Want Public Plan Health Care? Obama Played yo Ass.

[conv3rsion]

Let me frame my perspective. It may save us both time.

Combined with consensual contracts and property rights, I consider economics to supercede all other pursuits, including moral imperatives. I place every issue under that limited lens. To that end...

then you should start robbing people and stealing their money, especially if you pick and random people where you could very likely get away with it, since economics supercedes moral imperatives and since you will gain more by physically stealing their assets than you would through trade with them. the chance of you being caught doing this before establishing any pattern is exceedingly low.

You don't really consider economics to supercede moral imperatives. I don't care what you say. The fact that you havent robbed some old lady yet proves this.

 

[popeye]

 

[Trademark]

then you should start robbing people and stealing their money, especially if you pick and random people where you could very likely get away with it, since economics supercedes moral imperatives and since you will gain more by physically stealing their assets than you would through trade with them. the chance of you being caught doing this before establishing any pattern is exceedingly low.

You don't really consider economics to supercede moral imperatives. I don't care what you say. The fact that you havent robbed some old lady yet proves this.

I honestly cannot tell if you are baiting me, conv3rsion. I specifically noted the importance of property rights. That would preclude robbing someone of their property.

Surely, you read my post since you are responding to it. Am I misunderstanding your point?

 

[conv3rsion]

Your guilt trip doesn't work on me.

We are talking about policy and priorities, you aren't even using the term "guilt trip" correctly.

If you feel that the role of the U.S Governemt is to solve people's personal problems then fine - many of us don't.

Actually, nearly everyone does to some extent. Thats why we have public road, education, and aren't all defended by private contractors.

If you think the U.S Governemt spends your money better than you and private businesses do then fine - many of us don't.

I believe the market has not produced an adequate solution to the problem of providing low cost health care to all US citizens. Some people far smarter than you may argue thats because of government regulation in the first place. It doesn't matter, the system is broken and a public plan, is not by itself, more regulation.

Of course, there should be care for everyone including higher risk patients (the vast majority are high risk due to choice) but that's the incredible thing about a free market.... it always meets demand - if you allow it to.≈

And when do you expect this to happen, because we've been in the current system for at least 30 years.

And the majority are higher risk by genetics, not by choice, go fuck yourself.

 

[machinecontrol]

Yeah it's amazing how they "compromised" and created a bill that everybody hates.
This shit better not pass, it's insurance companies wet dream, 40 million new customers.

 

[conv3rsion]

I honestly cannot tell if you are baiting me, conv3rsion. I specifically noted the importance of property rights. That would preclude robbing someone of their property.

Surely, you read my post since you are responding to it. Am I misunderstanding your point?

It doesn't matter if you "note the importance of property rights" or argue that without property rights, truely optimal economic conditions cannot occur. There will always be a line where, if you are being honest with yourself, you will decide that the economically optimal solution is not the correct one. Substitute property rights for pollution control if you want. In your world, we should always allow cheaper more polluting production since it will produce goods at the lowest cost. My have no moral imperative to preserve the world's current state.

And yes, I do believe that "... have a moral imperative to care for every person that suffers a medical issue?"

If you dont believe that (which you obviously don't), we can drop this. You seem rather intelligent, unlike some of the trolls here, Let me ask you though, does the central state have a moral imperative to educate it's citizens?

 

[papajohn56]

we actually need pharma companies, despite their iron grip. they actually produce something with R&D.

Insurance companies are simply a middleman - which have no reason for existence.

problem is that many european countries ban their citizens from paying for R&D, which leads our prescription drug costs to go up, because we're the only ones paying for it.

 

[Mastermind]

Actually, nearly everyone does to some extent. Thats why we have public road, education, and aren't all defended by private contractors.

Huh? Those aren't personal problems.

I believe the market has not produced an adequate solution to the problem of providing low cost health care to all US citizens.

Actually, 85% of people have health care that they can afford and many others can afford it but choose not to purchase it. Of course, when you propose something for nothing, many people will all of sudden not be able to afford it.

The keyword you use is "all" citizens. You believe that I should be indirectly penalized for someone's lack of personal responsibility.

That's a fundamental difference in beliefs and the values of our country.

And if please don't tell me this is going to happen without increasing taxes. Even King Obama acknowledges that.

I believe the market has not produced an adequate solution to the problem of providing low cost health care to all US citizens. Some people far smarter than you may argue thats because of government regulation in the first place. It doesn't matter, the system is broken and a public plan, is not by itself, more regulation.

I agree that there are things that need to be fixed but spending 1 trillion dollars to create a socialist system is not the answer.

 

[Trademark]

Let me ask you though, does the central state have a moral imperative to educate it's citizens?

I do not believe the central state has such a moral imperative. In fact, the following position perfectly encapsulates my feelings toward public education...

Against School, by John Taylor Gatto

By the way, it is not a roll, Rick or otherwise (in spite of the unfortunate domain name).

 

[blank_czech]

Yall need to stop getting that H1N1 shit. Personally, I'd rather seen the food industry improve before the health care. If we didn't eat like shit every day, half of our problems would go away.

 

[guerilla]

OT,

In your world, we should always allow cheaper more polluting production since it will produce goods at the lowest cost.

No, under a regime of enforced property rights, you could not pollute anyone else's property without their consent (compensation).

Strict property rights is the greatest deterrent to pollution and environmental exploitation. Basic game theory, tragedy of the commons.

If you dont believe that (which you obviously don't), we can drop this. You seem rather intelligent, unlike some of the trolls here, Let me ask you though, does the central state have a moral imperative to educate it's citizens?

We don't attribute agent neutrality to corporations as separate from their managers and shareholders even if the artificial legal distinction exists.

Thus, a central state cannot have morality, which is an individual, subjective preference.

 

[hellblazer]

OP attempts to say this was Obama's plan all along. Highly unlikely - they probably had to divert the ad money after it became apparent their initial disastrous proposal didn't have a shitstorm's chance in hell of passing.

Who do you think invests decades and billions of dollars into research and development? Not Europe with it's awesome health system, that's for sure. They reap the benefits of the drugs we invent and pay practically nothing for them. The drug companies have a tiny amount of time in which they can earn back the enormous investment they made in the first place.

No government option is feasible. Allow insurance companies to compete across state lines. Take away the frivolous lawsuits. We've seen what happens when you put your life in Big Daddy's hands - Daddy's broke and he'll give you the cheapest medicine and send you on your way.

Government is EXTREMELY inefficient at running anything because it has no profit motive - thus no incentive to run efficiently and no capacity to expand to meet demand. They have a fixed budget and if there's more people than the budget can meet, you have rationing, shortages, waiting lists, for SIMPLE procedures. We're whining about somebody getting denied for expensive cancer treatment? How about not having a bed for a pregnant woman to give birth in? How about a lottery for who gets to see a dentist? We have the luxury of quibbling over the gaps in higher treatment, while others suffer through egregious lapses in competency in the most BASIC of areas.

Don't believe me? Here's just a few examples:

Bed Shortage forces 4,000 mothers to give birth in lifts, offices, and hospital toilets

One In six NHS patients 'misdiagnosed'

Man collapses with ruptured appendix - three weeks after doctors 'took it out'

Daughter claims father wrongly placed on controversial 'end of life' scheme

Sentenced to death on the NHS

 

[xmcp123]

I believe the market has not produced an adequate solution to the problem of providing low cost health care to all US citizens. Some people far smarter than you may argue thats because of government regulation in the first place. It doesn't matter, the system is broken and a public plan, is not by itself, more regulation.

I'll take a crack at this one.

Well first of all the market has not produced an adequate solution for a few reasons:

1)There is no competition. Companies are bound to their individual states and highly regulated. It's much easier to do price fixing/collusion on such a small scale. Open up the national market, and watch as they start undercutting eachother and creating specialized plans to scoop up the new supermassive low-end insurance demographic.
Beyond that is with how regulated the marketplace is, it's much safer to stick to the status quo than introduce something new. New things are liabilities.

2)Consumers can't really "vote with their money" as the marketplace demands in cases of recissions. A recission plus the policies towards pre-existing conditions means you're out of luck. No second chance.

#2 can be easily regulated the same way any other industry is. And by solving #1, you counteract the price hike that would occur otherwise.

But #1 is the most important of the two because of what it implies, and the fact that the market could possibly fix #2 with no regulation whatsoever if competition was actually restored.
But what it implies is that our legislators have sold us out. As evidenced by the Baucus bill as well. It was written by the insurance industry, and advertised by the pharma industry.

So here's the question I'd ask you conv3rsion: Acknowledging that the problem likely originated with the government being in bed with pharma(and this bill most certainly was a result of that) would you trust them to negotiate reasonable prices for pharmaceuticals? Is it possible to do so while the industry they're negotiating with on behalf of us is also funding their campaign?

There is no voting for big business or voting for big government. They're one and the same. Expanding government control directly expands the level of influence monopoly-sized companies have over them. And increases their incentive to gain more power within the government.
After all, the only thing companies can't do that the government can is legislate. So how big of a competitive edge is that shit?

 

[WickedJoe]

To a large extent Big Gov and Big Biz are only the same in the USA. And that's because of our worship of the almighty market and our deity captialism. We cant say anything bad about it or people start going ballistic. You can't even suggest moderating/regulating pure capitalism or people start in with their conspiracy theories and Nazi accusations lol.

This healthcare debate comes down to who do you trust IMO. Do you trust a profit-only driven Business more than you trust a Government for your healthcare?

I acknowledge both are imperfect but I definitely trust non-for-profit transparent Government more to handle my healthcare.

It's a lot like a Religious debate at this point. And most of us should know by now that no one ever changes their mind on religious debates past the age of 25 or so. One side may even use proof and examples (ie blatant fucking examples of successful socialized medicine in other countries) but it doesn't matter because the other side is putting on a blindfold and reciting bible passages. Grandpapa told them the bible was the only truth and that's that.

 

[BrooklynBlue]

Don't get me wrong, I hate big pharma too. But insurance companies provide no value and take a 1/3 of every dollar they touch.

I'm not a huge fan of big insurance as it currently exists and operates, but this isn't exactly true. Most of the big health insurers pay 78-85% of all revenue towards benefits/claims. This is called their medical expense/cost ratio, similar to 'cost of goods sold' in more common accounting parlance.

Right now MERs are trending to the high end of that range for most of the industry.

After factoring in SG&A costs, the big insurers only run a 2-5% profit margin on average (ranked 84th in industry profitability for the most recent quarter). So this notion that insurers are raking in record profits is a little misguided to say the least.

I'm not implying that there isn't a lot wrong with the industry, and yes they absolutely are middlemen, but health care is a market where insurance is wholly appropriate and will always exist, either privately or publicly.

The fact that they are just middlemen with relatively slim profit margins should make you wonder where all of the costs savings will actually materialize... because we sure as hell aren't talking much about reducing the actual cost of care -- both unit cost (doctors, hospitals, medical technology, pharma) and volume ("consumption" patterns, distorted incentives, etc).



[full disclosure: I'm in the industry and it treats me well, so while I hope to see a lot of change that forces us to overhaul our business model, there is some admitted vested interest on my part.]

 

[xmcp123]

To a large extent Big Gov and Big Biz are only the same in the USA. And that's because of our worship of the almighty market and our deity captialism. We cant say anything bad about it or people start going ballistic. You can't even suggest moderating/regulating pure capitalism or people start in with their conspiracy theories and Nazi accusations lol.

This healthcare debate comes down to who do you trust IMO. Do you trust a profit-only driven Business more than you trust a Government for your healthcare?

I acknowledge both are imperfect but I definitely trust non-for-profit transparent Government more to handle my healthcare.

It's a lot like a Religious debate at this point. And most of us should know by now that no one ever changes their mind on religious debates past the age of 25 or so. One side may even use proof and examples (ie blatant fucking examples of successful socialized medicine in other countries) but it doesn't matter because the other side is putting on a blindfold and reciting bible passages. Grandpapa told them the bible was the only truth and that's that.

I don't see how you can say they're the same, then elevate government over private. Expanding the power of government expands the power of corporations.
Beyond that, our government have already bankrupted medicare and social security. Us youngins will never see a single penny we pay into that fund. Ever. Because the government mismanaged the money. So why give them a third chance to put us trillions in the hole? Someone should've been indicted for that.

I'll tell you what I have faith in. The greed of the companies. That greed will drive them (in a true competitive market) to try to seize customers(aka money) from their competitors. The only way to do this without government involvement is to make a better or cheaper product.
I then have faith in the idea that the companies losing customers will want them back. Causing them to undercut/improve on their competitors.

You aren't supposed to have faith in the benevolence of a for profit entity. You're supposed to have faith that their greed will drive them to improve to get more customers and money.

They do the right thing for the wrong reason. But fuck if I care. At least it's not throwing my money into a black hole like SS and Medicare.

 

[ayzo]

Why are we even trying to help poor people? I say we let them die and harvest their functioning organs for personal use, then we can sell the left overs on the black market so we can payoff our deficit.

 

[guerilla]

I'll tell you what I have faith in. The greed of the companies. That greed will drive them (in a true competitive market) to try to seize customers(aka money) from their competitors. The only way to do this without government involvement is to make a better or cheaper product.
I then have faith in the idea that the companies losing customers will want them back. Causing them to undercut/improve on their competitors.

You aren't supposed to have faith in the benevolence of a for profit entity. You're supposed to have faith that their greed will drive them to improve to get more customers and money.

Indeed. The communists tried providing sunshine and lollipops. It doesn't work. In order for an economy to work, you need profit and loss, or you can't rationally allocate resources.

People who do a bad job must go broke, and people who do a good job, should assume a larger role in the economy. Only profit and loss can sort these people out in competition.

Governments have backwards incentives. When they fail, they get more money, when they succeed their budgets get reduced.

 

[WickedJoe]

Greed is a great motivator and can spark lots of innovation, etc etc. But many Americans put too much blind faith in it, just like they put blind faith in market-idealism.

I've had this conversation here before. Most innovations don't come from greed-driven companies though. They come from grant-supported laboratories in universities. Companies just take most of those ideas and try to make a profit off of them.

Anyway I'm only saying Biz and Gov are more or less the same in America. Other countries are not perfect but they're not nearly as bought out by corps as us. People like you and me prob want the same thing we're just split in how we want to achieve it. I want to achieve it by demanding full transparency in all government actions and demanding that corps do not sway politicians in disproportionate ways. Whatever laws need to be created to achieve that, I'm for them.

Many here on the other hand, would rather just say fuck government altogether. The less gov the better, etc etc. And some even want some kind of anarchy (Guerrilla), which i think is pretty ridiculous, no matter how idealistically nice it sounds.

For me it's pretty simple. There are countries whose healthcare is working right now and doing a better job for far less $$$ than what we do by far. Why in the fuck can't we just outright copy their system? Copy what's good, throw out what's bad. I'm guessing we don't do that because we're too conceited to think other countries might be doing something better than us lol. God did choose America afterall, we're god's chosen ones. Everyone else is godless heathens, and doomed.

 

[guerilla]

Greed is a great motivator and can spark lots of innovation, etc etc. But many Americans put too much blind faith in it, just like they put blind faith in market-idealism.

You make some of the most ridiculous posts on this entire forum.

Greed is just another word for rational self-interest or rational egoism. Note, RATIONAL.

What you continually propose, is IRRATIONALITY.

Christ.