buh bye
(FYI, take a look at the n00b’s other two posts)
1) An actual Brit student of 18 years neither speaks nor writes the way you did in this nonsensical brechenblatt charade.
2) Anyone just looking for the Yank's dichotemy would not preface the query with a longwinded explanation of Britain's own socialist system having "saved their life" several times by the tender age of "18"(!!). Seriously, the stench is appalling from that one.
3) Syntax, sentence structure, colloquialisms, all point to a rather unimaginative, predictably undereducated, dull American liberal with a limited vocabulary. I've worked in London and with and Brits for the past 25 years, and you're not even in the ballpark.
In 25 years, I've never met a Brit who liked their commie Health system. Ever.
Trot along, now, and leave the adults to our serious discussions. There's a good lad.
:-\
This is such mush.
This thread is condemned...
IBTZ
Do you like kitties? (moggies, if you are really are a Brit)
Viking Kittehs, that is.
Do you think it’s ‘fair’ that people who cannot afford health insurance and have expensive medical issues should have to choose between suffering and large amounts of debt?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
No, it’s not fair. But that’s not the point. The point is purely a governance one. That is, does a national government have the authority to enforce fairness on every facet of our lives? And at any cost to our wallets and freedoms? Does a national government have the authority to take over a portion of the insurance industry and exert its will over the medical fields?
And more importantly, SHOULD a national government have this authority and should we as free citizens allow it to happen? My answer is no.
Your own personal medical predicament is not really part of this debate. I know that sounds cold, but it is the hard painful unpleasant fact of the matter. Your own personal struggles are not my government’s problem. Good luck to you.
Do you think it’s fair that a buerocrat decides what care you get? Do you really think that your system gives everyone unlimited access to health care, or does it ration care, even if you don’t “perceive” the rationing? Some in America like to be masters of their own destiny, hard concept to understand for some.
The greatest health care system in regards to technology, pharma, procedurally, is right here in the US. There is a reason, the system allows people to make real money, gives people choices, etc..... National health care deincentivizes innovation and investment. From azt to zithromax, even in your uk you will use drugs first produced and marketed in the US in some cases by European drug firms!
Yes, you have a right to fail just like you have the opportunity to get rich. Anyone can have insurance. It’s a lie that insurance is overly expensive, inaccessible etc. Walmart and McDonalds offer it to their employees, every college student can get it for little........ It is not the role of government to by law dictate what you have to purchase, to include insurance. If you make bad choices and are unfortunate, that’s on you. Yes, it’s perfectly fine that some people go into debt when they become I’ll, because if you care check it, they did have a choice in the equation at some point.
I like the idea of being a customer, of having legal recourse, of having the doctor know that “I” pay him and that what “I” think matters. I have choices. My insurance is a private matter, it’s a legal contract that I enter in with an insurance that negotiates lower fees and levels/manages risk. The buerocrat is nothing more than another layer of red tape, where political favors are paid for with my money, and in the end, EVERY health care system on this planet has to ration care, but at least here “I” choose how that care looks, you?
There are a number of problems, some of which will be addressed in replies to your questions below, some of which are actually shared by the American system, which is why many of us on FR advocate market-based reform of that system.
First, all third-party payer systems, whether nationalized health care or the heavily-regulated, insurance-dominated American system, have no means of cost containment other than rationing of care. There is no effective competition among health care providers because there is not mechanism for passing price information to the purchasers/patients. A monopsony only exacerbates this problem.
Second, governments tend to be very inefficient in the provision of goods and services in comparison to the market.
If the problem is due to it being paid for by tax increases, do you expect the increases to be larger or smaller than your current insurance cost?
Larger, due to government inefficiency.
Do you think it's 'fair' that people who cannot afford health insurance and have expensive medical issues should have to choose between suffering and large amounts of debt?
There are different notions of fairness. Is it fair for the state to deprive us of the fruits of a labours unwillingly through taxation to succor the needs of people in the circumstances you propose? Or even if fair under your notion of fairness, is it desirable to impose such fairness by force?
And why limit your argument to healthcare? Is it fair that some cannot afford as good of food as others or no food at all? Is it fair that some cannot afford shelter? or clothing? or a motorcar to get to work (on this side of the Pond, distances are rather larger and rail and bus service rather sparser)? And on and on. . .
If we are Christians, it is incumbent on us as a matter of charity to provide for those in need. But even St. John Chrysostom, who in exhortations to the wealthy to engage in charity characterized the wealth of the rich as "theft from the poor", wrote strongly against the moral hazards of state imposed redistribution of wealth.
The state is not the only social institution able to provide aid (medical care included) to those in need.
Do you think the quality of healthcare will improve/worsen with NHC?
Worsen, due chiefly to rationing and a decline in the desirability of medicine as a profession.
Finally, I will answer a question you did not ask: what reform would you advocate to the American healthcare system?
1. Equalization of tax treatment for employer-provided health insurance and health insurance purchased by the insured.
2. Creation of a mechanism by which individuals wishing to purchase health insurance for themselves or employees of a small business could band together to form voluntary health insurance purchasing groups to give them corresponding leverage with insurance companies to that exercised by large employers or labour unions.
3. Increase in effective competition in the provision of medical services by
a) insurance regulations requiring payments for services by the insured be a percentage of the cost, not a fixed copayment (this encourages finding the least expensive provider)
b) improvement of the regulatory and malpractice insurance climate for marginal competitors to physicians (nurse-practitioners, nurse-midwives, psychologists with special training to earn prescription privileges. . .)
c) requirements that physicians and hospitals publish rates for services
4. Utility-style regulation of prices for medical goods and services when a state-granted monopoly exists. This should include monopolies on pharmaceuticals, medical devices or procedures created by patent law, and might arguably include even physician's services in areas where no effective competition exists. (I find guild-monopolies as objectionable as corporate or state monopolies.) 5. Tort reform to lower malpractice insurance costs. I would propose capping non-compensatory damages (both punitive and pain-and-suffering awards) at the larger of $100,000 and three times compensatory damages (though I would allow loss of income as compensatory damages). But in conjunction with this, I would strengthen regulatory and criminal sanctions against malpractice.
Whose right is health care? Do you think it's yours?Congressman Anthony Weiner has said that health care is not a commodity. If it isn't a commodity then do doctors and nurses have rights? Assigning health care the status of a right makes health care workers slaves to that right who must serve it. On what ground could a health care worker refuse to provide their products and services since that would violate the patient's "basic human right to health care."
That is a direct loss of individual rights for health care providers. The collective right of the people to receive health care would supersede the provider's individual right to set fees and hours or to change their occupational status or even decide how to apply their skills and knowledge if taken to its logical extreme. A collective right, by practical definition, is a state right because it is a right that is created and given by the government to those it chooses to give it to. It is not a natural right possessed by each person protected by the Constitution from the government. It is also a collective/state right by virtue of the fact that it would supersede individual rights when the two come into conflict. How else would the government view a right that it created and administers vs. one it has no control over?
Of course it isn't stated in any bill that a patient's right to care supersedes a provider's right to set fees and hours etc, but it doesn't need to. Rights, as always, are adjudicated in the courts. The Health Care Reform bills simply establish the foundation for the courts to rule in favor of the collective right.
Weiner’s view is collectivist, fascist and totalitarian. Collectivist because it has to be described as being a right of the many instead of the one and superior due to that fact. Fascist because ultimately the sole authority for its creation and oversight is from one entity the Federal government. Totalitarian because the Federal government is the enforcer of this collective right as well. State and local jurisdictions will have little say about it.
Congressman Weiner's view is the underlying philosophy of all of the Health Care Reform legislation in the House and Senate. Consider this section in the Senate version of the bill; the setting up of community watch dogs that will monitor citizens for various health parameters. Read pages 382 - 393.
TITLE I—QUALITY, AFFORDABLE HEALTH CARE FOR ALL AMERICANS pps 382 - 393
So, even citizens themselves will be subject to Federal regulations on their behavior in order to fulfill the "human right" of universal health care. It isn't the individual's liberty that is being protected by that it is the government's control over its own health care system that is being guarded. How much clearer can it be that these bills abrogate the concept of individual rights? Someone will be checking your lifestyle, according to gov regulations, to be certain you serve the best interests of the "basic human right to health care" ie. "the Public Option."
HCR is not just about rationing care and wealth redistribution. It's about the end of individual rights as the corrosive effects of the new collectivist "basic human right to health care" spreads throughout the legal and political systems like a virus.
I think that the main purpose of Health Care Reform (HCR) is as a direct assault on individual liberties.
Health Care is a Liberty Issue
Conservative Underground - 18 August 2009 - Tim DunkinAnother Stupid Argument: Heath Care is a Right
Obama's Authoritarian, Unconstitutional Health Care Proposal
To Americans Who Believe Healthcare is a Right
OBAMA: HEALTH CARE DESTROYING FREE SPEECH
Mandated health insurance threatens freedom, privacy
Bad Laws and Unintended Consequences, part 1.
Obamacare Rips Doctor-Patient Relationship Apart
Second Bill of Rights aka FDR's economic bill of rights
(An early attempt to embed collective rights into American politics and society.)
Another problem is that you're not free either. You're not even a human being as far as your government is concerned. You are a tax production unit who, statistically, must produce more revenue for the government than you take back in services. But you can't so your government borrows on what your children and grandchildren must produce to pay for you.
Our Constitution does not allow the Federal Gov’t to require a citizen purchase something or be fined. (Obama and the current Speaker of the House don't realize this, or don't care)
That would be akin to the federal government mandating every citizen must purchase a firearm for the purpose of reducing crime.
The US Constitution is pretty specific on what the FEDGOV cannot do.
States, on the other hand, have more leeway.
You know what sonny? My mother told me that even If she hadn't already moved away from The UK when she had her childern she would have because.......THE UK HEALTH CARE SYSTEM SUCKS!!!!!
She also told me on other thing that you should know too!.........
DONT TEASE THE VIKING KITTIES!!!!
What, exactly is the problem with nationalized/socialized healthcare?
Our government has no right to demand we purchase a service or product from another person.
Fine for your country but not ours.
Cheerio and IBTZ
Are heterosexual penguins more suitable than homosexual penguins?
Read his in-forum history...
#1) America is broke.
#2) This Obamacare adds an enormous added debt to our already bloated budget.
#3) It robs funds from areas where it is needed the most. Mainly Medicare.
#4) Obamacare includes 14,0000 IRS agents ready to pounce on your bank account.
#5) The individual mandate is unconstitutional under the commerce clause.
#6) America was not founded on collectivism. Individual Liberty is embedded in our DNA. We do not worship Royalty or any other form of Monarchy.
#7) The European Union is on the Brink of collapse due mainly to enormous entitlement spending.
#8) Americans beleive in Liberty over a false sense of security.
#9) Our constitution was specifically written to keep us from sliding back to a nation of subjects. (Read the Declaration of Independance)
#10) Finally, this country has overwhemlingly just recently cast a vote of “NO-CONFIDENCE” in our current administration for a vast majority of reasons.
I have a few points of contention with socialized medicine here in the USA and they are:
1) The Federal government isn’t authorized by our consitution to do anything outside of the enumerated powers, and health care as well as other social programs are not on the list. According to our 10th amendment social programs are within the scope of power retained by the states and the people. This is probably difficult for a European to understand, but our founders belived that local governments and society itself were best equipped to deal with micro issues and did not empower the central government to act directly upon the people in order to preserve the idea of liberty and freedom from which our founding documents were conceived.
2) Government intervention in the health care market is what drives prices through the roof by disturbing the natural pricing mechanism and injecting market failure with politics which includes the emergence of monopolies, price fixing, and other kinds of inefficiencies. It’s the primary reason health care becomes unaffordable. Providing even more subsidies with tax dollars only drives more waste and inefficiency, and puts people at the mercy of politicians and bureaucrats instead of having the power of the market.
3) Single-payer destroys the market based system all together which also destroys the incentive to provide the best possible care at the best possible price. You get what they feel like giving you when they feel like giving it to you, and if you don’t like that there’s nowhere to go.
4) It gives too much control over what care is provided and under what circumstance to the government and takes it away from the individual.
5) The subject of ‘fairness’ is a red herring. Prior to the government dabbling in our health care system, there were thousands of charity hospitals in the United States that operated on a low to no cost basis. Today, the number of existing charity hosiptals is in the low hundreds and declining. Our government responded to the lack of low cost health care by making treatment necessary when people just show up at an emergency room, and the cost is shifted to those who can pay, either with insurance or out of pocket, making us all unwitting philanthorpists just by purchasing health insurance or services at inflated prices. No one went without care because of inability to pay, not before the government started messing around with the system, and not now.