I've seen crushing poverty in Mexico, including large numbers of children without shoes or other basic goods. I can't imagine that they get treated for cancer or other serious diseases by a government that is fueled by an economy that can't give them proper food and shelter. I agree. Although if there is more money generally, then more will be spent on the less fortunate even if the willingness to help less fortunate doesn't increase. The pie gets bigger, but the slice percentage stays the same, so the slice gets bigger, in other words. I'm much more concerned about the size of the pie than I am the percentage of the slice for poor people. Ed O.
There is a middle ground between all or nothing, doing enough to help everyone is all that is needed, nothing more. When someone says "some kids are lucky, some aren't"...geez And IMO, trying to make this a world issue is crap, we need to start somewhere
Then she would have gotten on Medicaid more quickly. Seriously, try to keep up. The OT section moves fast. I'm glad that you're admitting that you wouldn't do whatever it took to ensure everyone had catastrophic health insurance, that you want others to do more. To each according to his needs, from each according to his abilities, eh? Or it could be paid for by charitable contributions. That's the angle you seem to be missing. Not everything has to be run through the government.
There are more wasteful things we are spending our money on than national healthcare. Healthcare is actually rather noble. Obviously our budget concerns are complicated and not entirely caused by a single administration, but a long chain of administrations & bad behavior by certain agents in the Corporatocracy we live in. It doesn't have to be a government run program, but since my ideal would be that everyone would have at least catastrophic coverage it doesn't seem like it makes sense to involve a middle man. Facilitating adoptions for orphans is pretty noble. It is just a small piece of pie. Having 1,000 charities covering different sectors might not be the most efficient way of handling healthcare. Nor are charities or private organization adverse to corruption... Neither is the public sector though... If there was an efficient way that we could have an affordable, agile privatized healthcare system in place I would be fine with it. Given the current situation we're in, I think there are too many vested interests in the private sector that would prefer to see the status quo reign supreme, which is why I think it would take government intervention to setup a universal healthcare plan to disrupt the market as it stands. But maybe operations like ZoomCare will expand to offer more advanced treatments & surprise me...
It's not always that clear cut or straight forward. http://www.phlp.org/a-single-mother-who-lost-her-job-and-medicaid-coverage Within "reason" and that's a quasi word with a lot of grey area. I should not have spoken in absolutes. I am not going to sacrifice myself in that situation, no. There is a bit of a difference asking someone to give up their food & shelter vs record profits from denying ill patients their insurance coverage, bonus pay, tax break, yacht, luxury car, iPhone. There is also no program in place right now to even ensure the money I sent would go towards universal healthcare. Charity is piecemeal & it's not always efficient, many are not very transparent. Charity is not a bad idea, but there are a ton of charities and they have not fixed our healthcare system.
You'll also find that here in the USA especially in rural areas. Some kids are lucky, some aren't, fuck 'em. When the pie gets bigger, those who already had a big slice, usually help themselves to an even bigger one & they can because they have the knife and will stab anyone who tries to even it out.
And you are suggesting giving them more power, more money and more control of our economy? That doesn't sound like a plan for success.
That makes no sense to me. You're saying you're not going to "do enough" for the poor kids who need to have whatever it takes spent on them. Why is that? Why is your line morally superior to those who draw the line in a different place? That's your opinion. I think it's a consistent approach that is much better than mocking other who don't want to spend as much of other peoples' money as YOU do, even though you're not willing to spend as much as it takes to help every poor child. I'd imagine that your concurrent concern for poor American children and disdain for poor children of other countries rings just as false to me as my Tarantino reference does to you. Ed O.
The private sector delivers goods and services more efficiently than the government. Dead weight loss isn't something that interests me. The motives of profit and efficiency are also much more transparent than political ones and therefore more easily controlled. Our private sector and charities have given us the most advanced health care system in the world. I've spent too much time abroad in countries with universal health care to ever have faith in that kind of system.
Frankly, I am talking about healthcare in general and more in favor of a single-payer system. Also Obamacare doesn't hand everything over to the insurance companies, there are some good provisions in the bill that I think will probably help. It's not as radical as I would have liked though.
I've never seen children walking in packs without shoes in the USA, and I've been in a variety of places. I saw it regularly in Mexico, and I didn't even spend much time outside of affluent areas. That's because "evening it out" is not something that many of us are that concerned with. I want the poor people to be as rich as possible. I don't want the poor people to be as close to the rich people as possible. Poor people in the USA have refrigerators. Cable television. Telephones. Coffee. Tons of things that, throughout history, have been utterly unavailable to poor people. I would guess, although I don't have stats to back it up, that the life expectancy of poor people in the USA is higher than poor people in the vast majority of human history. That is what's important to me, and I'm not at all eager diminish everyone's standards of living in the name of leveling. Ed O.
Which single-payer system would you like to model our system after? The UK? Sweden? Canada? As for Obamacare, if you can't see that the bill was a setup for a future single-payer system, then you didn't pay enough attention to it. I'm of the mind that my health is none of the government's business. It's my body, my life and I'll make the decisions on how to provide for my own health care.
No they are not. Corners will be cut for the sake of profit & markets can be manipulated to fix prices of higher than they should be. The market is also flooded with products that are of very low value. When you also factor in that the end game of the free market sectors is to slowly merge into a single mothership, you lose all the benefits of the free market. Free markets are also terrible at regulating the prices of essential resources like water, energy & healthcare. When you have a resource everyone must use, prices get gouged. When you have a product that loses profit when it helps people, you get a major conflict of interest. You just have to sell your house or go on government assistance to access...
You keep saying that Ed, why? Putting words in my mouth to try and defend your heartlessness is beyond cowardly You can infer all that you want, doesn't make it so
I'm going to try to be as gentle as possible when I write this, and I mean it in the best of ways, but your understanding of basic economics leaves too much to be desired for me to be able to educate you on the topic. Are you saying that owning a home is more important than your health? Why should I fund your healthcare if you have assets to expend? What right do you have to my money?
I'm on my phone so it's taking me awhile to sort through all of the essays, I'll be back when i get home
It's a difficult issue to turn into bumper sticker sentiments. If you wish to boil it down, however, there are those who believe that health care is a right and those who don't. Count me as being among the latter. To me, the Constitution is a list of negative rights; the constraints on government.
Mostly disposable consumer goods made overseas, imported from china. Our poor are supported by the Chinese poor. It's great, they can get coffee, potato chips & artificial soda, but not a trip to the dentist. Shit was shitty back in the old day is not a valid excuse for why things are shitty today. Life may be better, but that's never a reason to say we should be complacent. Many people actually lived pretty long back in ye olde times. E.g. Socrates lived into his 70s & Plato possibly to his 80s. There were higher levels of infant mortality and less medical knowledge back then which might slant "average age", but longer average age has more to do with possibly better information as far as prenatal care & birthing. You probably have a better chance of surviving birth these days, but after that you might be on your own. I am not trying to equal it out, but there are obviously certain institutions that have their minds made up that they deserve more than other people & have the means to enact that, even in morally reprehensible ways. It's much easier for a conglomerate to kill off a political activist in a 3rd world country, than it is for a poor person to try and advocate for better healthcare.
Our poor supported by poorer. That's not news. Someone will always have to scrub toilets. It absolutely is. Kings would have invaded countries for those things. I'm not complacent. I want society to be as rich as possible, which will then make the poor more wealthy. Sounds well and good to me. Not really. A poor person can try to do anything. The fact is, though, that most poor people have less to lose if society comes crumbling down than average-to-wealthy people, and so they would be willing to advocate more drastic measures... even putting the economy at risk. Most people, justifiably, aren't willing to take those kinds of risks. Ed O.
I don't think I can learn from your "free market is perfect and is never corruptible" form of economics... What is the point of having the most advanced healthcare system in the world if most people can't afford it at face value or you have to get the government to pay for it? I am not sure where you get off saying "the private sector has done such a great job", yet at the same time suggest if you don't have a house to sell off just have the government pick up the tab... Umm, isn't that kind of the opposite of what your point was?
