(Un) Affordable Care Act - the Uncomfortable Truth

[TBBNF]

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

That's quite a steaming pile of hyperbole, Woodsman. I guess I really pushed a button there with my talk about how people who create value and engage in voluntary trades with others who are happy to buy it are entitled to keep the profits they make, whether they create an "unequal" amount or not.

I guess that kid who works all summer and saves up his money so that he has created an "extreme wealth disparity" with his lazy brother is a closet fascist looking to enslave the masses and hate on the minorities?

And when he works hard in his physics and math classes while others party, and builds a better computer in his garage which he ends up selling to millions of eager buyers, creating billions of dollars of value that did not exist before and keeping a few billion for himself as his reward, he is actually committing a terrible act of "aristocracy" and quasi-banksterism, and seeking to foster dangerous extreme inequality and oppress the masses, the racist bastard!

Let me try to spell it out in simple terms. I accept that wide wealth disparities will be the natural (and morally-neutral) outcome of the facts that people have different levels of talent and motivation and that advancing technology allows the productive to leverage their productivity to ever-greater heights. The more-productive people create more and more value and offer to sell it to the rest of us and we happily buy it, and god bless them for it. And when they get rich because of it, I don't see that as a problem. I see it as their just rewards.

All the evil stuff you rant about is not because someone creative made a pile of wealth. It's because government hands taxpayer money to cronies or tilts the playing field in their favor. It doesn't hurt anyone when Steve Jobs piles up a massive pile of personal wealth by selling people iPads that they happily and voluntarily paid him for. It DOES hurt people when Bush, Pelosi, Reid, and Bernanke hand massive piles of taxpayer money to banksters to shield them from the natural results of their careless investments. That is a failure of government, not a problem of "inequality".

The founding fathers feared the recreation of the aristocratic class that they fled from in Europe and many states enacted Estate Taxes (which the Right has dismantled). All those who have "made" it did so in America with the help of PUBLICLY funded roads, railroads, education, court systems, military protection, patents, subsidies, and often times government funded R&D and the list goes on. I would like to see Bill Gates start Microsoft in Somalia from scratch. We aren't headed to becoming like a 3rd world country with a wealthy aristocratic class and the rest we have gotten there over the last 30 years of tax policy and government 'legal' corruption. The following Harvard study is quite illuminating. I didn't believe it was this bad!

And another article on why the Founding Fathers encourage Estate Taxes and feared the "productivity" of the Paris Hilton's of the world...
http://www.economist.com/blogs/lexin...unding_fathers

[Forrest]

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

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?

Cancer cannot exist in an alkaline body state that is under no existential stress...It is easily treated by complete vegetarianism, and just as easily prevented. That's Basic Care to me...poisoning or radiating an advanced cancer falls under a final illness to me...and since my Mom died after 5 years of that treatment, I know whereof I speak.

Bypass surgery is just surgery...and prevention helps avoid the need in future years...this is where personal responsibility comes in.

Organ transplants and continuous rejection therapy is a menu item...if you are going to have kids in future, pay the insurance for these possibilities, and put up with the genetic testing to get low rates.

Lifelong medical care for a child born disabled is a family problem...not a medical problem, as it is inherited...again a menu option you insure against.

All current living old and young will have to be cared for as is...we can only change the future.

[vinoveri]

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

oh com'on now, you're making it way too complicated. gov mandated genetic testing and weighted scoring; those below threshold get terminated or sterlized at their option (but with guaranteed death payout to remaining family); those above threshold but below "useful smarts and healty genes" go into the labor pool where they receive free "training" in order to serve in gov labor pool, earn and consume, and those who score above 80% get free academic education through college and those who score above 99% are forced donate their germ cells for in vitro fertilization to improve the gene pool; in a couple of generations, we'll have this health care cost problem licked.

[DSpencer]

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

Cancer cannot exist in an alkaline body state that is under no existential stress...It is easily treated by complete vegetarianism, and just as easily prevented. That's Basic Care to me...

Your idea of Basic Care is for people to turn to absolute quackery?

Basically, this is you saying to every serious doctor and researcher working to actually cure/prevent cancer that they are either complete frauds or utter morons. That in fact nearly everyone is an idiot for not following the silly advice of quacks on the internet and curing all the cancer in the world and preventing it forever in the future.

I usually try to be less antagonistic, but peddling this nonsense is potentially dangerous if you can convince anyone to believe it. Be honest with yourself for a moment and admit that you actually have no freaking clue what you're talking about. What kind of vast conspiracy must you believe to think that somehow nobody (save a few online quacks) ever noticed that no vegetarians got cancer and/or that every cancer patient who tried vegetarianism was cured? And you never considered that vegetarian animals can also get cancer? Or that well known people like Steve Jobs tried to cure their cancer with veganism and failed?

Maybe you were just kidding or trolling for a response like this. I certainly hope so.

[Forrest]

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

Your idea of Basic Care is for people to turn to absolute quackery?

Basically, this is you saying to every serious doctor and researcher working to actually cure/prevent cancer that they are either complete frauds or utter morons. That in fact nearly everyone is an idiot for not following the silly advice of quacks on the internet and curing all the cancer in the world and preventing it forever in the future.

I usually try to be less antagonistic, but peddling this nonsense is potentially dangerous if you can convince anyone to believe it. Be honest with yourself for a moment and admit that you actually have no freaking clue what you're talking about. What kind of vast conspiracy must you believe to think that somehow nobody (save a few online quacks) ever noticed that no vegetarians got cancer and/or that every cancer patient who tried vegetarianism was cured? And you never considered that vegetarian animals can also get cancer? Or that well known people like Steve Jobs tried to cure their cancer with veganism and failed?

Maybe you were just kidding or trolling for a response like this. I certainly hope so.

Nope...dead serious. The key is 'no existential stress'! Isolated groups of people worldwide stay perfectly healthy into old age if they simply refuse our technology, and our life style. That they also eat primarily a vegetative diet should also be noted.

Alkalinity works great on cancer cells in a test tube, and for those that can manage to eliminate the stress of modern living by reverting to a non-technologically based lifestyle...(Kill most of the electronics, the fast paced life, and choose a simple lifestyle...comfy and sustainable without much wealth, but with a lot of good food, family, and friends).

It's hard to change that much, and it takes a long time...and there is no quick fix for late stage cancers. You cannot rebuild a damaged body in a few months of treatment...it takes years of right living and right eating and right thinking. It takes 7 years to replace all the damaged cells in your body...you're not going to catch anything seriously progressing in less than 3 years, when the body systems begin to function more normally. Depending on your stress level, it might take a few years just to eliminate your sleep debt.

At the point of a late stage cancer, or even a small cancer in a currently (not futurely) damaged body, one must do everything...radiate, have surgery, refurbish your entire body systems with high quality juicing for mass refurbishing of the body with nutrients and enzymes. But one must also get away from the causes of the cancer...anxiety, fear, depression, keeping up with the Jones's, or keeping a mega corporation going with no sleep, and no concern for the body and how it reacts to our lifestyles.

These fall under existing diseases under Basic Care in my view, and this not for future cancer cases after years of preventive care. Tying medical treatment to how well you preserve the body in the first place is reasonable...because taking care of yourself lowers the health risks.

I have lived it...I know what happens and how bad the life under those circumstances can be...on the victim. My family survived...my Mom was poisoned and radiated and cut open, forced into misery for 5 years, and still died...that tiny missed lesion our great medical people missed. My Mom kept the lifestyle, and foods she liked when she could actually eat, and changed not one whit of her ways. In addition, my mom ran the days in terror of one more test, one more surgery, one more agony of waiting for news, dreading every day, lying sleepless in the nights. Stress before, and more stress after. It didn't help that I broke my neck 4 days before her diagnosis, and she added her fears about me to the bundle she already had. She did, however grow her own vegetables for years before her cancer, stood up well to the barbaric practices of the cancer people, and their ignorance of what is really needed to heal a body under attack, and even went into remission for a time. She had not done it all, but she came close. Then the missed lesion broke open, and swept her off.

Cancer cells exist harmlessly at most times in all mammals, and are activated by stress and lack of nutrients contained primarily in veggies and fruits. Add the nutrients back to a low tech lifestyle and remove high life stress, and you revert to a low incidence of cancer except in late age, when the body systems fail, because your immune system kills the cancers cells.

Meat to me is not an issue, not being a vegetarian, but it throws the body into a more acidic state, and is best added back to the diet after full health is regained. Best also to eat free-range grass fed cows and chickens...I don't like the GMO fed, stress causing fattening lots that serve up meat from cows that can barely walk for pain from eating GMO products, or chickens that can barely stand due to extreme genetic changes to get modified chicken breasts the size of a natural turkey, again stressed by being packed together, and fed the GMO products.

I am not interested in anyone's claims or quackery...I merely note that the more advanced our civilization became, the more cancer showed up, along with a lot of other stress related/generated problems. I also note that I have done my research on how the entire body systems work TOGETHER, and you cannot fix a terminal disease without fixing the whole mind and body. Our medical people are taught to treat the symptoms, not prevent bad health, and until you change that, it will simply get worse.

Add the barren soil our food is raised in, and teach people to eat GMO products, and you stress the body into not working properly.

Add modern technological striving for always more stuff that you cannot use to any benefit, and all the ills of a society embracing false body image, false personality requirements, cut the modern time for sleep to 7 hours from the natural 10 hours, add the disintegration of the family as social support, and you have a killing kind of stress...the kind that only killed Aristocrats in the old days. Stress attackes the immune system, and with a bad immune system, you have most of our bad healthcare issues.

As for Steve Jobs and other late stage cancer victims, the stress had done it's damage, and was irreversible by gentle methods. With all things regarding health, prevention is primarily the only real cure.

This is mere observation of historical lifestyles around the globe, and common sense.

Unfortunately, few people are willing to live healthfully. Just look around.

[Forrest]

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

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.

If you won't attempt to eat well, sleep well, work and play hard, and live within your means, why is the free market letting you live?


"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.

No...if you are responsible for yourself, and you, having taken the advice of your doctor as to how long you can live, and how much it costs, and what the Taxpayers can afford for Basic Health Care (30% of GDP divided by the population, payable only to Doctors/Hospitals outside of government control), why should anyone be affecting your decisions except you and the facts...your personal ability, the willingness of your family, and other insurance you might buy with your own money in the free market? The government has no control except to pay your maximum share of the GDP allotted for Basic Medical care. Government is only used for collecting taxes, and paying medical fees, and enforcing the law as defined by the Constitution, and devised under Congress in regard to collect and dispersing money. Death Panels are unnecessary...market forces are a death panel.

"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?

My, you do want it spelled out. Lawyers, Insurance companies, and Drug companies are not involved in the decision making, nor in the collecting or disbursement of funds, nor in regulating malpractice, nor in keeping monopolies on Drugs at the expense of taxpayers. Lawyers will have to go back to injury cases, Insurance Companies can cover the high end of the market as they have always done, and Drug Companies will need Private and Federal Research Grants for developing new drugs. Expensive new drugs can be tested on the wealthy until they are proved to work.

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.

Nope...under my system the medical system is entirely private...just payments are limited to the share of common Medical Fund.

"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.)

I don't want the market for medicine under anything but free market control. And the Government should not be allowed to decide anything about medical care except what is determined to be safe and effective...you know...standard medical practices?

Basic Medical care is Preventative treatment, including a requirement to live healthfully in order to continue to receive treatment (no extreme living if you want Basic Care), Surgery, Emergency care, Disease treatment, and so forth. Long term Hospitalization would not be included...recovery and dying should be a family affair. If no family, then placement into guest recovery homes on a volunteer service basis, with a tax credit for helping society out.


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.

If you would re-read what I posted the first time, you might realize that all I want is collection of Medical money and payment of medical money to Doctors...and all the people with their hands in the till, and lobbying for their share of the medical money blocked from such lobbying. My system is completely free market, so much so that it might take a Libertarian Dictator to put it in place, and probably against his better judgement.

If the entire system is designed for Doctors to compete, as they once did, for clients who have a guaranteed amount of care, you will have a free market, and a general plan of care for everyone.

[Woodsman]

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

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.

MN, why don't you take an hour or so to read about the history of silicon valley and then come back and tell us how the free market was instrumental in the foundation of computer industry? There's even a movie you can watch.

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".

Health stamps? Just like food stamps? How comforting. Sorry, MN, but your earnestness and certainty is almost irresistible to this old class clown. And since you are wise enough to admit your lack of expertise here, are you wise enough to put your general principles aside for the moment and see how they are not operable here?

[shiny!]

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

From brainstorming how to come up with a better solution to Obamacare, this thread has largely devolved (IMO) into sniping and veiled (and not-so-veiled) name-calling. Rather than looking for common ground, I see people entrenching themselves in their corners. Terms like "socialist", "conservative" and "quackery" are being hurled around as the equivalents of "scumbag" and "idiot". Too many people want "change" as long as they don't have to change. They just want everybody else to change.

If members of one of the most polite, intelligent forums anywhere can't get past personal beliefs and political ideologies enough to say "While I disagree with most of what you're saying, I do think you make a good point with such-and-such," or "I have never heard that before. It sounds crazy but I'll investigate your claims before I pass judgement. Can you direct me to some articles?"... then I hold out no hope for productive, civil discourse outside of this forum.

Our Bart made a list of logical fallacies, cognitive bias, disinformation, sophism, etc. Too many of the items on his list are being indulged in this discussion, and that's why it's going backwards, not forwards.

[jiimbergin]

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

From brainstorming how to come up with a better solution to Obamacare, this thread has largely devolved (IMO) into sniping and veiled (and not-so-veiled) name-calling. Rather than looking for common ground, I see people entrenching themselves in their corners. Terms like "socialist", "conservative" and "quackery" are being hurled around as the equivalents of "scumbag" and "idiot". Too many people want "change" as long as they don't have to change. They just want everybody else to change.

If members of one of the most polite, intelligent forums anywhere can't get past personal beliefs and political ideologies enough to say "While I disagree with most of what you're saying, I do think you make a good point with such-and-such," or "I have never heard that before. It sounds crazy but I'll investigate your claims before I pass judgement. Can you direct me to some articles?"... then I hold out no hope for productive, civil discourse outside of this forum.

Our Bart made a list of logical fallacies, cognitive bias, disinformation, sophism, etc. Too many of the items on his list are being indulged in this discussion, and that's why it's going backwards, not forwards.

+1

[DSpencer]

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

From brainstorming how to come up with a better solution to Obamacare, this thread has largely devolved (IMO) into sniping and veiled (and not-so-veiled) name-calling. Rather than looking for common ground, I see people entrenching themselves in their corners. Terms like "socialist", "conservative" and "quackery" are being hurled around as the equivalents of "scumbag" and "idiot". Too many people want "change" as long as they don't have to change. They just want everybody else to change.

If members of one of the most polite, intelligent forums anywhere can't get past personal beliefs and political ideologies enough to say "While I disagree with most of what you're saying, I do think you make a good point with such-and-such," or "I have never heard that before. It sounds crazy but I'll investigate your claims before I pass judgement. Can you direct me to some articles?"... then I hold out no hope for productive, civil discourse outside of this forum.

Our Bart made a list of logical fallacies, cognitive bias, disinformation, sophism, etc. Too many of the items on his list are being indulged in this discussion, and that's why it's going backwards, not forwards.

Shiny, I generally agree. However, at some point I think a line has to be drawn. Not every opinion is equally valid. If I claim that every disease is psychosomatic and that all we have to do is think positive thoughts and will ourselves to good health and therefore we should cease having "healthcare" altogether, is that really a claim that anyone else should be obligated to thoroughly research and refute?

Issues like socialized medicine vs free market medicine are an entirely different situation where both sides have some reasonable basis to debate.

[jiimbergin]

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

Shiny, I generally agree. However, at some point I think a line has to be drawn. Not every opinion is equally valid. If I claim that every disease is psychosomatic and that all we have to do is think positive thoughts and will ourselves to good health and therefore we should cease having "healthcare" altogether, is that really a claim that anyone else should be obligated to thoroughly research and refute?

Issues like socialized medicine vs free market medicine are an entirely different situation where both sides have some reasonable basis to debate.

This is true, but the other items should be moved to rant and rave, IMHO.

[shiny!]

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

Shiny, I generally agree. However, at some point I think a line has to be drawn. Not every opinion is equally valid. If I claim that every disease is psychosomatic and that all we have to do is think positive thoughts and will ourselves to good health and therefore we should cease having "healthcare" altogether, is that really a claim that anyone else should be obligated to thoroughly research and refute?

Issues like socialized medicine vs free market medicine are an entirely different situation where both sides have some reasonable basis to debate.

But no one will agree where that line is. With all due respect, who gets to decide that?

Where you see someone espousing quackery and say their opinions are invalid, I see (from personal experience) an opinion that has at least some basis in fact. I don't believe that adhering to a certain diet will 100% eliminate or cure cancer 100% of the time. I don't think it's that simple or black-and-white, but there does seem to be a link (for example) between body alkalinity and the ability of the body to heal itself from cancer (I'm using this as an example of a controversial idea, not as something that needs thorough debate in this thread).

Why not have healthcare that is more open-minded regarding nutritional or natural medicine for prevention and treatment of disease? Modern medicine opposes alternative medicine, calling it "unproven" or quackery. But these approaches are considered "unproven" and quackery because it isn't profitable for Big Pharma to spend millions and billions of dollars studying things that they can't get a patent for. So it's a vicious circle.

I'm not saying you have to agree with everything. I am saying that if you're going to be so quick to "invoke authority" in order to discredit "unproven methods" as quackery, if you're going to be so quick to discount anyone who offers a seemingly far-fetched, out-of-the-box opinion on healthcare, you just might miss something useful.

[Woodsman]

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

...I'm not saying you have to agree with everything. I am saying that if you're going to be so quick to "invoke authority" in order to discredit "unproven methods" as quackery, if you're going to be so quick to discount anyone who offers a seemingly far-fetched, out-of-the-box opinion on healthcare, you just might miss something useful.

Man, I had a great post that would have squared the circle and solved all of our problems, everywhere. And then the power went out... But seriously folks.

I wish we would see more people using Rant and Rave. It really is a liberating place full of serious and thought provoking arguments - between the rants and raves, that is. For me, it is one of the best parts of iTulip. And besides, isn't it the open parts of iTulip where most of this contention occurs? The "editorial slant" of the public forums is largely determined by the dozen or so daily posters and a few drive by's. As such I don't consider it representative of the iTulip POV as expressed by EJ in his long form pieces and his occasional posts. The public forum is mostly just us hens pecking away. And besides, the tone changes over the course of the months depending on which of the 50 or so active posters are at bat. So in some ways it's like the weather, right. Give it 15 minutes. Perhaps I am wrong to assume that most of these folks don't ever set foot beyond the velvet rope into the Select forums, which as we know is an entirely different sort of animal than the open forums.

Behind the paywall we're paying for the privilege and rely on our individual sense of probity augmented by "Fred" and EJ's efforts to keep things civil. I can point to several "full refund" notes issued by Eric to that end and imagine if a similar sanction was available in the public forum we'd see more comity. The public forums are fun and sometimes thought provoking, but generally not all that meaningful to me. And in the end I am here for EJ, so if the forums were all of a sudden to go away I wouldn't mind so much. Just so long as EJ's research keeps coming!

[Mn_Mark]

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

The founding fathers feared the recreation of the aristocratic class that they fled from in Europe and many states enacted Estate Taxes (which the Right has dismantled). All those who have "made" it did so in America with the help of PUBLICLY funded roads, railroads, education, court systems, military protection, patents, subsidies, and often times government funded R&D and the list goes on. I would like to see Bill Gates start Microsoft in Somalia from scratch. We aren't headed to becoming like a 3rd world country with a wealthy aristocratic class and the rest we have gotten there over the last 30 years of tax policy and government 'legal' corruption. The following Harvard study is quite illuminating. I didn't believe i

This is the Obama "you didn't create that business" argument.

Here's the flaw in that argument: the persons who "made it" using publicly-funded roads, court systems, etc, already paid for those roads, court systems, etc, with their taxes. Paid in full. Any profits they make now with the help of those publicly-funded utilities should be theirs to keep.

Let me give you an analogy. You buy a house intending to fix it up and sell it for a profit. Part of what the house needs is a new roof. You find a roofer and come to an agreement that you will pay him $3000 to put on the roof. He puts on the new roof, and you pay him. You would surely agree that your obligations to him are finished - the contract was agreed upon and executed and you two now owe one another nothing.

Now you go to sell the house. Because of your good eye for houses and what the market wants, that improvement to roof along with the other improvements you made allows you to make a nice hefty profit on the house of, say, $50,000.

But now the roofer comes back and says, "you owe me a share of that $50,000 profit. You wouldn't have been able to earn that without my roofing services, therefore I am entitled to a share of your profits. You didn't fix that house up by yourself!"

Would you accept that argument or laugh at his chutzpah and walk off?

You are making the same flawed argument. Because we are compelled to pay for government roads, court services, education, etc, the Left argues that our use of those government services gives the Left an open-ended claim on as much profit as we make in our work in the country. "You didn't build that business," they say, smirking like Obama.

Wrong. Us productive people paid for those government services with previous or current taxes. When we use the services - which we paid for, just as you paid for that roof in the example - it does not thereby justify taking more of our profits in taxes.

[vinoveri]

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

another monstrous step toward cost control (h-t Jesse)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...9AQ0NJ20131127