There is that indeed but the main reason was to point out that most of the new entrepreneurs are doing it for a basic reason: To be happier than being in the dead end or restricting jobs they had before.
Of course, seeing posters (not you) that are in favor of free enterprise being willing to toss new entrepreneurs under the bus is a wonder to behold.
Those who disagree with you on nuance, no. Those who do not think that they should have to pay for the healthcare of others, well, they may not favor mass graves, but they need to come up with some way of dealing with all the dead bodies that will pile up if people are turned away from medical services due to an inability to pay.
I don’t think people who oppose greater government involvement in healthcare could ever come up with a plan to make insurance more affordable and cover more people; but if they did, I’m pretty sure there’s a lot of people in this thread who wouldn’t even listen.
Well, sure they did. It is currently called Obamacare. The ACA was based on the model from the Heritage Foundation, which is exactly those people who oppose greater government involvement in healthcare.
They certainly haven’t been able to come up with a BETTER idea.
Let’s start with what I have said already and you have ignored by saying the above:
I favor the system we had in the US in 2008.
So far as I know, we were not digging mass unmarked graves in 2008.
Do you acknowledge now that I am supporting the system we had in 2008?
Do you acknowledge that you did say that you were against paying for other people’s healthcare, and that that could be a reason as to why people felt that you were advocating for policies that would wind up with quite a number of people dead?
I did not ignore what you said, in fact, what I said above, I did not attribute to you, but to those who hold to the policy that you claimed to favor earlier, that of not paying for anyone else’s healthcare.
In 2008, you most certainly were paying for other people’s healthcare, through medicaid, medicare, through your taxes to the VA, and through higher premiums and hospital costs due to poor people using the ER as their primary method of getting medical treatment.
So, are you happy with going back to the 2008 healthcare situation? Would you not want to make any changes at all to how they were?
As with any position, I start with the aspirational ideal: I don’t pay for anyone’s anything. I buy my food, my clothes, my roads, my police, and my healthcare.
Then I assess the value in abandoning that ideal and recognizing the tradeoffs for common pooling of expenses make sense.
So when I consider clothes, even though everyone needs clothes, I remain steadfast in believing that each person should be responsible for buying their own clothes. But when considering roads and police, I agree that the benefits of the common pooling of resources outweighs the individual provisioning of resources.
With that framework in mind: I am against paying for someone else’s healthcare. But I recognize that there are limited instances in which a shared cost pool is of value. That does not mean I favor an unrestrained rush into a national cost pool.
Do you understand?
Not to your awareness, no.
And to be strictly honest, odds are low that any corpses generated by the insurance companies’ death panels (excuse me, ‘denied coverage’) were dumped in the gutter because there are less illegal methods of getting rid of them, that have the side effect of shuffling them out of your line of sight. The world would probably honestly be better if the corpses of the poor who died due to insufficient health care were piled on your and other conservatives lawns, so you would have a harder time hewing to the outrageous delusion that back in 2008 things were hunky-dory.
Let’s inject a little truth, shall we? American health insurance has sucked hardcore for as long as I’ve been aware of it (20 years now). That’s why most of the world has flushed the idea of leaving the payment of medical care in the hands of private insurance companies. Because it’s damned stupid to believe that the invisible hand of the market is going to work in a situation where prices are largely hidden from consumers and the people actually paying don’t benefit from the service. Seriously it’s idiotic to assume the free market can handle this well.
Turning the clock back to 2008 would be a net negative, in the unlikely event it could even be done. Though admittedly well off people who have no empathy whatsoever would see no negatives whatsoever from the massive increase in bankruptcy, misery, and death that would result.
Sure, if that’s where you say you are coming from, but what are those limited instances? I assume you are for the VA, to support wounded troops who are returning from wars, but would you also support the VA to deal with medical treatment of veterans after they are out of the military? Would you support medicare for the elderly, even though that’s getting pretty expensive? Do you support medicare for the poor, even though that’s getting pretty expensive these days too?
We can’t go back to 2008. If we just ripped up the ACA, premiums will not return to what they were. The costs of the VA, medicare, and medicaid will be much higher as well than they were in 2008. If we return to 2008, coverage will be decreased, or costs will go up. This means either higher taxes, or more debt.
If your favored policies were implemented, what outcomes should those who do not work for large companies that can offer a generous health insurance benefits package expect?
Out of curiosity, do you also favor going back to 2008 and getting rid of the healthcare marketplace, a way to actually comparison shop between insurance companies, and return it to the old days when you were prevented from comparing plans and companies to see which one fit you and your budget the best?
I’d be a bit down with some restructuring of the healthcare system, but IMHO, a few things that they really need to leave are the marketplace, pre-exiting conditions, and allowing kids to stay on their parent’s plans a bit longer. Something that should be improved is the ability for small businesses to provide health coverage for their employees.
But, as far as your principal goes, if you were aware that repealing the ACA would increase your premiums and healthcare costs, decrease the number of people who can receive healthcare, and cuase a recession as all the small businesses restructure as their employees leave for places they can get healthcare (and their owners do as well), would you still, in principle be for the repeal?
As I see it, the ACA is great for small businesses, and according to every politician ever “small businesses are the backbone of our economy.”. Repealing the ACA will do great damage to my business, and to the businesses of many of my peers as well.
Literally? No, we were not. But various studies find that the ACA reduced deaths from not having healthcare dramatically: between 20,000 and 45,000 deaths per year depending on the study. Even if we take the lower number, that’s an awful lot of graves, mass and unmarked or otherwise. It is, for example, more than 1000 times the number of jihadi deaths in the US in the same time period, which we’re apparently willing to spend virtually unlimited money preventing.
Lot of people who could have gotten early medical care in 2008 would not have gone on to get sicker. And might very well still be here.
“Nip it in the bud, Andy!” is humorously dumb advice, except when applied to medicine. Looking at this from the perspective of desperately acute conditions is stupid and counter-productive. Treatment at an early stage is cost-effective as a sumbitch!
What an extraordinary assertion — which makes me question your good faith in this line of argument.
Even in Britain we are aware of America’s venerable tradition of Hospital Dumping.
2007:
LOS ANGELES — A hospital van dropped off a paraplegic man on Skid Row, allegedly leaving him crawling in the street with nothing more than a soiled gown and a broken colostomy bag, police said. *
*Witnesses who said they saw the incident Thursday wrote down a phone number on the van and took down its license-plate number, which helped detectives connect the vehicle to Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, the Los Angeles Times reported on its Web site.*
Police said the incident was a case of “homeless dumping” and were questioning officials from the hospital.
NBC 2007 02 09
No-one will judge you for feeling this was right and proper; but denying these incidents is shameful.
I can only find this practice in an American context, but I shouldn’t be surprised if it had once happened in India, which has a similar healthcare system, being mostly private.
Um, speaking of extraordinary assertions…
Yes, and yes. These are government-as-employer offering benefits, not government-as-government offering entitlements.
Yes, for now: people need to be given fair notice that their retirement planning should account for the fact that the future won’t include Medicare before we discontinue it.
Isn’t that Medicaid?
Answer: yes, because of reasons I’m too lazy to type now.
No, I like the Marketplace. I don’t like the mandate.
But can I just point out how far afield we’ve strayed from the original entry point? I stepped into the thread to rebut an OP that claimed that targeted campaign contributions were a sign of “the collapse of American democracy.” I continued to engage the OP to rebut his bald assertion that he knew what was in everyone’s best interests better than they did, if they disfavored the ACA.
Now we’re discussing policy choices, and you’re offering up very reasonable and defensible policy positions.
It is clear to me that Bricker was using a Reductio ad absurdum argument. It was supposed to ridicule the positions others have; but when even the absurd in that argument has taken place in America it leads to the conclusion that his argument is really an Argument from ignorance.
While this post was reported yesterday, I sat on it for a bit as I have been a participant in the thread up to this point. Typically I try to avoid moderating in threads where I am a heavy participant. If I were not participating up to this point in the thread, I almost certainly would issue a warning for this post as I think it mischaracterizes sufficient to cross the line into jerk territory.
However, because I was a heavy participant and my fellow mods were indisposed for the day, I did not want this to go by and get stale without comment.
So, rather than a warning I’ll leave this note here. Do not intentionally mischaracterize the posts of others in order to disparage them.
[/moderating]
I’m stepping in here and giving the warning. Yo7 may not attribute such hideous motives to others here at the SDMB. Don’t to it again.