Posted on 01/13/2005 3:38:25 AM PST by from occupied ga
I'm pretty sure - though I'm willing to shift my view if I'm wrong - that no one has ever died from not having a television.
I guess that's why they passed a statewide smoking ban...
Not relevant. Health care is a commodity like anything else. Is someone else's misfortune (ie being sick) your moral responsibility? I don't think so. For Example, if someone else engages in behavior that leads to AIDS, then should you and I be obligated to pay for treatment? If someone sends their money back to Mexico and then applies for Medicade should they get it? If people download children that they can't afford why should we pay for their education? This is socialism - the redistributionist philosophy that bankrupted every notion that has persisted in following it.
Good ol' Republican hypocrisy. Although Perdue was a Democrat for many years before he saw the writing on the wall in GA and shifted parties.
As far as the actual debatable point goes, it is easy ideologically to take your position. It is more difficult practically, because there are some situations that I just don't think our populace is going to accept. You are correct that some people are responsible for their own health care crises. But some are not. I don't think that we, as a nation, are prepared to say "tough sh#@" to a child brought into the ER by a parent without the resources to pay for health care. We may be, but I don't think so. So, at present, those who show up to a publicly funded ER get care, whether they can pay or not. If this is our standard, I'd much prefer that we provide efficient care to those persons, rather than crisis care. It is cheaper and more responsible to do so. For me, the only way around this conclusion is to decide that we are going to turn those folks away at the ER.
Should we segregate such care between those who are simply unable to provide for their own health care needs (children, disabled, elderly) and those who can? Probably. But I'll be amazed if we ever get to the point, as a nation, where we decide that those who can't pay for health care can just go ahead and die.
Anyone who goes to an ER in any hospital in the USA today is treated regardless of the ability to pay now. The costs are just passed on to those of us who pay our bills. Although what do you think about a homeless junkie who runs up a couple of hundred thousand bill. I know doctors who'd like to pull the plug on these guys.
My biggest problem is not about emergent care, but ongoing problems. I thnk that free clinics should be done away with EXCEPT as supported by charity. If someone wants to donate money for the care of others, then more power to 'em. I just don't think that it should be a function of government.
Health care is on that evil list of "human rights" that the UN promulgates (and btw was authored by Elanor Roosveldt). IF I have a "right" to health care, then someone has an obligation to provide it. Either you make the doctors work for free (kind of like they do in Canada) for your fellow taxpayers cough up the cash. For example an electro-cautery machine costs about $30k If surgery is my right, then is the manufacturer obligtated to provide the mache for free? You're welcome to form whatever opinions you want of course, but I just don't think so.
I don't think we are going to get rid of emergency care for indigents. If we accept that premise, then my issue becomes 'why have we chose to provide free health care in the most expensive, least effective manner?'. I'd much rather have the government spend $50 of my money to keep the kid from getting sick than $500 for an ER visit when he gets sick. As I said, for me, the only way around this conclusion is to say that we aren't gonna pay for the eventual ER visit. As long as we are, I think we should try to control those costs as best we can.
Then you're accepting socialism. This idea of everyone's wants becoming obligations to the rest of us is a late 19th century idea that really got its main impetus under FDR, and the more socialism that we have the screwier the country becomes. I'm much rather the parents or a charitable institution pay rather than force me to pay, and the hell with junkies. If they want to shoot up, let them, but then if they die from an OD that's their problem too.
No, I'm accepting efficiency. By your construct, I accepted socialism when I accepted that my money is going to be spent on the kid at the ER. And, if I understood you correctly, so did you.
Or are you saying that it is 'socialism' to spend $50 of your tax money on preventive care, but it is not 'socialism' to spend $500 of your money on emergency care? If that is what you are saying, I'd really like to hear how you differentiate the two.
It depends on whose money. If it's government money plundered from the taxpayer it's socialism. The kid going to the ER is paid for by the customers and stockholders of the hospital, not the taxpayers.
"Efficiency" is used to cover a lot of evils. I'm saying that spending $50 of the taxpayer's money on your straw man (the sick kid) only is efficient if you accept the socialistic premise that his health is the responsibility of the taxpayers anyway and it will cost the taxpayers $500 later on. If it costs his parents $500 then not spending the $50 isn't a problem for me. That is what parents are for, not to just squirt out children, but to take care of them as well.
Health care is a commodity, and if a sick person can't pay for health care, then look to private charity, but don't plunder what I worked for to pay for it. It isn't any different than any other commodity. You're distorting the whole argument by the handwringing emotional example of the "sick kid." What about the sick junkie who has abscesses from using dirty needles. I guarantee that one hell of a lot more ER admissions who can't or won't pay are from deadbeats who due to their lifestyles and stubborn persistence in poor life choices have health problems (abscesses, hep c etc.) and no money (all spent on dope or booze) than the hypothetical sick child.
That's your fallacy. The only ER's that have to provide indigent care are those that are publicly funded.
"You're distorting the whole argument by the handwringing emotional example of the "sick kid." What about the sick junkie who has abscesses from using dirty needles."
Did you choose not to read where I addressed this distinction in my original post to you on this topic? Or are you just choosing to ignore it now?
Not true. All have to provide emergency care
Did you choose not to read where I addressed this distinction in my original post to you on this topic? Or are you just choosing to ignore it now?
All I remember your saying on this is that we are going to have to accept indigent care.
I'm not a single issue voter, and I'll probably vote libertarian. It's just that on all my issues there is not very much difference between the pubs and the dems. Gun control, government spending, illegal immigration - I don't see the pubs doing much conservative on these fronts.
Translation: keeping corporations happy with taxpayer dollars.
PRAVDA TOVARSCH! They've taken over these forums too in case you hadn't noticed.
Sadly, I agree with you. I voted for Sonny as a protest vote- never thinking he had a prayer of unseating a sitting Governor- but obviously, Barnes had offended enough voting blocks to get the boot, despite all the influence-peddling he indulged in. The joke down here- six hours away from the fever swamps of Hot-lanta, was "Roy Barnes? Why, he's the best Governor money can buy..."
While not as blatantly corrupt, Sonny seems to have no problem spending everybody else's money. My tagline is from a true story--
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