More Healthcare Nonsense!

[clibinarius]

So if anyone has read any posting by me, obviously I'm going to disagree with most people by default. But I think there's something here that most can agree on: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/18/w...r_n_262554.html some people are retarded. Shouting Heil Hitler at an Israeli won't help you win any arguments, rather, it makes you look like an idiot. Just ask anyone who is a Palestinian supporter! Of course, the Israel supporters won't even want to dignify such a comment. The fact it is coming from a woman wearing an IDF shirt...its just surreal.

I'll admit, I love a good circus. But not over something I think is so serious to so many people, as everyone's effected by it.

[Scalliwag]

I was really hoping the November asswhipping the GOP took would have pushed them more to the center. It pushed them right over the edge though. They are diving headfirst into their McCarthyism roots. I don't think most republican "voters" think like this but their voices are being drowned out by a minority of nutjobs that yell louder and just can't accept the fact that them and their policies and ideas were rejected by the majority of voters not so long ago.
They have an elitist attitude that only their fugged-up opinion counts because idiots like Limpdick, Beck, and Liddy get them wound up and they think people actually give a shit what they think.
The people making the most money off the our failed heathcare system are pouring everything they have to save their livelihood and using a bunch of unstable people as their pawns. They think bringing guns to townhalls, yelling and disrupting to where no debate is allowed between the reasonable people, and saying Obama is not a U.S. citizen is going to win their argument.
If I was a republican I would be pissed and scared shitless because what is going on right now is completely drowning out their voice of reason and making them look like a bunch of domestic terrorists. My republican friends have lost all their zeal and passion to even argue with me because none of them can even identify someone in their party leadership that represents them. Their party has been hijacked by the minority of extremists. Pretty damn sad

[Tyler]

Glenn Beck is not a republican. We don't want him.

[Svaals]

Glenn Beck is not a republican. We don't want him.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/14/business/media/14adco.html

Neither does Proctor and Gamble, Geico, Progressive, Roche, Radioshack, Sargento and more to come!

[TheScotsman]

Glenn Beck is not a republican. We don't want him.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/14/business/media/14adco.html

Neither does Proctor and Gamble, Geico, Progressive, Roche, Radioshack, Sargento and more to come!

a link to a membership required is stupid

[clibinarius]

Glenn Beck is not a republican. We don't want him.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/14/business/media/14adco.html

Neither does Proctor and Gamble, Geico, Progressive, Roche, Radioshack, Sargento and more to come!

a link to a membership required is stupid

The Times has been like that since I can remember-I registered for it while I was still in high school!

No one wants Glenn Beck. He has serious issues. He took one too many abusive things when he was younger and never recovered from the paranoia or, by looks of it, the stupor.

[twoapplesplease]

The GOP is so screwed for the next elections.They won't be able to oust Obama but I'm willing to bet they vote out all most all of there current leaders.

[Scalliwag]

Hear is a great video of him recovering from surgery and going off about the healthcare system. This guy is completely braindead. Lately he's talked about Obama is trying to mess up the best healthcare system in the world. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bX1rLv_hNeI

[Tyler]

Best in the world, no. One of the better ones, yes. There are a quite a few flaws, but there are also things that are done right. Anyone who goes to military hospitals their whole life then to a civ hospital knows what I'm talking about. And then overseas military hospitals. Hehe.

[Hookie The Hookah]

Best in the world, no. One of the better ones, yes. There are a quite a few flaws, but there are also things that are done right. Anyone who goes to military hospitals their whole life then to a civ hospital knows what I'm talking about. And then overseas military hospitals. Hehe.

The quality of individual hospitals is irrelevant and not even what is being discussed in the current national discourse. The issue is falsely inflated insurance prices which underprivileged people cannot afford and the arbitrary rejection of medical bills for people who already have insurance.

[joytron]

Can someone explain to me the worry of socialized health care?

Is it the cost or the fact the quality will go down, a combination of both or something other entirely.

[Svaals]

Can someone explain to me the worry of socialized health care?

Is it the cost or the fact the quality will go down, a combination of both or something other entirely.

Logic really doesn't follow either point. Unfortunately, most people are more emotionally driven, thus you have emotionally charged rhetoric being used to rile people up.

[clibinarius]

Can someone explain to me the worry of socialized health care?

Is it the cost or the fact the quality will go down, a combination of both or something other entirely.

The worries of socialized healthcare are, in a nutshell, this:

1. Longer lines: As government reduces the cost of health care, more people will seek it. I find this notion to be pretty wrong, because people seek it already: Shoot first, ask questions later when you're sick.
2. Free markets lower prices: When compared to breast implants and lasik, its true that those procedures are going down on the free market. The problem is, only elective procedures actually drop in price. I find it unlikely that costs will actually go down, because people will start to cannibalize profits. However, there's the possibility that they might. In the current system, there is little reason to come up with cost reducing measures since someone's always willing to pay for it. If prices don't go down with a free market, however, it will prove it faulty.
3. People are opposed to government intervention: Remember, when you leave cities-where healthcare is supported-you start entering private industry zone; no running water in some places except wells, no garbage collection except private contractors. If you can't rely on the government to pick up your trash except you pay more and more in state and federal taxes, you won't trust them with healthcare. People from urban areas never encounter this, and its true that on the poor rural people, taxes have gone up with no appreciable benefit. Now the government threatens to change their healthcare, and they are in some cases both angry and paranoid. Government simply doesn't work for these people, unless they're already on welfare. A lot of this has to do with the cutting of taxes however on the rich-back during the 1950s, the highest tax rate was a whopping 91% and if nothing else, the economy grew and surpluses were common. Now that tax rate is 36% I believe, and that's a "tax hike" that might "kill the economy"-the reality is there needs to be adjustments. The notion that lowering taxes encourages spending is absurd; when taxes were high with itemized deductions, you HAD to spend your money in order to pay less in taxes and gain property. Perhaps a flat tax with no deductions would make sense today, but itemized deductions and a low tax compared to the 1950s does nothing except make it so some don't pay taxes, and free trade agreements allow people to skirt tax law too easily.

Mind you, a lot of people will complain if taxes go back up to 50% on the top earners. For most of the 20th century, they were over 50%. Back in the second round of Reagan tax cuts-written by Dick Gephardt mind you-the top tax bracket paid LESS than the immediate two under it. Someone making $10M in 1988 paid LESS percentagewise of taxes than someone making $80K a year. That also doesn't include the social security cap, which is an income tax that, at a certain point, becomes less and less on richer people. Taxes for healthcare and social security and state taxes go up, and these people get nothing until they retire, and no added benefit to when they started paying. No one wants to address this issue because it means bringing back a progressive income tax or switching to a flat tax, which no political party wants to do, though occasionally a Republican will scream about a flat tax proposal (I think Fairtax is a sham, I'm for a flat INCOME tax) and tax code reform, and a Democrat (usually labor unionist) will tax about changing the tax burden back to where it was during the 1960s-1970s (For those that want to blame "High taxes" on Carter, I would again cite that taxes were far higher on the wealthy during Eisenhower, and the country certainly didn't stagnate or become weak).
4. Distrust of socialism in any form: Remember, people think communism was evil, and nazism was a form of socialism because its in the name. But of these two systems have a form of socialism involved, usually, too. But saying that socialism inherently leads to Hitlerism or Stalinism is nonsense; Hitlerism didn't arise because of socialism, though there was a large fear of communism, and Western Europe's been fairly socialist since 1945 without any mass genocides since. Since there's been no genocides through those years of socialism, I think its safe to say socialism doesn't lead to genocide, but I think some lunatics might be critical of this view.
5. Genocide: This doesn't really fit the bill in the above, but it goes into the abortion issue. Some people think its outright genocide if not murder, and some think its nothing like that at all. People who think anything having to do with the reproductive system should not be regulated by the government, or else they believe they'll be funding genocide or murder. There are medicinal benefits to birth control, however, that would probably be permissible by religious organizations provided they're not used for birth control, so to state birth control should be illegal is an extreme point of view even for the extremists. Unfortunately, those extremists exist who want to outlaw condoms, birth control (without regards of its effects on its treatment hormonal and ovarian diseases), and then there's activists who are morally opposed to Roe v. Wade. I won't turn this into a discussion on abortion, I just wanted to say the reasons for the opposition.
6. Conspiracy lunatics: It wouldn't surprise me if some thought socialized medicine was a "Jewish Plot" for instance, as was what some who opposed-but not all, and certainly not now-the floridation of water called it to be. The point here is that Obama's black, and his Chief of Staff is Jewish, and you're bound to have certain cranks who have endorsed some presidential candidates like Lyndon LaRouche and insane people who support Ron Paul (I'm not referring to sane people, I'm referring to people who are or like Don Black) thinking it is a black-Jewish plot to destroy "white people" or, if not white, at least "the greater good"-this element is not talked about, partially because the White Power movements aren't taken seriously (thank god) and that those who do get press time are generally exposed to be nutjobs.

Now, I doubt Ron Paul supporters here are Nazis at all, let me be clear about that, although I think Ron Paul supporters generally ignore the fact that some people are paranoid about Ron Paul because some people he's had around him through the years. This is another topic, and by no means do I want to denigrate Ron Paul or the average Ron Paul supporter. Its a statement that people like David Duke who try to get people to vote for Ron Paul hurt from his viability, and even if Ron Paul does condemn this support, he will have massive trouble shaking that association with many people.
7. The stock market: Money talks, and healthcare is a way of ballooning costs that people have to pay until they go bankrupt completely. Regulation of the healthcare system (or massive deregulation, in theory) could hurt profits. I would compare this in fact to a regular ponzi scheme in that eventually the system must break. The reality is what would happen if the financials got thrown out of healthcare? They would need another bailout. This isn't much talked about, but its really reality when you look at the sheer size of this segment of the economy, how many loans are involved in it, how it pushes prices up and gives things a trading market, the closeness of insurance to other more exposed companies like AIG (Who are probably in the healthcare industry, but I'm not sure perceisely how, and are definitely exposed to it).
8. Fear of change: People get healthcare, and they assume they always can. People say they want change, then when its time to go to the point of no return, people regularly get cold feet.
9. Political decisions effecting healthcare more: Let's say a theocratic government does come to power in the US and the healthcare industry is controlled by government regulation. They could defund the treatment of AIDS and fire all workers involved, creating a supply shortage of treatment. This would be disasterous.
10. Political decisions effecting research: What the government pays for in negotiation might be also at the whim of the voters, though it sort of already is now with the FDA. If the government corners the market on research, then it decides what drugs to come up with. Currently, the FDA forces certain financial incentives to research due to the costs of testing.

I think this is solvable through treaty, however, because you shouldn't have to file the same costly research for every country...but...I digress...
11. Lowering of wages: If you lower the rights or wages of doctors through regulation (some call it slavery), some believe you lower the care. This I think is rather insulting to doctors, as it implies that the only reason they go into medicine is to make money; if you're a good investor for the last 30 years, you could make much more in financials than you can in healthcare unless you own a company. I don't see doctors complaining though about their costs and wages out in Europe, and socialized countries churn out surplus doctors regularly. Whether or not they're good is another story (many in some countries might be terrible).

One could also point to the price of oil here: Before the Clinton deregulations in the 1990s, the purchases of commodities by financial institutions was heavily restricted. By the end of the midnight congressional sessions in 2000, prices began to explode until it caused a terrible bubble. In the 1970s there was an honest supply shortage, but with a few exceptions, the prices of oil remained stable under GOOD regulation. The new (de)regulations proved disasterous and oil prices are historically extremely high. Even when they were "low" last winter, they were still at about par with historical averages during times of prosperity. Saying this is an effect of peak oil and consumption is bullshit, because there were no shortages, and if nothing else, oil exploration and discoveries in the last five years alone indicate the prices should be extremely low.

Tirade aside, a gallon of gas that costs $4 a gallon is no better than the one you bought in 1999 for $1 a gallon. That's the point of the comparison. Lowering prices is not the same as destroying the product.
12. Does it really work? This is an interesting question you aren't actually seeing: I wonder what is going on in Iceland with the situation. In the event of an extreme depression, in that the government does go bankrupt, do bills get paid for healthcare?

That said, I support single payer healthcare, but there are many questions I have about its long term viability. A good acid test for me and point 12 would be to see if Iceland can reasonably make it out of the mess it got itself into. If it can not, there won't be healthcare or education there much longer-and those two things defined Iceland's incredibly high standard of living for years.

By the way, Iceland's a good acid test for a lot of extremes at the moment. If you don't have any clue what I'm talking about, look it up. Iceland was one of those countries that was doing really well for a decade, and then wakes up literally within one day and finds itself suddenly extremely poor.