower health care costs.
Or are you just hoping that if we disband the FDA, things will magically get better?
I think you misunderstand what I mean. There is no freemarket in health insurance. Employers and employees get a tax break when employers offer insurance to employees. This is from WWII. Back then the government had wage control laws which prevented employers from paying employees more, but to allow employers to attract employees employers were given tax breaks if they offered employees health insurance. If the government allowed employers to pay employees more, without taxing them more, so they could get insurance on their own then you'd have a free market in health insurance and care.
Most people don't subscribe to the minimalist libertarian view that the government is only there to run the courts and defend the borders: they believe that government can, and in many cases should, also be a parallel system to accomplish things that the market can't or won't accomplish on its own.
That's easy to handle, amend the Constitution. Not one proposal I've heard of mentions that anywhere.
If We The People believe that everyone deserves medical care, whether they can afford it or not, well, the market sure isn't going to make that happen on its own, is it?
A free market very well could provide people with health care and insurance, however there is no free market in health care or insurance in the US.
People often just want something for nothing.
I'm sure they often do, but this isn't one of those cases. Everyone realizes that health care costs money, whether that money is funneled through private insurers or government agencies.
If people care so much about health care then why do so many eat junk food? Why are so many obese? Why are there so many diabetics?
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Your municipal tap water is "socialized", but it works pretty well, I think.
Not nearly as well as after the water's gone through the products of a capitalistic filter company, it doesn't.
Except when Atlanta privatized it's water the water quality dramatically decreased. The city issued water alerts frequently. Personally I have a 5 gallon bottle I fill with filtered water at my coop.
more liberal states like California or New York could pass a universal health care law without the massive fighting that's necessary to push something like that through at a federal level.
Massachusetts is trying this. It even fines people for not having insurance. The unfortunate thing is that not everyone can afford health insurance and by not buying any they risk being fined.
FalconBecause it forces some to pay for the bad choices others make. Because it drives up prices. If you think health care is expensive, wait until it's free. When people have to pay out of pocket they are more willing to reduces risks whereas those who don't pay out of pocket don't have the awareness of the costs of health care.
If you look at what France or Germany or Australia or the Scandinavian countries have as a "socialized" health care system, it's dramatically better.
Oh, and by the way - they all have better health care outcomes and healthier populations that the USA.
France is recognized as having one of the best national health care system in the world. Yet a man diagnosed with cancer in France has a lower 5 year survival change than a man in the US does according to a special report done by CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta.
but you're (presumably) not bothered about other socialized things like roads and firefighters and police
Roads are specifically mentioned in the Constitution of the USA. However most roads are local not national. Local roads can be paid for with a tax on fuel, you drive you pay out of pocket whereas if you don't drive you don't pay out of pocket. State and national roads can be paid for the same way, via a tax on fuel. Firefighter and police, which are mainly local, budgets can and should come out of property tax.
and the military?
I've said a bunch of tymes I'd rather have the military downsized, rightsized. There should be a small professional core then have all citizens between say 18 and 55 in the citizens' militia.
2) How can you ethically justify having people die because they can't afford treatment?
A free market in health care and insurance, which the US does not have, will reduce the costs of health care and therefore insurance. Then with the money saved people can freely help those who need help. I'd voluntarily help the person who had a string of bad luck and therefore can't afford medical care. But I'd hate to be forced to pay for the medical treatment of someone who's too lazy to work, eats 5 tymes a week at McDonald's, and smokes 3 packs of cigarettes a day.
FalconTo you, I'm imposing on you by telling you to bear the costs of society taking care of all its members, and to me, you're imposing on me by saying I must accept that the benefits from such a system will not be had.
There's one BIG difference, you would force others by gun or threat of imprisonment however no body's preventing you from helping others.
FalconFrom all the "In Canada you have to wait months" stories one reads here on /. one would deduce that the Canadians are in a serious risk of extintion...
The Canuck is a hardy species.
FalconI just get a kick out of it every time people bemoan the loss of "mom & pop" Apple retailers because of "evil competition," like they were the last great thing from some golden era. I have a feeling that if anybody was to actually do some research, they'd find that pruning some weak or dead limbs makes the whole Apple tree healthier, for both the corporate shops and the independents =)
Oh I agree.
FalconI hate to break it to you, but the courts have ruled otherwise
Yea, and the courts have also ruled the feds can prosecute Californians for medical marijuana, even though it has nothing to do with interstate commerce, it was the interstate commerce clause that the feds used as justification.
Again, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but a majority of Americans say the federal government should guarantee health insurance to every American, especially children, and are willing to pay higher taxes to do it.
One, that's not everyone, as you pointed out when you said "I don't know if you've noticed, but there are over 300 million people in this country. They don't all say or do the same things." Secondly most people don't know there is not a free market in health insurance, I bet if everyone knew this more would support it. Also, as I stated earlier I have been denied insurance, yet I still advocate a free market and oppose socialized medicine.
FalconAnd then you were either in the top 3% income-wise, will be paying it off for more than a decade, or filed bankruptcy because it's highly unlikely you had a 6 digit amount saved for medical expenses just on hand.
My family, parents, were low income. My older sister and I went into the military, which my father retired from, before going to college. When I went in I signed up to have money deducted from my pay to save for college. When I went in that was the only way I knew of that I could afford to go to college. Well, I knew another way I might of been able to pay, while on a school field trip to a research lab people there offered me a job and to help paying for college if I wanted to go. However it was a marine research lab, Mote Marine Laboratory, and I wanted to major in Computer Engineering. I didn't declare bankruptcy either.
FalconYou implied that it wasn't important for them to be able to afford preventive health care.
I did no such thing, if you read my previous posts you will see I believe a free market in health care and insurance will lower costs so most if not everyone could afford it.
That's not a real world example, it's a hypothesis. Do you have any evidence that a "free market in health insurance" actually results in lower prices and better outcomes in real life?
Are you ignoring economics? Or is it that you don't know it? People complain about how outsourcing drive US wages down but then refuse to believe competition will also drive health care costs down. On the other hand do you have evidence a free market won't drive costs down? Socialized medicine has already been shown to cause health care to be rationed.
There already is competition between health insurers; they have to compete for employers' business, and they also sell
There are way many more people than there are employers. By increasing competition among consumers costs go down. That's basic economics, don't they require economics in college now? Forget college, I learned this in junior and senior high school, in public schools.
FalconBut if a doctor doesn't treat you, you DIE. You don't get a chance to try to recover. You DIE. The closest analogy I have ever heard to medical insurance in the USA is "protection money". Instead of paying to avoid having a thug blow off your kneecaps, you're paying to avoid dying sooner.
By the same logic, if you don't have it you die, food should be nationalized. Try to national food though and watch productivity fall.
FalconYou think we need a Constitutional amendment for health care?
For it to be constitutional yes the constitution would have to be amended.
every other social program, including Medicare, gets along just fine without one.
And they are not constitutional.
I don't know if you've noticed, but there are over 300 million people in this country. They don't all say or do the same things.
Nor do they all want socialized medicine.
FalconFair enough. Though I doubt the original pictures even have that much colour information
One camera I want to get has 14 bit colour depths, so while not as much as what Photoshop supports, it's more than what GIMP supports. My scanner though has 24 bit colour depth and it's an old scanner.
Do you even get printers that can print at print at the equivalent of 96 bit colour, or are you just referring to the fact that the higher the quality of the source, the higher the quality of the final output
Higher end printers for offices can print high colour bit depths, Epson has printers with 8 and more inks, as can reprographics businesses.
FalconAnd if a food emergency hit, yes, nationalizing the food supply might be the best option.
They tried that in the Soviet Union and they could get the crop yields high enough.
If you want the government to issue patents on drugs,
I don't want patents on drugs, especially drugs created with taxpayer money.
FalconFood and Shelter are readily affordable by private individuals without the need to pool resources. Health care is not.
I don't know where you live but where I live everyday medical expenses cost less than food and housing.
A taxpayer isn't a victim, he's a member of society. If you don't like it, go live in the Ozarks or something and leave the rest of us alone.
I was here first, if you don't like it you move. Maybe Cuba will take you.
FalconIf everyone only picks up their own garbage, eventually the ground will be covered in garbage, because everyone will drop something eventually, and not knowing it's theirs, they won't pick it up, and neither can anyone else. Imagine that principle carried over into all aspects of society.
Hey, that already happens. A few days ago I walked around picking up trash passersby threw down in the yard, including broken glass.
FalconIf nationalising food production cut the costs in half, I'd have no problem with it. Especially if millions of people had little or no access to food, the leading cause of bankrupties were food costs, and food companies could deny selling to people who were starving.
Of course Americans are in no danger of starvation so this is probably a poor analogy.
Actually food is a poor choice as an analogy because the government already gives farmers and agribusinesses billions of dollars of taxpayer money already. "House, Senate pass one-week farm bill extension".
Actually if the government didn't take so much money from tax payers they may be able to afford health insurance on their own.
Falcon(Also, while the NHS isn't perfect, I'll take it over the US "sorry, you don't have any insurance, come back on Thursday for the free clinic and pray you don't need surgery" crap any day of the week).
Been there, done that. Go to a hospital without insurance that is. Without any means of paying my medical bills, which came to more than $120,000, I was admitted to a hospital and treated. In the US.
FalconAs a college I was unemployed and without insurance, therefore unable to pay, when I was hospitalized. My medical bills totaled more than $120,000 yet I wasn't kicked out of the hospital.
(emphasis mine)
That's because you could reasonably be expected to pay a significant amount of your medical bills (plus interest) after you finished college.
In no way, shape, or form could I have been expected to pay my medical bill after finishing college. Because of my injury, a Traumatic Brain Injury or TBI, I wasn't expected to finish college. Actually the docs expected me to die, that's what they told my family while I was in a coma.
I wish I had died.
FalconI liked Borland C++ Power Builder.
And the Exchange/Windows Mobile DirectPUSH combo is way better for email on the go than those crapberry things..
These I know nothing about these other than MS doesn't have Exchange for Macs.
Falcon... or not be offered insurance at all due to being to much of a risk, or be offered insurance at a premium that clearly says "we don't want to do business with you".
That's what we have now. I know because I have been denied health insurance. And not because I couldn't afford it, premiums never came up, all it took was a look at my medical records.
Actually I should be a poster child in support of socialized medicine however I am totally against it and instead want a free market in health care and insurance.
FalconAn upgrade only needs the previous version as a kind of validation, not because it uses components of the previous version.
But the previous version needs to be installed and if the new OS isn't compatible then you're stuck paying full price instead of simply upgrading.
I went through a photography phase and the GIMP was always enough for anything I wanted to do. Usually it was just modifying the levels, but I even edited some wedding photos for a professional photographer friend (cloned out a statue that she thought was ruining the composition). There's not much at all to touching up photographs.. definitely not worth spending $1000/£500 on unless you need some funky filters that only Photoshop has, or you are incapable of learning a different interface.
Can GIMP do 24 bit colour channels? Nope it does 24 bit total, 8 bits per channel. However Photoshop does 32 bits per channel. And professional photographers need the colour depth.
FalconIn America people do not wait months for basic services.
Of course people wait. They wait to get that little problem looked at until they get a job with health insurance and the pre-existing condition exclusion period is over. Or they wait - wait forever - because they can't afford the services.
Without any insurance I was admitted into a hospital immediately and spent almost a month there before being moved to a rehab house.
FalconTrue enough, if you don't have health insurance or enough money to pay out of pocket, you don't get the basic services. Period.
As a college I was unemployed and without insurance, therefore unable to pay, when I was hospitalized. My medical bills totaled more than $120,000 yet I wasn't kicked out of the hospital.
If you think the US health care system is the "best in the world", you either are delusional or you simply don't interact with the system much.
My mom is close to retirement as a lab tech in a hospital and I have a sister who's a nurse.
FalconOf course, most people would have a hard time paying the full price out of their own pocket even while they were still employed. How exactly are they going to pay for it while they're between jobs?
If there were a free market in health insurance people would be able to afford it.
FalconGosh, you're right, none of those people deserve to live.
Prey tell, when did I say they didn't deserve to live?
Any real-world examples of a "free market in health care" actually leading to lower prices and better outcomes?
Yes, just as outsourcing lowers salaries and wages, a free market in health insurance would lower health care costs.
Or are you just hoping that if we disband the FDA, things will magically get better?
I think you misunderstand what I mean. There is no freemarket in health insurance. Employers and employees get a tax break when employers offer insurance to employees. This is from WWII. Back then the government had wage control laws which prevented employers from paying employees more, but to allow employers to attract employees employers were given tax breaks if they offered employees health insurance. If the government allowed employers to pay employees more, without taxing them more, so they could get insurance on their own then you'd have a free market in health insurance and care.
FalconMost people don't subscribe to the minimalist libertarian view that the government is only there to run the courts and defend the borders: they believe that government can, and in many cases should, also be a parallel system to accomplish things that the market can't or won't accomplish on its own.
That's easy to handle, amend the Constitution. Not one proposal I've heard of mentions that anywhere.
If We The People believe that everyone deserves medical care, whether they can afford it or not, well, the market sure isn't going to make that happen on its own, is it?
A free market very well could provide people with health care and insurance, however there is no free market in health care or insurance in the US.
People often just want something for nothing.
I'm sure they often do, but this isn't one of those cases. Everyone realizes that health care costs money, whether that money is funneled through private insurers or government agencies.
If people care so much about health care then why do so many eat junk food? Why are so many obese? Why are there so many diabetics?
Falcon