If you like your plan you can keep it, period

[liams]

Nice reading. Does everyone "deserve" a state of the art car, house, clothing, restaurants, etc? (Where's my Lamborghini!)

Nice diversionary nonanswer.

Yes, all people deserve access to a minimum level of quality healthcare. Period. If you want a cadillac plan with a single room and a fancy bigscreen tv to watch, you can pay extra. But the quality of care itself shouldn't be determined by your ability to pay.

And do they "deserve" the right to FORCE others to pay for it under threat of IMPRISONMENT.

Yes, it's called living in a modern, responsible society.

 

[guerilla]

Yes, all people deserve access to a minimum level of quality healthcare. Period.

This is socialism.

But the quality of care itself shouldn't be determined by your ability to pay.

Then why should anyone pay anything?

Yes, it's called living in a modern, responsible society.

Threatening people with violence to pay for people who can't afford what they need, at no fault at all of the people being made to pay?

You call that responsible?

Why don't you donate all of your disposable income to the needy? Aren't you not following through on your own philosophy if even one person needs care and you're not willing to pay for it?

And seriously, who is the Utopian when you don't understand (or believe in) scarcity?

 

[teatree]

?


What does % of GDP have to do with anything? Seriously. I want you to explain it to me.

% of GDP has everything to do with it. Despite romantic fantasies about how we control our own destiny, we're only as successful as our nation is.

You can lift a man from Syria and plonk him in Britain and immediately he'll do better, simply because of the system he's operating in. Systems count, nations count.

If a nations system means that all your customers are too skint to spend on your goods because a chunk of their income is eaten up with over expensive healthcare, it has a perceptible affect on your income. The USA at it's zenith in the 1950's paid only 5% of GDP on healthcare. Now they pay 17.5% of GDP - and there's a perceptible difference in wealth and well-being (and thus the ability of commercial entities to sell to them).

Spending 17.5% of GDP on health, on top of taxes is insane. And the terrifying thing was that it was rising. Anyone in power would have to address this - because there is such a thing as crowding out, which has negative economic consequences.

To put it another way - going from 5% of GDP to 17.5% of GDP represents 350% inflation in real terms - would you argue this was a good thing if you were talking about any other good than healthcare?

 

[liams]

This is socialism.

Oh noes! The evil S word! Call it whatever you want, I don't give a fuck. It needs to happen.

Then why should anyone pay anything?

Because services are still being rendered and people should get paid for their work. Those costs shouldn't be detrimental to the livelihood of the patient.

Ideally, the US would move to a single-payer system and provide real universal healthcare. Obamacare isn't that, but, God-willing, it's a step toward that direction.

Threatening people with violence to pay for people who can't afford what they need, at no fault at all of the people being made to pay?

Oh yeah, those evil threats that aren't in anyway blown out of proportion. Nosiree. Get the internment camps ready! Hey, did you hear what FEMA's really up to! I heard about it on Alex Jones!

You call that responsible?

I call it living in a modern society. Deal with it that you, as a member of said society, should contribute your fair share to that society.

Why don't you donate all of your disposable income to the needy? Aren't you not following through on your own philosophy if even one person needs care and you're not willing to pay for it?

And seriously, who is the Utopian when you don't understand (or believe in) scarcity?

You keep on veering more and more toward hysterics don't you? I'm not even going to dignify this with a rational response. Just because I believe there should be a minimum level of healthcare to everyone doesn't make me a raging utopian socialist commie devil.

 

[guerilla]

% of GDP has everything to do with it. Despite romantic fantasies about how we control our own destiny, we're only as successful as our nation is.

You can lift a man from Syria and plonk him in Britain and immediately he'll do better, simply because of the system he's operating in. Systems count, nations count.

If a nations system means that all your customers are too skint to spend on your goods because a chunk of their income is eaten up with over expensive healthcare, it has a perceptible affect on your income. The USA at it's zenith in the 1950's paid only 5% of GDP on healthcare. Now they pay 17.5% of GDP - and there's a perceptible difference in wealth and well-being (and thus the ability of commercial entities to sell to them).

Spending 17.5% of GDP on health, on top of taxes is insane. And the terrifying thing was that it was rising. Anyone in power would have to address this - because there is such a thing as crowding out, which has negative economic consequences.

To put it another way - going from 5% of GDP to 17.5% of GDP represents 350% inflation in real terms - would you argue this was a good thing if you were talking about any other good than healthcare?

This is mostly hot air.

Can you explain to me what % of GDP has to do with the fact that surgery is cheaper in Thailand than in the US, and in a nicer hospital too? And that Thailand has less regulation than the US, thus making my statement you called "made up" demonstrably true?

GDP is an arbitrary number that gets used by too many lay people that can't even tell you what the components of GDP are.

Also, relative GDP between countries is an even more stupid measure, except in the most vulgar raw transaction/purchasing sense. US government debt is the greatest in the world, and this distorts its purchasing, and gross GDP number significantly.

To be honest, whether it's a television pundit, or some random guy on a forum, when someone says GDP, I immediately think, "idiot" because GDP is only useful in the most narrow sense of looking at total economic activity INCLUDING DEBT. GDP going up or down, proves very little, and percentages of GDP are meaningless because the magnitude of GDP components are different, place to place.

Before you accuse me of making things up, make sure you know what you are talking about.

 

[guerilla]

Oh noes! The evil S word! Call it whatever you want, I don't give a fuck. It needs to happen.

This sentence reads like "I don't care, I am a babby, you have to do what I want, Waaah Waaaah Waaah"

Because services are still being rendered and people should get paid for their work. Those costs shouldn't be detrimental to the livelihood of the patient.

So it's ok to pay people for giving healthcare, but everyone should get it regardless of ability to pay.

Brilliant. "IT NEEDS TO HAPPEN DURRRRR DURRRR"

Ideally, the US would move to a single-payer system and provide real universal healthcare. Obamacare isn't that, but, God-willing, it's a step toward that direction.

Why should healthcare be a monopoly?

Oh yeah, those evil threats that aren't in anyway blown out of proportion. Nosiree. Get the internment camps ready! Hey, did you hear what FEMA's really up to! I heard about it on Alex Jones!

Do you keep posting strawmen because you don't have an argument?

I call it living in a modern society. Deal with it that you, as a member of said society, should contribute your fair share to that society.

Who decides what is a fair share? Who has that authority?

You keep on veering more and more toward hysterics don't you? I'm not even going to dignify this with a rational response. Just because I believe there should be a minimum level of healthcare to everyone doesn't make me a raging utopian socialist commie devil.

No, it makes you an idiot who doesn't understand economics. Who doesn't understand basic facts of material reality like time and scarcity. Who doesn't understand opportunity costs or incentives.

It is someone who spends a lot of time on liberal democratic websites, getting his panties all bunched up about bullying other people to do what he won't even do with his own money.

It is the height of hypocrisy.

 

[teatree]

This is socialism.

This might come as a shock to you, but part of the reason homo sapiens have been so successful compared to other primates is because we're socialistic.

See the following:

Horizon What Makes us Human? - YouTube

As illustrated in the documentary, chimps have equal or better problem solving abilities to us, but they are individualistic - they won't share and they won't co-operate. As a result they're imprisoned in zoos by humans who are physically weaker but who operate in teams. If roles were reversed, we'd have shared resources and banded together to break out.

You wish to chimpify the world and send us backwards. The rest of us are happy with remaining human beings with our shared system of surviving.

 

[teatree]

This is mostly hot air.

Can you explain to me what % of GDP has to do with the fact that surgery is cheaper in Thailand than in the US, and in a nicer hospital too? And that Thailand has less regulation than the US, thus making my statement you called "made up" demonstrably true?

Can most people in Thailand affords those hospitals? Or are you viewing things purely as a privileged coloniser who is happy that their system lacks local customers because it makes things cheaper for you?

 

[bluechinagroup]

The USA doesn't have a free market health care system. It has a patchwork system both on the state and federal level that has private health insurance providers, private hospitals, public hospitals, government regulators, and public health insurance providers like Medicare and Medicaid.

It's a regulatory mess that involves higher fees for private sector due to how poorly organized it is. Private sector healthcare fees are lower in HK for example due to the fact that we do not have this messy patchwork system described above.

Instead HK has a two tier system that involves public health care in public hospitals which is available to everyone, but involves a queue (which is skipped if you have an emergency); and the private sector which offers high quality private health care which costs less than what it costs in the USA. Even private health insurance costs less. I only pay $400 USD a year for mine for example, and it's been very useful for me this year.

HK has one of the longest life expediencies in the world and despite having "public health care", it still is considered the freest economy in the world by Heritage Foundation and Cato. HK has some of the lowest taxes in the world as well.

When it comes to health care, I'm willing to be pragmatic rather than being a straight up libertarian about it. As long as taxes are maintained at low levels that is. In HK maintaining low taxes and a balanced budget is mandated by its constitution.

 

[guerilla]

Can most people in Thailand affords those hospitals?

Relevance?

Or are you viewing things purely as a privileged coloniser who is happy that their system lacks local customers because it makes things cheaper for you?

Can you prove that they lack local customers?

Can you explain how a lack of local customers makes it cheaper for me?

If they are performing the same operation, or even with better care as apparently can be had in Thailand, and it's cheaper, then it's cheaper.

Sure it's a product of its environment. An environment with less regulation.

Forget Thailand, lets talk about Singapore. Singapore is hyper developed and relatively very wealthy. Healthcare costs there are still lower than the US.

This myth that the US has a free market healthcare system is nonsense, and a fact of history. The AMA has been pulling the strings on medical costs for many decades.

I am happy you dropped the GDP tact. GDP is nonsense, and anyone who babbles on about it is probably stupid. It's the most mindless and common economic figure tossed around, and it's not even understood by the people who talk about it.

 

[guerilla]

When it comes to health care, I'm willing to be pragmatic rather than being a straight up libertarian about it.

Ideals are expensive anyway. Seriously, when I am surrounded by people who want to use the state to leach off me, it's hard to be very much for freedom.

These days, I am hella pragmatic. liams and teatree are going to pay my welfare and my healthcare costs. Then they will put my kids through school and pay for them too.

After all, that's the system they support.

 

[guerilla]

This might come as a shock to you, but part of the reason homo sapiens have been so successful compared to other primates is because we're socialistic.

This is untrue. Socialism isn't capable of economic calculation and rational resource allocation as markets are.

What little benefit came under socialist systems is a priori either inefficient or an accident.

Also, I don't watch documentaries against or for my point of view. I have never seen a documentary that wasn't propaganda, and they are literally the lowest form of intellectual media people consume to feel good about themselves.

 

[bluechinagroup]

Ideals are expensive anyway. Seriously, when I am surrounded by people who want to use the state to leach off me, it's hard to be very much for freedom.

These days, I am hella pragmatic.

I'm sure I'd have a different opinion on public health care if I was taxed at 40%+ due to it like you are in Canada. Thankfully that is not the case in HK.

 

[bluechinagroup]

Forget Thailand, lets talk about Singapore. Singapore is hyper developed and relatively very wealthy. Healthcare costs there are still lower than the US.

Yeah this is 100% true. The Singapore model is even more free market friendly than what HK has going on, yet it is still affordable to the average person.

The only thing bad about Singapore is their tight control on civil liberties compared to HK. Singapore does a lot of things right otherwise, and it's no surprise that it's ranked as the second freest economy in the world.

 

[teatree]

Relevance?


Can you prove that they lack local customers?

Can you explain how a lack of local customers makes it cheaper for me?

Average salary in Thailand appears to be $8200 a year before taxes. The cost of a heart bypass is about $23000.

Do you really think the average Thai has money around to pay for that?

As for "how does a lack of local customers make it cheaper for me" - simple supply and demand. Lack of local demand means their prices won't rise, which make it lovely-jubbly for colonisers from abroad who enjoy higher wages to afford the relatively "cheap" Thai healthcare.

If Thailand's wages rose, and they could afford their own hospitals, the sheer demand would ensure that prices rose and people like you would then moan about how things weren't as cheap as in the "good old days" when locals died rather than consumed healthcare, which left plenty of room for the likes of you...

Low prices are always an indication of lack of local demand - and this applies to everything from healthcare to Adwords CPCs in certain countries. C'mon you know this, so why are you pretending otherwise?

 

[wayn3]

Really, what are you all so getting worked up about?

The socialist side in this discussion gets their thing. They get socialized shit. You other guys get to see their money getting devalued by this joke of a philosophy. You all get exactly what you want.

You complain about the dollar being worthless, then whine because your plan is 20 more. Here's what you do when you feel a service is overvalued. You don't buy it. You dream these phantasies about governments going away yet can't even go offshore on your insurance.

It's so easy to flee from America. But you'd rather bitch. That's all you ever do.

 

[Moxie]

GDP is an arbitrary number

ar·bi·trar·y

1. Determined by chance...

 

[dmnEPC]

A kinder, gentler guerilla

 

[Meatytreats]

Look on the bright side...

All of us gay, male webmasters now have maternity coverage!

 

[dreamache]

% of GDP has everything to do with it. Despite romantic fantasies about how we control our own destiny, we're only as successful as our nation is.

You can lift a man from Syria and plonk him in Britain and immediately he'll do better, simply because of the system he's operating in. Systems count, nations count.

Some farms are better than other farms. Some farms give their livestock more freedom, with gentler handlers. But the few things all farms have in common are their fences (borders), farmers (politicians, corporatists), the livestock (you and I), and the yield (taxation).

Quit arguing for farms, they're all based around theft, prettied up with bullshit social contracts. Be a fucking individual.. Quit arguing for your enslavement. If you want to help the poor, go help the poor. You don't need threats lingering over your head to do so.

You've been duped bro. The elites are laughing all the way to the bank with your money.

Now, to more eloquently show how absolutely absurd the idea of socialism and politics are:

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yt_q6YR5Ugo]The Conversation - YouTube[/ame]


Edit: 4k post, didn't even know it. Glad it was this post.