toldailytopic: Obama's State of the Union speech. What did you think of it?
- Thread starter Nathon Detroit
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One Eyed Jack
New member
I don't know about all that. I just don't want to be forced to buy something I don't want. If I get sick and can't afford medical care, then so be it.
Alate_One
Well-known member
And the rest of us get to pay for it! :madmad:
If you can't do it with car insurance WHY should you be able to do it with health care?
Don't want to pay? Go move to a country where they let you die on the street if you don't have insurance.
edit - Or perhaps we should start a form where you can sign that if you don't want to buy health insurance, nobody is legally obligated to treat you if you (or your children) get sick and you can't pay. You're on the list you get to waste away and die. Oh and no changing your mind at the last minute . . . .
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Ecumenicist
New member
Wouldn't work for kids, but not a bad idea for legal adults who don't have kids.
But not entirely honest, survival instinct kicks in at the onset of a heart attack or trauma or sudden onset life threatening infection, and I don't care how staunch the republican, the person is going to want help to survive.
Maybe a reduced rate for people who are willing to waive treatment for slow onset illness, like cancer. In that case, by the time they suffer enough to change their mind its too late no matter what anyway.
But even then, when the suffering gets great enough few people are willing to just sit by and listen to the moaning and screaming when a morphine drip would make the process much more comfortable.
No, I don't think it would work after all. Sorry.
edit:
I'm beginning to wonder of the right wing is right. If there weren't any bleeding heart liberals around, society could just let people suffer and die without conscience or recourse.
WandererInFog
New member
The two really aren't precisely comparable, because you can choose not to drive, or move to one of the handful of states that doesn't require liability insurance. And technically speaking you're not required to buy car insurance in any state, what's required is to show that you are financially able to cover the costs of the accident, this can either be insurance or a bond posted for an amount equal to the state's minimum insurance.
nicholsmom
New member
This is not the "right wing" view :nono: If you look with honesty, you find that right-wingers give at least as much to charity as do lefties. The difference is that we choose to give directly in the direction of our choosing, whereas the left choose to take it out of our pockets and direct our charitable dollars by their choice.
Around here there are local charities to which you can donate to help pay the health care costs of those in need. It makes a big difference even with the gov't taking away most of our charitable dollars to direct as they choose. Imagine what we could do if the gov't thugs just got out of the way and let us give where we want to give instead of forcing our hand. Charity must be voluntary for it to be charitable.
Ecumenicist
New member
Doesn't exactly help the least and the lost... That's why suburban churches have baseball leagues while others have much much less.
Also, local healthcare support charities are fine but they generally don't have the millions needed to cover things like chemo and dialysis for people. If they did, they would be functioning as co-op / nfp style insurance, which is what the public option is all about.
Alate_One
Well-known member
But the principle is the same. And with health care, no person will be financially able to cover ALL the cost of their care out of their own pocket unless they are super rich and never get particularly sick.
Like car insurance, I pay more BECAUSE some people are not insured. This is especially true in healthcare because hospitals are under a moral obligation to treat anyone that shows up on their doorstep. Because we are ALREADY paying for these people (even more so than in the car insurance example) it is only fair that those that are able are asked to actually pay for their care ahead of time with insurance.
Alate_One
Well-known member
You still don't get it.
People without insurance ALREADY take money out of MY pocket against my will when they get sick and need to be treated. Is it so much to ask that people actually pay for insurance ahead of time rather than expecting the rest of us that pay for insurance to foot the bill in increased premiums?
Opposition to health care, I think, is caused by people failing to realize what the situation really is for so many people. They assume everyone else is doing okay because they and everyone else they know is making ends meet. But there's actually a sizable percentage of people that suffer and go bankrupt without insurance, far away from the view of any charities.
drbrumley
Well-known member
America's Healthcare Future?
Some years ago, the Nobel-laureate economist Milton Friedman studied the history of healthcare supply in America. In a 1992 study published by the Hoover Institution, entitled "Input and Output in Health Care," Friedman noted that 56 percent of all hospitals in America were privately owned and for-profit in 1910. After 60 years of subsidies for government-run hospitals, the number had fallen to about 10 percent. It took decades, but by the early 1990s government had taken over almost the entire hospital industry. That small portion of the industry that remains for-profit is regulated in an extraordinarily heavy way by federal, state and local governments so that many (perhaps most) of the decisions made by hospital administrators have to do with regulatory compliance as opposed to patient/customer service in pursuit of profit. It is profit, of course, that is necessary for private-sector hospitals to have the wherewithal to pay for healthcare.
Friedman's key conclusion was that, as with all governmental bureaucratic systems, government-owned or -controlled healthcare created a situation whereby increased "inputs," such as expenditures on equipment, infrastructure, and the salaries of medical professionals, actually led to decreased "outputs" in terms of the quantity of medical care. For example, while medical expenditures rose by 224 percent from 1965–1989, the number of hospital beds per 1,000 population fell by 44 percent and the number of beds occupied declined by 15 percent. Also during this time of almost complete governmental domination of the hospital industry (1944–1989), costs per patient-day rose almost 24-fold after inflation is taken into account.
The more money that has been spent on government-run healthcare, the less healthcare we have gotten. This kind of result is generally true of all government bureaucracies because of the absence of any market feedback mechanism. Since there are no profits in an accounting sense, by definition, in government, there is no mechanism for rewarding good performance and penalizing bad performance. In fact, in all government enterprises, exactly the opposite is true: bad performance (failure to achieve ostensible goals, or satisfy "customers") is typically rewarded with larger budgets. Failure to educate children leads to more money for government schools. Failure to reduce poverty leads to larger budgets for welfare state bureaucracies. This is guaranteed to happen with healthcare socialism as well.
Costs always explode whenever the government gets involved, and governments always lie about it. In 1970 the government forecast that the hospital insurance (HI) portion of Medicare would be "only" $2.9 billion annually. Since the actual expenditures were $5.3 billion, this was a 79 percent underestimate of cost. In 1980 the government forecast $5.5 billion in HI expenditures; actual expenditures were more than four times that amount – $25.6 billion. This bureaucratic cost explosion led the government to enact 23 new taxes in the first 30 years of Medicare. (See Ron Hamoway, "The Genesis and Development of Medicare," in Roger Feldman, ed., American Health Care, Independent Institute, 2000, pp. 15–86). The Obama administration's claim that a government takeover of healthcare will somehow magically reduce costs is not to be taken seriously. Government never, ever, reduces the cost of doing anything.
SOURCE
Some years ago, the Nobel-laureate economist Milton Friedman studied the history of healthcare supply in America. In a 1992 study published by the Hoover Institution, entitled "Input and Output in Health Care," Friedman noted that 56 percent of all hospitals in America were privately owned and for-profit in 1910. After 60 years of subsidies for government-run hospitals, the number had fallen to about 10 percent. It took decades, but by the early 1990s government had taken over almost the entire hospital industry. That small portion of the industry that remains for-profit is regulated in an extraordinarily heavy way by federal, state and local governments so that many (perhaps most) of the decisions made by hospital administrators have to do with regulatory compliance as opposed to patient/customer service in pursuit of profit. It is profit, of course, that is necessary for private-sector hospitals to have the wherewithal to pay for healthcare.
Friedman's key conclusion was that, as with all governmental bureaucratic systems, government-owned or -controlled healthcare created a situation whereby increased "inputs," such as expenditures on equipment, infrastructure, and the salaries of medical professionals, actually led to decreased "outputs" in terms of the quantity of medical care. For example, while medical expenditures rose by 224 percent from 1965–1989, the number of hospital beds per 1,000 population fell by 44 percent and the number of beds occupied declined by 15 percent. Also during this time of almost complete governmental domination of the hospital industry (1944–1989), costs per patient-day rose almost 24-fold after inflation is taken into account.
The more money that has been spent on government-run healthcare, the less healthcare we have gotten. This kind of result is generally true of all government bureaucracies because of the absence of any market feedback mechanism. Since there are no profits in an accounting sense, by definition, in government, there is no mechanism for rewarding good performance and penalizing bad performance. In fact, in all government enterprises, exactly the opposite is true: bad performance (failure to achieve ostensible goals, or satisfy "customers") is typically rewarded with larger budgets. Failure to educate children leads to more money for government schools. Failure to reduce poverty leads to larger budgets for welfare state bureaucracies. This is guaranteed to happen with healthcare socialism as well.
Costs always explode whenever the government gets involved, and governments always lie about it. In 1970 the government forecast that the hospital insurance (HI) portion of Medicare would be "only" $2.9 billion annually. Since the actual expenditures were $5.3 billion, this was a 79 percent underestimate of cost. In 1980 the government forecast $5.5 billion in HI expenditures; actual expenditures were more than four times that amount – $25.6 billion. This bureaucratic cost explosion led the government to enact 23 new taxes in the first 30 years of Medicare. (See Ron Hamoway, "The Genesis and Development of Medicare," in Roger Feldman, ed., American Health Care, Independent Institute, 2000, pp. 15–86). The Obama administration's claim that a government takeover of healthcare will somehow magically reduce costs is not to be taken seriously. Government never, ever, reduces the cost of doing anything.
SOURCE
drbrumley
Well-known member
And who allows that to happen? You, me, One Eyed Jack, Nicholsmom? Or the Federal Government. And thru bad economic policy has allowed this to fester.
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