After reading 80 posts of this ubiquitous debate, part one of the needed responses follow:
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Originally Posted by willravel
Suggesting that one should have freedom from medical care should mean that they want freedom from police care, fire protection, disaster relief, use of public roads, and air. How about you stop paying taxes, and thus you stop using all that which the government affords you? How about the military stops protecting your family? How about you stop complaining?How about you stop being so selfish? I don't hear anyone complaining about having to pay taxes to the firemen come when there's a fire... at someone else's house!
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A police officer either helps you or he doesn't. (One of the problems is that he isn't required to help you.) A fire is either extinguished or it isn't. Health care is much more nebulous--does everyone in the country have a basic human right to wart removal? Circumcision? Accutane?
In other words, your comparison is very inappropriate, but your personal attack, proclaiming that anyone who disagrees is a selfish complainer is noted. And discarded.
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Originally Posted by flstf
I think one of the biggest problems with health care is that there is little or no competition in many cases, especially hospital costs. I don't see where Hillary's or most other plans do anything to foster competition. Where there is little competition prices are naturally going to go way up.
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The health care industry is saturated with competition. If you make the effort to determine whether your doctor or hospital takes your insurance, you will find that Blue Cross has limited the payment for their services, as have MetLife, Aetna, and everyone else. Especially Medicare, which frequently pays less than the cost of providing the service, and essentially has the power to shut down many hospitals if they refuse to accept it. Thus, Medicare is simply another hidden tax. Who pays it? Those poor souls who arrive at a hospital with a job, but without insurance. A procedure that has been contracted with Blue Cross at $600 costs $8,000 if you don't have insurance. Hospitals are also required by the government not to turn anyone away from their emergency rooms. Therefore, a wise course of action if you need to make an uninsured visit to the ER is to speak Spanish. Everything is free if you do.
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Originally Posted by ASU2003
This is the other side of the coin. Would the government tell you which doctor to go to because they are the cheapest? Or would the government set the price that doctors can charge? I don't know how you would control prices and if the experience that doctors have, their success rates, how many patients they see, or what speciality they are would dictate how much they get paid.
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They already do the above. In fact, in Canada, people are denied procedures on the basis of their age. "You're 70?" No cataract surgery for you--you're about to die."
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Originally Posted by roachboy
basic health care is a fundamental human right, it seems to me.
the variable is the mode that gets us from here to there.
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QFT. Is it your responsibility, or is it everyone else's responsibility to take care of you, regardless of your efforts in your own behalf? Is it my responsibility to pay for anti-AIDS drugs for a prostitute? Is it my responsibility to pay for a special bed for someone who weighs 400 pounds?
Some here would say "yes." I say no.
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Originally Posted by willravel
You still didn't address my point, seretogis. Would you opt out of police and fire protection and pay slightly less taxes? Would you opt out of paying for streets and sidewalks and stop driving or leaving your home?
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Many people in smaller communities do exactly that. What is your point, and why does it involve driving and leaving your home?
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Originally Posted by kutulu
The "I did x and therefore those that didn't are lazy" is illogical and does nothing to address the real issue. The reality is that no matter what the individuals do, there will always be low paying jobs out there and the workers aren't going to get coverage.
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The additional reality is that there will always be people who forego paying for health insurance in order to have the latest 42" plasma TV, or pipe full of crack. It makes the industries who provide a living for us much less competitive in the global economy to carry such a dead weight burden.
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Originally Posted by willravel
What we're all saying is that while you may have had that opportunity, not everyone else does. Some people are very much stuck and have zero options for getting health insurance. There's a reason 45 million Americans don't have health coverage, and I have to tell you it's not because they all just don't think they need it.
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What others are saying is that out of 45 million people, many of them choose to spend funds frivolously, instead of making sacrifices such as Cynthetique's.
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Originally Posted by rekna
How do you know they didn't try hard in school? How do you know the school even taught them anything? How do you know they weren't helping raise 5 kids in a single parent family and thus couldn't concentrate on school? You are generalizing based on a bias that you have. Not everyone in the world has the same opportunities as you did and the reason for this isn't necessarily their fault.
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How do you know they didn't buy a new car every two years? How do you know they didn't skip school to surf all day? How do you know their parents aren't capable of paying their insurance? Not everyone in the world is a destitute, ragged paragon of virtue who went broke paying for his mother's cancer operation.
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Originally Posted by willravel
So what you're saying is that because SOME (an unknown number) of these people *might* be lazy or don't apply themselves, ALL of them don't deserve our help.
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So what you're saying (
assuming) is that ALL of the people who have no insurance are incapable of paying for it themselves. Read Cynthetique's post again.
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There you go with those assumptions again.
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Oh, the irony.
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Originally Posted by filtherton
and i don't mind spending some of your money too.
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The liberal battle cry. Except most times, they DO mind spending their own money.
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Originally Posted by cj2112
I now have health insurance for myself and my children, I have a decent place to live. Why? Because I have busted my ass to put myself in a better situation. I wasn't GIVEN any opportunities. I fought tooth and nail to create them. Guess what? The system doesn't owe me free healthcare, free food, free housing, or anything else. If I want it, I had best get off my dead ass and do what it takes to get it, don't expect me to provide it for you when you don't.
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Good thing you didn't have some of our members around at the time, to tell you that what you did was impossible.
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Originally Posted by dc_dux
Cynthetiq......I am trying to understand how personal tax credits to working families and tax incentives to small businesses to enable millions more workers to have access to affordable insurance will take money out of your pocket anymore than lowering the marginal rate on the top 2% of earners or cuts in the capital gains tax... not to mention the more than $100 billion in corporate tax breaks enacted in the last six years to industries as diverse as restaurants, nascar owners and importers of Chinese ceiling fans (just to mention a few who benefited from Bush corporate tax cuts)
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I am trying to understand how you give tax credits to people who already don't pay any taxes. And without those tax cuts, there would be a great deal fewer workers to provide the tax dollars that big government enthusiasts are so fond of.
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Originally Posted by Charlatan
Nothing I have seen so far from the US system suggests that healthcare for profit works.
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Practically everything I have seen suggests that Canada's healthcare system is despicable. A year for an MRI? Six months for lab tests? However, if I'm wrong, many of us would be happy to refer 10-15 million illegal immigrants to Canada for their health care needs.