Myths on healthcare

[Strem2]

I won't read something that starts with

I was trying to find a resonable explanation for your dissatisfaction with the insurance companies. But it turns out it is completely ilegitimate.

I thought you were the defender of corporations.... Guess not.

Instead of putting this blind trust on the insurance company, the money is better spent in a savings account. You know, for unforseeable events such as you or a relative falling ill.

[AlexL]

A very healthy debate going on here. As a primary care physician at an academic hospital who spent seven years as the medical director of primary care I recognize just how unqualified I am to thoroughly analyze many of the suggestions I'm seeing put forth to improve our system, much less anyone who doesn't study health care systems for a living. Not that many of the ideas presented here aren't good ones. But to solve a problem you first have to understand it thoroughly. I'd like to offer to this discussion a post called "A Prescription For The Health Care Crisis" I just put up on my own blog. I'd be interested in getting reactions to it either in this forum or on my blog.

Happiness in this World » A Prescription For The Health Care Crisis

[WelfarestateChild]

Originally Posted by Strem2

I won't read something that starts with

I thought you were the defender of corporations.... Guess not.

I was spending way too much time on you anyway.

Hey, and please dont edit sentences when you qoute them

[Kaspian]

Originally Posted by Brutha

Why is the right of property ownership more important than the right to life?

The right to life is this: no one has a right to attack you as an aggressor or kill you. (Though you definitely have the right to defend yourself if you are attacked!) In fact, if you own your own body (and you do), than your right not to be attacked or killed is included in your property right; the right not to have your property damaged, destroyed, or stolen by another person. Your right to your own honestly earned/produced wealth is the means by which you sustain your life.

If you think the right to life means that I have a right to take your honestly produced wealth in order to pay for my medical care, or the government has the right to steal your wealth through taxes in order to pay for my medical care, than you assume that I have the right to steal your means of sustaining *your* life in order to sustain mine. Why should my life be any more important or valuable than yours?

[Brutha]

If you think the right to life means that I have a right to take your honestly produced wealth in order to pay for my medical care, or the government has the right to steal your wealth through taxes in order to pay for my medical care, than you assume that I have the right to steal your means of sustaining *your* life in order to sustain mine.

Nobody gets taxed enough to not be able to buy any food anymore. Taxes result in people not being able to spend as much money on big houses and fancy cars, but they usually don't result in people dying.

[ar81]

Originally Posted by WelfarestateChild

More government intervention in the healthcare sector will only further drive up costs. Disable the power government currently have here, and you will see healthcare becomming abundant again.

Then how is that Americans can't afford healthcare, and a third world like Costa Rica, where people have about 1/3 of American's buying power, can afford a better system?
Evidence proves you wrong, either you like it or not.

You are moved by ideology, not facts. And you have not studied health economy to understand it. It is one of the most complex branches of economy, because the rules that apply for normal markets do not apply there.

If you do not study health economy, it will be like studying newtonian ballistic physics and pretend to talk about orbital mechanics without knowing Kepler laws, or like talking about relativity with only newtonian background.

[WelfarestateChild]

Originally Posted by ar81

Then how is that Americans can't afford healthcare, and a third world like Costa Rica, where people have about 1/3 of American's buying power, can afford a better system?

Because healthcare in america is more expensive

[ar81]

Originally Posted by Kaspian

@ar81 - 90% of economists do not understand economics. My husband majored in economics in college. Since then, he has read hundreds of books on economics and history in order to understand markets better and make better decisions about how to invest our money. His view: all macro economics he learned in college was pure rubbish.

The Keynesian view is convenient for politicians because it encourages more government power and intervention in the economy and people's lives. But Keynesian economics doesn't work, even if most economists believe in it. It's full of wooly-headed thinking, assumptions, and fallacies. It gave the United States a 15-year Great Depression.

Ever heard of the Depression of 1920?? No? That's because it didn't last. The market crashed in Nov 1920 and prices dropped 40%. It was as bad or worse than the crash in 1929. Warren Harding, the president at the time, admitted that he knew nothing about economics and did nothing. No bailouts, no stimulus packages, no New Deals, no new government programs.... nothing. The economy corrected itself, and within 9 months, it had fully recovered.

You keep claiming that the healthcare industry is somehow different than other markets. How? Why? In all the reading that I have done, I have seen no evidence of that, other than it endures more government interference than the average industry. It is precisely that governmental interferences that has the problems we have with the healthcare industry.

We don't need more government interference. We don't need yet another government program. We would all be better off with less, MUCH LESS, government in our lives and business. (Frankly, I'd prefer to live in a world with no government, where the only laws are those that prohibit aggression against my person and property.)

---------------------

A note about your signature: How on earth is "embracing criticism" freedom? The words sound nice, but the meaning in this context is so fuzzy it makes no sense to me... at all. Freedom is the absence of coercion, the absence of aggression against a person and his/her property.

So I think your husband got to anticipate US financial crisis.
If he learned macroeconomics to understand the principles of financial macroeconomic programming to set constraints for a balanced economy, he probably found the problem like I did. However I expected the crisis to start by 2011, but it came sooner, since executives screwed up bigger than I thought.

And not only that. He might have found the problem of the model that is incomplete, because it lacks internal market as a sector of economy, since there is the assumption that higher profits will increase employment, while indeed downsizing increase profit with lay offs.

[kwicherbichen]

Your email is seriously scary... "Dear Friend"...

The white house website requests that we email them if we witness someomne bad-talking the health-care reform.

This is seriously EERIE!!

[ar81]

There is nothing scary.
It is a white house bulletin.
Have you ever suscribed to any bulletin in the past?

What seems scary to me is to see people who have health problems and no hope of getting the proper health care they need.

I am familiar with non US health care system planning.
I see that what Obama proposes is good. It has worked in UK.
Believe you me that I had seen that Obama proposals were senseless, or irrational, I would have been the first to oppose. But Obama proposals make sense, even if they go against the microeconomical ideology that caused this mess. Ideology won't save lives, reform will.

There is no point in defending a country if you let your fellow citizens to die because of lack of health care.

[Strem2]

Originally Posted by kwicherbichen

Your email is seriously scary... "Dear Friend"...

The white house website requests that we email them if we witness someomne bad-talking the health-care reform.

This is seriously EERIE!!

Hi. Where does the letter ask us to email them? All I see is a request to forward the truth to anyone who might have questions.... Perhaps my eyes are a little tired from too much time online.

[ar81]

Rumors come up from uncertainty.
Those version about rationing health care anddeath panels, made me think as if ill citizens were to be sent to to Guantanamo.
Rumors need official communication, because rumors come out from lack of information that causes uncertainty.

If I was the president I might like to know about poisoning rumors, so they can be refuted and clarified.

[Kaspian]

Originally Posted by Brutha

Nobody gets taxed enough to not be able to buy any food anymore.

Based on my own experience growing up poor, I respectfully disagree.

You seem to think that it's okay if I harm you a little to benefit me, as long as I don't harm you too much (or kill you). But where do you draw the line? How do you decide how much is too much? If I have a right to take your money in order to by myself food, who decides how much of your money I can take? The only decision that is not purely arbitrary is to hold the ethic that it's not okay for me to take any of your money by force, either by my own force (or threat of force) or the government's force.

[ar81]

Originally Posted by Kaspian

Based on my own experience growing up poor, I respectfully disagree.

You seem to think that it's okay if I harm you a little to benefit me, as long as I don't harm you too much (or kill you). But where do you draw the line? How do you decide how much is too much? If I have a right to take your money in order to by myself food, who decides how much of your money I can take? The only decision that is not purely arbitrary is to hold the ethic that it's not okay for me to take any of your money by force, either by my own force (or threat of force) or the government's force.

If there is a pandemic, and you get sick, we all may get sick too if we are around you. So it is our best interest that you are healthy, so we are healthy. It is true for a national level too.

So instead of being a win-lose game (I lose - you win) which is how you seem to think, it is a win-win game, because the amount of "harm" (I respectfully disagree with your idea of harm) does not exceed the benefit of everybody being healthy.

Life is priceless, and if a few bucks can save the life of a fellow citizen, it is worth it.
To me the irony is that soldiers are told sacrifice their lives to save their fellow citizens, but normal people in the mainland prefer not to sacrifice a few bucks to save the lives of fellow citizens. And it could be the life of a vet you could be saving.

[WelfarestateChild]

Originally Posted by ar81

If there is a pandemic, and you get sick, we all may get sick too if we are around you. So it is our best interest that you are healthy, so we are healthy. It is true for a national level too.

So instead of being a win-lose game (I lose - you win) which is how you seem to think, it is a win-win game, because the amount of "harm" (I respectfully disagree with your idea of harm) does not exceed the benefit of everybody being healthy.

You are more than welcome to pay for my doctors visits, thanks very much for your general concern

[ar81]

Originally Posted by WelfarestateChild

You are more than welcome to pay for my doctors visits, thanks very much for your general concern

No problem.

It is like paying for a road. I am paying so you use the road when you need it, and at some point I may use it too. Same happens with health, people pay to keep a service functioning, and when someone needs it, it is there.

[WelfarestateChild]

Originally Posted by ar81

No problem.

It is like paying for a road. I am paying so you use the road when you need it, and at some point I may use it too. Same happens with health, people pay to keep a service functioning, and when someone needs it, it is there.

Im pretty sure in most if not all states in america people are forced to pay for the roads, was that what you meant by a win-win situation? Where people are forced against their will?

[ar81]

Originally Posted by WelfarestateChild

Im pretty sure in most if not all states in america people are forced to pay for the roads, was that what you meant by a win-win situation? Where people are forced against their will?

If you do not pay, you would have no roads.
No one would care about you, and other people may not like to pay for a road you would use.

Are you against the sole existence of government?

[Brutha]

Based on my own experience growing up poor, I respectfully disagree.

You still happen to live.
Additionally that might be part of your American system that unfair that poor people have to pay to much taxes. The solution is to move that tax burden to richer people.

But where do you draw the line? How do you decide how much is too much?

In theory through utilitarianism in practice through democracy and the rule of law.

If I have a right to take your money in order to by myself food, who decides how much of your money I can take?

Individuals don't have the right to make such decision but it's needs liberal democratic institutions to make those decisions.

[Strem2]

Originally Posted by WelfarestateChild

Im pretty sure in most if not all states in america people are forced to pay for the roads, was that what you meant by a win-win situation? Where people are forced against their will?

Don't forget the people like Kaspian's family who were poor. The poor don't pay taxes, but instead, get more money back than they pay out in withholding. We supplement their road use, their mass transit use, and so forth. We also already pay for the health insurance of the poor and the elderly.

It is only the middle class worker who has to pay for his own or do without. This is a class war. This is the upper class trying in yet one more way to destroy the middle class.

[Strem2]

Robert Creamer in The Huffington Post had this to say that may explain some of the nasty fights and rumors:

They [ed: the health insurance industry] would love to see a plan that requires the taxpayers to reach into their jeans and plunk down hundreds of billions more dollars as long as they could continue to skim their take off an ever-exploding national health care bill. They would love to have the government require that everyone must buy their health care insurance. But the idea of competing with a public plan that forces efficiency, drives down the industry's growing profit margins and gives consumers an option other than the oligopoly of eight major health insurance firms? They think that is a terrible idea.

They feel the same way towards a public health insurance option that the local mob boss feels about some interloper who tries to cut into the piece of the action he takes from the bookies operating within his turf.

So, like the local mob boss, they will be pulling out all the stops in August to terrorize members of Congress and sow fear and confusion about the Obama Health Insurance Reform plan. They will run ads. They will make copious political contributions. They will provide ammunition to the right-wing talk show hosts. They will do everything in their power to stop the Obama plan dead in its tracks, because they know that once people have a new health insurance system, there will be no going back.

Isn't this what we are seeing?

[ar81]

In the past, communists were the ones who caused riots.
Nowadays it seems right wingers are leading people into riots.
It looks like there might be right wing communism these days...

[WelfarestateChild]

Originally Posted by ar81

If you do not pay, you would have no roads.
No one would care about you, and other people may not like to pay for a road you would use.

Are you against the sole existence of government?

Government people are not per definition my friends, rather my everyday parasite. Every single argument for statism have been proven wrong, so its hard for me to support the idea.

Even if government forced people to pay for something, it would still be the people paying for it, which means whatever good or service money is dictated to be used upon, could still exist entirely without the state. Only thing is, its existence would then be deemed neccesary or the like by these people who are paying, and not just the dictaters.

Im still not sure where you stand. Do you want government to take everyones money, and provide some sort of healthcare coverage for these everybody?

[ar81]

Originally Posted by WelfarestateChild

Government people are not per definition my friends, rather my everyday parasite. Every single argument for statism have been proven wrong, so its hard for me to support the idea.

Even if government forced people to pay for something, it would still be the people paying for it, which means whatever good or service money is dictated to be used upon, could still exist entirely without the state. Only thing is, its existence would then be deemed neccesary or the like by these people who are paying, and not just the dictaters.

Im still not sure where you stand. Do you want government to take everyones money, and provide some sort of healthcare coverage for these everybody?

Blame companies. It is their fault.
Companies hired the best people, leaving the worst to fund political parties and rule nations and lead your destiny.

[WelfarestateChild]

Originally Posted by ar81

Blame companies. It is their fault.
Companies hired the best people, leaving the worst to fund political parties and rule nations and lead your destiny.

No

[Strem2]

Originally Posted by ar81

In the past, communists were the ones who caused riots.
Nowadays it seems right wingers are leading people into riots.
It looks like there might be right wing communism these days...

Communists in the old Soviet Union were very controlling. They didn't stand for dissent did they?

These who defend the status quo, even though by every independent test or standard the US system comes in worst, are simply squelching dissent and innovation.

How un-American!

[kwicherbichen]

Originally Posted by Strem2

Hi. Where does the letter ask us to email them? All I see is a request to forward the truth to anyone who might have questions.... Perhaps my eyes are a little tired from too much time online.

Ew, stop acting like you know so much ****. Go read the bulletin on the white house website. I'm not talking about the email in this thread.

And I am not saying Obama's proposal is unreasonable. I just think these messages are EERIE. 1984-ish.

[Strem2]

You know what, the biggest myth is that America even has a "health care system."

We have some good docs and some good hospitals, and then we have money grubbing health care insurance companies and a money grubbing Pharma industry.

The docs and the hospitals do their best to navigate the quicksand and the hail storms and the avalanches of insurance and Pharma to give their patients the care that they need. Sometimes, there's nothing they can do and they just can't provide the needed treatment.

And, this is why we need a public option. There are people who are losing their insurance every day, and there are people who are choosing between their mortgage and the health care they need, every day.

People should not have to loose their homes when they have always worked at jobs that had health insurance -- simply because the health insurance company kicked them out when they got sick!

This is not the America I believed in as a child. I am deeply saddened by the heartlessness and the greed that threatens our Democracy.

We have to fight for what's right, not for the best sound bite!

[ar81]

Originally Posted by Strem2

Communists in the old Soviet Union were very controlling. They didn't stand for dissent did they?

These who defend the status quo, even though by every independent test or standard the US system comes in worst, are simply squelching dissent and innovation.

How un-American!

Communists in western countries caused riots.
But they did not like riots in their countries.

Ther is no difference between the right wingers who are causing riots nowadays.
They also pretend to control us.

Both right and left extremists try to control others.

[Strem2]

Originally Posted by kwicherbichen

Ew, stop acting like you know so much ****. Go read the bulletin on the white house website. I'm not talking about the email in this thread.

And I am not saying Obama's proposal is unreasonable. I just think these messages are EERIE. 1984-ish.

It's a big website!

I'm flattered that you think "I know so much" but I can't find the bulletin you're speaking about. Please give us a link to it.