Judge a society by how it treats those less fortunate than others. The fact that the UK could afford to keep animals better than it's poorest shamed us.
-
Security incident: ISF was recently accessed by intruders. Please change your password, and change it anywhere else you used it. Read more
single-payer system ... singled out
- Thread starter Oliver
- Start date
Judge a society by how it treats those less fortunate than others. The fact that the UK could afford to keep animals better than it's poorest shamed us.
Ziggurat
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- Jun 19, 2003
- Messages
- 64,242
Do I need to point out sarcasm in the second quote?
Ziggurat
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- Jun 19, 2003
- Messages
- 64,242
Well, no. The poverty definition does not include the various forms of assistance which are available. When factoring those things in (including food stamps, medicaid, etc), the number of people who cannot actually afford to feed and shelter themselves is quite a bit smaller. Furthermore, one of the most significant contributions to poverty in the US is illegal immigration. But ironically, the people who voice the most concern over poverty in the US are frequently the same ones who don't want to crack down on illegal immigration.
Ziggurat
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- Jun 19, 2003
- Messages
- 64,242
Nonsense. Pick any standard of care for the poor that you could possibly ever achieve, and you can still treat a racehorse better - in fact, it's almost certain there will be racehorses who get treated better. But so what? The example is an appeal to emotion, and the emotion is jealousy. As I already asked, and which you notably didn't answer, what difference can it make to me what treatment a racehorse gets? If my treatment is good enough, why should I care if a racehorse's is better? If my treatment is not good enough, what consolation is it that a racehorse get treated worse? It does not make any difference. The treatment of racehorses is irrelevant to my treatment.
Zig, I notice you refer to services available to poor and disenfranchised people a lot. You have also stated that you would not be opposed to government-funded medical care for people financially unable to pay. Do you believe in a fundamental right to healthcare? If not, why would you want to use resources on poor people?
Ziggurat
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- Jun 19, 2003
- Messages
- 64,242
I've already said no. There are damned few positive rights (though a good deal of negative rights) that I believe in.
I do not think the government MUST offer health care to everyone. This is not the same as thinking the government must NOT offer health care to anyone.
Do you believe that if someone will die without a particular procedure that they cannot afford that they should be allowed to die? If that is your opinion than I can't really argue with it, it just seems that a lot of people reference things like private charity and welfare to make their own positions sound less harsh.
"You think poor sick children should die in the street."
"That never happens, there's always Medicaid."
If you truly don't believe people have a right to healthcare, than private charity and medicaid are really nothing more than ways to deflect criticism of the obvious consequences of your position.
Ziggurat
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- Jun 19, 2003
- Messages
- 64,242
Sometimes, yes. So, in fact, does almost everyone, including the people who run the NHS. It cannot be any other way: the system must ration care, and that includes denying life-saving care if it's too expensive. I'm just upfront about that reality. You can quibble about where exactly you draw the line, but the line will get drawn, one way or another. It is no form of nobility to try to hide that reality, and it is no form of villainy to recognize it.
No. Charity is charity. No one has any right to charity, but it is still a good thing, and people give to charity for a variety of reasons, many of them unconnected to deflecting criticism. In fact, even suggesting that in this context is absurd, because you're the one who brought it up (in this post), not me. I have made no previous references to charity in this thread.
Oliver
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- Aug 12, 2006
- Messages
- 17,396
Ziggurat
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- Jun 19, 2003
- Messages
- 64,242
Does the Hippocratic Oath place any requirements on whom the physician must attend to? No, it does not. It only governs treatment of whatever patients the physician has accepted. So why did you bring it up? Perhaps you thought it said something other than it did, and never bothered to check. Is that what happened, Oliver? Do tell, I'm oh so curious as to what you thought your point was.
I'd much rather you explain why you consider such mutually incompatible positions in the scope of just a few posts.
Then I'm afraid that we'll never agree. But tell me, then, why you consider education to be different?
You miss the context at the time some of the poor had no healthcare. We deemed that unacceptable and figured it would be fairer to care for all of our citizens equally irregardless of wealth. I do see healthcare as a right and a healthy populace is, as Adam Smith noted himself, a more productive one.
You want to teach people a lesson when the potential cost of failure to them is death. I agree with you that people should take resposibilty for themselves. I do not see how a dead person could heed this lesson.
Ziggurat
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- Jun 19, 2003
- Messages
- 64,242
Because I think everyone needs it, going without has massive externalities, and it's needed at a point in life where they cannot possibly provide it for themselves.
Only the last of these ever applies to healthcare. You could convince me that children should have guaranteed access to healthcare, but they do frequently get such access through medicaid even for the very poor, and since most children are healthy, they're a fairly small part of the overall health care problem.
Ziggurat
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- Jun 19, 2003
- Messages
- 64,242
Apparently I do need to point out the sarcasm. I am opposed to the car company bailouts, and consider what is happening to them as an example of the kind of mess that Washington can be expected to make when it tries to step in and take over the operation of private companies. That second quote is facetious, and was intended to be recognized as such. I would have thought the "What could possibly go wrong?" bit would have given the game away, but apparently it didn't. Do you need further explanation?
Ziggurat
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- Jun 19, 2003
- Messages
- 64,242
Then the problem is that they had no health care, not that race horses had health care. Race horses had no logical connection to the actual problem: nothing about the care (or lack thereof) that the poor were receiving was in any way connected to the care that horses were receiving. The context you mention is irrelevant except to prime the emotional response to the argument, since all the argument is is an appeal to emotion.
It's called oratory.
Ziggurat
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- Jun 19, 2003
- Messages
- 64,242
Yes. Appeals to emotion and other fallacies often make for effective oratory, or as it's sometimes called, rhetoric. This is not news to me.
KoihimeNakamura
Creativity Murderer
Execpt it's sadly possible to be ineligiable for medicaid/medicare if you earn too much money but not enough for health insurance.
He was a politician and he was trying to convince the populous, what other tool did he have? However this isn't really the point.
You say you aren't happy that people suffer yet you also say you won’t change a system that allows many of them to suffer in an attempt to make them responsible. This system costs more than it should and is fundamentally inefficient. Further you have yet to show that it does make people more responsible. You are willing to put your ideology, that government is bad, before what is best for the overwhelming majority of the population.
People like you scare me to be honest. .