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Originally Posted by aceventura3
I gave an example of how public policy can impact a family decision, my example illustrated a rational thought process, and what followed was a pretense that the point was not relevant.
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It's relevance will only be established when you can provide an estimate of prevalence. There's little point in considering situations that don't have a significant impact and aren't significantly prevalent.
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I think some fall into a trap when looking a statistical information. Basically, statistics dehumanize people. Before one can really understand broad based statistical data one has to understand what drives decisions on an individual level. The trap I describe leads us to public policy that takes the form of - 'well we are doing XX% out of 100%' and expecting everything is o.k.
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Public health policy is necessarily a matter of statistics. If policy makers took the time to consider every possibility then nothing would ever get done.
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When you are one of the people on the margins, that is not o.k. I think there are better approaches to these problems, for example rather than totally changing health care in a half baked way, why not simply take the step of giving every child, 100% of them, full and complete medical care. No margins, no geography issues, no parental issues, no preexisting condition issues, no income issues, no timing issues, nothing, just give them coverage.
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Why don't you write your congressperson and ask them?
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You are working too hard to read things into what I wrote that are not there. Why?
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Hmm.
Here's what happened:
You said:
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They don't get married - his connection to his family is weakened. What may have been the beginnings of a wonderful family has been hurt by government policy. I say rather than these arbitrary cut-off and high "marginal tax" (or loss of benefit) situations, let's come up with a better solution.
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To which I responded:
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As far as connections with families being weakened, I think you're overstating the power of a marriage license here. A father's (or mother's) connection to their family exists completely independently of whether or not they are in a legally recognized marriage with the other biological parent.
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To which you responded:
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Look at this from a big picture point of view - the things that connect a family include many factors, one being the financial connection of willing to work and sacrifice for one's family. Another factor is the connection being reinforced by daily contact. If we take both of these away, it has a big impact, especially on males in the ages up to about 35.
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Was this a complete non sequitur? Because in the context of our conversation (the effects of marriage on familial strength) it seems like you're saying that "from a big picture point of view" the lack of marriage correlates with a disinclination for work and sacrifice for the benefit of family and a lack of connection stemming from a lack of daily contact. Perhaps you're not talking about the effect of marriage on familial strength here, which would makes sense given your incredulity at my response. In the context of our conversation it seemed like you were saying something completely different.