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Necesary Reforms

sir drinks-a-lot said:
You could argue against that strawman more effectively by pointing out that Socialism is an economic system and single payer health care is not, therefore the straw man is comparing apples to oranges. Category error.
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I'm not the one who claims that single payer health care, or the plan far to the right of that >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Obamacare, is socialism. That's been a loud and steady refrain from the right wing. Surely you don't need a citation for that, do you?

But since you've pointed out that single payer still retains a profit motive and is therefore capitalist, then those people calling it socialism are wrong.
 
icebear said:
Obamacare is a total disaster, basically just a redistribution scheme. It does not address any of the real problems with medical costs. The reform I suggested above does.
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I think if it was going to be a disaster we would have evidence of that by now, not just claims that the sky is falling when it clearly isn't. A lot of people HOPE it will be a disaster but that is not the same thing as being a disaster.

What I see so far, is that at least in our state, people will be paying less for medical care, and people who could not afford care before will be able to be covered. More people that can afford preventative care will be hopefully less likely to need emergency care.

If there is a problem, there could be a shortage of medical care providers. But I see that as a job opportunity. (Of course, another way to sabotage health care would be to require that only doctors could see patients).

1. Elimination of lawsuits against doctors and other medical providers. There would be a general fund to compensate victims of malpractice for actual damage and a non-inbred system for weeding out those guilty of malpractice. The non-inbred system would be a tribunal composed not just of oher doctors, but of plumbers, electricians, engineers, and everybody else as well.
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Your solution seems over complicated. Why not just have socialized medicine? (You could do away with a lot of lawyers). I'm just being a bit of a devil's advocate here. If you are going to block a private industry like 'lawyers' from making money in a free market, and then take time from plumbers, electricians, and engineers so that they can deal with this stuff - why stop there? And where does the money for this fund come from?

Why not advocate complete socialism? It seems like you are resisting an easier solution. Yes the ACA redistributes costs, but your suggestions do that too.
 
In regards to health care, I'd simply point out you can have a universal system and still have from pretty fierce free market-like competition. See: Taiwan's health care system.
 
icebear said:
US public ed still worked after a fashion in 1955, but it was nobody's idea of fun to be involved in even then.
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It worked well enough for me, and I graduated in June of 2001. It would probably work a lot better if they stopped catering to parents and stopped babying children.

Also, school isn't supposed to be fun. You're there to learn.

icebear said:
If you simply got rid of it, funds could be provided for the truly poor to set up their own neighborhood school. It would cost a lot less and work a lot better.
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Or, more likely, their children wouldn't get the education they desperately need.
 
Kopji said:
I think if it was going to be a disaster we would have evidence of that by now, not just claims that the sky is falling when it clearly isn't. A lot of people HOPE it will be a disaster but that is not the same thing as being a disaster. .
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Republicans have put themselves way out on this one. They wouldn't go to this much trouble on their own initiative or for the sake os ideology. You've got huge numbers of people being cut back to <30 hours on account of this, labor unions crying over it, polls (Rasmussen) noting that 51% of the public wants this thing stopped even if it means shutting down the government, and pretty nearly all of Obunga's favored groups demanding and mostly getting waivers from it.

Like I noted, the thing apppears to be a redistribution scheme, and that HAS TO raise costs for the people who pay for it. Again, it does not fix anything.
 
DDWW said:
Can I still keep my "assault weapons"?
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Depends on what you mean by "assault weapons(TM)"

There are basically two definitions of an assault weapon, i.e. a political and a military definition.

The political definition is basically just anything which, on a scale of one to ten for being scary looking to democrats, rises much over about a five or a six...

The real military definition is more complex. Most assume a weapon has to be at least semi-automatic and preferably automatic to quality but, in real life, that's not really necessary. In fact in real life, most people attempting to fire any military weapon in full auto mode will never hit anything with it.

What you really want and need for an assault weapon are things which work well in assault situations:

  • Big enough to injure a human adversary badly enough to take him out of the battle.
  • Otherwise fairly small, easy to load up with lots of ammo and carry lots of ammo around. That says small caliber; the tradeoff is that you assume you're not shooting anything past about 300 meters which is normal for most military situations. This eliminates the idea of taking 600 meter shots with an assault rifle. One guy in the squad carries something which CAN do that.
  • Quick (aimed) follow on shots.
  • Light, easy to carry and manipulate.
  • Add to that list the ideas that it would be good if the thing never jammed and were easy to clean. Add all of that up, and what I come up with is a lot different from the pictures you usually see.

These are the two rifles I'd ask you to look at:

http://www.weaponsandgear.com/pictures/_H/_Henry Repeating Arms/HENH001TM_1.jpg

http://picturearchive.gunauction.com/9318194723/4979931/Izzy Hbar 1.jpg

The Israeli heavy barreled FAL rifle is basically a conversation piece for older people, way too heavy and clunky to meet the military definition of an "assault rifle"; in the Israeli army it served the dual purpose of sniper rifle and squad level light machinegun.

The little 22-magnum caliber Henry Rifle, assuming it was using the newest Hornady ammo with 45-grain bullets meets the military definition other than for lacking a detachable magazine which would be a slight modification.

The Henry is a $375 item on Gunbroker or at BassPro or Gander Mountain.

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Edited by Loss Leader: 
Edited for hotlinking and Rules 1, 3
 
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icebear said:
Republicans have put themselves way out on this one. They wouldn't go to this much trouble on their own initiative or for the sake os ideology. You've got huge numbers of people being cut back to <30 hours on account of this, labor unions crying over it, polls (Rasmussen) noting that 51% of the public wants this thing stopped even if it means shutting down the government, and pretty nearly all of Obunga's favored groups demanding and mostly getting waivers from it.

Like I noted, the thing apppears to be a redistribution scheme, and that HAS TO raise costs for the people who pay for it. Again, it does not fix anything.
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You've already had this claim about Rasmussen debunked. It's not a good sign that you're continuing to repeat this after you've been shown to be in error.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics...y-be-all-that-bad-for-republicans-yes/279790/

Rasmussen isn’t a very reliable pollster -- in last year’s presidential election, the company’s polls consistently overestimated Mitt Romney’s chances. But leaving that aside, the poll doesn’t quite show that the public wants defund or nothing. The pollster asked, “Would you rather have Congress avoid a government shutdown by authorizing spending for the health care law at existing levels or would you rather have a partial government shutdown until Democrats and Republicans agree on what spending for that law to cut?,” and 51 percent picked the second option, which suggests a partial trimming of health-care spending. Another recent poll by a respected Republican pollster found that a large majority of Americans, including a majority of Republicans, oppose “shutting down the government as a way to defund the president’s health care law.”
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icebear said:
You've got huge numbers of people being cut back to <30 hours on account of this
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How many employees have had their hours cut back to <30 solely or predominantly due to Obamacare? Of that number, how many were not employees of an employer who made the decision for political rather than financial reasons?
 
Is anyone else getting the vibe that this thread opening positively reeks of birtherism and right-wing-echo-chamber reverberations?

More than once I've heard the usual refrain, "Obamacare is a DISASTER!" without any evidence to support that assertion.
 
TellyKNeasuss said:
Exempting doctors from lawsuits while creating a fund to compensate victims of incompetence seems like a communist idea to me.
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That was one of the only areas I sort of agreed with, except that I would have gone one better and say we should stop frivolous lawsuits altogether. It's an abuse of the system and only encourages gold digging.

It's especially bad for the medical field because it causes doctors and students studying to become a doctor to become fearful of being sued either for something that's beyond their control or an honest mistake.

Or do you think it's alright if parents sue their pediatricians if their children becomes diagnosed with autism after becoming immunized because of recent surge in anti-vax mentalities?
 
Elimination of the outmoded WW-II notion of triage in favor of a system which took some rational account of who pays for the system and who doesn't.
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That is brilliant.

You could create a simple, common sense, color-coded card system based on this.

Those in the lefthand category could get a red card, those in the righthand side a green one, with various shades of orange, yellow, and lime in between.

Now, to maximize efficiency and reduce moral hazard among the red-card holders, you'd need to allot physician time minimums when treating people in the green-card group. Whereas presently, third party payers limit time spent with any individual patient to 8 minutes or less, under the Improved System, physicians would need to be required to see green-card holders for at least an hour. Additionally, for a rational physician-to-wealth ratio, green card holders will need to be educated about the potential usefulness of state-of-the-art prevention techniques like monthly MRIs and EKGs for early diagnostic purposes.
 
icebear said:
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/pub...tdown_until_congress_cuts_health_care_funding
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Yes, we're referring to the same poll, but it doesn't say what you think it says. As pointed out to you twice now, the question asked was not about stopping Obamacare via shutdown, it was about getting agreement on the budget, and there are several, more recent polls that demonstrate that Rasumussen's poll is an outlier to boot. In short, you're wrong. The public won't back you. But please proceed, Teabaggers.
 
Icebear, did you learn nothing from 2012? You remember how willfully they lied to you about Romney's chances? Do you recall how everyone on the extreme right caterwauled loudly and long about how the left were a pack of sycophantic liars? And how all the news agencies that were saying Romney wasn't going to have a sweeping win were liberal plants or democrat propeganda? And the death panels? Et cetera? And when the elections came, and it turns out the right lied and distorted and the left didn't?

Didn't that tell you anything?
 
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