(Un) Affordable Care Act - the Uncomfortable Truth

[BadJuju]

Re: (Un) Affordable Care Act - the Uncomfortable Truth

more and more look at the human as just a smart animal, a piece of meat that either has use or not (means to an end) and this is why our culture is in trouble, and this I can lay at the doorstep of corporate power together with our collective apathy and ignorance.

That's because humans are just smart animals. They are just pieces of meat. There is no creation. No god. No soul. It is a very meaningless, pointless existence. We are all organic machines with highly advanced programming acting as cogs in some grand machine that came together without purpose or reason. It exists solely to exist and runs until its energy is exhausted. It is all completely mechanical and free of any fantastical intervention. And any meaning you contrive is not your own but that of your programming. Stop trying to see things as they aren't. No god has endowed each human with some special property that gives them a right to exist. The universe nor the world we live on gives a damn. No one has a right to exist except that which we humans instill in them ourselves. And as a human I believe it is the woman's choice to do as she pleases with her body and as long as the fetus is within her, it is her's to do with as she pleases. Once it leaves her personal domain, it can enter society proper and be instilled with those rights we reserve for actual persons.

I am sorry if that is not what you want to hear. I am not particularly fond of it either. I would have much preferred something like Middle-Earth; however, the whims of an insignificant hunk of meat such as myself are not held in high regard by the universe.

[Woodsman]

Re: (Un) Affordable Care Act - the Uncomfortable Truth

That's because humans are just smart animals. They are just pieces of meat. There is no creation. No god. No soul. It is a very meaningless, pointless existence... I am sorry if that is not what you want to hear. I am not particularly fond of it either. I would have much preferred something like Middle-Earth; however, the whims of an insignificant hunk of meat such as myself are not held in high regard by the universe.

BJ, man you are itching for a fight. Now I don't necessarily disagree or agree, mind you, but since none of us can say anything about this with any authority, maybe in the interests of comity we should try to lead with "I think..." rather than make provocative assertions. And absence of proof is not proof of absence, no? Anyway, this has rant and rave all over it, don't you agree?

[jiimbergin]

Re: (Un) Affordable Care Act - the Uncomfortable Truth

Hmm. I think you're the one speaking in black and white terms, aren't you? I agree that the government giving banksters bailouts is wrong, while also arguing that those who earn their wealth honestly are morally entitled to it, regardless of how "unequally" large the amount of wealth they create is compared to other less talented or motivated people. You, on the other hand, don't respond to these points at all and instead go off on a standard left-wing tirade about how conservatives love inequality and want to enslave the proletariat.

+1

[DSpencer]

Re: (Un) Affordable Care Act - the Uncomfortable Truth

That's because humans are just smart animals. They are just pieces of meat. There is no creation. No god. No soul. It is a very meaningless, pointless existence. We are all organic machines with highly advanced programming acting as cogs in some grand machine that came together without purpose or reason. It exists solely to exist and runs until its energy is exhausted. It is all completely mechanical and free of any fantastical intervention. And any meaning you contrive is not your own but that of your programming. Stop trying to see things as they aren't. No god has endowed each human with some special property that gives them a right to exist. The universe nor the world we live on gives a damn. No one has a right to exist except that which we humans instill in them ourselves. And as a human I believe it is the woman's choice to do as she pleases with her body and as long as the fetus is within her, it is her's to do with as she pleases. Once it leaves her personal domain, it can enter society proper and be instilled with those rights we reserve for actual persons.

I am sorry if that is not what you want to hear. I am not particularly fond of it either. I would have much preferred something like Middle-Earth; however, the whims of an insignificant hunk of meat such as myself are not held in high regard by the universe.

I don't think anyone at this point can say definitively whether that is true or not, though many would claim to be able. However, the legality/morality of abortion is a minor detail in the implication of what you are saying. The bigger point would be that there is no morality and so murder, rape, torture etc are all equally meaningless mechanical acts with no greater consequence or significance.

The reality is that the vast majority of humans do not feel this way. There is broad consensus that human life and the enjoyment of it has value, even if only to ourselves. And so we endeavor to create a society that protects human life and prosperity. And if the nihilists don't like it, well what do they care anyway!

[Mn_Mark]

Re: (Un) Affordable Care Act - the Uncomfortable Truth

It's not their body. It's not as though they were donating one of their kidneys.

It is the body of a completely different and unique human being with a different genetic code, different fingerprint,
often a different blood type, and about half of the time - of a different gender.

An innocent, defenceless, helpless human being who is being murdered because they are deemed to be inconvenient.

+1

I thought abortion was a no-brainer, an obvious right and the right thing to do in most cases, until the 18-year-old daughter of friends of mine became pregnant. I thought it was obvious that she should get an abortion because she was just starting college and this would ruin her life. She didn't have an abortion, though, because her family is very catholic, and her parents were going to help her raise the child.

I didn't see these friends for a few years and then our paths crossed again and I was invited to their house for a get-together. I'm sitting at their house, sipping a beer, and here comes the nicest little 3-year-old girl you would ever want to meet. She was introduced to me by her mother. I sat there rather dumbfounded, remembering that I believed this person should have been scraped out of her mother's womb because she would have been inconvenient. And yet here was the actual human being in front of me, an actual person and not an intellectual abstraction. Abortion had always been an abstraction to me before. Now I don't think inconvenience or college or anything short of rape or danger to the mother's life justifies it.

I do not believe abortion should be outlawed because it is in practical terms unenforceable, like outlawing liquor or drugs or gambling, and only creates a new profit center for organized crime and forces women into unsafe situations.

But it seems to me now that it is wrong to abort a fetus. Unless the mother's life is threatened, she is aborting a child because the child will be inconvenient. It will be inconvenient and sometimes unpleasant to bear the child for 9 months and painful to deliver it. But weighed against her inconvenience and pain is a person's entire life - perhaps 80+ years of experiences and creativity and life. Considering that it is almost always the case that the woman voluntarily engaged in the activity which could create that life, it seems small and mean to deny a person a lifetime of experience because you don't want to be bothered to walk around with them in your womb for nine months.

Frankly it seems especially hypocritical of a woman who supports left-wing politics to get an abortion, since her politics are all about how we have to sacrifice for the common good - while she won't walk around pregnant for nine months so that another person can live an entire life.

[Woodsman]

Re: (Un) Affordable Care Act - the Uncomfortable Truth

I thought abortion...

This conversation needs to move to rant and rave. It needed to go there before Shiny! suggested it on Sunday and surely needs to now.

[radon]

Re: (Un) Affordable Care Act - the Uncomfortable Truth

The right wing seems content that a right or liberty be generally accepted by 51% majority and then written down somewhere. The ability to express it, well, that's your problem; I got mine. And so it seems to me that the right wing doesn't really understand positive liberty at all, even as they seem to so freely express it in their own lives. In their own associations and activities they seem quite ingenious in their expressions of positive liberty. Or maybe its they understand it too well. Because what they don't seem to want is others expressing their positive liberty with a similar zeal. But what aristocrat wants his subjects to express the same liberties as he does? What would be the point of an aristocracy then?

Tyranny of the majority knows no right or left. People no longer think in abstract terms of why laws are instituted among men or the rational behind a government with specific and strictly limited powers. There has been silent coup d'etat the outcome of which is that most people view the bill of rights as an exclusive list rather than a few examples. And so plebeians and patricians, optimates and populares, democrats and republicans fight over nothing while the real power is consolidated elsewhere and we become a republic in name only.

[Woodsman]

Re: (Un) Affordable Care Act - the Uncomfortable Truth

Tyranny of the majority knows no right or left. People no longer think in abstract terms of why laws are instituted among men or the rational behind a government with specific and strictly limited powers. There has been silent coup d'etat the outcome of which is that most people view the bill of rights as an exclusive list rather than a few examples. And so plebeians and patricians, optimates and populares, democrats and republicans fight over nothing while the real power is consolidated elsewhere and we become a republic in name only.

They don't call it the iron law for nothing!

[Forrest]

Re: (Un) Affordable Care Act - the Uncomfortable Truth

Coulter is a performance artist. I'm of the view that she does not really believe the outrageous things she says and writes, but the sugar is too sweet to quit. I can't take a word she says seriously. Argumentatively, appealing to Coulter should be considered a formal logical fallacy .

She has a charming way with words and sarcasm....

[Forrest]

Re: (Un) Affordable Care Act - the Uncomfortable Truth

It's not their body. It's not as though they were donating one of their kidneys.

It is the body of a completely different and unique human being with a different genetic code, different fingerprint,
often a different blood type, and about half of the time - of a different gender.

An innocent, defenceless, helpless human being who is being murdered because they are deemed to be inconvenient.

Nicely put.

I do not understand the dichotomy of allowing child abuse on such a scale.

[Forrest]

Re: (Un) Affordable Care Act - the Uncomfortable Truth

This conversation needs to move to rant and rave. It needed to go there before Shiny! suggested it on Sunday and surely needs to now.

We could always go back to actually talking about what the Affordable Care Act SHOULD be, not what it is (Obamacare) or how it got there, and who was wrong. There is blame enough for all politicians involved.


We need Basic Medical care for everyone...no one should object to it.

A little prevention, a requirement for personal responsibility, a quick surgery, ameliorative drugs, food and shelter for the diseased, and elderly, but yes, you have to let people die eventually, decided on by the doctor AND the patient, according to their condition...not their finances.

Since the current society has destroyed the family group usually responsible for elder care, or very ill people, we all have to pay for it. We always did before...it just wasn't billed directly.

How do we pay for it? A tax.

Who collects it? The Government...it IS a tax, after all.

Then Government pays the doctor's medical group...directly. All Basic Medical care is provided for by the government. You want additional menu items, you pay for them.

Basic Medical care is provided according to what the taxpayers, as a group, can pay with no lawyers, insurance companies, or drug companies being involved...just the Doctor/Hospital system that already exists in an open market.

No Government intervention, direction or regulation (other than contract law and safety regulations, and standard Medical practices) to be allowed in the medical marketplace...which makes it a marketplace.

You want insurance to be waited on hand and foot in your home to drag out your final illness into a five year misery...you buy it yourself.


What is so complicated about this?

[shiny!]

Re: (Un) Affordable Care Act - the Uncomfortable Truth

We could always go back to actually talking about what the Affordable Care Act SHOULD be, not what it is (Obamacare) or how it got there, and who was wrong. There is blame enough for all politicians involved.


We need Basic Medical care for everyone...no one should object to it.

A little prevention, a requirement for personal responsibility, a quick surgery, ameliorative drugs, food and shelter for the diseased, and elderly, but yes, you have to let people die eventually, decided on by the doctor AND the patient, according to their condition...not their finances.

Since the current society has destroyed the family group usually responsible for elder care, or very ill people, we all have to pay for it. We always did before...it just wasn't billed directly.

How do we pay for it? A tax.

Who collects it? The Government...it IS a tax, after all.

Then Government pays the doctor's medical group...directly. All Basic Medical care is provided for by the government. You want additional menu items, you pay for them.

Basic Medical care is provided according to what the taxpayers, as a group, can pay with no lawyers, insurance companies, or drug companies being involved...just the Doctor/Hospital system that already exists in an open market.

No Government intervention, direction or regulation (other than contract law and safety regulations, and standard Medical practices) to be allowed in the medical marketplace...which makes it a marketplace.

You want insurance to be waited on hand and foot in your home to drag out your final illness into a five year misery...you buy it yourself.


What is so complicated about this?

From your lips to god's ears. But the devil is in the details.

Is cancer treatment considered "basic medical care"? Or bypass surgery? Or an organ transplant for a young person who has their future ahead of them? Or lifelong medical care for a child that was born with a congenital condition?

[Mn_Mark]

Re: (Un) Affordable Care Act - the Uncomfortable Truth

We need Basic Medical care for everyone...no one should object to it.

A little prevention, a requirement for personal responsibility, a quick surgery, ameliorative drugs, food and shelter for the diseased, and elderly, but yes, you have to let people die eventually, decided on by the doctor AND the patient, according to their condition...not their finances.

Since the current society has destroyed the family group usually responsible for elder care, or very ill people, we all have to pay for it. We always did before...it just wasn't billed directly.

How do we pay for it? A tax.

Who collects it? The Government...it IS a tax, after all.

Then Government pays the doctor's medical group...directly. All Basic Medical care is provided for by the government. You want additional menu items, you pay for them.

Basic Medical care is provided according to what the taxpayers, as a group, can pay with no lawyers, insurance companies, or drug companies being involved...just the Doctor/Hospital system that already exists in an open market.

No Government intervention, direction or regulation (other than contract law and safety regulations, and standard Medical practices) to be allowed in the medical marketplace...which makes it a marketplace.

You want insurance to be waited on hand and foot in your home to drag out your final illness into a five year misery...you buy it yourself.


What is so complicated about this?

What's so complicated about it? Where do I start? I'll just start listing questions that arise as I read through your post:

"A requirement for personal responsibility" - defined how? Enforced how? How does it affect our liberties? The government is terrible at getting personal responsibility out of the welfare class as it is.

"you have to let people die eventually, decided on by the doctor AND the patient" - how nice, I guess the doctor and patient have a little conversation about whether the patient should continue to live. I'm guessing the patient says "hell yes I'm going to continue living, give me the damned treatment." And the doctor says, "I'm referring you to the death panel to make the decision whether We The People continue to pay so you can live. End of conversation.

"Basic Medical care is provided according to what the taxpayers, as a group, can pay with no lawyers, insurance companies, or drug companies being involved...just the Doctor/Hospital system that already exists in an open market" - who decides what the taxpayers, as a group, can pay? With a monopoly purchaser of services, there is no market mechanism for discovery of prices. The government, with all of the built-in screwed up incentives that a bureaucracy runs on, will decide what is to be paid, without market signals. See the Soviet Union or Cuba for how well that works out. And then you are not going to "involve" lawyers, insurance companies, or drug companies? Who is going to manufacture the drugs?

Under your system, everyone in the medical system will work for the government. That's what they have in Cuba, which theoretically has exactly what you are proposing: government-provided "free" basic health care. Except that it is extremely scarce and the facilities are terrible and you have to bring your own medical supplies, etc.

"No Government intervention, direction or regulation (other than contract law and safety regulations, and standard Medical practices) to be allowed in the medical marketplace...which makes it a marketplace." So you think you're going to have a system where the government pays all the medical bills, but there's not going to be any regulation of the medical marketplace? The kind of socialist (yes, that's what it is - be honest about what you are proposing) mentality that creates such a "free" medical care system is not going to try to regulate what prices doctors can charge for what procedures, what prices drug companies can charge, etc? You are eliminating the price discovery mechanism by having one giant customer for all basic medical services. (What is defined as 'basic', anyway? That's far from simple to determine.)

Here is a truly simple system: get back to a real healthcare marketplace, with real competition to drive down prices (so that even the poor can afford to buy their own medical care, as they used to do) and improve quality. Let the miracle of a free market system, with all of its fine-tuned price signals and proper incentives, spur more and more supply of medical goods and services and drive down the price. In a free market no one would get away with asking $14,000 to set a bone in a fingertip and stitch up a gash, as happened to a child of my friends. There would be many doctors willing to do that for much less money. There already are, overseas.

Find out why it costs $14,000 to have such a surgery and pare back the regulations and redistribution and jury awards. Increase the supply of doctors by lowering the hurdles for getting into medical school. How can a medical school get away with charging $200,000 for a medical education? Increase the supply of medical schools. Limit the jury awards so malpractice insurance is affordable. Send the pregnant Mexican illegals back to Mexico, or seize Mexican government money or put a big tax on Mexican money transfers to pay for their deliveries. Get rid of the rule that says anyone can show up in an emergency room and get treated for free.

The free market is the only way that medical services are going to become cheaper and better over time. Government interference does not work. Implementing a quasi-socialist medical system is not going to work. Medical innovation will disappear under such a system. Eventually a free market system is where we end up, though it could well be after decades and decades of suffering under a socialist medical system, as those poor bastards in Cuba have been doing for 50 years.

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: (Un) Affordable Care Act - the Uncomfortable Truth

...The free market is the only way that medical services are going to become cheaper and better over time. Government interference does not work. Implementing a quasi-socialist medical system is not going to work. Medical innovation will disappear under such a system. Eventually a free market system is where we end up....

Can you tell me the place in the world where this free market system for medical care is working well today?

[Mn_Mark]

Re: (Un) Affordable Care Act - the Uncomfortable Truth

Can you tell me the place in the world where this free market system for medical care is working well today?

I'm not an expert on this so I speak from general principles, but my guess is that there is more of a free market in those places where people fly to have cheap surgeries done by competent foreign doctors. There's more of a free market for many drugs in Mexico, as I understand it - in fact I think there's a movie just out about a guy buying cheap AIDS drugs in Mexico and smuggling them into the US. There was more of a free market in the US in the past; I've posted here before about the invoice I found for my grandfather's surgery and 12-day hospital stay in 1944 which cost him $1000 in 2013 dollars. Can you imagine what 12 days in the hospital costs now?

There is a surgery center in Oklahoma which I have seen mentioned as operating strictly on a cash basis, and offering surgical procedures for a fraction of the normal cost.

The point is simple and I think it's irrefutable: the free market is the best way to get an ample supply of anything at an affordable price. Every time the government tries to intervene it reduces supply or drives up prices.

The idea that if the government takes our money from us in taxes, and then buys our health care services for us, we are going to "save money" is just laughable. Just on the face of it, it is ridiculous because instead of me buying a service directly from a doctor there is now an entire government bureaucracy of middlemen in between us, and I am now paying for bureaucracy salaries, benefits, and all the little empire-building that goes on there.

It's laughable to think that with the government being the sole purchaser of health care services, that we are going to have the same supply of doctors, new medicines, new techniques, medical equipment, etc. There's a reason that the hospitals of Cuba are so poorly supplied and are such pest holes. With only one buyer of services, the government will dictate the prices of medical goods and services. But that doesn't mean suppliers will supply at those prices. Inevitably the government tries to compel suppliers to supply at the prices the government wants to buy at - see Venezuela for a recent example of how that spiral works out.

We are living in a time when the world is largely socialist when it comes to medicine, and growing more so. The zeitgeist is such that most people think socialism (though they generally don't like the word) is the best way to organize things. So there are very few if any really free-market medical systems in the world (that I am aware of). But the free market is the way you get cheaper prices and higher quality. It's simple economics.

The medical industry is no different than any other in that respect. It is people choosing to enter the field to provide goods and services and get paid doing it. The same free market incentives work there that work in every other industry. But economically ignorant people are just sure that if the government just takes over, it's going to do things more efficiently. It never will. As I posted before, the incentive for government bureaucrats is not to find ways to do their jobs with fewer resources; that just cuts their budget for the next year. The incentive for a bureaucrat is to find reasons to spend ever-more money and grow their fiefdoms larger. That's how they get bumped up to a higher pay grade and get more prestige.

So let's show the world how a free-market health care system can work. We've done it with the computer industry and many others before that. Get the government out of it and let the supply of doctors grow and let them compete on the basis of price and quality in the marketplace.

Then we will drive prices down to where working-class people can afford to pay for their own medical care, as my grandfather could. And if they can't, we can provide "health care stamps" like we provide "food stamps". But don't have the government take over the industry (and having them be the "single payer" means that they take over the industry). People need food and clothing and housing more than they need health care, but most people understand we would not help things out by having the government take over food, clothing, and housing production. It's no different with health care.