Fuck Your Health Care Reform
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Health care isn’t a right, it’s a privilege.
The left, however, tends to disagree with that statement.
Massachusetts is perhaps the bluest state in the nation. Liberals practically pour from the cracks of the sidewalk in Boston. Keep in mind that the last Republican senator from Massachusetts was Edward Brooke, who was elected to the last of his two terms in 1972. Finally, this was the seat vacated by the liberal God Teddy Kennedy.
Let’s outline what went down with this special election in Massachusetts:
- The Democratic candidate Coakley was up 30 points in the polls in September of 2009.
- The Republican candidate Brown campaigned on the promise of voting NO on the current health care bill and on the financial reform bill. The voters of Mass. knew what they were getting.
- Brown started to pick up steam in the polls, and the mainstream media caught on.
- Coakley vacationed in the Caribbean from December 23rd until just after the new year. In the meantime, Brown was busy working the campaign trail.
- On Tuesday, January 19th 2010 Brown takes an early lead in the election.
- Coakley — knowing that she lost — calls Brown to concede just two hours after the polls close.
- Brown wins the upset of the century, disrupts the Democrat super-majority, and puts a huge damper on getting health reform passed.
The voters of Massachusetts have spoken.
“Stop with the backroom, closed-door and smoke-filled room deals (Nebraska and Louisiana, anyone?) and do what the people want, Obama.”
If a Republican can win in Massachusetts — and take the late Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat at the same fucking time — they can win anywhere.
This was a direct vote against the shitty health care bill. 56% said that the reason they voted for Brown was because of health care.
In one single vote, they’re saying “Fuck Your Health Care Reform.”
And, I am too. Fuck your health care, liberals.
I pay for mine, you pay for yours.
All Hail Hoover! King of Kings, of all that is holy and just in the land of socialist/commie scum!
You’re absolutely right that you pay for yours, and I pay for mine.
I don’t want to buy insurance, period. I’ll simply save (as in “put in a savings account”) the money that I’d spend on premiums, and use that to pay my bills.
If the 1 in 5000 odds happen to me, I’m screwed, I suppose. But if the only solution you offer is to ignore the Constitution and trample my liberty and sense of self-responsibility, I’ll just have to take that chance and hope for the best. It’s also an incentive to not become a fatass overentitled American, and sedentary (speaking of which, why can’t we have incentives at least to offer rates that are CHEAPER for people who are in good/excellent shape and are not overweight/good BP/cholesterol levels/etc.? We have “good driver” insurance policies where people sit at some douchebag 5 hour DMV class or if you get good grades because you’re Asian you get a 10% discount on your insurance policies, why can’t we have a similar policy too for health insurance?
Now that we can get rid of the shitty mandate, and exempt me from any future retarded single payer scheme you commies dream up? I’ll sign paperwork agreeing to this.
If anybody disagrees with Hoover (i’m going to assume it’s a bunch of retarded premeds from America who have no sense of personal finance and economics) It’s his choice if he wants to take that risk. What ever happened to the idea of each person being free, rather than 40% of their income going to the income and payroll tax?
To liberals out there (note, I’m a libertarian fair disclosure): Failure to prepare because it might happen too early for you to prepare is inexcusable, and whining that “it’s not fair” when it does will get little sympathy from me.
Grow up.
If your preparations involve whining to any politician that will listen to “do it for you”, don’t be shocked if by the time you need it you discover that it was all a swindle. Money and resources that you could be squirreling away on your own will be squandered, leaving you nothing. And when that happens, no one will even bother to listen to your whiny little ass.
And remember this is America. Not. Fucking. Africa.
Your quality of health care and nutrition is by far the best in the world if you ever just exercised a little personal responsibility.
Of course, some retard premeds will say that I am condemning no one to death — apparently so are all the Massachutteans (sp?). This is quite clear to me. Their philosophy is that I must do something (give up my own liberty and self-responsibility and means), or else their death will be on my hands. But they never specify how much. Am I supposed to give up 100% of my income, and starve to death, so that the poor little people of Mojumbistan can have anti-malaria drugs? After all, I’m condemning them to death otherwise. Maybe I should additionally steal from other people, and send that money as well, at least until I fall down unconscious from hunger.
If I fail to do that, I’m condemning other people to death, after all.
Or are theyone of those pussies that says “well, give as much as you can!” ? Because, I have to tell you, I can’t afford even one penny more. I can’t afford what they’re taking now, and if I could this government isn’t spending it very well at all.
Of course, liberals will point out that universal health care “works.”
And I can fly by farting and flapping my arms. All I have to do is jump off the top of a building. If the building is high enough, I can even do it for quite a long while!
To those who bring this up, please refrain from calling it “possible” until the long term economic validity is confirmed. All we’re seeing right now is the crazy flying man flail his arms until he splatters on the sidewalk.
Anyways enough of the ranting, but the biggest problem in the “no competition” area is the fact that for the most part, health insurance companies can’t compete across state lines. (Hello, tenth amendment.)
The other problem is that there are so many regulations that there’s no such thing as a “small” insurance company anyway. You gotta spend millions of dollars on lawyers just to figure it all out – works fine when you’re a corporation with a market cap of 10 billion…. but it makes it almost impossible to start up a new one.
~
Faggotron Relaunched.
P.S.
You better fucking update this website more Hoover, glad you’re writing again. I can’t stand the stupidity from my peers in medical school nor the bureaucracy. Keep on writing!
Hoover/Ron Paul 4 Prez! 2020?
By personal responsibility you must also mean knowing how dangerous not understanding what has happened to American food and nutrition since the 1950s as it has evolved into an industry of a few giant corporations seeking only profits. Just eating whatever America companies would like you to eat is of course much more dangerous than in other countries. Unless of course that is just another liberal ruse. (I’m not a liberal either, neither are a the farmers who know this story). So if the point is that you need to know something before you act or tell others how to act – then America is a place where you need to know a lot which may contradict your point that success in America is a simple act of exercising personal responsibility and attaining knowledge. Information is confusing and contradictory, often on purpose and fraught with bias. American companies can get away with not living up to the standard you are suggesting for individuals. Balancing the system out so that their success does not leave normal individuals outmatched doesn’t seem unreasonable.
Yeah, cuz everyone thinks that phosphorescent orange glow of Cheetos means they’re secretly good for you. We buy crap food because it’s cheap. Insanely cheap, partly thanks to subsidies. It’s not some sinister plan to make us eat what they want us to eat, we like cheap food that tastes good, and companies are more than happy to provide. They really don’t give a shit if it’s Twinkies or tofu as along as they can make money. Twinkies just sell better to a larger market segment because they’re sweet, don’t have the consistency of rubber, and have a conveniently long shelf life, go figure. If you want tofu, grass-fed beef, and locally grown produce, plenty of people are more than willing to take your money. Archer-Daniels-Midland won’t be cursing the day you were born for robbing them of a happy consumer of high fructose corn syrup, get enough of you together and they’ll be scrambling for subsidies to grow your organic produce and still laughing all the way to the bank.
Yeah, that’s what i just said.
Well, except for the “blame it all on those nasty corporations” theme. And the harping on misinformation and whatnot. Let’s see, sole focus on the evil producers, no mention that consumers are actually getting precisely what they are really demanding. No mention of economics other than producers are motivated solely by profit, I guess as opposed to the halcyon days of yesteryear where the cows were cherished and nurtured, the local butcher was honest to a fault, and the hardy peasant stock didn’t even know the concepts of hunger or malnutrition. You know, I really don’t think what you had said and what I said were that much alike, even if I mentioned subsidies and you’ve read about them somewhere and are positive they’re bad.
To broaden the scope a little and surely draw at least a token “I never said that!”, I think I kinda know what it is. When you get a little glimpse of how the sausage is really made, it’s much more comfortable to project that revulsion onto diabolical fatcats in smoke-filled rooms, lining their pockets with ill-gotten plunder from a horribly misled public believing they’re really paying top dollar for humanely treated livestock raised on the same wholesome diet dear old great-grandpappy fed his cows, because it was the right thing to do and that’s how we did it by gum. It’s got nothing to do with the fact that all the hormones, optimized feeding, cramped conditions, etc. have the distinct effect of maximizing efficiency in the production of meat, which translates into a cheaper burger for you and yours, and to the American consumer price is king. No, we’re all victims, VICTIMS! That single working mom driving right past the whole foods store and farmer’s market to buy ground meat at Wal-Mart for $2/lb less, NO QUESTIONS ASKED, simply knows not what she does. She’s sympathetic. You identify with her. She’s been misled. Hoodwinked. It must be so, it’s the only possible explanation. If she only knew the horrors you knew, she’d never feed that tainted meat to her kiddos. The countless atrocities commited on her behalf on a daily basis against our furry friends would never occur. She shares none of the blame, it’s all those fatcats. Ooh, I can just see them, twiddling their mustaches, maybe knocking over a couple of orphans and never apologizing in their haste to make it to opening bell at the stock market. They’re forcing her to buy their cheaper food through trickery and deceit, it has nothing to do with the markedly lower price they can offer, which she bases 95% of her purchasing decision on and just kinda doesn’t really want to know too much about why it’s so much cheaper.
Are you referring to my post? I think what you read into it says more about you than me. I’m a republican. That doesn’t mean I jump to the defense of every moron in my party.
Yeah, that’s generally how threaded comments work, but huh? I guess we can put you down for proudly thinking that picking Red in the biannual dog and pony show makes a difference, but what exactly does that have to do with anything?
@shininghector
and that meat eating lady will live to the tender age of 95. OH THE AGONY. Had she gone vegetarian she could have broken 100.
How can you allow such a horrible thing to happen?
To someone claiming a proper system was being gamed by ignorant meddlers, I reminded that the system is already being games by republicans (my own party) and relationship to big business, and is why some folks (including non-liberal farmers) (yes I used and example) also seek to leverage government for balance, and that he was blaming another’s ignorance while demonstrating his own. You can disagree without being a douche. i asked about the threading because it read like you were responding to a different post. just like numbnuts who points to Henry Hazlitt as a counter to what I’m saying – republicans need to get republicans out from meddling in free-markets before blaming liberals. Hazlitt disagreed with that?
Your response is “look at me, look at me, I’m smart.” brilliant
Like picking a scab, I know. I can’t resist:
“even if I mentioned subsidies and you’ve read about them somewhere and are positive they’re bad”
So what you’ve read somewhere is only what’s right, not what anyone else has read? I mean honestly, look at your tone, would you listen to you? if you do know anything it is obsfucated by that beligerant tone that you know telegraphs your reader as possibly the last refuge of someone who doesn’t. I can’t tell whether you’re credible or not. you stand on cold intelligence but your delivery is emotional – not persuasive. but then you don’t give a tinker’s fart do you? you’re trying to persuade people that there is nothing to be persuaded about? what exactly are you doing here?
Eh? If you see some intelligence showing through guess it’s hard to hide. If emotion comes through it’s because I’m human and have no real need to emulate the laptop I’m typing on. If belligerence comes through it’s because internet arguments are basically 99% guilty pleasure and in all honesty whether or not I manage to coldly convince you or anyone of my credibility makes about as much difference to me as a cow farting in Argentina. I’m not trying to put food on the table by conning you into buying overpriced timeshares here. But to sorta answer your question, I do occasionally learn new ideas from Internet rants. One can easily be emotional, condescending, and correct. And it’s much more entertaining than scrolling through bar graphs.
Life is unfair, make no mistake. People are unequal in opportunity, capacity and the hand they were dealt at birth. To think that this truth can be removed in any way, shape or form is to betray a profound ignorance of economics and the human condition. You cannot make life better at the bottom by tearing down the top; the top is where progress happens, progress that lifts the quality of life for everyone. Punishing success in order to reward failure has predictable results – more failure and less success. The wealthy of 1950 were far worse off than the poor of today precisely because progress brings economic rewards to the successful.
Arguments based on inequality are, at root, made from a misunderstanding – willful or otherwise – of the way in which wealth, medicine and technology are best created. Rapid progress for all requires a free market, strong rule of law and property rights. Such a culture necessarily has a power law distribution of ownership and success. There’s a reason the US has led the world in technology, for all that it’s going to the dogs nowadays – it’s the flip side of the reason that communism, socialism and the politics of envy lead to poverty and suffering.
Creating “equality” by taking from the successful ruins the creation of wealth – very much a non-zero sum game – for all. It takes away the vital incentives and rewards for success. At the end of the process, as demonstrated by all that transpired in the Soviet Union, you are left with the same old inequalities, but now taking place amongst ruins, starvation and disease.
Nice tony danza, you’re making a point that no one on here (on either side) is arguing against.
Baseline of healthcare coverage and some restrictions imposed on the insurance companies in how they can treat their customers is what the legislation is for. You can still be better than everyone else with healthcare reform (obviously you are, because you’re the fucking Tony Danza).
Mark,
Please take an introductory micro and macroeconomics class before blabbing.
> So if the point is that you need to know something before you act or tell others how to act – then America is a place where you need to know a lot which may contradict your point that success in America is a simple act of exercising personal responsibility and attaining knowledge. Information is confusing and contradictory, often on purpose and fraught with bias.
Tell those who are too ignorant and lazy to learn information by themselves to stop buying expensive LCD screens, buying unnecessary garbage, cable internet, brand new cars to compete with the Dumbasses next door, etc. Your average American has $5000-6000 in credit card debt alone.
You guys are pretty fucking retarded, and I’m not going to pay for their intellectual laziness and lack of personal responsibility.
You seem to think that there is a panacea for human life and death, and that we can avoid all bad things in life. Sorry buddy, that’s just not how the universe goes and our friend Shining Hector eloquently explained below in a later post.
There are pros and cons with capitalism and socialism and communism, for instance, but we’ve seen how Soviet Union was an utter failure. In America, we don’t have unbridled capitalism either as excess greed has led to the fucktards on WAllstreet fucking everything up for fucking everyone. But in general, a capitalist leaning economic system is more in tune with our primitive human nature that has been selected for over hundreds of thousands of years.
We’re greedy, selfish, egotistical, and brutal people and it’s what nature has selected for. That’s just how the world is.
Sincerely,
Mark Is Stupid
It’s right out of the text moron. you’d know that if you’d actually taken economics. how is it that hector did not exactly make my point? talk about caliber. the first post was that american food is better, which is not true. not exactly news, idiot, bad food=unhealthy. what exactly was your point anyway? how was it a response to mine? talk to a farmer blowhard, maybe you can fetilize his fields with what comes out your mouth.
What do you mean “American food is not better”?
I can easily buy organic beef, organic veggies, eggs, etc
This country is about FREEDOM. It’s about doing what you WANT to do, and taking responsibility for the consequences of your actions.
There are plenty of food options available in this country, and you’re making the argument that it’s the fucking ho hos and twinkies fault that your mom is a fat cow effusing methane at night — which is why I said earlier that your arguments are retarded.
You’re responsible for your own life and how you live it. I shouldn’t be penalized because you never want to exercise and eat HO HOs and burritos from Taco Bell every week.
Majority of Americans are overweight and lazy. It’s pathetic really. And hell, if I had to choose between giving health care to the kid who’s going to die anyways but at least tries to do something over the fatass morbidly obese hippo, I’ll choose the former simply because fat people suck. I forgot to mention that they’re ugly and smell too.
Some “satisfactory” options that I wouldn’t mind:
1) Ban shitty foods.
2) Insurance deductions for not being a fatass and keeping yourself in excellent shape — the better shape you are, the more deductions you get.
You’re right, that’s all valid. I was making a point more along the lines that regular agri-food has changed a lot since the 50s and a lot of the engineering has resulted in something more foodish than what was properly food, and that’s information that maybe a lot of people aren’t going to just come by, so they could be thinking they are eating properly and exercising personal responsibility, meanwhile it is affecting their health. But granted, I was responding more to the poster’s attitude and that he supposedly represents “my side” politically, I think liberals can be dethroned on the merits.
Also, are you really making the argument that “eating whatever American companies would like you to eat” is worse and much more dangerous in other countries?
Really?
Let me guess, you’re a premed in college or in high school.
My god, the “caliber” of students that medical school in America accepts. Learning b.s. for years, only to be woefully ignorant of how the world operates.
you must be siamese sharing a brain with the other guy. where have you been? i have to back up and argue common knowledge with you first? really? chickens matured artificially so they can’t even stand up, radiated; cows that would die from their diet if they weren’t slaughtered, corn purposely made without nutrition so its cheaper and which causes the ecoli being more common. really. you guys are hilarious. Hector is right, subsidies are so large in fact that it makes food cheaper than it would have been in the free-market. healthy foods cannon compete with the government artificially lowering prices – good God it’s like talking to children, where have you been?
plus this is just fun. let me have it.
Amen! Amen! Amen! I thought there was no one else like His Majesty Sir Hoover. I stand in awe, that there are TWO great ones who understand. Thanks, Faggotron! Thanks, Hoover! Keep us posted.
Amen! All Hail Michelle! Deputy to Hoover, and to all that is great in the land of Hooverville (ok bad analogy I suppose). But I will say this, HOOVER HOOVER HOOVER HOOVER!!!
I, too, stand in stupor in front of you, that there at least THREE great ones who understand.
Thanks, Faggotron! Thanks, Hoover! Thanks Michelle!
May the soldiers of truth carry on prosper.
And fuck SDN and their stupid premeds who want to save people in Uganda over Martin Luther King Day to post on their primary application essay the interdependencies between saving people in Uganda, health care, and Martin Luther King.
In any case, Hoover, you have a fine understanding of the economics of medicine, of health care, and of business, and you should really think about getting into politics and try to correct the wrongs in our stupid system.
You get it, and you are our de facto a leader in the Hoover Revolution.
Can we call it Hoover 360?
And you never know, if a no name state senator from MA — Scott Brown can do it (WHO BY THE WAY IS A 10th COUSIN TO OBAMA LMAO http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/29/president-obama-scott-bro_n_441754.html), so can you Hoover.
You get it Hoover.
May you live long and prosper and guide us to a new hope.
but perhaps you should stop being clever long enough to see what is before you. I suppose you are a younger person. What I am saying is that you are about to be given a hollowed-out shell of a crappy world as your inheritance. Your parents, grandparents, and their parents basically took whatever they wanted out of a treasure of finite size and have only left you the box the treasure came in. You have been stolen from, but you simply don’t know this yet.
You suppose that the world will just be there for you when you are 30 or 40 like it always has been for those before you. It won’t. Within 10 years we will not have 24-hour electricity everywhere in America – it will be rationed. We will not be able to drive anywhere we like anymore – gas will be rationed. Food will cost 5-10 times what it does today, and rent/mortagages will go up even though people will have less money than today. Unemployment will be 15-20%, and huge permanent communities of homeless squatters will appear in every major city. Riots will break out. Life will be vicious, dirty, and poor.
All of these problems will force the government to restrict civil liberties and constitutional rights just to maintain control. People will be held without trial, and personal ownership of guns will be outlawed.
The goverment will be forced to put millions of people to work and also to feed them. This will provide the right environment where total Socialism can be implemented in America, destroying our nation. And because we will also be at war constantly to secure dwindling oil reserves, our nation will begin to look outwardly much like a Fascist State.
This is the world we are giving to you. Enjoy. You can’t see this coming yet unless you look very hard like I have. This is because our entire economy is dependant upon future growth for current prosperity. Business interests and politicians need to constantly reinforce an image of never-ending growth, or the people will stop investing and spending and the economy will collapse.
Socialism is a stupidly unfair and inefficient system. But Capitalism is like a very perky super-optimistic pep rally held for a football team that may or may not actually be any good. Even though the team may totally suck, the pep squad keeps up the cheer all the same so you won’t NOTICE how sucky the team actually is. And because Capitalism requires never-ending growth or it will die, if the team doesn’t get better every year (even if times are good) the whole thing will still fall apart.
What we have right now is the end of times when the pep squad can still convince the people that things are still good. Soon, the mounting numbers of fumbles, interceptions, and real crappy play will have the crowd slowly start to boo.
So leaving metaphor-land (since you didn’t understand my widget bag metaphor) let me be clear. The problems in the world like higher prices for everything, unemployment, famine, war, and reduced quality of life will start top get dramtically worse during the next few years. People will get really worried. Then, at some point, things will break down suddenly and the new impoverished, starving, anarchic world will emerge.
People will blame this on one thing or another. But there is only 1 real cause of it. OVERPOPULATION – too many people consuming too much stuff too quickly. Locusts.
So why talk about this? I know that most of you will just think I am a kook who thinks the sky is falling. People have said that to me. But I never mentioned the sky. I just said that your life will go on in massively sucky new ways very soon as a logical consequence of some indisputable facts. I don’t get any kick out of this nor do I wish to say ‘told you so’ when it happens. It just seems to me to be the right thing to do to warn people so that they can take steps to make life better when times get tough. Most of you won’t. But some of you might.
Yeah, pretty much. Don’t sound too much like Mises, but maybe you’re a doubtful libertarian, too. Oh well, at least there’s probably never going to be a shortage of sick people. Long as I don’t get shot for never keeping my big mouth shut or wrong place/wrong time.
http://mises.org/books/TRTS/
Wow. Out of all the drek of the interwebs, a clear and coherent understanding of the world that we live in. I feel the same way.
What an invaluable perspective.
Tangentially related, but, UK has a population around 60million, Canada 30million. They have been trying to perfect government as savior for a very long time and have not achieved nirvana. Now, USA…. around 300million!!!
It is clear by postings of numerous pre-meds and even med-students, etc… that folks have NOT looked at the realities. Look abroad and learn the truth of the “free healthcare systems”… Do NOT simply latch onto the lack of “co-pays” or lack of actual premiums (as opposed to massive taxes). Ask yourself about the elderly and others coming out of Canada for specialist healthcare in the USA. Investigate it…. evidence base your ideas.
A good amount of costs in healthcare are government caused. Private premiums and costs go up to compensate for artificially low reimbursement by government. Your private insurance reimbursement dollars does not simply spread to pay for those that get uninsured care but also for those with government plans. It also goes to pay for the malpractice…
Again, 80+% are happy with their coverage. Depending on the numbers used, we are proposing massive change to the system to bring coverage to somewhere between 15-30 million. The hidden component is that we are doing this in large part to bail-out unions from their growing “legacy” costs… The plans do NOT address malpractice, do NOT decrease costs and fail to include the healthy population (cause they can opt out, pay $750/yr penalty as opposed to $7-10k policy).
Currently, the government is looking for a cookie cutter. It wants to develop a one size fits all plan… this means Joe healthy will be paying for Jane’s accupuncture and chiropracter, etc…. The current bailouts and actual cost per performance of the government is attrocious…. look at cost per mortgages “saved”, look at cost per “jobs created”, etc….
Yes, health insurance can improve. I just have NOT seen any credible examples, evidence, or even suggestion of how government local, state, federal can achieve this or even come marginally close to private sector economics. Neither have the proponents. In fact, when these facts were pointed out to the proponents of wide sweeping “healthcare reform”…. there answer was, “we’re not really focused on the costs…”. You can google this too.
I know in the USA, homeless grandpa, age 75, CAD, hypertension, DM, aortic stenosis, mild renal insufficiency WILL get CABG & valve…. and social svcs placement if he shows up at a major USA med ctr. I know well to do grandpa, 75, CAD, hypertension, DM, mild renal dysfunction will NOT get operation in Canada under the socialized system (apparently can purchase a private plan or pay out of pocket though).
Improvements can be made. But, contrary to what some may say… it can get worse and it isn’t emergent gotta be done by tomorrow.
PS: this is all just like high schhool student government elections… it’s pathetic. I still remember the candidates talking about vote for me because, “I can lower your homework, get you longer Christmas breaks, more days off during the summer….”
Wow, to the previous posters, you are too caught up in your “screw you, I’ve got mine” mentalities to understand what the real problem is.
Health care reform isn’t being implemented to give money/service to people who don’t prepare. It’s about ensuring people’s lives aren’t destroyed because something happened that they could do nothing about.
The scenarios that health care reform will prevent are these:
1) People who develop a lifelong disease (ex: an 18 year old out of high school has crohn’s disease. His bills are going to be lifelong tens of thousands of dollars per year. He hasn’t built up enough capital to be able to afford this, while at the same time, no insurance provider is going to cover him.)
2) Someone switching jobs. Right now, if you develop a disease while currently being provided insurance by your company, you’re stuck in that job forever. And you better not lose it, or else you’re going bankrupt.
3) People out of college no longer covered under their parent’s insurance. They haven’t had time to build up capital to afford healthcare. Right now, out of college if you’re waiting for your job to come up, you don’t have insurance unless you get a loan to add to your college loans and pay for it. Most people get what is termed catastrophic insurance which runs about $100/month depending on your state and will cover a terrible accident up to 1 million total and have a $10,000 deductible.
These people cannot go to the doctor because these insurance policies cover none of that. And unless they have another $1000 sitting around somewhere, these folks are not going to the doctor until things become bad enough that they end up in the emergency room. And then you know who pays for them at that point? The hospital. And you know where that money comes from? The rest of the patients insurance plans because the hospital has to recoup their losses somewhere. And the price of healthcare skyrockets, and insurance premiums spiral out of control until the only way a person can afford one is to have a large employer negotiate a deal which includes them.
All these people are screwed under the current health care system.
The ultimate goal and eventual future for health insurance is putting it into the hands of a party that doesn’t have a vested interest in NOT HELPING US. An insurance company makse money when you don’t go to the doctor, so with that as their ultimate goal, this system is a failure.
You don’t say to a handicapped person, sorry you’re in a wheel chair, but you cost just cost too much for me to do anything about. That’s bulls**t. You help these people out.
Previous commenters: You will get over your bitterness towards improving this system. The status quo is working for you right now, but the majority of Americans have already had their eyes opened to why health care reform is absolutely necessary.
To MSH author: Massachusetts citizens already have a better healthcare system in their state better than would be implemented by the federal government. So they didn’t want to have to worry about a change to their system that would bring it closer to what the rest of America has right now. It’s not that MA voters don’t want healthcare reform, it’s that they already have it. It’s easy to see how your interpretation of the results would be flawed when you don’t understand this underlying cause.
That is purely your opinion and/or speculation, as well as a common talking point from the left.
MSH author: Check out this website with information concerning the healthcare in MA:
https://www.mahealthconnector.org/portal/site/connector/menuitem.d7b34e88a23468a2dbef6f47d7468a0c?fiShown=default
It has the major facts displayed (97.4% of MA residents are insured), 2.6% is the lowest uninsured rate in the country. And that’s what healthcare reform is all about, making sure a large number of people are insured so they have access to healthcare.
You can click on this page to the MA report (powerpoint, slide 4) showing this study and statistic, and you can view more info in the link provided to US census data.
When you have that many people covered and such a good system in place, one wouldn’t want the government to possibly change the rules with a federally implemented health insurance guidelines. This guy in MA won because the people of MA like their healthcare the way it is. And if the rest of the states could implement a system like this, the federal government wouldn’t need to.
But to say this win was a way of MA residents saying “Fuck you to health care reform” is factually incorrect. MA has the very healthcare reform you claim they’re saying “fuck you” to.
|1) People who develop a lifelong disease (ex: an 18 year old out of high school has crohn’s disease. His bills are going to be lifelong tens of thousands of dollars per year. He hasn’t built up enough capital to be able to afford this, while at the same time, no insurance provider is going to cover him.)
If I can’t be denied “insurance” for a pre-existing condition, why buy it when I’m healthy? Why not wait until I get sick?
That’s what people are gonna end up doing, which is going to cause premiums to go through the roof. If you think it’s expensive now, wait until every healthy person drops their insurance and waits until they get sick to buy in.
It would be like saying car insurance companies can’t deny you coverage if your car is already totalled… and then they have to pay to fix it once you buy an insurance policy.
Of course, the current system in America sucks pretty hard, but it’s because of over regulation, not-under regulation. Adding 1,000 pages of rules (which don’t address the underlying problems) is just going to make things that much worse.
| Previous commenters: You will get over your bitterness towards improving this system. The status quo is working for you right now, but the majority of Americans have already had their eyes opened to why health care reform is absolutely necessary.
Ha ha, well if anything this Massachussetts victory for Scott Brown was a referendum on ObamaCare. People are in support of universal healthcare of some form, but not the way it was being shoved down our throats by the Democrats. Most of us (to the exception of the 10-30 million that would supposedly be covered by TRICARE-quality or worse and the big health insurance companies contrary to what you may be saying, are not in favor with the way healthcare reform is being pushed upon us.
Though time will tell. The Democrats can always ram it through before Brown gets seated, or try to force it through a filibuster. Both of which look less likely, as everyone’s interpreting this as a massive backlash against the Democratic version of health care reform. So, as a result, any Democrat who’s on board with ramming this through can expect to be at serious risk of losing their job next election.
Can I say one term President?
> If I can’t be denied “insurance” for a pre-existing condition, why buy it when I’m healthy? Why not wait until I get sick?
Again, if you look at the MA system, over 97% of the citizens have health insurance. The first step in health care reform is requiring people to have health insurance the same way people are required to have car insurance if they drive.
You would be right if you didn’t think this was an ideal situation. It’s not. It’s also not ideal to have a company in place whose interests are in not paying for your healthcare, being the ones paying for your healthcare. It’s a very conflicted system. This is why healthcare is one of those issues where an unbiased 3rd party system needs to be implemented.
It is not good enough to tell someone: sorry, because of our system, your genetic/pre-existing disease excludes you from receiving health care unless you want to pay tens of thousands of dollars per year (that you couldn’t possibly have unless you were born into a very wealthy family).
I honestly don’t believe that anyone thinks these types of problems are acceptable for Americans to have to face. I think most people in opposition to healthcare reform are thinking about the people in our society who chose to buy a mercedes & no insurance instead of a honda & health insurance. They don’t want those folks having their cake and eating it too. Well the good news is, they are not, they would be required to be responsible and pay for their health insurance.
That’s what this reform is all about. It benefits the honest mainstream Americans who are down on their luck. It forces the others to be honest. And it forces the insurance companies to be a little more honest too. Of course they would be picking up hundreds of thousands of new customers to make up for all this, but I don’t think anyone will disagree that it’s not right to deny paying for someone’s healthcare just because they picked up an unpreventable disease and now have lost their job.
> Of course they would be picking up hundreds of thousands of new customers to make up for all this, but I don’t think anyone will disagree that it’s not right to deny paying for someone’s healthcare just because they picked up an unpreventable disease and now have lost their job.
Liberals always make the argument about those with unpreventable diseases. Well, let me be clear in saying that I don’t feel guilty if said person dies from the disease. It’s not my responsibility, nor my fault, it’s the universe’s or the most beneficient God (or Satan if you’re really that naive), and these people who have these unpreventable diseases are the extreme minority (the propaganda stories repeated ad nauseum of someone who had some type of uncurable cancer, and insurance denied them, which obviously made you come to the emotional conclusion that everyone needs “free” care).
Nature controls us, not the other way around, and at the end of the day, we are still animals. Whenever you go against what nature dictates (i.e. survival of the fittest and those with the best traits), then everyone suffers. You forget that billions and billions of our ancestors have died in many cruel ways to make us who we are today. Relatively healthy, and evolutionary successful.
Animals/people/etc. die, sometimes in horrible ways, and sometimes for the best as harsh as it may sound. It’s nature selecting for what is.
Do you realize that there are millions of African children who die each year alone? Or that there are anywhere from 100,000-200,000 Haitians dead right now or suffering? Or the Indian subcontinent or Indonesian tsunami that killed over 100,00-300,000?
And all of a sudden the attention is put on that one kid with a terminable disease and how little Johnny has help from no one.
I pity the way teh world is, I really do, but I also know that if we keep on taxing the people to oblivion and making the country more socialist in nature, that we will become less efficient, less in line with our human instincts for success and innovation, and costs will actually go up for everyone.
Eventually, when supply and demand equilibriate, a lot of the high cost medical technologies of today will decrease eventually. And we have to remember that the biggest reason why health care costs is because of medical technology and innovation. This is overlooked, yet it is so obvious.
We have to spend thousands of dollar to prolong some 80 year old old guy because it’s “ethical” and “the right thing to do” yet we don’t have the means to pay for 50-60 million geezers/baby boomers in the coming years.
Believe me, if there was a way to provide an infinite amount of resources, and energy to people I would do it.
But again, that’s just not how the world works.
And Social Security is the biggest Ponzi scheme I have ever seen. You need more and more people to support those at the top of the pyramid.
Just like Ponzi’s plan, Social Security does not make any real investments — it just takes money from later “investors,” or taxpayers, to pay benefits to earlier, now retired, taxpayers. Like Ponzi, Social Security will not be able to recruit new “investors” fast enough to continue paying promised benefits to previous investors. Because each year there are fewer young workers relative to the number of retirees, Social Security will eventually collapse, just like Ponzi’s scheme.
Again, before you reply, I would like only those with an economics/finance background to have a discussion with me. No dumbass premeds who got As in orgo I and II and volunteered to go to Haiti over spring break on their parents’ money (http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=694146)
You have your political blinders on. You’re spouting off retorts to arguments that haven’t even been brought up.
You don’t need to feel guilty about said person with an illness. You don’t need to give a shit about it. All of us who are pushing for healthcare reform aren’t doing so because we feel guilty and have to fix our conscience. We’re pushing for it because it’s turned into a system that screws people over and I don’t want to be screwed over and I don’t want my friends and family to be screwed over. Even if it was just 1 or 2% of people getting screwed over, that’s too many, but it’s WAY more than that. So here’s how it works, healthcare reforms starts with the big one, getting everyone insurance. Work to get everyone covered. Next step, bring some honesty to the insurance companies, get them to cover individuals who want private insurance and give them reasonable prices. The step after that? People go to their doctors when they’re sick! People get check-ups! People get preventative care so they don’t end up with chronic disease down the line that ends up costing a fortune.
They don’t go to the emergency room without insurance and completely screw over the hospital. Because you don’t know this, but the ER doesn’t make money, it loses money that gets subsidized by the rest of the hospital. Insurance companies make out with a lot of extra money, while hospitals are breaking even or in the red.
And what the hell are you bringing up natural disasters and loss of life on other continents in this discussion about HEALTHCARE in the US? That stuff sucks, it really sucks, but we can’t fix the world in one fell swoop. There is time to work on what’s in reach (healthcare) in addition to helping others in need in the rest of the world (earthquake, tsunami). Are you saying the millions of people in the U.S. getting dealt a shitty hand are not important because there are other countries around the world we could send our dollars to? It doesn’t work like that, I think you need a refresher course in these intro econ classes you’ve been ranting about.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4aQCiRjvZY&feature=player_embedded
I’m a huge fan of the website, am not a fan of socialized medicine, and thoroughly expect to be flamed, but I have to agree along the lines of Mike that these statements don’t represent the kind of intelligence and insight this blog provides to other fans. The website’s premise is that a traditional system (like the medical school system) can be terribly terribly flawed and should be responded to. And the insightful intelligent theme of this website is how easily people are convinced by superficial and anecdotal evidence or the first thing they read, without accurate and thorough investigation into reality.
If you are smart and in medicine you must see all the time the correlation between poverty and healthcare, and the growing expense to everyday people and cuts to benefits, so it’s not a problem that will just go away by rooting for all efforts to fail. On the one hand it is hard to argue that the ability to make money in healthcare drives the United States to excel and attract talent and resources that make a high level of care possible that wouldn’t necessarily be achieved otherwise. On the other hand, if access to healthcare is only available to those with health insurance and health insurance is unaffordable and out of reach or simply refuses to pay for services for a large segment of society, then those people have a right to want an alternative and if their numbers grow until they are a larger voting block than the ones we’re pointing at now, does that mean that then they will be right? You really don’t think it is unthinkable to let citizens pay for a flawed system with their lives?
Is there no appreciation for solving the flaws? Is it really that easy to lump all the different people affected by this issue into a single category of stupid or bad people that get what they deserve? Is how many people agree with you the only measure of what’s right?
I’m all for simply removing the antitrust exemption from insurance companies and letting them compete for customers nationally and let capitalism go to work on this problem, but to support meanspiritedness disguised as the whole story is what we already see everyday in the media, does it have to be just a replay here?
that wasn’t directed at you specifically euifhsiuf, sorry about that.
Mark,
Please take an introductory micro and macroeconomics class.
Sincerely,
Bill Clinton
you again? really? you’re the guy that’s never actually taken economics telling other people? you live in a system that you benefit from, why do you talk like we’re all out there alone on our own totally free, all men are islands. to not realize you are in a system full of give and take on your part and others is monumentally ignorant. i can’t believe people don’t tell you that to your face everyday.
like i said, fun. it’s too easy.
I was an accountant for several years before going premed.
You need to read “Economics In One Lesson” by Henry Hazlett, you have much to learn.
http://jim.com/econ/
a bad accountant. did you go to harvard like George Bush? wow, when I surround myself with everyone who agrees with me, I’m always right. I can’t believe you got into med school. what a douche.
Glad you guys have it all figured out, cuz I don’t. Honestly, I don’t even really believe in the free market anymore. Just more magical thinking to rationalize away a guilty conscience. Any system really can be gamed, moreso when unconditional faith comes into play. From what I’ve put together, I’m pretty sure more government solutions will just make things worse, though. Let’s see what we’ve got to work with.
1) Humans are hardwired to work well in tribal groups not exceeding 150 or so. More than that and you need formal organization and direct coercion to keep the group together. Thank anthropoligists and the Amish for that one. No, I don’t have a reference, do your own homework, I’m busy. 300,000,000, forget about it, seriously. You can try marketing, patriotism, sloganeering, guilt, brute force, whatever, it’s just too big a group of people to effectively manage as some giant monolithic entity, but that’s not gonna stop 536 folks on the world’s biggest power trip from trying. So my advice is stop letting them try. Your public wailing and gnashing of teeth over hypothetical 18 year olds with Crohn’s is just adding to the problem.
2) Our government has long passed the point of writing checks it can’t repay. At this point I honestly think we’re just going to max out our credit and then default on it. What happens afterwards I don’t know. Whether this is a deliberate plan or just the net result of decades of short term thinking and irresponsibility isn’t known to me, but it really doesn’t matter anyway, same end result. You wanna know what “Full Faith and Credit of the U.S. Government” means, ask a Navajo. Or for that matter a veteran. You guys did actually talk with them about more than bowel movements and vision changes during your VA rotation, right?
3) Entropy always wins. Always. No exceptions. I kinda wonder if that’s one of those facts man was never meant to know, but it’s out there so might as well deal with it. We can get all philosophical and metaphysical about fairness and justice and such, but honestly I wonder if it’s all some sham to defend ourselves from realizing some pretty horrible truths. Life is unfair. Sometimes bad things just happen, and it’s not always someone’s fault, someone’s responsibility, nor does anyone really benefit from it. Sometimes bad shit happens for no reason and we’re absolutely powerless to reverse it. The universe gradually gets more disordered every millisecond, and the only way to make a local area more ordered is to make the system as a whole more disordered. Them’s the breaks. And in the end every last one of us is gonna die at some point, despite our desperate, childish, and futile whining and thrashing against the idea of our own mortality. Cheers.
You can look at all that and despair I guess, but to me it misses the point. I really don’t mind fighting a hopeless battle, I guess I’ve been doing it since conception, but I do want to know what battle I’m fighting. I want to be able fight it on MY terms. Call me an ornery cuss, but that’s my own non-negotiable conditions to lift myself off the couch and struggle against the inevitable. I don’t think collectively we really do. Why are my choices restricted to let the 18 year old with Crohn’s live in agony and slowly shit himself to death or pay $10K a year in insurance premiums? There’s really no other way? I’m tired of this bullshit. I’m tired of empty solutions. I’m tired of false dichotomies. I’m tired of being lied to, pushed, pulled, guilt-tripped, whatever. I would have checked out of medicine like Hoover if I didn’t still actually mean all that stuff in my personal statement, but you want me to martyr myself on your terms, adding more bureaucracy, more failed solutions, more promises that have no real hopes of fulfillment, so you bullshitters can pat yourselves on the back again and call it a day and the rest of us can slide even quicker to economic collapse. Fuck you. Never. I’ll move to Africa and eat grubs if that’s what it takes to practice on my terms, you fucking charlatans. It’s not about the money or responsibility, it’s about having the self-respect to not buy into another heap of lies and walk around with a shit-eating grin because it’s easier than accepting and confronting reality, you fucking posers.
Hector – a reference that supports your first paragraph could be the “The Stone Age Present” by William F. Allman. A terrific read.
1) Discussing the problem does not add to the problem. That’s not sound logic to say it does. And this hypothetical crohn’s patient is, yes, hypothetical for this discussion. But your dismissal of this case because it is a hypothetical also dismisses the other million people who have crohn’s disease in the US. And the average age of diagnosis is under 25. So looking at crohn’s disease specifically, health insurance would be a problem for many of these people.
And now look at the all other chronic gastro issues people can have, add that to all the other chronic diseases a person develops as a child or young adult. A lot of diseases are diagnosed in adolesence or young adulthood making this is large problem for people who’ve never had a job with insurance benefits. Even if these illnesses are diagnosed later in life, there is not job mobility available. A person diagnosed with a chronic illness is effectively stuck with their current job for the rest of their lives, and they better not be laid off.
2) One of the benefits of cleaning up the health insurance industry is bringing down the completely out of control costs. If you’ve been following this healthcare discussion at all, you know by now that the US pays some of the highest costs in the world per person to receive the adequate healthcare we’re receiving.
I think you’re stuck on the false issue that healthcare reform means everyone will be mooching the system, taking what’s not theirs. No, we want everyone to have health insurance in one form or another so the cost of healthcare doesn’t get passed to the hospital, and then on to the other patients and doctors. We’ve got insurance companies moving these costs around to the people that carry the least weight. The person who is not on a larger corporate plan which has an ability to negotiate a decent price. A person who goes to the insurance company and wants a single person or single family plan cannot get anything reasonable unless they can afford tens of thousands per year.
3) It sounds as if you would rather just throw up your hands and say to hell with it all. That’s very fine and well for a single person, but if that’s what you’re saying, what’s the point of your comment. I’m interested more in what you’re advocating here? Out of one side of your mouth you say entropy wins, this is futile to try to make things better, and out of the other side you say this system that we’ve implemented to make things better can only get worse if we work on it. That doesn’t make sense, we implemented this current healthcare system, and like everything that’s not suiting people adequately enough, we try to make it better.
So it’s hard to tell exactly what you’re saying but mostly it just sounds like you see a gigantic problem that you don’t have a discrete answer to, and it’s overwhelmed you into apathy. And from your last comment:
” I’ll move to Africa and eat grubs if that’s what it takes to practice on my terms, you fucking charlatans. It’s not about the money or responsibility, it’s about having the self-respect to not buy into another heap of lies and walk around with a shit-eating grin because it’s easier than accepting and confronting reality, you fucking posers.”
It does sound like you’ve been lied to. You’ve been told that someone is going to take over your healthcare decisions and do for your patients what they think is best, not you.
Guess what, that’s the insurance companies right now. They dictate your practice unless you’re somewhere with a private practice, no insurance, all out of pocket. We all want the unnecessary costs to come down, that way you can do more of what you want with less 3rd party oversight because it will cost less money.
If I had my druthers, I’d rather get rid of health insurance altogether and start over. In fact, I’m planning on it on a personal level, even if it means providing lots of charity care to right some of my perceived wrongs of the world. But that’s my individual choice, put a gun to my head and force me to do the same thing and you’re gonna get a different response from me entirely.
All your criticism of them ignores one basic fact, though. They’re not a charity. Their business plan involves sizing you up and charging you more on premiums than you’re statistically expected to cost them. Nothing more, nothing less. You’re positively guaranteed to suck up $20,000 a year in expenses, hell yeah that’s going to change the accounting. What the fuck did you expect, they’ve been hiding a magic fairy in the boardroom that cries tears of gold every time she reads the file of some hard luck case? You might as well toss eggs at some local contractor every time you see a homeless person on the street. It’s not his fault not everyone in the world has a house, he’s just trying to make a living. You can tack on all the regulation and resulting overhead you want, it’s not going to change what they are. Nor are many of our expensive treatments in truth that cost-effective or even effective period, but damned if you’re gonna tell anyone in this country they’re not getting them. Goddamn it, we’re motherfucking Americans, we always get what we want when we want it. Especially if some pittance they’ve been paying to an insurance company makes them feel entitled to demand “whatever it takes”. Damn the consequences, if it takes 30,000 per year of someone else’s money so I don’t have to tell little Jimmy the fates just dealt him a bad hand, so be it.
Socialism is for losers!
“Fuck socialist schools! Fuck socialist roads! I was home-schooled growing up and now I only drive on mother fucking toll roads because THIS GOD DAMN SOCIALISM HAS GOT TO GOD DAMN STOP!
And FUCK these pipes coming into and out of my house. I FUCKING HATE THE SOCIALIST POLICIES THAT GOT SEWER AND WATER SYSTEMS IMPLEMENTED IN MY COMMUNITY and I choose not to live in a god damn suburb because I do not support the socialist policies that supported the growth of municipalities across this nation.
Fuck telephones, fuck the postal service. I can’t believe I’m paying taxes for the socialist army we have too. If I had things my way, I’d pay for my own militia, I don’t want the government using my money for anything.” -Every drone who thinks they can better their argument by calling healthcare reform socialist.
The fact is guys, whether you want to believe it or not, every developed country has in part gotten to where it is today because of what you would refer to as “socialism”. If you genuinely don’t like these types of programs, then argue against everything I’ve just brought up and not just healthcare, or else it’s VERY APPARENT that you either (a) don’t understand what you are saying or (b) are being deliberately deceitful.
When you have to use deceit or feigned ignorance to make an argument, you’ve lost the fight, you’re wrong, you’ve proven that your voice and your opinion do not matter, and this becomes clear to anyone with an actual interest in bettering the nation.
What deceit? What ignorance? I can assure you I’m quite serious. You’re the one trying to change the subject. Whether I have the time or inclination to sit down and write you a 100 page manifesto blasting everything from public education to the water supply to assure you of my seriousness really has no bearing on this discussion.
And honestly, I couldn’t give a tinker’s damn about your good intentions towards bettering the nation if I think your methods and the likely end results are catastrophically flawed, and I do. I’ve even tried to express why. How many of history’s greatest man-made disasters began with the best of intentions?
My reply was for the comment by Fartass. It wasn’t meant for you Hector, I don’t think you’re being deceitful in your comments here. I disagree with you, but I respect your arguments.
I do, however, think Hoover is mischaracterizing the MA vote. And he’s ignoring the background of the vote to further his side of the argument. That’s pretty shady.
“How many of history’s greatest man-made disasters began with the best of intentions?”
This country was founded with the best of intentions in mind, and I’d argue it resulted in the greatest country in the world. I’d also argue that we should go into every endeavor with the best of intentions, would you say otherwise?
Wtf are you smoking? It IS socialism because public health care is a page out of socialism’s book.
Yes because the postal service, Medicare, Medicaid, government food subsidies, government mandated minimum wages, and in general government projects have made the country a better place. However, I am not an extremist and will agree that some basic services like the police department, fire department, and even public schooling (as shitty as it is — and if you want to argue why, just look at how retarded your citizens are and their English/Math/Science scores out of high school compared to other Western modern countries. Even premeds from America barely do any special mathematics and have a great trouble with physics (the prereqs require calc I+II, and algebraic physics LOL) are needed. But when federal government or any government starts outstepping its boundaries and becomes bloated (http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15330481) Keep going. The State is a bad manager of business or banking. But who says that the State is the best at redistributing. Why did the State crowd out charities and churches and local communities and set up Behemoths of government departments of minimum wages, unemployment benefit, support for single mothers, etc etc? Or education? Or Transport, for Heaven’s sake. We should question evrything that government has been asked to do by socialists. Easy for them to spend other people’s money, or indeed money that does not exist- as we shall now suffer. The State is as huge in Britain as it was in the USSR.
Give me a break — whenever government takes away money in the form of taxes from citizens, it destroys economic effiiciency by reallocating money to firms/parties that are far less productive than those in the private sector.
The only reason why the Postal Service, MEdicare, Medicaid, etc. are “successful” (hint: short-term “success” at the cost of long-term longevity) is because the federal government can go into the red even after it fucks up time and time after again. It can also create money out of thin air, thus being the central reason why we have inflation in the first place. They’re the reason why we had the housing bubble in the first place (The Fed sets interest rates super low, investment banks borrow shit load of cash, and then sold lots of “toxic” mortgages to blacks, hispanics, and rednecks, etc.).
In general, whenever government is given control over something it fucks things up. Who’s going to pay for all of the government debt we’ve accumulated huh? You will.
One only need to look a the high tax rates we pay and the little we get from them (JUST LIKE IT WILL BE WITH OBAMACARE mikey mike),
People like Mike and Mark need to grow up. They need to stop seeing “the government” as a super-parent whose role is to step in and sooth everyone down when things go wrong. Remember that large government and DISECONOMIES OF SCALE. What happens when a firm grows too large? It becomes bloated and EXTREMELY INEFFICIENT AND THUS COSTLY (you end up with a lot of paper pushers and unnecessary paperwork for instance — one only need to look at government contracted painters in a town such as Waco where the state will hire 8 painters @ $30/hour each to paint some wall for $2000 when my buddy and I could do it in the same time for $400) The “nanny state” is seemingly everywhere now simply because that is what people expect. A lot more self-reliance, a lot more acceptance of the fact that life is fundamentally unfair – indeed, that life is a struggle for survival – and a greater willingness to take personal responsibility for the conditions of one’s life are all prerequisites for a smaller State.
> This country was founded with the best of intentions in mind, and I’d argue it resulted in the greatest country in the world. I’d also argue that we should go into every endeavor with the best of intentions, would you say otherwise?
If that’s what you think, then you seriously need to reread the Constitution and what the founding fathers advocated for you.
To anyone who has half a brain around here and doesn’t just believe in fairy tales, I highly recommend Henry Hazlett’s “Economics in One Lesson”
http://www.amazon.com/Economics-One-Lesson-Shortest-Understand/dp/0517548232
http://jim.com/econ/
Wtf are you smoking? It IS socialism because public health care is a page out of socialism’s book.
Yes because the postal service, Medicare, Medicaid, government food subsidies, government mandated minimum wages, and in general government projects have made the country a better place. However, I am not an extremist and will agree that some basic services like the police department, fire department, and even public schooling (as shitty as it is — and if you want to argue why, just look at how retarded your citizens are and their English/Math/Science scores out of high school compared to other Western modern countries. Even premeds from America barely do any special mathematics and have a great trouble with physics (the prereqs require calc I+II, and algebraic physics LOL) are needed. But when federal government or any government starts outstepping its boundaries and becomes bloated Keep going. The State is a bad manager of business or banking. But who says that the State is the best at redistributing. Why did the State crowd out charities and churches and local communities and set up Behemoths of government departments of minimum wages, unemployment benefit, support for single mothers, etc etc? Or education? Or Transport, for Heaven’s sake. We should question evrything that government has been asked to do by socialists. Easy for them to spend other people’s money, or indeed money that does not exist- as we shall now suffer. The State is as huge in Britain as it was in the USSR.
Give me a break — whenever government takes away money in the form of taxes from citizens, it destroys economic effiiciency by reallocating money to firms/parties that are far less productive than those in the private sector.
The only reason why the Postal Service, MEdicare, Medicaid, etc. are “successful” (hint: short-term “success” at the cost of long-term longevity) is because the federal government can go into the red even after it fucks up time and time after again. It can also create money out of thin air, thus being the central reason why we have inflation in the first place. They’re the reason why we had the housing bubble in the first place (The Fed sets interest rates super low, investment banks borrow shit load of cash, and then sold lots of “toxic” mortgages to blacks, hispanics, and rednecks, etc.).
In general, whenever government is given control over something it fucks things up. Who’s going to pay for all of the government debt we’ve accumulated huh? You will.
One only need to look a the high tax rates we pay and the little we get from them (JUST LIKE IT WILL BE WITH OBAMACARE mikey mike),
People like Mike and Mark need to grow up. They need to stop seeing “the government” as a super-parent whose role is to step in and sooth everyone down when things go wrong. Remember that large government and DISECONOMIES OF SCALE. What happens when a firm grows too large? It becomes bloated and EXTREMELY INEFFICIENT AND THUS COSTLY (you end up with a lot of paper pushers and unnecessary paperwork for instance — one only need to look at government contracted painters in a town such as Waco where the state will hire 8 painters @ $30/hour each to paint some wall for $2000 when my buddy and I could do it in the same time for $400) The “nanny state” is seemingly everywhere now simply because that is what people expect. A lot more self-reliance, a lot more acceptance of the fact that life is fundamentally unfair – indeed, that life is a struggle for survival – and a greater willingness to take personal responsibility for the conditions of one’s life are all prerequisites for a smaller State.
> This country was founded with the best of intentions in mind, and I’d argue it resulted in the greatest country in the world. I’d also argue that we should go into every endeavor with the best of intentions, would you say otherwise?
If that’s what you think, then you seriously need to reread the Constitution and what the founding fathers advocated for you.
To anyone who has half a brain around here and doesn’t just believe in fairy tales, I highly recommend Henry Hazlett’s “Economics in One Lesson”
Mike: “This country was founded with the best of intentions in mind, and I’d argue it resulted in the greatest country in the world. I’d also argue that we should go into every endeavor with the best of intentions, would you say otherwise?”
Yeah, I would. Best intentions? This country was founded on the principle that you can’t trust a distant, oppressive, unaccountable, out-of-touch, paternalistic government to look after your best interests no matter what happy horseshit about best intentions they happen to be spouting. Now look at us, seriously. This ain’t your Founding Father’s country anymore. “Give me unlimited free healthcare or you might as well be killing me!” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
@ Hector:
> 2) Our government has long passed the point of writing checks it can’t repay. At this point I honestly think we’re just going to max out our credit and then default on it. What happens afterwards I don’t know. Whether this is a deliberate plan or just the net result of decades of short term thinking and irresponsibility isn’t known to me, but it really doesn’t matter anyway, same end result. You wanna know what “Full Faith and Credit of the U.S. Government” means, ask a Navajo. Or for that matter a veteran. You guys did actually talk with them about more than bowel movements and vision changes during your VA rotation, right?
We’d damage our pristine credit. The US has never defaulted on a debt in history. It would have negative implications for future borrowing. I guess in extreme cases countries could demand that the US turn over collateral to pay off the debt. We could borrow from other countries to pay it off (digging ourselves a deeper hole no doubt).
Worst case but more likely, we would just print more money, increase inflation what a dollar would buy today , you would need $10,000 for the same commodity.
In other words, hyperinflation. Coincidentally, this is what led to the Third Reich (the Nazi takeover of Germany).
Graph of hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:GermanyHyperChart.jpg
If hyperinflation occurred, all of that $12,500,000,000 (trillion) would easily be worth nothing if a huge amount of money was printed.
Again, how you get me being in favor of a nanny state means you are replying before you read. This is supposed to be a discussion board. If you have all the answers, how come you’re the only one that has them? I’ll repeat:
“To someone claiming a proper system was being gamed by ignorant meddlers, I reminded that the system is already being games by republicans (my own party) and relationship to big business, and is why some folks (including non-liberal farmers) (yes I used and example) also seek to leverage government for balance, and that he was blaming another’s ignorance while demonstrating his own. You can disagree without being a douche. i asked about the threading because it read like you were responding to a different post. just like numbnuts [out of order, I apologize] who points to Henry Hazlitt as a counter to what I’m saying – republicans need to get republicans out from meddling in free-markets before blaming liberals. Hazlitt disagreed with that?
Your response is “look at me, look at me, I’m smart.” brilliant
[again out of order, but you guys can't say that you weren't]
Something tells me the difference between a straight out default and hyperinflation to wiggle our way out of our debts will make little difference in our perceived ability to pay off our future debts. China’s not gonna sit back and chuckle, “Guess you clever Yanks got us this time. Writing money into existence and leaving us to hold the bag, good one. Oh, you want more cruise missile parts and heparin on credit? Sure, my Equifax credit report here says you’ve technically never defaulted, guess you’re good for it. Here’s a little extra to outcompete us for oil contracts. Have a nice day!” IIRC, hyperinflation didn’t make the rest of the world kick back and tell Germany it’s all good and their war debts were paid in full with the boatloads of worthless cash. Germany more or less refused to keep paying and then got all pissy with the invasions and such. But hey, we’ve got nukes and oil, maybe it will turn out differently for us.
Yeah, we’ll just nuke the countries instead thereby canceling any outstanding debts we owe.
Here’s an excellent article highlighting the problems with big government:
http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15330481
To anyone who has half a brain around here and doesn’t just believe in fairy tales, I highly recommend Henry Hazlett’s “Economics in One Lesson”
http://www.amazon.com/Economics-One-Lesson-Shortest-Understand/dp/0517548232
http://jim.com/econ/
What does it all come down to? Your system is flawed, millions are left uninsured, and yet the costs are dramatically higher than in european countries with comparable health outcomes. Whether or not you agree with Obama’s proposed reforms, you should know something has to give.
Next on the list, we must insure all pet chihuahuas, all cockroaches, and all microbes that are in our bodies.
BECAUSE THEY’RE LIVING (ALBEIT SLIGHTLY LESS SENTIENT) organisms TOO!
You may be “morally superior” which is a pretty pretentious claim to make you arrogant son of a bitch, but in your system’s system, you know what you have?
Substandard treatment, waiting forever for a botched treatments and I can think of at least three different reasons why your system sucks at the NHS.
1. Your GP can’t help you because he’s crummy doctor. If so, change doctors quick. But you probably can’t.
2. He can’t cure you because no-one can. If that’s the case, life is tough but it looks like you’re going to have to live with the pain. If generic NHS medicine “X” doesn’t work, they won’t spend any money on “Z” medicine because it’s not approved. Ha ha, you die painfully bitch.
3. He can’t cure you because he works for the NHS which encourages lazy practices and slipshod medicine, fails to invest in effective treatment, spends to much on nannying anti-smoking and healthy-eating campaigns and not enough on curative medicine etc
Contrary to popular opinion, our Constitution gave us the liberties of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
No one ever said you were entitled to this.
Life is hard, and life is rough. I know that Sesame Street and your religious cults has told you that Jesus loves you and that’s why he fucks you on a day to day basis (Haiti anyone? Well, Pat Roberston said that the Haitians made a pact with the Devil because they wanted to be free from their superior overlords the French LOL), but natural selection and survival of the fittest has taught me otherwise.
Enjoy the scraps off your Socialist place, dumbass (http://gullyborg.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83421dda453ef0120a570e9e8970c-800wi) <— Click the image for massive LULZ factor.
Clarification on “No one ever said you were entitled to this.”
I meant that “No one ever said that you were entitled to free health care or taxing others for your health care”
The Constitution never gave that
but it certainly “entitled” you to the life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Problem is that lazy bums like you think that you have a “right” to health care.
The operation of the universal health care system in the UK is a system that has long been in the doleful steady state of all such socialist, centralized systems: waste, terrible services, and – most importantly – rationing. Every taxpayer involuntarily funding this behemoth feels that they own a piece of it, and everyone has that tug on their human nature urging them to make sure that no-one gets more than they do. It’s ugly, and it’s why socialism fails. Along the way to failure, however, it produces dangerous ideas, such as “human beings have a fixed length of life, after which they should be cut off and left to die.”
Economic ignorance is the death of cultures; it is presently eating away at the US, and is sadly most advanced in medicine and medical research. People who favor equality and envy over wealth and progress are, unfortunately, usually comparatively wealthy themselves and thus largely insulated from the short-term consequences of their ignorance. These dangerous philistines will have to decide in the years ahead whether their dearly-held positions are worth losing their lives to, not to mention the lives of everyone they manage to kill.
Hey,
Just a quick question for the libertarian/Republican/right wingers?
Not intending to offend, but genuinely curious.
As far as I can see, your angle is all about freedom of choice, and not wanting to pay for someone else’s care etc. Is that right?
Well, in a system, (such as two I have worked in, both socialist systems as you call them,) whereby there is a public State funded level of service, and a for profit private insurance based level of service-why is that not the preferred option everywhere?
The above, as is in Ireland, New Zealand, and I believe, in the UK as well, allows those with money and insurance to purchase whatever healthcare they wish wherever they wish. It also provides for the people who are not millionaires, and cannot afford hundreds of thousands of dollars for chemotherapy etc-they just don’t get their choice of a fancy private hospital and whatever treatment they wish-they get the best practice, evidence based treatment for their condition, but no frills.
I’m an American who has never lived in the USA for any significant period of time, but looking at my relatives, some of whom are doctors, their taxes seem the same as mine, in some cases higher. It just appears the taxes go towards different things.
Here, our taxes go towards, in part, publicly funded healthcare as well as the usual road maintenance, education, stuff that taxes everywhere go towards.
Would it be that bad to reallocate a portion of tax in the States towards basic healthcare and primary prevention-which has actually been shown to REDUCE healthcare costs in countries that implement it-such as the Netherlands?
While still keeping the option of private healthcare with all the trimmings available for those that wish to purchase top notch out of their own pockets?
I’m just genuinely interested as to why this is so unpalatable? Is it a cultural thing that I don;t understand? Or are there practical reasons why basic standards for all citizens in the areas of education, healthcare and housing are somehow bad for the economy, and country in general?
> Would it be that bad to reallocate a portion of tax in the States towards basic healthcare and primary prevention-which has actually been shown to REDUCE healthcare costs in countries that implement it-such as the Netherlands?
Reduced healthcare costs? I’d like to see where you got those figures that implemented it with cost savings.
Why do premeds not understand/realize basic arithmetic?
Economically iliterate seem to think that 2+2 = 5, and will argue vociferously for it yet they don’t even realize that they’re doing it.
Ugh.
You fucking numbnuts, when people don’t go to the doctor when they’re sick, they get worse. And worse and worse and worse, and we don’t let people die because they’re sick. So when they eventually show up at the doctor’s office with no insurance and massive medical needs, they get very expensive treatment. And just one example for you to help expand your shit-for-brains mind with some foresight: if someone without insurance needs to go on dialysis for the rest of their life, WE DON’T LET THEM DIE. Their visits to the dialysis clinic are paid for by your taxes.
2+2 doesn’t equal 5, but 2+2 plus the 1 that your fucking small brain cannot comprehend does equal 5.
So don’t comment with your IDIOTIC rants if you’re too fucking dumb to understand where any of these numbers from. God damn, you’re one of the dumber ones on here. Thank god people like jane doe exist who can actually comprehend the problem to point out logical ways to fix the it.
As opposed to the NHS, which actually does just let them die.
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/dialysis-shortage-exposes-failings-of-nhs-601353.html
Anon is the biggest troll and dumbass on the internet and I’m not even exaggerating.
And nice find Shining Hector, I chuckled on that article and the shortcomings of the NHS.
People become increasingly comfortable and standards of living improve in the first world (no doubt thanks to technologies that were once prohibitively expensive but are now cheap as fuck because the costs of production goes down with mass production and improved technologies.)
Let me give you a little lesson, prices equilibriate/go down in the long run. How does this happen? Well one, there need to be economic profits to attract firms to enter an industry. The entry of firms forces down the market price until the typical firm is breaking even (i.e. cheap vibrator for your ass Mr. Anon, the cheap petroleum lube for your asshole, and the bandages for your asshole after the slumber party with your gay lover Vihsadhas from SDN is done). Economic losses cause firms to exit an industry until the typical firm is breaking even. This is also known as long run competitive equilibrium, fucktard, and this results in firms breaking even and this is where consumers benefit from goods/services at their lowest possible costs (cheap bandages and cheap dildos for those nights when you’re all alone in your little premed dorm room fapping off to dwarf pornography)
What this means is that in any competitive market (i.e. one of the big problems with health insurance market being closed and unaccessible), if there is an opportunity to make money, then profits won’t last long. In fact, it’s the reason why Hoover probably left medicine because he realized that it’s not just worth it anymore (ask him 20-30+ years ago during the “Golden” days).
Over time, most products become mass-produced, familiar, and less expensive. Think of Band-Aids, TVs and calculators — they’re all ordinary, and they’re all generally affordable.
We don’t get to know scalpels and stents the way we know calculators. We don’t really understand just how perfect they need to be. And we tend to accept that marginally better medical technologies are worth the cost and it is THE DE FACTO REASON why health care is so fucking expensive in America. Innovation comes at a price, but it doesn’t mean that you’re entitled to it dumbass (and if we didn’t come up with it, do you think Russia is on the frontier of groundbreaking medical technology?)
Because we’ll pay for the new, better stent, manufacturers are constantly trying to make a new, better stent. Americans have been incredible innovators in medical technology. We benefit from that. The world benefits from that. We also pay for it. A lot. But people like you and Nany Pelosi seem to think that you’re entitled to this. The right solution? You deny those expensive treatments and you let the old senile geezers to die off if they can’t afford it. Idiot. Fortunately, we’re at a point in society where painkillers and anesthetics and end of life care is cheap/already cheap.
So again, the PRICES WILL GO DOWN over time, it’s just that you dumbasses keep on using all these expensive technologies that haven’t equilibriated in price yet (which takes time), and want to use it to live longer.
We don’t have a health care system in this country. We have a medical care system, a disease treatment and management system, a heckuva successful drug marketing system, and a highly profitable insurance system… and these ‘systems’ do not care one whit for health. They care for profits. Health happens when people eat healthy food (good luck finding that in your local grocery store), drink clean water and breathe clean air, and learn how their body works so they can take care of it themselves. Obesity? Perhaps these overweight bodies are simply seeking a nutrient or two buried in all the food-like substances out there. Heart burn, digestive problems? Perhaps all those antibiotics handed out like candy have destroyed your digestive system and it never recovered. Alternatives that work like exercise and eating right are frowned on by all the ‘systems’ noted above, and the FDA, supposedly charged with protecting us from harmful food and drugs, instead is a whore for the big food and drug conglomerates. ‘Health care’ costs will never go down as long as we rely on drugs and technology to save us after we’ve destroyed our own health instead of learning to take care of ourselves to begin with.
And again, Mr. Anon, please don’t bring up the argument about the fucking minority Native Girl with Aids/Ebola/Cervical Cancer/Down’s Syndrome all at once who got denied coverage, this isn’t about the genetic rejects, this is about lazy entitled Americans who believe their fat asses deserve an infinite amount of wants in a world that has many restraints.
Now, the goals of Health care reform should be very simply stated and easy to understand.
There are three objectives that need to be addressed:
1. Reform the claims, billing and accounting procedures to prevent fraud and waste. Computerization and audits are key tools for this goal.
2. Regulate the coverage rules to enable portability and continuity of coverage and establish arbitration procedures for disputes to reduce inflated legal expenditures and settlements (tort reform).
3. Establish a minimum coverage policy of last resort for those who cannot afford commercial policies. This will facilitate universal coverage and establish a base for competition. It’ll also mean denial of expensive treatments/rationing of course like the NHS does, but hey you can’t have your cake and eat it too.
It’s not that hard, really and this has not and won’t be done by Obama, guaranteed.
Oh, did you just get schooled? I think you did.
Skeet skeet skeet on your face.
You are awesome faggotron because even though it took you all those words and multiple posts, you got to the point where you recognized the importance of:
“3. Establish a minimum coverage policy of last resort for those who cannot afford commercial policies.”
Your objective 1 and 2 are agreed upon by many on both sides of the table as well.
The thing is, Anon, is that we already have 3) — it’s called Medicaid.
“Anon from /b/” doesn’t know what medicaid is if they think Medicaid covers all those who cannot commercial policies. Look it up.
Basically, I don’t think the real world works that way, and day to day and historical evidence seems to play it out. You can lay out whatever beautiful plan you want, but you’re inadvertently going to step on the toes of about 20 or so conflicting interests, and few are going to stand by and let you slaughter their sacred cow for the “greater good”, by definition defined by you. Quite often they even have a point. So they’re going to demand concessions. And those concessions are going to step on more toes, and they’ll demand concessions. And so on. Each concession demands the system become more complex to accomodate the growing laundry list of demands and proscriptions, to ensure nobody pitches a fit. More complexity demands more bureaucracy and reduces transparency. As time goes on, it just snowballs, and eventually you’re paying more in time and effort (what money theoretically represents) to keep this increasingly unwieldy Rube Goldberg system going than the amount of useful work you’re getting out of it. So I say cut the bullshit. What you get is what you pay for. It’s simple, both parties immediately know their benefits, it reduces mountains of waste, doesn’t create perverse incentives, and leaves all the decision power in the hands of the interested parties instead of a detatched third party. Whether or not it’s fair that Bill Gates can afford better health care than some random schizophrenic and whether or not I support some faceless third party to try and forcefully right the cosmic scales of justice is honestly not a decision that I think is mine to make. If the two of them walked into my office, I will say I’d be much more likely to treat the schizophrenic pro bono than Bill Gates, but I’m really pretty much okay with leaving that as the limit of the scope of my power on the issue, and I really wish everyone else would, too. There’d be a lot less wrong with the world in general if people just rolled up their sleeves and tackled the problems of the world themselves rather than puling for the government to do it for them for nothing more than a little whining and tax money.
I fundamentally don’t like the idea of deferring control of my money and my health over to third parties to make my decisions for me. And before anyone else chimes in, I have big issues with both private and public health insurance as they stand and resent having the issue painted as a choice between eating dog shit and cat shit. How about you let me fix my own fucking food. Pretty much my stand on our two party system, too. That’s pretty much it. Whether or not I want to to pay for someone else’s health care really doesn’t enter into the picture, actually I resent the issue being painted as me having to take a side on that. To me it’s not whether I get to keep my money or pay for some anonymous homeless dude’s dialysis. I take a step back and ask if expanding this hideously unwieldy system that by all appearances is flawed at the conceptual stage in the first place will provide more of a benefit than a hindrance. My answer is a resounding no.
Great, Hector, so how about you say what you really want. It’s blantantly obvious to everyone based on your comments that you want a system where everyone pays for themselves for whatever ailment they get. You want health insurance to not exist. That’s the only way to get to your utopia of 100%-capitalist healthcare where hospitals don’t end up gouging the guy without insurance.
Sorry, hector, we have health insurance as a means to spread the risk around to all parties involved, thus limiting the hardship that any one person will be dealt.
It’s the principle behind all forms of insurance. And health insurance is the one form of insurance where fair competition is severely limited creating an industry where the companies providing coverage have become severely corrupt and the masses are not getting a fair deal.
You’ve been duped with this debate into thinking that you’re fighting for maintaining your rights as a citizen, when you’re actually arguing against them. Your taxes don’t go up with healthcare reform. The healthcare insurance industry will just be getting some rules imposed on them so you get to keep more of your money.
It hurts the economy and it hurts the populace to have the insurance industry taking advantage of you.
Thought I was saying exactly what I really want, in no uncertain terms, Captain Obvious. I guess I succeeded in conveying that, but your triumphant tone at parroting it back to me is somewhat puzzling.
As for the purpose of health insurance, as I had said, its only real purpose, as with any business, is to make money for its owners. In the end, you as the consumer are merely the means to that end. If it fails to do so, it fails as a business and won’t be around too long. The fact that insurance companies are being run, Surprise!, as a for-profit business and not a welfare program with unlimited resources isn’t some “corruption”, it’s part of the core design. If you fail to understand that, any further railing is guaranteed to miss the point. “We” don’t generously keep health insurance around as a means to spread risk around, they set up shop selling a means to spread risk around and charge us for the privilege. They don’t make money, there’s no business, and all the bitching and whining in the world about your rights and expectations as a consumer won’t change that.
Where you’ve been duped is thinking that the government is going to save you from those horrible insurance companies. Have you been paying any attention at all? Who’s been getting all these bailouts? Who are the real end beneficiaries of all the 2000 page bills that no one has time to read? The biggest barrier to fair competition isn’t the insurance companies, it’s the government. You piss and moan about the insurance companies picking your pocket while ignoring the fact the government, like any good paid stooge, is holding you down letting them do it. Now the stooge, while winking and grinning at his real master, generously offers to weakly slap that mean old hand away if you’ll only quit resisting and offer a better hold and you’re going to believe it? How dumb are you? Do you seriously think insurance companies are going to end up the worse for wear from anything that comes out of Washington?
Shining Hector,
Would you really be deferring control of your money and health to third parties if you lived in a country where you have 1) a publicy funded basic safety net and 2) a private, for profit system where you can buy, using your money, any crazyass healthcare you can think of, including a double sex change to become a hermaphrodite?
You very much then have the option of purchasing what you wish, if you have the money.
If you have fallen on hard times, or develop a metastatic pleiomorphic retroperitoneal liposarcoma, or some other condition that would bankrupt you, the publicly funded option is there, but you get what is funded according to international best practice-no more, and no less.
I don’t understand the American reasoning. It is apparently permissible to pay taxes that are higher than in most European countries actually when you factor in State tax and Federal income tax, to fund roadworks, basic education, water and power, etc, and it is even ok to pay lots of tax to fund the military to kill in SOME unnecessary wars, and fund things like Guantanamo.
However, if we were to redirect a portion of tax take into basic healthcare for American citizens, this somehow infringes on EVERYONE’s civil liberties to the point that they become hysterical.
I have lived in both Ireland and New Zealand. In both countries there is a fairly decent publicly funded healthcare system. I have always held private health insurance because I can afford it, and therefore should not be sponging off of the taxpayers, and aslo because it affords me the privilege of attending whatever private facility I wish, for whatever I wish. I have never felt that my choices were being taken from me, and that I was being controlled by third parties. That sounds, frankly. schizophrenic.
I have the choice of buying my health insurance, at whatever level of cover I choose, (and some of the expensive policies mean you literally get treated like Gwen Stefani when you walk in!). If I no longer have this option-for example if I develop leukaemia and can no longer perform my job, hence unable to earn money to pay for my insurance-I have a safety net.
I don’t pay higher taxes than anyone in the US, and I have freedom of choice, as much as I wish.
The only difference is, those less well off than I don’t have to suffer and die in a supposedly civilised country.
> I don’t understand the American reasoning. It is apparently permissible to pay taxes that are higher than in most European countries actually when you factor in State tax and Federal income tax, to fund roadworks, basic education, water and power, etc, and it is even ok to pay lots of tax to fund the military to kill in SOME unnecessary wars, and fund things like Guantanamo.
We don’t pay taxes that are higher than in most European countries. I don’t know where you are getting your facts from again. And again, I’d like to see some figures where there are health care savings from those countries, I’ve asked you once, and you haven’t, so I’m gonna have to assume that you’re pulling things out of your ass.
In any case, we already have in many respects that safety net that you’re speaking of. Mainly, Medicaid which is for those who are truly poor enough that they can’t afford shit.
If you’re in another group, then you need to plan better and learn to save your money and invest it properly rather than buy stupid shit that you don’t need. I’d simply save (as in “put in a savings account”) the money that I’d spend on premiums, and use that to pay my bills.
It’s called being fiscally responsible. Shit happens, so you deal with it and at the end of the day it’s still a hundred times better than dying from diarrhea in Africa.
> to fund roadworks, basic education, water and power, etc, and it is even ok to pay lots of tax to fund the military to kill in SOME unnecessary wars, and fund things like Guantanamo.
I’m libertarian and the majority of Americans want out of two unpopular wars that we never wanted in the first place. I’m all for cutting military spending by as much as 80%. By the way, Europe and Canada don’t have to spend as much on the military because they have America protecting their asses, because our leadership is so paranoid of not being number one (which it won’t be for very long given all its stupid decisions lately, $3.15 trillion deficit for the year HELLO!).
The problem comes when the proposition that Congress gives is shitty at best and twogirlsonecup at worst. We don’t want to pay more for a system that we have doubts on, that was muddled with pork, shady closed door meetings with big pharm, and insurance that benefited them far more than us, etc.
There was no tort reform, no single payer, no reform of insurance procedures, no portability, nothing.
It was a stupid bill that wouldn’t have amounted to any savings for the average American.
> I have never felt that my choices were being taken from me, and that I was being controlled by third parties. That sounds, frankly. schizophrenic.
Uh, so you’re saying that the third party (i.e. the insurance company or the federal government or whatever) won’t dictate the rules of what tests you can or cannot do? Please.
You speak like we’re given some choice in the matter on whether to fund unnecessary wars, the latest and greatest fighter jets to shoot down enemy planes that don’t exist, bridges to nowhere, etc. We don’t. Every two years you get to pick Red who will spend more money than we have, bail out bankers, build bridges to nowhere, expand the federal government, expand military spending, expand Medicare, or Blue, who will spend more money than we have, bail out bankers, build bridges to nowhere, expand the federal goverment, expand military spending, and expand Medicare. Each side decries this behavior to slightly varying degrees depending on the issue, and then each turns around and does exactly the same thing as the other the second they take office. All the bullshit about party platforms is all smoke and mirrors, they’re two sides of the exact same coin, and together they’re going to keep chipping at our economic and social freedom until there’s nothing left.
I’m just fucking fed up with it and that honestly overshadows any other consideration. Call it schizophrenic if you like, I honestly don’t give a shit. You want a glimpse of what is different about the American character, there you go. We don’t trust the government. “We’re from the government and we’re here to help,” really is a joke to us. I’ll quite gladly take my chances with a couple of 1/50,000 diseases if it means avoiding a 1/1 chance of tightening that inexorable noose around my neck another couple of inches, seriously. I really don’t plan on living forever, but I’d rather at least have a sense of being master of my own destiny while I’m here. It’s that important to me, seriously. If that makes no sense, I really do feel sorry for you. You’ve missed out on more than too much high fructose corn syrup as an expat.
Well said Shining Hector!
> However, if we were to redirect a portion of tax take into basic healthcare for American citizens, this somehow infringes on EVERYONE’s civil liberties to the point that they become hysterical.
actually it does, you potato-eating/kangaroo bashing Irish New Zealander.
The Constitution never gives the power for Government run health care which infringes on my rights. Big distinction. I believe that a gov’t run plan is stepping outside of their constitutional powers. Not one of the 17 enumerated powers give them the right to run a govt plan. The fact that it would destroy private insurance and lead to a single payer system where the govt makes my medical decisions for me, infringes on my freedom.
Btw, the the general welfare clause requires the national government to provide for the general welfare of the states. It does not trump our inalienable rights. It also in no way allows the national government to go into ANY business in competition with the private sector.
Not that that really matters as the Constitution has become toilet paper for politicians’ dirty assholes (www.instantrimshot.com) as no one really pays attention to it anymore.
That aside. My liberty is dependent on what i can earn to provide for my family. If the govt is going to tax me for my neighbors care then they are taking away my liberty. To put it more directly, why should i have my hard earned dollars pay for your (those that don’t have ins,not you) care.
Wow, so much anger and fierce debate here. I am impressed. To some extent I agree with all of you. Each one is right, depending on the point of view. Once you get to my state, you realize that there is no such thing as free will if you want to be a happy person. All illusion of control. The path to happiness is in letting go of that illusion (aka “ego”), and going deep inside yourself and see who you really are. Happiness comes when soul and mind work in unison. Soul can be seen as female aspect of yin yang, and mind as male. Soul is interested in the present and always seeks love. Soul is that dream that you had as a child: may be you want to grow flowers, may be you want to be a healer, may be you want sing, or may be travel. Imagine that you already have your goal. Does it leave you with a feeling of emptiness, if you have it? If so, then this goal is an illusion. Soul doesn’t care and doesn’t understand the language of logic. It just wants its toy to play. Yes, to the soul, life is nothing more than a game! Soul doesn’t want money, it wants to experience life! It is the job of the mind, however, to figure out how to achieve the goal/dream that soul desires. It is nothing, but futile to try to find your goal using logic. The logical mind will make up all kinds of excuses of why you should do something, forgetting about the subconscious subtle desires coming from the soul. By listening to the mind alone, it is impossible to find happiness. Pursuit of happiness is an ILLUSION. There really is nothing to pursue. Happiness is the closest thing to you. The rule of thumb is this: if you do not truly enjoy doing what you are doing right now at this very moment, you will not enjoy it in the future. Real (not prosthetic substitute) happiness comes on your path to your goal. If what you want to do is truly yours, it will give you energy, it will make you feel alive, and your life will turn into a celebration. Every day will be a holiday and fresh.There is no such thing as happily ever after. By fulfilling the desire of your soul (imo opinion something that comes directly from god) you become happy. That is why there is really no such thing as free will if you want to be truly happy.
Anyways guys, I just wanted to share this info with you. After reading this website, I finally put the final nail in the coffin for med school. I am finishing my undergrad in neuroscience this year, and will be taking a year off and doing things that I want to do. Thanks but no thanks to all my relatives. They seem to think that medical school and being a doctor is a path to paradise. What an illusion, eh? And to hell with the money. It’s not money that’s important, it’s living a life. But goals should be coming from the soul; they cannot be substitutes from society, competition, envy etc. Two years of spiritual seeking and trying to crack the real tough nut of happiness brought me to this conclusion. Too many people put off life for never arriving tomorrow and die slowly for 40-50 years. Their dreams go unfulfilled, they slave away at a 9-5 job. Screw security, screw predictability! Life by it’s nature is unpredictable, insecure.
As far, as political systems and everything. It doesn’t really matter that much much. In some cases treating health conditions is considered a sign of good health care system. It’s not. Many health problems that people have are a result of lifestyle and state of mind. Cortisol released during prolonged stress leads to decreased lymphocyte proliferation and increased plasma concentration of suppressor CD8 cells. It acts as immuno-supressant and an extremely potent anti-inflammatory agent. Happiness and well-being on the other hand are correlated with higher plasma concentration of natural killer cells. Sleep is necessary for growth hormone release which actually is crucial for proper immune system function. Not to mention obesity and everything that is associated with it. Restricted-calorie diets slow aging. Telomere disintegration slows down on low calorie diets, and animals on such a diet live up to 30-40% longer. What sucks, hoever, is that this diet is really restritctive (intake of approximately 1000 calories per day for humans). To improve health one must really start looking after himself/herself. Ultimately you only have one body, and that’s it. Pills are not a magical solution. Everything in the body is tightly integrated, and drugs for act on receptors that a present in a plethora of tissues. As far as surgery is concerned, it may be nice to have prosthetic, but isn’t it better to keep your own organs? Mental activity delays onset of age-related dementia. Each year of post-secondary education has been linked to approximately 3-year later onset of Alzheimer’s disease.
Purely for profit drive is detrimental if it’s not backed by anything from the heart. It will become just an empty hunt for the money. That’s what’s happening in insurance and banking industry, not to mention all law suits. So much waste and absurdity in society. Wars and nuclear weapons are great examples of what happens when logical is used, but it’s not back up by anything from the heart. On the other hand, Mozart’s symphony, a masterpiece painting, Einstein’s discoveries in physics are all example of what happens when soul and mind unite for one common goal. Do you know that Mendeleev failed high school chemistry, and that Einstein was kicked out of college, as was Elton John. Einstein was against organized education, and do you know why? IMHO it really doesn’t matter who runs a business (government, private owner, or corporation); it’s the intention that matters. Are you running it for monetary gain? If so, then it’s a futile effort. For you, and for your customers. What matters is in what state you are running it. The highest peak is the state of love for what you are doing and giving everything that you’ve got. In that state, there would be no greed. Soul seeks unconditional love. Of all the systems that have existed for centuries, the oldest one of compassion and love (something taught essentially by all religions, and especially Jesus Christ) has never been tried before on mass scale. It’s much easier to complain and blame, then to learn to love. Jesus lover people who were crucifying him!!! Can you do the same?!? I’m not there yet, actually quiet far from there. In state of love all you can do and want to do is to share and to give; it comes NATURALLY. Helping someone should never be forced. Societal morals are nothing more than a mask. If you don’t really feel like helping someone, then you should not; it’s nothing more than deception. Instead of going deep inside themselves people mindlessly repeat and study the action actions of others drifting away from happiness that was just a pinkie away. Happiness cannot be found in a book. A true path is unique to the individual. As a result, what we have is approximately 1% of people who are creators in this world, who contribute everything worthy in this life to existence. The vast majority are consumers who are mindless slaves and robots. Freedom is a state of mind. It is independent of the system of government in place. If you are worried about government or policies, they already control your thoughts. If you are worried about your future, your thoughts are also being controlled by others (using subtle emotions like fear, guilt, artificial complexes, insecurities). Yes, all that is control, not freedom. If you are on the right you are being controlled, if you are on the left, you are being controlled. The funny thing is that both are being controlled by exactly the same people. Btw, what I said right now is not contradictory to what I said above. Reaching happiness requires giving up control. It’s just a matter of who is running you. Your soul or other sources (e.g. relatives, government, boss, etc). Your soul is always interested in your happiness, but what about the company that you work for? What about your clients? What about your government?
But enough of all this. Rambling too much today. All this is just something to think about! I would like to thank you guys for the work you do. It really helps countless deluded and confused people from walking the path of misery.
DISCLAIMER: except for science facts presented above everything else is a byproduct of personal discovery and integration of multiple philosophical and spiritual discoveries that are subject to subjective expression. Truth is ineffable, and I do not claim to have seen the absolute truth. That is a privilege of select few, like Buddha, Jesus, Osho, etc… By their own nature my thoughts are not objective and cannot be proven. Hence, I do not intend to argue with anyone regarding my conclusions and observation. Everyone of us is right to an extent, as long as we believe it to be true. If you like something I mentioned, test it and if it works for you use it. Otherwise, you can disregard everything I said. ;D
SH
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Yeah, some parts I agreed with you, but other parts — you gotta stop toking the weed and shrooms.
It’s arrogant for cocksuckers like Buddha, Jesus, Osho, Moses, and Mohammed to have claimed knowledge of the absolute truth. All I’ve seen from them is manipulation, and desire for power over people. And if I were a man who was lusting over power, creating a religion is the best way to do that.
So fuck them.
And coming from someone who is a bit older who did the whole taking some time off thing, it get’s old after a while.
You get bored and sad that all your friends are moving on with their professional lives and you are not. You may be happpy in the sense that you’re not working your ass off, but at some point you’re going to do it, and like you said, “there is no free will” (which I agree upon) so if it will happen it will happen.
Another thing is that what you speak of is an overly simplified view on how the world works. But I’m not surprised seeing as you’re in college and haven’t worked in the real world yet.
One day you might just (probably not) look at this post you wrote on Hoover’s wall and say to yourself, “Man, how fucking naive was I”
Of course, I agree with you that you have to do something that you’re good at and that you’re remotely interested in, but that is a common cliched theme in general in the West, we all know that. It also helps that living in a spoiled nation/s, makes us pain averse and to seek the path of least resistance. And besides, if you really don’t have free will, then you don’t have control over what you will do too.
In any case, it sounds like you don’t want to go into medicine because of the temporary pain/stress over a few years that may be involved. That’s not a reason to not go into medicine as pressure will turn a lump of coal into a diamond one day.
Nobody said it would be easy (but certainly taking some time off doesn’t hurt unless it it makes you soft and dulls your mind…).
Yay, no replies. So that means I get to say whatever and you’ll just take it like a bitch. Good times.
Go you. Worldly wise at 21 or so, you should write a book. Or maybe one day you’ll really grow up and discover something called responsibility, you know, that thing that made your family with all their hated expectations of you keep your happy ass on this mortal coil when you weren’t good for too much more than gurgling, spitting, pissing, and shitting. Coming from someone else who took time off, yeah, it really does get old. If you can truly live in the now and be happy doing whatever, there’s nothing at all keeping you out of med school. From what I’ve seen, if you have a little stubborn, uncompromising, non-negotiable core of self-respect and courage, most of the bullshit will roll roll right past you, it’s mostly the self-hating fools who never under any circumstances stand up for themselves and walk around the wards with a shit-eating grin no matter the circumstances that turn around and do most of the complaining. If that sounds like you, by all means tell daddy you’re tired of all those horrid expectations the world has for you to justify your existence and you wanna drop out of society and devote your life to never ever ever being unhappy and tell us how that goes for you. Or don’t. There’s, what, 7 billion of us and counting, you won’t be missed.
I eat shit burgers.
So, before I could read the bill i didnt like the fact that I’d have to buy into something or get fined if I dont. Wheres my right to privacy? ANYTHING THAT TELLS ME WHAT TO DO WITH MY MONEY OR MY LIFE IS WRONG AND SHOULD BE BURNED.
I will resist whatever american bull shit comes my way. I just want to have a good time, not working my entire life for a bunch of knobs that just want money. Fuck that, and fuck the healthcare bill. If they pass it, they’re will be much pain.
lol, you’re such a retard
Spoiler alert: Selfish pricks in this thread.
Spoiler alert: Just kidding, I suck dick hee hee.
Is that you Hoover? Or does Hoover just pussy out in comments and use multiple false names?
HOW LOW CAN YOU GO!!! HOW LOW CAN YOU GO!!! HOW LOW CAN YOU GO!!! HOW LOW CAN YOU GO!!! HOW LOW CAN YOU GO!!! HOW LOW CAN YOU GO!!! HOW LOW CAN YOU GO!!! HOW LOW CAN YOU GO!!! HOW LOW CAN YOU GO!!! HOW LOW CAN YOU GO!!! HOW LOW CAN YOU GO!!! HOW LOW CAN YOU GO!!! HOW LOW CAN YOU GO!!! HOW LOW CAN YOU GO!!! HOW LOW CAN YOU GO!!!
I’d like to apologize for being a noobtard. I deserve to be pwned in life, by girls, and Halo 3.
BOOSH!