Healthcare is NOT a right.

Suicide is a personal decision. I would think that all those who exclaim against government intervention and regulation would agree. I don't know anyone with thinks that Thích Quàng Ðúc's protest was dishonorable.

So let me get this straight. The question of healthcare reform should be answered based on a philosophical view on "rights" rather than on its merits?

See, this is the trouble with conservatives in America and why you can't argue with them, let alone allow them to have any political influence. They're not conservatives in the sense that they've educated themselves about the society they live and how it came to be the way it is today, and made an informed decision about the best way forward. They're "conservative" in the sense that they're basically religious people with a religious mindset. To them, politics is not a question of right or wrong, it's a question of compliance with scripture. The Constitution is a bible. It may not be God's word, but it's the word of the founders of the nation and that's almost as good. So when it says in this particular bible that people have the right to bear arms, they not only take it at face value, they consider it blasphemy to even question that rule or attempt to put it in its proper context. If it was right in the 18th century, it's right today, period. Never mind that the independence of the nation is no longer under threat by the British Empire.

Same thing with healthcare. Conservatives downright refuse to debate whether providing healthcare for our citizens is the ethical, compassionate or dignified thing to do. That doesn't fuc\king matter to them. They don't even want to discuss whether a healthy and unconcerned workforce would benefit our society economically. All they know is how to say that the Founding Fathers didn't consider healthcare a universal human right and so it's wrong for us to provide it. End of discussion. And the fact that all other developed nations have long since figured out that healthcare a massive benefit to society? Well, that just proves they're communist. Somehow.

So if you think it's entertaining to debate with these morons, by all means, keep at it. It's completely pointless but lots of pointless things are entertaining.

On the other hand, the liberal morons view everything through a prism that defines the value of an institution or piece of legislation not in how it will affect the rights of the invidividual, but how it will affect those who cannot afford to pay for something. To these people, the individual lives to serve the socity, not the other way around.

Brain dead arguments such as these can be used to justify ANY curtailing of liberty as long as it helps out "those less fortunate".

There is a name for this moronic philosphy: "socialism".

I try to examine what is best for society as a whole. You pay for the education of others through taxes, for example, not to benefit any one individual, but to ensure the availability of a viable workforce for the economy.

Libertarianism would be great if all people were intelligent and sensible. But I have found that the opposite is often the case.

Precious Roy wrote:

In Japanese, there is no word for "rights". The closest word is "duty".

That's why the Japanese also have the word "Kamikaze" to their credit.

There are too many entitlements. All of these things should be privatized:

K-12 schools

universities

medical (dental, pharmacy etc.) schools

prisons

mental hospitals

medical research

vaccines

emergency services

social security

the military

None of these are rights. The government shouldn't be in the business of funding things that it thinks will supposedly help society. This distorts the market. If you can't afford these things, you should have chosen a better career and it sucks to be you.

No they don't. That's just a false statement, probably something you picked up from FOXNews or who the fu\ck knows where. But it's false.

But liberals do recognize that there's a great variance of individuals in society. That you can't just legislate for your idea of the average individual and declare that everyone who doesn't meet the definition of that average is wicked.

Sagarin . wrote:

There are too many entitlements. All of these things should be privatized:

K-12 schools

universities

medical (dental, pharmacy etc.) schools

prisons

mental hospitals

medical research

vaccines

emergency services

social security

the military

None of these are rights. The government shouldn't be in the business of funding things that it thinks will supposedly help society. This distorts the market. If you can't afford these things, you should have chosen a better career and it sucks to be you.

And we all know that a free market is the highest purpose of government. Not a means to an end, it IS the end. If the well-being of our citizens have to suffer in the interest of a free market then that's worth it.

Adam Smith himself would never suggest that these particular services were best provided by leaving the market unregulated. The virtues of a free market are predicated on a set of very restrictive assumptions that do not apply to education, healthcare, national defense, security, etc. But you, Sagarin, and your ilk have never actually educated yourself on that kind of boring stuff. You just like to spout off cheap rhetoric about "distortion" of the markets and then pretend you're actually debating economics.

The laws of supply and demand aren't suspended because an ideology wishes they would be.

The Philosopher. wrote:

Precious Roy wrote:

In Japanese, there is no word for "rights". The closest word is "duty".

That's why the Japanese also have the word "Kamikaze" to their credit.

Actually, the word kamikaze, in the context you are using it can be attributed to America, not the Japanese. It was a mistranslation. The actual term the Japanese used was shinpu. The characters for kamikazi and shinpu are the same, 神風, so there was a mistranslation, and we actually created the term Kamikaze as a name for the suicide attacks during WWII, not them.

on the runs wrote:

I try to examine what is best for society as a whole. You pay for the education of others through taxes, for example, not to benefit any one individual, but to ensure the availability of a viable workforce for the economy.

Yes, I pay for many things. Too many, actually Community healthcare is not an expense I am willing to add. I will pay for my own and you pay for yours. I honestly do not even care if it costs me more, just as long as I don't have to pay for you.

just nasty wrote:

on the runs wrote:

I try to examine what is best for society as a whole. You pay for the education of others through taxes, for example, not to benefit any one individual, but to ensure the availability of a viable workforce for the economy.

Yes, I pay for many things. Too many, actually Community healthcare is not an expense I am willing to add. I will pay for my own and you pay for yours. I honestly do not even care if it costs me more, just as long as I don't have to pay for you.

Wasting money for spite. Nice.

I'll wager Sagarin knows his Smith. Anyway, Adam Smith's view of regulation was focused on preventing cartels from dominating the economy. It has nothing to do with the kind of intervention and regulation that we're talking about here.

It's really best not to talk about "the market." It's just a word we use to describe the aggregate exchanges that people in a free society make so as to maximize their own happiness. When you call it "the market," then you start treating it as this anthropomorphic thing which is supposed to serve some larger social goal. Then you start talking about "market failures"--an oxymoron if there ever was one.

When people talk about the selfishness of conservatives, they're only seeing half the picture. Conservatives support free market policies, not because they don't want to help people, but because they believe that such policies 1) are most consistent with ideals of liberty (that's a philosophical argument that we can't really get into here), and 2) because they believe such policies DO help people.

Finally, there are clearly people who are incapable of supporting themselves at even a minimally adequate standard of living. These people should be supported by charity, something that conservatives are much better at than liberals. Charities have some major advantages over government programs. They are accountable, and can die if they're ineffective, whereas government programs simply do not die. Charity is targeted at those who really need it. Perhaps most important, charity is good for the givers too. I believe that the callous society is the one who wants the state to take care of the poor and weak, rather than the one that rolls up its sleeves and gets to work, taking care of the poor on its own volition. Charity makes people better, and it would be a shame if the state continued to crowd it out. There's ample evidence showing that charity and taxation are inversely proportional, and that charity should adequate to support the poor in an industrial country.

what so many people neglect to consider is that healthcare costs money. do you think its cheap to develop drugs, instruments and complex procedures? do you think its cheap to teach doctors everything they need to know?

in just about every other industry people who want to access the good and products offered by that industry they have to pay the appropriate price.

another HUGE thing to think about is Health Insurance in and of itself. Why is health insurance so different then any other type of insurance.

Take auto insurance...

standard auto insurance doesn't cover maintenance items or even regular things that break.

why the health does INSURANCE pay for me to go see the doctor on a scheduled basis? Health Insurance IS NOT insurance at all...insurance is supposed to be for unexpected or "in case shit happens" events.

The way it should work is that every person essentially has a wage based deductible. You pay for common medical things but insurance kicks in above a certain threshold. It can be on either a total basis or even basis.

I think that such a system might function well on a tribal level society, or if all members of society were sufficiently forward thinking and educated, but private, voluntary charities would likely be ineffective in a nation of 350 million people.

on the runs wrote:

Suicide is a personal decision.

Not always.

Of course healthcare is important. And there is no shortage of service providers of healthcare. If the government hadn't intervened enough before now, you would find lower prices all the way around. Government intervention has actually increased the cost of healthcare tremendously, and has decreased the quality. Religion has nothing to do with the conservative viewpoint.

Why the hell should employers be involved in healthcare at all? That move alone represented a tremendous shift of wealth and power from rich to poor. The public buys into an IPO, and part of the funds are diverted to funding employee healthcare. Do you think the investors like that? No they don't. They want activities that enhance the company and themselves, and resent government involvement in taking some of their assets and handing it to employees.

The reform that is needed is deregulation, not increased regulation. Why are doctors spending $100-150K per year of their personal wealth for malpractice insurance? Because the courts are saying yes to just about about any claim out there. That is another public intervention that kills healthcare providers, driving up costs even more. Those docs crank up their bill rates to try to offset the malpractice insurance premiums.

Any employer's logical response should be to:

1. Keep the absolute minimum number of people on the payroll and pay everyone else as part-time, temp, or contractor,

2. Keep their own income under $250K and use a combination of dividends and capital gains for better compensation,

3. Use labor from other countries as much as possible,

4. Keep a doctor on the payroll as a perk for employees, their families, contractors, and others who help you - paying for a doctor will actually lower the employer's cost, increase the doc's stability, and help workers by giving them unlimited free (to them) visits to a quality primary care physician - and it will keep the government's greedy hands out of the company.

Remember that the liberals are relying on the work ethic and dedication of business owners to keep them alive. If enough employers decide to give up because of overregulation and overtaxation, then the liberals are doomed. Why reward the least productive members of society and penalize the most productive? But that exactly the system we have now, and it is going to get even worse. Imagine if employers decided to close up shop abruptly and retire. You think the liberals want that? They need the business owners in there working. They starve without it.

on the runs wrote:

I think that such a system might function well on a tribal level society, or if all members of society were sufficiently forward thinking and educated, but private, voluntary charities would likely be ineffective in a nation of 350 million people.

It worked when we were a nation of 150 million, why wouldn't it work now?

Blowing.Rock Master wrote:

It worked when we were a nation of 150 million, why wouldn't it work now?

Because this isn't about reality. It's about extortion- the rich have money and the socialists want it for themselves. Arguing with socialists about what "works" is pointless. All you can do is expose them for the cannibals that they are.