Cheney would "probably be dead by now" if not for his federally funded health care

Nurses Activism

Published

December 7, 2007, 2:58 pm

Nurses' Health-Care Ad Takes Aim at Cheney

Susan Davis reports on health care.

Vice President Dick Cheney would "probably be dead by now" if not for his federally funded health care, according to an eye-catching ad calling for universal health care that will run Monday in ten Iowa newspapers. The ad is union-funded by the California Nurses Association and its national arm, the National Nurses Organizing Committee, which represents 75,000 nurses.

"The patient's history and prognosis were grim: four heart attacks, quadruple bypass surgery, angioplasty, an implanted defibrillator and now an emergency procedure to treat an irregular heartbeat," the ad states, referencing Cheney's lengthy medical chart. "For millions of Americans, this might be a death sentence. For the vice president, it was just another medical treatment. And it cost him very little."

The group is calling on the presidential candidates to support a single-payer government-run health-care bill introduced in Congress by Rep. John Conyers (D., Mich.) that has 88 co-sponsors, including long-shot Democratic candidate Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio.

The three Democratic front-runners have all proposed sweeping plans to cover all or nearly all uninsured. Republicans have offered more modest plans and none advocate a single-payer system. The nurses group opposes the plans of Sens. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and former Sen. John Edwards because they argue that each plan will "continue to rely upon the wasteful inclusion of private insurance companies." The single-payer plan would take insurance companies out of the equation altogether. ...

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2007/12/07/nurses-health-care-ad-takes-aim-at-cheney/

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

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.

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)

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.

Specializes in Critical Care.
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.

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

Why do you keep suggesting that, when it isn't anyone else's point? We do open our checkbooks up, figuratively, twice a month when taxes our withheld from our paychecks and literally, often, when we give money to causes that provide healthcare to people who can't access it (your assumption that we don't put our money where our mouth is is just that; a conclusion to which you've jumped with absolutely no supporting evidence. It is worthless. Not that it's any of your business, but I do give both of my money and my time to a health care organization.)

Disagree with us all you like, but could we possibly stay on point? That being, some of us believe that as contributors to our society (your claims to the contrary notwithstanding), we also believe we have the right to express our frustration and dismay that more of that contribution isn't directed towards health care coverage for those who need it.

Specializes in Critical Care.

I could deal with the theft from my earnings if I thought it was doing a moral good. I don't think the world works that way, but still.

In the end, however, looted money cannot be morally productive money. The damage we are doing to many, in the name of their public good, is not just immoral; it's cruel. We have made ourselves the moral busy-bodies to 'solve' their lower Maslov needs at the expense of allowing them to actualize their higher Maslov needs. RESOLVING your own base needs is a key to the self-actualization that is our reason for being. Taking that away from a person is a greater theft than what is done to my paycheck.

It's not that I bemoan the money stolen from, although I do. MORE SO, I bemoan the opportunity stolen from so many, in the name of helping them. It's so . . . uncompassionate.

~faith,

Timothy.

Because all we hear from the left is lip service about how America is not doing enough to help, yet those on the left insist everyone should pay for it. I say if you want health care coverage for everyone and don't expect them to pay for it, then you pay for it.

Why do you keep suggesting that, when it isn't anyone else's point? We do open our checkbooks up, figuratively, twice a month when taxes our withheld from our paychecks and literally, often, when we give money to causes that provide healthcare to people who can't access it (your assumption that we don't put our money where our mouth is is just that; a conclusion to which you've jumped with absolutely no supporting evidence. It is worthless. Not that it's any of your business, but I do give both of my money and my time to a health care organization.)

Disagree with us all you like, but could we possibly stay on point? That being, some of us believe that as contributors to our society (your claims to the contrary notwithstanding), we also believe we have the right to express our frustration and dismay that more of that contribution isn't directed towards health care coverage for those who need it.

we????

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)

Specializes in Maternal - Child Health.

Originally Posted by HM2Viking

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)

If we're already paying for national healthcare, then it shouldn't cost another red cent to implement it. OK. Go for it!

Specializes in Public Health, DEI.
Because all we hear from the left is lip service about how America is not doing enough to help, yet those on the left insist everyone should pay for it. I say if you want health care coverage for everyone and don't expect them to pay for it, then you pay for it.

Yes. I get that. What I want to know is what part of "I think health care should be funded by tax dollars (of which I certainly pay my share)" translates for you to "I am willing to fund this myself". I also support public education as an entitlement. That doesn't mean I'm willing to open my checkbook up and pay for everyone's schooling. Should people who support the war be bearing the cost themselves? No? Whyever not?

Specializes in L & D; Postpartum.

I think what the left wants is for the "weathy" to pay everything. Never mind that they work hard for their wealth and ALREADY pay the lion's share of taxes. They are BAD, BAD, BAD, for having so much money and should therefore have to give it up.

Vice-President Cheney has the right to whatever aid he is getting because he's in that age group, he has without a doubt paid into the system as a wage earner and if nothing else, he is our vice-president.

Did anybody complain when Clinton had his medical treatments done? I'm sure that was not paid for out of his pocket.

Specializes in Public Health, DEI.
Did anybody complain when Clinton had his medical treatments done? I'm sure that was not paid for out of his pocket.

I'm sure plenty of people complained when Clinton had medical treatments.

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