[ukstudent]

I find it strange that people thinks he gets better treatment, not because he is the vice president and get treated different than the average Joe on medicaid, but because you think he is on medicaid. If there was no private insurance or ability to legally buy health care other than that provided by the government then Chaney would be dead. Can someone that supports government control of health care provide numbers of how many people get defribilators for the same reason as Chaney in England, France or Canada as these countries are always quoted as being so great.

[Spidey's mom]

[quote=tntrn;2541349]

Originally Posted by HM2Viking

I think that a referenced study says otherwise. Both countries have access problems. BUT Canada has better outcomes on a population basis for its citizens. QUOTE]

And IMHO, research doesn't always tell you what's really going on. First of all, research papers are difficult to read; getting to the meat of the topic is a giant PIA. Then it depends on HOW questions are asked. In a statistics class I took long ago, the professor said, "You can prove anything you want to prove statistically. It depend solely on how you do the study."

So I, personally, would listen to this physician who works on both sides of the border than to a study.

I'm at the tail end of my stats class and this is exactly right!!


steph

[HM2Viking]

My problem with the physicians statement was not that he referenced waiting times rather that his experience with one family member is being used to say the whole system is bad. There is no doubt that that the Canadian system has some problems with waiting times. But the US system is almost equally bad on this dimension. As I have consistently said we should not try to copy the Canadian system but we should learn from what they do right and use those lessons to improve our own system. If you look at the mirror mirror graph the US can learn something from every other country as we move along in reforming our own system.



Looking at the data I think our first two teachers should be Germany and the UK. (France also has a very good system that should be used as part of our knowledge base for improving our system.)

The classic definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Insanity is spending twice as much for worse overall population outcomes.

[Elvish]

So.....why is it a good thing for my tax dollars to subsidize Dick Cheney's healthcare and not someone else's? Why is he more deserving of a pacer - or anything else, for that matter - than anyone else?

No one is decrying capitalism. Some of us just think healthcare should be accessible AND affordable for everyone.

[ZASHAGALKA]

Originally Posted by Arwen_U

Some of us just think healthcare should be accessible AND affordable for everyone.

On this point, we agree. The BEST way to accomplish this, for the most people, is through - CAPITALISM.

Free markets bring the best combination of quality and price. The thing about free markets is that both the buyer AND seller are free to choose. That influences the outcome. THAT makes all transactions literally win-win: they wouldn't occur unless BOTH parties agree that the deal is a selfish win for their side.

You say you want two things: access and affordability. The free market is the only thing that can bring those things to the masses.

I understand what you hope to accomplish by using the stormtrooper powers of gov't. Freedom doesn't work that way. Neither do efficient markets.

It's not that I disagree with what you hope to accomplish. It's that I disagree with the methodology you would employ. I do so because it will not work. It cannot work. History is literally littered with examples of it not working. Oh, you can bring such systems along for a time, for a ride. The Soviets managed 70 yrs. We might actually get a century out of Social Security before it collapses. But. Collapse it must. Looting from the producers to give to those that will not or cannot produce is not a recipe for success.

Or, as is said, you cannot tax yourself into prosperity. Or, tax yourself better healthcare coverage, for that matter.

You have mis-imagined human motivation. People do NOT work just as hard when you punish their efforts. The tragedy of the commons causes overuse of a resource whether people understand they are doing so, or not. Gov't produces overbudget mediocrity as a common staple. THERE IS neither access or universality to gov't restricted healthcare.

I applaud your aims. I approve exactly of your quote above. Your means? Your means are a recipe to fail those very aims. THAT is why I don't approve of gov't interference in the freedom to choose.

That freedom is also the freedom to excel. I believe in the free market BECAUSE it is the most logical, most reasonable, most incentive based means imagined to provide for your stated aims above, to the most people, at the most reasonable cost.

Everything else is hyperbole, half-lies, or outright deceit. Check your premises. The gov't is not your friend. It never was. When our framers said, "We the people", what they meant is that we are each empowered by a social contract to govern our own lives and our government would be disempowered to interfere. That is as should be. Hamilton, in the Federalist Papers, defended the new Constitution by proclaiming that the framers had enumerated the powers of gov't in such a way as to CONSTRAIN the gov't from any domestic interference: the Constitution would protect you BECAUSE it barred the gov't from any say in your day to day life. Imagine that! Out of this modest idea, the greatest nation was born! Thank you, guys.

To each according to his own effort. From each only what they willfully exchange. To imagine that you, the gov't or anybody is entitled to appropriate so much as a dime from my earnings and give it to another person that didn't earn it: that is a moral evil. If I do so, that is charity and a moral good. To have done to me without my consent, the common word for that is thievery. THAT is a moral evil, by any name.

It is never compassionate to commit a moral evil. Not one time. Even if you want it to be.

~faith,
Timothy.

[Elvish]

Nobody is advocating 'stormtroopers.' I'm not asking to go back to the USSR.

I doubt that people in the UK, New Zealand, and numerous other countries would appreciate the comparison. And, maybe your goals are different from mine, but my goal for my country is not prosperity, at least not the main one. Do I love my country and want the best for her? Of course.

But, when you have a system where rich people tend have both access and affordability and poor people usually have neither, there is a problem.

And again, I will ask, why is ok for my tax dollars to subsidize Dick Cheney's existence and not average Joe's?

We are going to have to agree to disagree, Tim.

[CRNA2007]

Nothing is topping you from writing out a check this very minute to subsidise someone else's healthcare. But I suspect you won't.

Originally Posted by Arwen_U

So.....why is it a good thing for my tax dollars to subsidize Dick Cheney's healthcare and not someone else's? Why is he more deserving of a pacer - or anything else, for that matter - than anyone else?

No one is decrying capitalism. Some of us just think healthcare should be accessible AND affordable for everyone.

[HM2Viking]

Originally Posted by CRNA2007

Nothing is topping you from writing out a check this very minute to subsidise someone else's healthcare. But I suspect you won't.

We already pay the highest health care taxes in the world see:

Taxes already pay for more than 60 percent of US health spending

Americans pay the highest health care taxes in the world. We pay for national health insurance, but don’t get it.
(Woolhandler, et al. “Paying for National Health Insurance — And Not Getting It,” Health Affairs 21(4); July / Aug. 2002)

[HM2Viking]

To each according to his own effort. From each only what they willfully exchange. To imagine that you, the gov't or anybody is entitled to appropriate so much as a dime from my earnings and give it to another person that didn't earn it: that is a moral evil. If I do so, that is charity and a moral good. To have done to me without my consent, the common word for that is thievery. THAT is a moral evil, by any name.

There is such a thing as a political process. I agree with Paul Krugman. Sometimes ideology is the worst reason to do anything. The free market has a lot to contribute undoubtedly. But capitalism is not democracy. A social democracy provides the framework within which capitalism can function. To equate politically derived decisions as thievery is troubling in its implications from a social justice standpoint. There is little difference on a practical standpoint for a free people to decide that it is the fairest and most efficient way to devise a system to assure access to a public resource. Health care at its core is a publicly shared and financed resource.

At its core health insurance represents just that. A process by which we collectively share the risk of death and disability that does not extend beyond the ability of any single family or individual to bear.

25% profit is at its worst thievery. The large health insurance companies are neither transparent or responsive. While no system is perfect at least with a single payer or universal public private partnership scheme the health care system will be transparent and influence can be exerted using the political process.

[ZASHAGALKA]

Originally Posted by HM2Viking

There is such a thing as a political process. I agree with Paul Krugman. Sometimes ideology is the worst reason to do anything. The free market has a lot to contribute undoubtedly. But capitalism is not democracy. A social democracy provides the framework within which capitalism can function. To equate politically derived decisions as thievery is troubling in its implications from a social justice standpoint. There is little difference on a practical standpoint for a free people to decide that it is the fairest and most efficient way to devise a system to assure access to a public resource. Health care at its core is a publicly shared and financed resource.

At its core health insurance represents just that. A process by which we collectively share the risk of death and disability that does not extend beyond the ability of any single family or individual to bear.

25% profit is at its worst thievery. The large health insurance companies are neither transparent or responsive. While no system is perfect at least with a single payer or universal public private partnership scheme the health care system will be transparent and influence can be exerted using the political process.

If someone makes a 10 thousand percent profit, that is not theft, unless, he had the heavy handed aid of government to do so. As such, I agree with your assessment that the large insurance companies are theives - for the same reason that gov't looting from my salary is theft: neither could get away with their schemes without the strongarm of gov't power aka tyranny.

In a free market, somebody can only make the profit willingly paid by a buyer that considers the exchange to his mutual advantage. As such, a seller should make AS MUCH PROFIT as he possibly can. There is no limit to what is 'fair', except, of course, what the seller is willing to buy.

Our Constitutional structure contains no mechanism by which to transfer earnings from one citizen to another. In fact, it has some very hard restrictions on just such a thing. First, it enumerates common interest items that would require Federal funding so as to eliminate any doubt that those enumerated powers, AND ONLY THOSE POWERS, were to be considered 'in the public good' as far as public financing was concerned.

All of those enumerated powers, such as the military, included a public benefit equally applicable to everybody. That is NOT your argument for gov't restricted care: your chief argument is to loot my salary to offset the financing for those that did not EARN my salary.

The second mechanism our Framers used to avoid this trap is to create a Republic so that mob doesn't rule. Your ideal of political process is mob rules. IF the mob decides to loot THIS much from my paycheck, well, then, that is OK with you. Pass any law you want and make anything legal you want; that doesn't make it moral. Stealing from me to give MY money to somebody that didn't earn it, at the point of a gun (just try not to pay your taxes), is armed robbery. It is a moral crime.

The problem with envisioning the gov't as the looting mechanism to punish the producers and reward sloth is that you discourage production. All your ideas DEPEND upon the consent of the victim and the illogical conclusion that the producers in this nation that you would penalize with reckless abandon would continue to produce at greater and greater penalty for doing so.

That is not how humans work. We ARE incentive based creatures.

More to the point, I, and ONLY I, should be entitled to determine how to spend my money. For YOU, or anybody, to decide to give it to those that didn't earn it: that is morally wrong.

Our gov't was designed to prevent JUST that sort of thing.

The idea that gov't looting is theft SHOULD be troubling to the idea of social justice. Stealing from me to give to those that didn't earn it isn't justice. Social justice should involve allowing people the opportunity to live to their potential. There is no justice in short-circuiting that opportunity with a looted handout. The end result is all too predictable: you turn would-be producers into moochers at a damning price to their spiritual wellbeing. THAT is more morally wrong than the theft that accomplished it, in the first place.

~faith,
Timothy.