Conservatives, under what conditions would you allow universal coverage?

[RecoveringYuppy]

But doesn't that ignore the fact that everyone in the US is covered by our medical system, even if not covered by insurance. A car full of illegal aliens will be treated at the nearest hospital if they get in a wreck. A homeless person passing out on the street will usually end up in a hospital. So, it doesn't make sense to pretend that adding them to "the system" will increase costs so much when we already cover their most expensive treatments.

I don't know that car wrecks and passing out in the street are the most expensive treatments there are, but what difference does it make? Do you and I have some disagreement about whether we should extend health care to them? I think we should extend health care to all and let the politicians and experts figure out the costs and/or savings involved in the instances you're referring to here.

So far, I have not seen a very compelling argument that Americans can't have UHC.

Me neither.

 

[RecoveringYuppy]

Others have provided how much more per capita the US spends on administration.

Yes, I agree with Tranewrecks numbers.

Is seems to me like you disavow your own claims under the guise of “just asking questions” but are insisting on increasing high levels of evidence for any anything you don’t want to hear and simply intend to ask for more and more specific answers until people tire of answering you . This is a common style for proponents of many types of woo...

What woo do you think I'm promoting?

I've accepted all the figures that Tranewreck provided evidence for. I can't remember what you've posted earlier. Do you have some reason for me to accept a different number for administrative costs? If so, did you say what the number is and provide evidence for it?

 

[RecoveringYuppy]

Is seems to me like you disavow your own claims under the guise of “just asking questions” but are insisting on increasing high levels of evidence for any anything you don’t want to hear and simply intend to ask for more and more specific answers until people tire of answering you . This is a common style for proponents of many types of woo...

Just went back and re-read the exchanges between you and I. Our first exchange was you rejecting a link I provided as inadequate (and I don't care since I didn't consider it to be gospel truth, just potentially useful). And my last post to you before this current exchange I accepted your entire post without question. So WTH?

 

[lomiller]

Just went back and re-read the exchanges between you and I. Our first exchange was you rejecting a link I provided as inadequate (and I don't care since I didn't consider it to be gospel truth, just potentially useful). And my last post to you before this current exchange I accepted your entire post without question. So WTH?

The link was weak and you were not prepared to back up anything in it, which ties into the point I’m making. You seem to want to be free to say or imply anything you want without backing it up while at the same time rejecting everything anyone else says based on a an ever increasing standard of evidence.

Someone says US administration costs are3 to high you reject it because they don’t say how high, they give details on how high you reject it because they don’t explain why it’s high, I explain why they are high and you reject that because “no one can predict the future and tell you exactly what the saving would be” and therefore want to continue assuming these costs can’t be reduced. This is pretty much the same game young earth creationists play with the fissile record, with each explanation being grated with “but you still can’t explain this!” while never backing up their own positions.

 

[RecoveringYuppy]

@lomiller, think you need to reread

You're quoting me right now agreeing the link was weak. I even said something to that effect right in the post I gave the link.

Just a few posts back I accepted (that's what non controversial means) all your explanations as to why costs are high.

And just a few posts back Tranewreck posted numbers I agree with (couple or several hundred billion).

I don't see anything in your posts that I think I disagree with. What do you think we disagree on?

 

[Travis]

So is the lesson to draw from this thread that some want the Constitution changed for some reason and the others just oppose it outright under all circumstances?

 

[RecoveringYuppy]

Did any conservatives actually show up and answer? Sorry, if my contribution turned in to a derail. I should have been posting in "Liberals, under what conditions would you oppose universal care?"

 

[Travis]

At least three did.

 

[Grizzly Adams]

Let's hear 'em. The only thing I've seen you offer is a really bad Constitutional analysis that says we aren't allowed to do UHC.

I like how you just assert the analysis is "really bad" and then just continue as if your conclusion is self-evident. You don't need to support your assertions because you're special!!

Of course, we have Medicare, we have VA health care (which unlike Medicare, is actually socialized--the military employs doctors and nurses), if those are Constitutional, why does merely expanding those programs render them inconsistent with federal law?

I have no issue with the VA as a function of government (though its existence as a Cabinet-level position is definitely debatable). Article I, Section 8 explicitly grants to Congress the power to raise and support armies. Raising them involves hiring, training, and compensating them. If the Congress decides an appropriate piece of compensation for defending the nation is health care, that's their prerogative. It also falls under supporting the army for obvious reasons.

I have yet to see a convincing argument that Medicare is constitutional. But I'm not going to argue that point because it's not the topic of the thread and the reasons I would give are pretty much exactly the same as the reasons I've already given against UHC.

 

[Grizzly Adams]

If that's the case, what is your solution for people with medical problems who don't have the means to pay? I have never encountered an anti-UHC poster heree who could answer this question.

The example I'll use is a 22 year old with a part-time job and no medical insurance who slides his car into a ditch and is now paralyzed from the neck down.

We know you don't want a single dime of government money to help him so what happens? Do we just leave him in the ditch to die?

The fact that I do not believe a universal health care scheme is constitutional is insufficient grounds to assert that I prefer him to die in the ditch above all other possible outcomes.

The fact that I do not believe a universal health care scheme is constitutional does not mean I have an answer to worst-case scenarios.

All I'm saying is that the Constitution does not provide the power to the federal government to take part in a universal health care scheme. I see no constitutional solution to the dilemma you presented, so far as the federal government is concerned. But that doesn't mean I want the guy to bleed out in the *********** ditch, as some others have claimed.

 

[WildCat]

All I'm saying is that the Constitution does not provide the power to the federal government to take part in a universal health care scheme. I see no constitutional solution to the dilemma you presented, so far as the federal government is concerned. But that doesn't mean I want the guy to bleed out in the *********** ditch, as some others have claimed.

No, it just means you reject all efforts to help him.

I have no idea which part of the Constitution you think prohibits the government from paying for health care. You must also think that federally funded public roads are unconstitutional? Public schools? NASA?

 

[Grizzly Adams]

IOW: Taking the constitution out of it, what's your actual opinion on if it's a good idea or not?

I can't state there are any laws of the Universe/economics that state any such scheme must be bad. I could imagine some variety where everyone must pay something, a capitation tax of sorts, and each visit is accompanied by a co-pay or each procedure is paid in part by the patient (a percentage of the cost, capped at a certain dollar amount adjusted annually for inflation, maybe).

I guess I'd have to see the specifics.

I do, however, have an exceedingly difficult time accepting the proposition that the simple fact that I exist obligates you to donate to me your labor, especially if I am an able-bodied adult. Should you choose to voluntarily contribute to my well-being that should be your choice.

Note that this is not the same as wanting to see people die in the streets. Note that this is not the same as simply being selfish and saying "screw you" to everyone else. It's a logical result of a rational belief that a person owns his labor and no one else is entitled to it for their own personal gain.

 

[Grizzly Adams]

Additionally, Medicare is Constitutional. I don't see how "Medicare for all" would violate any law, nor is the VA (an actual socialist institution), unconstitutional. The argument against UHC by way of the Constitution is not a strong one.

And TraneWreck spoke. And it was so.

 

[RecoveringYuppy]

And TraneWreck spoke. And it was so.

Was the whole country chloroformed while Medicare was implemented? It's not like TraneWreck is the first person to express an opinion on this. What kind of conspriacy theory does it take to think that Medicare got in without being scrutinized and debated?

 

[Grizzly Adams]

No, it just means you reject all efforts to help him.

Really? All efforts? All I said was that the Constitution does not provide Congress with the power to institute a scheme for universal health care. The Constitution does not prevent the states from experimenting with such schemes. The Constitution does not prevent large cities like New York (or small ones, for that matter) from trying something. The Constitution does not prevent charitable donations from private citizens/groups. The Constitution does not prevent insurers from saying "we'll eat the cost on this one."

It seems like you need to make, literally, a federal case out of this when there's no reason it must be so.

I have no idea which part of the Constitution you think prohibits the government from paying for health care. You must also think that federally funded public roads are unconstitutional? Public schools? NASA?

The part of the Constitution which prohibits the federal government from enacting a universal health care scheme is the part that says "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." That's the tenth amendment talking. It explicitly states that if the Constitution doesn't provide for a power, the federal government doesn't have it.

Some like to point to the general welfare clause or the interstate commerce clause to support their arguments. I've already addressed the general welfare clause, and the interstate commerce clause argument fails for the same reasons.

The Interstate Highway System is about as far as I'd go with federally-funded roads. It's easily classifiable under supporting armies, as goods and people must be able to reliably get from one location to another in the case of national emergency. Perhaps some roads that branch off those main arteries, but not much else.

I see no constitutional problem with public schools, so long as they are not federally-funded.

And no, I do not see a constitutional basis for NASA as it exists today. You have no idea how much it hurts to say that, because I love what NASA does and the two Space Shuttle launches I've seen are quite possibly the most awe-inspiring events I've witnessed with my own eyes. Yes, I get misty when I even watch a launch on the teevee. But no, I cannot find a constitutional basis for them. The only justification I can dream up (and I've spent some time on this) is the old common-law principle of "I'm here 'first', and I claim this land in the name of <insert nation here>." But we stopped going to the Moon, have no plan at the moment to go back, and ratified the UN's Outer Space Treaty, so we can't claim the Moon (or anything else) even if we did go back.

 

[Grizzly Adams]

Was the whole country chloroformed while Medicare was implemented?

Umm, unlikely.

It's not like TraneWreck is the first person to express an opinion on this. What kind of conspriacy theory does it take to think that Medicare got in without being scrutinized and debated?

I don't know what kind of conspiracy that would take. Probably a really big one.

I also don't know what it has to do with anything.

 

[RecoveringYuppy]

Because it would take a conspiracy that large, preventing the examination of Medicare, to justify a claim that Tranewrecks assertion that it is constituional merely rests on his opinion.

 

[Grizzly Adams]

Yes, because no law has ever been passed that was unconstitutional, right?

 

[TraneWreck]

I like how you just assert the analysis is "really bad" and then just continue as if your conclusion is self-evident. You don't need to support your assertions because you're special!!

I've said this before, so enough with the histrionics, but adopting a universal system like Germany's is pretty obviously constitutional.

Via the Commerce Clause, Congress has broad power to regulate interstate commerce. Thus, a health care law that requires health insurers to be non-profit and take on a certain percentage of high-risk clients to maintain certification is pretty obviously Constitutional.

I have no issue with the VA as a function of government (though its existence as a Cabinet-level position is definitely debatable). Article I, Section 8 explicitly grants to Congress the power to raise and support armies. Raising them involves hiring, training, and compensating them. If the Congress decides an appropriate piece of compensation for defending the nation is health care, that's their prerogative. It also falls under supporting the army for obvious reasons.

This is what always amuses me about the legal principles of the right. So long as something can be described as "supporting the army," anything goes, even obviously socialist institutions (should we reflect on why they're happy to adopt socialism for the programs they find important? No, that would amount to a level of self-reflection that could lead to, gasp, actual reasoning).

But, of course, when we discuss "general welfare," that has to be defined as narrowly as possible.

THis is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of who the founding fathers actually were. Thanks to the intellectually bankrupt revisionist history of the right, there's this popular opinion that the Fathers were libertarians, they weren't. They were very clearly progressives. They were versed in Enlightenment ideas and believed strongly in the idea that government should be in the business of taking care of the people, even to the extent that general welfare trumped property rights (remember, Locke said "Life, Liberty, and Property," and Jefferson changed it). From Jefferson:

Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise. Whenever there is in any country, uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labour and live on. If, for the encouragement of industry we allow it to be appropriated, we must take care that other employment be furnished to those excluded from the appropriation. If we do not the fundamental right to labour the earth returns to the unemployed. It is too soon yet in our country to say that every man who cannot find employment but who can find uncultivated land, shall be at liberty to cultivate it, paying a moderate rent. But it is not too soon to provide by every possible means that as few as possible shall be without a little portion of land. The small landholders are the most precious part of a state.

http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2...s-jefferson-on-the-limits-of-property-rights/

If a politician advanced this view today, you would call him a socialist. They intended the General Welfare Clause to provide for those unanticipated situations where government needed to intervene to help the people. Your Constitutional analysis is based on a false historical premise (let's not even deal with the fact that, you know, stuff has changed a little since then), and your position is a reflection of that basic misunderstanding.

And to be clear, Hamilton argued for a broad understanding of the clause (specifically mentioning education as a subject falling under the clause), Jefferson argued that it should only apply to taxation aimed at supporting the general welfare of the country (which, of course, health care could still fall under). After the 1930's, we're fairly clearly in Hamilton's camp. I know it sucks, but the world changes. The general welfare clause is broadly construed and you can't own slaves anymore, tragic indeed.

I have yet to see a convincing argument that Medicare is constitutional. But I'm not going to argue that point because it's not the topic of the thread and the reasons I would give are pretty much exactly the same as the reasons I've already given against UHC.

You will never see what you try really hard to ignore.

 

[Newtons Bit]

I've said this before, so enough with the histrionics, but adopting a universal system like Germany's is pretty obviously constitutional.

Via the Commerce Clause, Congress has broad power to regulate interstate commerce. Thus, a health care law that requires health insurers to be non-profit and take on a certain percentage of high-risk clients to maintain certification is pretty obviously Constitutional.

Why? Can't an insurer be localized to one state and that one state only? How does interstate commerce have anything to do with that?

It bugs me with the Interstate Commerce clause is thought to be an all-inclusive clause dealing with any and all business. It's not supposed to be that way. The original intent, and the older definition of the word, was exclusively about goods and services travelling from state to other states. It's been so thoroughly abused, such as with the Gun Free School Zone Act that it doesn't mean anything anymore. It's just carte blanche for the government to do whatever the hell it wants to.