Universal Healthcare

[sophocles07]

Take care of yourself. Or die. Your choice. Want to help someone? Do it yourself. Don't rob me to "help" err subsidize homelessness.

This is absurd.

1. The Homeless have not appeared (at least that I'm aware) in this thread as relates to health care. We're talking people who can't get insured, and therefore can't afford health care; or we're talking about people who get diseases, and can't get help/can't afford help.

2. This stretch of libertarianism is the most simple-minded nonsense that you can come upon. "Take care of yourself." This essentially reduces all problems to a question of money, property, instead of connecting the problems to the community, where they obviously lead. You are filling out the stereotypical, RIDICULOUS identity of the "libertarian."

Grow a brain. Let's look at this in terms of nations: Do you support aid to Israel? No, right? Take that and apply it to everything else.

That's pure sophistry.

Should the USA prop up and support the needy nations of the world? No, why? Because; a. it's stupid. and, b. it would result in dependency on US foreign aid, the nation wouldn't ever get its act together and you will do nothing but drive the US citizens further in debt via inflation.

Is your neighbor a foreign nation? WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?

 

[SeanEdwards]

People live. People die. People are born. People fall of cliffs. Welcome to fate.

Welcome to fate? What kind of bullshit answer is that?

Your fixation with libertarian philosophy, even to the point where you are willing to DIE, rather than pay any tax towards maintaining the health of your community is quite absurd. It's penny wise and pound foolish.

"Oh, I saved so much money on my taxes! I can use all that cash to build a nice mausoleum when I die prematurely from some preventable disease."

What is the point of involuntary taxation to provide socialized healthcare?

What's the point of involuntary taxation to provide a sanitary water supply? What's the point of involuntary taxation to provide a public education system that is accessible to everyone regardless of their financial means? What's the point of involuntary taxation to provide fire departments, courts, and all the other trappings of civilization?

What is the point? The point is that we don't want to live in a state of nature where people live nasty, short, brutish lives. If that's your idea of heaven on earth, then there are plenty of places where you can get it. Try Mogadishu, Somalia for one.

You are handing people shit and for what reason? To make yourself feel better? Worry about yourself, then worry about others, preferrably with your own dime.

If I had the financial means to do so, then building hospitals to help heal the sick, and to spread health in the community would not be a bad idea. Sadly, I'm not personally capable of doing that. However, I can speak my mind, and support government that recognizes the importance of the health of the ENTIRE population, and uses public funds for that purpose appropriately.

If my society can force me, and you, to pay for the education of some snot nosed brat, then that same justification works just fine to force me, and you, to help pay for some minimum standard of healthcare that is accessible to all. Just as we both are threatened by the alternative of uneducated, illiterate louts crowding our society, we are equally threatened by the alternative of hordes of diseased people spreading plagues through our society.

And again, this is a total joke of a conversation, when you consider how much money our government wastes on truly stupid things, like bridges to nowhere that we'll never drive on. The amount of money we're talking about to ensure everyone could get timely access to a doctor when they felt sick is a pittance in comparison.

 

[misterbig]

I didn't really mean that they "work" (I hated public schools, and learned only the bare minimum from them), but still...it's better than nothing.

So public schools are better than nothing? Do you know this? I think that is a dangerous assumption. Public schools (at least here in Florida) are paid for through property taxes and lottery sales.

What if there were no public schools? Well taxes would be lower and money that was going into the lottery might go to local businesses instead. The increased spending would create more jobs for these uneducated folks.

Perhaps instead of a generic public school education, we would see the rise of vocational based training, with workers receiving less overall schooling, but they would be getting specialized job specific skills.

We can't really say that public schools are better than nothing, because we don't know where the resources that are currently being drained away into the public school system, would go if the public schools were gone.

 

[misterbig]

Apparently SeanEdwards and other like-minded ilk did not read the essays in my aforementioned post so I will repeat the post:

Robert P. Murphy wrote free market solutions to services typically provided by government in his short essays titled "Chaos Theory: Two Essays On Market Anarchy".

Murphy writes:

"The following essays show that the two most crucial 'functions' of government - law and defense - can be efficiently supplied on the free market. The State is thus shown to be completely unnecessary. Anarchy, the absence of coercive government, must not be confused with chaos."

The full text of the essays:
http://www.mises.org/books/chaostheory.pdf

This "infectious disease" argument is viewed by some as an obstacle for free market solutions but Robert Murphy provides a rather elegant solution. In the case of infectious disease, it would be the incentive of the insurance companies to provide free vaccination or treatment even for the uninsured. These insurance companies are incentivized financially to keep their customers from getting sick (through a system of payouts for health issues that arise). Since the marginal benefit from providing service even to the uninsured (through positive externalities) exceeds the marginal cost, even the uninsured can get a base line level of health care. Specifically, since infectious diseases transmitted by uninsured people can affect customers who are insured, these companies have an incentive to eliminate easily transmitted diseases in general.

 

[jjockers]

Those are unreasonable measures to address a minor threat. Infectious diseases are not a minor threat, and minimal healthcare is not an unreasonable measure.

Actually, those same measures are being seriously considered by the same people advocating universal health care.

According to this webpage there were 14.7 million deaths due to infectious diseases worldwide in 2002:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infectious_disease:

That's worldwide. What % in the US?

Now how much money have we spent fighting 'terrorists'? And how many people are terrorists suspected of killing?

Get some perspective.

I don't agree with that either. We shouldn't be wasting our money over there either.

 

[misterbig]

...minimal healthcare is not an unreasonable measure...

This is your fallacious assumption right here. That you cannot contemplate non-government-mandated solutions to specific health care problems reflects more a lack of imagination on your part than a shortcoming of the free market system.

 

[misterbig]

Here is a quote that I made:

"When there is a financial incentive for doing something, it gets done."

This is pretty much true in all cases. Take crime for example. Crime pays. Therefore, we have crime. The best solution to every social problem that one can conceivably think of, is to create a financial incentive for taking care of the problem. Then, you can be assured that competition for money will efficiently bring us to a speedy resolution.

Unfortunately, the government is not accountable to anyone. They do not have a financial incentive to solve any problems. In fact, we have the opposite. Government actually has an incentive NOT to solve the problem, because they can use that as an excuse to spend more money (i.e. "the problem hasn't been solved because we aren't spending enough").

 

[Paul10]

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[therealjjj77]

Do you think the free market is the best option for a justice system? If the free market is the ultimate best solution for every problem, then why don't we have a free market system for military defense, or government for that matter?

I don't know that what we have now in healthcare can be called a 'free market' system, but whatever you call it, it isn't working. Any system that leaves millions of people with no access to medical care is non-functional.

I think, in light of the reality of the dangers of infectious diseases, that health care should not be regarded as an entitlement, but a duty. Just like people are denied the liberty of building property that presents a fire danger to the community, so should people be denied the liberty of infecting their community with infectious diseases. In a way, it is about property rights. Your right to be free of socialized medical care is not allowed to trump my right to have my body not be infected by diseases that you may carry.

If a real free market in medicine can guarantee everyone access to medical care, then fine, bring it on. However, I am not convinced that is the case, and I think that most likely the best solution will be some kind of mixed system that permits private health care, while also ensuring some minimum standard of access to everyone.

Just like every child is guaranteed some minimum access to a public school system while still allowing for private schools. I think we need the same kind of thing in healthcare.

People are only denied that ability to build how they wish because they do not own the allodial title. They only own the real estate title.

As for justice, that was authorized by the Constitution. Healthcare was not.

Also, we do not have any semblance of a free market in American health care today.

Why don't you move to Canada or England and tell us how wonderful their universal health care system is? Oh, because it isn't. Because people from those countries have huge waiting lines and cannot get the emergency services they need and so they go to other countries for important surgeries.

And, by the way, I know plenty of 23 year olds who live far less then a healthy lifestyle.

 

[misterbig]

Uh no. There would be a demand for private schools and it'd still be 12 grades. What incentive do they have to get you out earlier?

Either you are a troll, or you are so stuck on your position that you cannot see alternatives.

In the scenario above, independent third party agencies would administer testing services to students on behalf of parents. Part of the student-school contract would mandate that the school ensure sufficient education that students will be able to score some baseline level of performance in independent tests. There would be a prescribed maximum number of months of years of education required to achieve that level. There would be an economic penalty if students do not perform. For example, a rebate, or a payout. Insurance companies would help offset the inevitable risk (i.e. some students are going to fail regardless).

Historical student testing information would of course be available for every school after suitably anonymizing the data. Parents would use that information in deciding which school to send their children. Competition for educational dollars would make sure that it is in the interests of everyone involved (the school, teachers, parents, students) to maximize performance.

Thats the free market.

 

[misterbig]

Ladies and gentlemen we need to understand that whenever there is a popular forum that gets a lot of readers, inevitably it will attract those who are here not in the search for truth, but in the interest merely of debating for its own sake. These individuals do not come here with an open mind ready to listen to the opinions and arguments of others but instead arrive with their own agenda of contrarianism. We call them trolls.

 

[Locke]

Universal health care would be a plus. If health care was universal then we wouldn't need to pay for it because there would be a lot of governments and people paying into it. The problem is, it would take agreement from most country leaders that a needed change would be extremely slow and would be inefficient or ineffective by the time it was made.

With that said, we'd need a committee to decide on the changes (delegates or representatives chosen by the people) which means voting.

The upside to universal health care is that it could not be easily corrupted by corporations as it would be health care of the world and not ran by private business (or shouldn't anyways). The downside to universal health care is that it could easily be corrupted by government. This is why the people who decide on such changes should be representatives chosen by the people of that country. Or even perhaps, we should put such changes into the form of a poll, then the results are handed to a committee of representatives and then the committee decides on the changes, and then informs the world leaders.

The world leaders would and should have no say so...or at least no part in the decision of the changes. Words can be influential and if the governments were allowed to decide on changes then they could easily bend the plan to their will.

Yes, votes can easily be changed, but that's at the fault of the government and can be fixed. Nothing is safe from corruption.

 

[Paul10]

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[JosephTheLibertarian]

This is absurd.

1. The Homeless have not appeared (at least that I'm aware) in this thread as relates to health care. We're talking people who can't get insured, and therefore can't afford health care; or we're talking about people who get diseases, and can't get help/can't afford help.

2. This stretch of libertarianism is the most simple-minded nonsense that you can come upon. "Take care of yourself." This essentially reduces all problems to a question of money, property, instead of connecting the problems to the community, where they obviously lead. You are filling out the stereotypical, RIDICULOUS identity of the "libertarian."

When did I ever say it should be an anarcho-capitalist society? Even though health freedom is hell of a lot better than what we're getting, I never said it had to be an anarcho-capitalist setting. It can be anarcho-communism, maybe you'd feel more at home with that. My point is that we don't need healthcare statism (government intervention in the healthcare sector) in order to not die. Do you love public education? Do you want to know WHY ghettoes are shit? Not because government has turned their back on the inner city, no, no, no. The inner city is where the government spends most of our money, the inner city IS the government, the government runs the inner cities! So you want the same corrupt system to provide your healthcare? You're cattle. You're a slave of the system. Citizens are just tolerated because they can produce for the state, the only people government officials care about are the special interests that fund their campaigns every election cycle. Ever see the side of police vehicles, "serve and protect." yeah, to serve and protect the state. Like any mafia, the police are there to keep the people under control (weather they know it or not) and to follow the hegemony hierarchy. The slaves keeping the slaves in line.

 

[JosephTheLibertarian]

Welcome to fate? What kind of bullshit answer is that?

People do die. Or do you think the government can prevent that as well?

Your fixation with libertarian philosophy, even to the point where you are willing to DIE, rather than pay any tax towards maintaining the health of your community is quite absurd. It's penny wise and pound foolish.

I never said I'm advocating for anarcho-capitalism You did. I'm just talking about getting the statism out of the equation. But hey, I bet you anything that an anarcho-capitalist style of health freedom would be great, too bad you have fed too much into the communist manifesto.

"Oh, I saved so much money on my taxes! I can use all that cash to build a nice mausoleum when I die prematurely from some preventable disease."

Ever hear of an immune system? I suggest you develop one.

What's the point of involuntary taxation to provide a sanitary water supply?

Well, to socialize water. I don't need government to have water. I could just travel to a natural spring, and drink, or go to a store...or a load of other scenarios.

What's the point of involuntary taxation to provide a public education system that is accessible to everyone regardless of their financial means?

So that the government can better brainwash people. Looks like it has done a number on your mind.

What's the point of involuntary taxation to provide fire departments, courts, and all the other trappings of civilization?

The point? To better control you, of course. The government becomes the decider of what is right or wrong. Now THAT'S power. But what does the government do? It counterfeits money and it throws 2,000,000 people in prison. And that's just the US.

What is the point? The point is that we don't want to live in a state of nature where people live nasty, short, brutish lives. If that's your idea of heaven on earth, then there are plenty of places where you can get it. Try Mogadishu, Somalia for one.

There is plenty of statism in Somalia. Ever hear of warlords? It's local statism, just as bad as other forms. The warlord (and his fighters) break the will of the people and live off of them. That's why they become warlords in the first place, so that they can consolidate some power. They use force to extract that. You either obey, or we shoot you.

If I had the financial means to do so, then building hospitals to help heal the sick, and to spread health in the community would not be a bad idea. Sadly, I'm not personally capable of doing that. However, I can speak my mind, and support government that recognizes the importance of the health of the ENTIRE population, and uses public funds for that purpose appropriately.

You're not able to build hospitaly, so you want to rob me to pay for shit commie healthcare, instead? Is that about right? You're actually going to do more damage when you get the government MORE involved. Neoliberals trust the government way, way too much.

If my society can force me, and you, to pay for the education of some snot nosed brat, then that same justification works just fine to force me, and you, to help pay for some minimum standard of healthcare that is accessible to all. Just as we both are threatened by the alternative of uneducated, illiterate louts crowding our society, we are equally threatened by the alternative of hordes of diseased people spreading plagues through our society.

Minimum standard is all we'll be getting Your mentality is all screwed up.

And again, this is a total joke of a conversation, when you consider how much money our government wastes on truly stupid things, like bridges to nowhere that we'll never drive on. The amount of money we're talking about to ensure everyone could get timely access to a doctor when they felt sick is a pittance in comparison.

Let's see if communism works if we do it this way, huh? You commies will never learn.

 

[nightlight]

Prison food is infinitely better than no food at all.

True. So is the socialized medicine better than no medical care at all. But, we are not starting here with no medical care. There is a functioning, largely private system already. Even the people with no insurance are taken care of through private or public charity. The choice we are discussing is whether everyone should be forced into government ran medical system or not. You could ask the same question about eating, clothing, housing, internet browsing, music and other arts,... In every such instance a government ran and controlled system would be far inferior to the existent one (which is largely private, except for charity).

Hence, your comparison is non sequitur.

 

[Paul10]

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[JosephTheLibertarian]

You've said it multiple times to me about health care and education.

If you want the states to decide, I guess you're happy with people living under Medi-Cal and a charity care scheme.

Anarcho-capitalism is not federalism

That's doesn't even make sense.

Yeah, I know statism doesn't make sense.

You know very little. The inner city has all the poor people that can't afford to fund anything. Obviously a place like Berkeley has a ton more government funding and they do much better.

But yeah, those rich places will spend a lot on government. Not saying that this is a good thing.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,330959,00.html

That must be why most government welfare goes to the inner cities. What a joke. You are the one advocating to continue the oppression.

 

[JosephTheLibertarian]

True. So is the socialized medicine better than no medical care at all. But, we are not starting here with no medical care. There is a functioning, largely private system already. Even the people with no insurance are taken care of through private or public charity. The choice we are discussing is whether everyone should be forced into government ran medical system or not. You could ask the same question about eating, clothing, housing, internet browsing, music and other arts,... In every such instance a government ran and controlled system would be far inferior to the existent one (which is largely private, except for charity).

Hence, your comparison is non sequitur.

oh..my.. arguing for status quo? You're even worse than Edward lol

 

[SeanEdwards]

True. So is the socialized medicine better than no medical care at all. But, we are not starting here with no medical care. There is a functioning, largely private system already. Even the people with no insurance are taken care of through private or public charity.

No they are not.

The choice we are discussing is whether everyone should be forced into government ran medical system or not.

A false dichotomoy. I'm not arguing in favor of changing your health care. I'm arguing in favor of some level of government committment to provide at least a minimal access to healthcare to everyone.

Our government purifies water, and that purified water is available to everyone. Is that communism? Is that a big government tyranny of clean water? People still go out on their own and pay extra to get bottled water, are those people then SLAVES, paying their hard earned taxes some so some worthless impoverished bum gets to drink pure water? Under this anarchic fantasy of extreme self-sufficiency shouldn't the poor, and the homeless be forced to purify their own water? Maybe you think they should lap up water from the gutter like dogs?

The truth is that we purify water because it is an issue of PUBLIC HEALTH. As unfair and as unjust as it may be, we are all linked together by our shared genetic heritage. No man is an island.

Just as providing sanitary water to drink is important to public health, so is managing and controlling infectious diseases in the community. Trying to pretend that it's not your problem is just sticking your head in the sand.

You could ask the same question about eating, clothing, housing, internet browsing, music and other arts,...

Now there's a real non-sequitir. When your clothing/housing/internet choices have the possibility of infecting me with disease then maybe you'll have a point.