single-payer system ... singled out

[balrog666]

You didn't read Professor Yaffle's link, did you?

So now you want to go on paying twice as much as you need to for medical care in order to keep people in jobs that are otherwise redundant?

And you think I'm left-wing?

Rolfe.

Back to the 1 trillion dollar question: Where will you cut 1 trillion dollars from current discretionary expenditures and how will cutting such services improve the delivery of medical services?

 

[Rolfe]

More productive people are willing to pay for a better standard of care. And a better standard of food, water, housing, and pretty much everything else they spend money on.

Why would you want to deprive them of the right to spend their own money in such a fashion? How does that improve anything for you or anyone else?

Who said anything about that? Certainly here you are entitled to spend your money on any damn thing that's legal. And medical care is certainly legal.

Why do you have such an objection to providing a high basic (that is, universally-available) standard of healthcare? Nobody is even thinking about preventing you from wasting spending your own money on a swanky hospital or a really comfortable private room or as many MRI scans as your eardrums can stand.

Is it too scary to you to contemplate a situation where, even though people can do these things, the standard of universal provision is high enough so that few people want to?

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

Back to the 1 trillion dollar question: Where will you cut 1 trillion dollars from current discretionary expenditures and how will cutting such services improve the delivery of medical services?

Try reading Professor Yaffle's link. If you're not too afraid to learn something.

Rolfe.

 

[balrog666]

Because he isn't. The goal is 'government and private', and you can pay for the private one i you want.

That wasn't allowed the last time the government tried to take over the delivery of medical services - that effort included draconian penalties for both doctor and patient for going outside of government provided delivery of medical services.

Furthermore, we have yet to address how you coerce 3 million doctors, nurses, technicians, and administrators to become de facto government employees ...

Or how you decide which currently operating and productive hospitals, surgery centers and medical clinics must be closed permanently to cut costs ... will we even get a voice in those decisions or will Moscow Washington decide everything for us on a never-ending series of 5-Year-Plans?

 

[Matthew Best]

More productive people are willing to pay for a better standard of care. And a better standard of food, water, housing, and pretty much everything else they spend money on.

Why would you want to deprive them of the right to spend their own money in such a fashion? How does that improve anything for you or anyone else?

You can spend your money on whatever you want, just like people can in the UK under the NHS. The fact that you're erecting straw men to argue with doesn't say much for your argument.

 

[Rolfe]

That wasn't allowed the last time the government tried to take over the delivery of medical services - that effort included draconian penalties for both doctor and patient for going outside of government provided delivery of medical services.

Well if that is the case then you are right to oppose it, in my opinion. However, since such a prohibition is hardly an essential part of a universal healthcare system, then this is hardly an argument against such a system.

Furthermore, we have yet to address how you coerce 3 million doctors, nurses, technicians, and administrators to become de facto government employees ...

Or how you decide which currently operating and productive hospitals, surgery centers and medical clinics must be closed permanently to cut costs ... will we even get a voice in those decisions or will Moscow Washington decide everything for us on a never-ending series of 5-Year-Plans?

More baseless assumptions. The same number of people will need to be treated. Sorry, more people will need to be treated. Why would you imagine that facilities would have to be closed?

Are you afraid to read Professor Yaffle's link, in case you might learn something? I note you bodyswerved every reference to that directed at you the last time you visited the thread too.

You're American, right? You get a vote? Like everybody else? You aren't going to vote for something that is essentially Stalinist, are you? Do you think your fellow-citizens are likely to do that either? Why do you assume that a universal healthcare system, which every single other capitalist country in the developed world has, must be synonymous with communism? It isn't, anywhere else. Why should your be different?

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

You can spend your money on whatever you want, just like people can in the UK under the NHS. The fact that you're erecting straw men to argue with doesn't say much for your argument.

You're right. His entire argument is a straw man. But he clings to it and won't countenance anything else.

He doesn't want a universal healthcare system, for whatever reason I don't know. His solution is to dream up the most unlikely and frankly risible scenario he can, and then ask others how they are going to implement that, pray tell?

Get a clue, Andreas.

Rolfe.

 

[Ziggurat]

Or how you decide which currently operating and productive hospitals, surgery centers and medical clinics must be closed permanently to cut costs ... will we even get a voice in those decisions or will Moscow Washington decide everything for us on a never-ending series of 5-Year-Plans?

What, you aren't impressed with how the government is turning around Chrystler and GM by closing down dealerships?

What could possibly go wrong?

 

[boooeee]

They will figure out ways. The easiest is to wait for them to lose their employment. Then you have them.

I am sure there are others as well.

If you lose your job, you can get COBRA (what a strange acronym) coverage regardless of health. It ain't cheap, but I think "thousands of dollars a month" is an exaggeration. When COBRA runs out after 18 months, in most states you have the option of purchasing a HIPAA plan which is also offered on a guaranteed issue basis. But the vast majority of people can get individual coverage on the open market for much cheaper.

There are gaps in the system, and it's not simple or necessarily cheap, but it's rare that individuals truly have no options.

 

[Matthew Best]

It sounds unnecessarily complicated.

I'm hoping something can be done about the US health care system, because my wife would like for us to live in the US at some time, and it's one of the main things that's putting me off the idea.

 

[Architect]

What, you aren't impressed with how the government is turning around Chrystler and GM by closing down dealerships?

What could possibly go wrong?

But you've just taken us back to one of the earlier arguments; never mind that the UK, France, and others have all managed to implement a high quality, socialised and universal healthcare system for a fraction of the price of the current US system. The US government is incapable of doing it itself.

Really, I find it hard to believe that you consider your Government and civil service so grossly incompetent.

 

[Architect]

Saving people from any bad consequences of their own mistakes is not a function I need government to perform.

What, you aren't impressed with how the government is turning around Chrystler and GM by closing down dealerships?

Do I need to point out the inherrent contradiction in your position here?

 

[Architect]

Furthermore, we have yet to address how you coerce 3 million doctors, nurses, technicians, and administrators to become de facto government employees ...

Existing hospitals contract in as single service providers under a tendering regime. If they don't play ball, the government starts building hospitals. Next question?

Or how you decide which currently operating and productive hospitals, surgery centers and medical clinics must be closed permanently to cut costs ... will we even get a voice in those decisions or will Moscow Washington decide everything for us on a never-ending series of 5-Year-Plans?

1. You seem to assume that savings can't be made without closures. What evidence do you have for this?

2. Where do you see evidence that those of us with socialised healthcare systems suffer from "a never ending series of 5 year plans"?

 

[volatile]

Oh please. There are damned few people so destitute that buying health insurance will make their lives truly miserable. This is an appeal to emotion, and a weak one at that.

Errrmmm... really not.

"Poverty in the United States is cyclical in nature with roughly 12% to 17% living below the federal poverty line at any given point in time, and roughly 40% falling below the poverty line at some point within a 10 year time span.[2] Most Americans (58.5%) will spend at least one year below the poverty line at some point between ages 25 and 75." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States).

Ziggurat - over half of all Americans will spend at least one year of their adult lives with less money than they need for food and shelter, let alone healthcare premiums. Something around one in six of the population is in that position at any one time. -O) If your assumptions are so far out of whack, perhaps it's not surprising that your conclusions are so flawed.

 

[Professor Yaffle]

Ziggy, when it comes to healthcare, why are you willing to let people off with the effects of their bad decisions in most cases, just not when it comes to bad money decisions? For example, lets look at a couple of hypothetical cases:

Ms A has made wise money decisions all her life and therefore has health insurance, but has made some poor decisions in other areas of her life. She takes little exercise and has a very poor diet. As a result of this she has just discovered she has diabetes.

Ms B has made very bad money decisions in her life and as a result has no health insurance. She eats a good diet and gets a lot of exercise. She has just discovered she has Addison's disease.

Why should one set of poor decisions lead to full access to healthcare, and the other set of decisions lead to minimal or no healthcare?

As to your assertion that there are very few people who cannot afford health insurance, I think we have another person who does not live in the real world where there are people who have to make the choice whether to heat their crappy apartment or buy decent food for their kids, where there are homeless people, mentally ill people, people with learning disabilities.

Also the result of poor people having poorer health care is that poor people have poorer health. Poorer health means less capacity to work your way out of your poverty (and more people living on government provided disability benefits paid for by your precious taxes) which feeds into the already existing poverty cycle. Which widens the gap between rich and poor. The wider the gap, the more everyone suffers:

http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/why/evidence

Oops - now I am letting my evil socialist side really show!

 

[volatile]

So we'll ask you again - what freedoms do you, under the US healthcare system, enjoy that are denied to us poor commies in the rest of the civilised world?

Anyone want to hit this one? Ziggurat? Balrog?

 

[Professor Yaffle]

Anyone want to hit this one? Ziggurat? Balrog?

The freedom to make people pay dearly for poor economic decisions?

Coming back to the racehorse analogy; Ziggy asked us why we should care how we are doing compared to the racehorse, as long as we are doing ok. I ask him a similar question: Why do you care so much that the people who make poor decisions get less than you healthcare wise? It doesn't affect what you get if they get a better deal.

 

[volatile]

http://notalwaysright.com/it-turns-out-you-can-be-too-safe/2001

"Me: “Sir, please deal with his injuries and make sure he’s taken to the hospital. You can call us back after he’s been treated if you need to and we’d be happy to explain how to get the bills paid - right now you need to worry about him.”

Caller: “I ain’t doin’ anything ’til I know who’s gonna pay for this. I shouldn’t be stuck with this!”"

 

[Rolfe]

Coming back to the racehorse analogy; Ziggy asked us why we should care how we are doing compared to the racehorse, as long as we are doing ok.

I think that last bit is the point. If there had been no systemic problems with human healthcare in Britain, Nye Bevan would not even have mentioned racehorses. It's not the cosseted lives of high-rank companion animals that are the point per se, it's the contrast with the desperate situation of many people.

In the days when children were dying and adults were suffering because of lack of money to pay the doctor, the pampered attention racehorses were getting was seen as a comparative scandal. Nowadays, I can confidently tell you, the racehorses are getting far higher-grade veterinary treatment than they were in 1947. However, since no person is suffering because they can't pay the doctor any more, this issue has gone away.

The comparison that does happen is the relative lack of wait times for veterinary treatment. To which the first answer is, well, that does tend to be a feature of private medicine across the board, the second is, if your entire lifespan is only 15 years, a six-month wait is a lot more serious than for someone with a lifespan of 70 years, and the third is, well, just be glad we don't decide simply to put you down when you become too expensive or too much trouble!

I ask him a similar question: Why do you care so much that the people who make poor decisions get less than you healthcare wise? It doesn't affect what you get if they get a better deal.

This seems to be a common theme among many opponents of universal healthcare. Dan Stanley was another. They seem positively offended by the idea that people who are short of money or who have made poor financial or lifestyle decisions should have easy access to necessary medical care. There's a hard, judgmental side to the attitude - even to the point of calling it a "moral hazard" to society for citizens not to be restricted in their access to healthcare.

Even if it won't cost them a single extra penny, even if there would be a net reduction in their own expenditure, the idea of a society where everyone - the poor and the rich, the sensible and the reckless, the just and the unjust - all have the medical treatment they need provided, seems to be fundamentally offensive to them.

I wonder why?

Rolfe.

 

[Random]

People who make mistakes should not be insulated from paying any consequence for their mistakes at my expense.

Most people who utilize healthcare are suffering consequences regardless. They are sick and/or injured! If someone offers you free auto repair service, do you decide to ignore all street signals? Did Europeans take up smoking so they can take advantage of free treatment for lung cancer?

People who make poor health decisions and end up needing medical care are in every socio-economic group. Ability to pay doesn't enter into it.