How about you fucking off?
Because a bad doctor’s visit can kill you. A bad trip to the movies still has very encouraging mortality rates.
How much for your little girl? I want to buy your children, I want your women.
How much for your wife?
Well, with his puritanical disposition, she’s got to be practically untouched. So, she’s practically a new wife altogether!
It’s more likely to do the opposite. Our present system is a luxury; a self indulgent wallowing in our capitalism fetish.
Well, yes. Not everyone actually think that the government is intrinsically bad, you know.
And at any rate; you are a Randian, someone who has said that “the weak should perish”. Why should I feel any sympathy for someone like you, who is essentially the declared enemy of humanity ? Someone who has no sympathy for others, no sense of obligation to the rest of society; someone whose entire worldview is all about taking all he can get and to hell with everyone else ? I’m quite sure you would happily condemn everyone on this board to death if it was profitable, and you’d feel quite self righteous about it.
To be a self deluding, self destructive idiot ? Yes it is, unfortunately. Americans make great victims; the rich have been stomping on the common people for ages and still millions of Americans can’t bring themselves to do anything but beg to be stomped on harder.
I take it you never went to see the re-mastered, added scenes version of the original Star Wars flicks in a geek-heavy environment. Heads 'sploding, murderous berserk rages, aneurysms all across the theaters… it wasn’t pretty.
Then I suppose I can take comfort in knowing that we have the technology and means to repair them. 
I’m not sure that benefits society, but I’ll pay for some missteps for a better tomorrow. =P
And the award for statement of the bleeding obvious in this thread goes to… Giraffe!
If the conservatives are dishing out wishes, I’d like:
- My friend Chuck who was killed in Baghdad by an IED brought back to life;
- The money we spent on the war in Iraq applied to UHC;
- To go back in time to before we invaded Iraq, so I don’t have to try and do a re-boot here in Afghanistan;
- My nation’s sense of honor restored;
From TPM (I think it sums up Rand Rover’s positions nicely) Category: Cafe - TPM – Talking Points Memo
Top Ten Reasons the US Can Never Have Universal Health Coverage or a Single Payer System
July 16, 2009, 1:02PM
In no particular order:
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Taxing the rich to pay for the coverage of the poor will cause all capitalists to fold their tents and stop producing goods and services. This is a version of the “I’ll take all my toys and go home syndrome” so common to those who are used to getting their own way. Once all those uninsured are out of a job, they’ll wish they never heard of universal healthcare.
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Being uninsured is character building. The idea of charging one portion of society, (the haves), to pay for another’s, (the have-nots), runs counter to the American spirit. Those with health insurance worked hard to get their insurance, and so should everyone else. Bootstraps Baby! On the count of three!
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Government is inefficient at everything it attempts to accomplish. One need only look at the US Postal Service to see the truth in this. The corollary to this is the efficiency of the marketplace that is so obvious in the way medical goods and services have become so much more affordable in the US compared to all the other OECD nations that already have universal health coverage.
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Healthcare is a privilege, not a right. For some insecure people of privilege, offering the same benefits to those less fortunate, detracts from their sense of self satisfaction, and entitlement. Many Americans blessed with financial security remain convinced that they deserve their advantages as a result of indefinable qualities they possess. In the words of the Church Lady: Isn’t that ‘special’?
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We just can’t afford universal health care. The cost of such a program, last estimated to be about 100Billion/year over the next 10 years), will bring America's economy to its knees. Especially after we spent trillions bailing out the investor class by funding the financial sector in their latest get rich quick schemes.
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We just don’t want to insure the poor. It somehow empowers those of us who can afford adequate health insurance to know that there are the less fortunate out there who can’t help but envy us. This mantra should be repeated twice a day for 15 minutes in a quiet environment. Everyone: “I’ve got mine, I’ve got mine, I’ve got mine, I’ve got mine.”. Feel better? I know I do.
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There is no way the healthcare and insurance industries can continue to reap astronomical profits by inflating the cost of goods and services, through their own version of ‘churning’ the market once all those poor people have been brought onto the public tit. That public tit is there to feed Defense and other corporate sucklings. If room is made for all those poor people the corporatocracy will suffer.
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America is the land of opportunity. It’s like a great game. Each of us has the opportunity to be rich or poor, (ask Bernie Maddoff). Where’s the fun in taking the worrying about our health or financial security due to escalating medical costs out of the equation?
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There will be poor always. Jesus said it. Even though he didn’t say there will be the sick always, we get his drift. Speaking of anointing with oil, I’ve got to get to my massage at the spa.
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Medical goods and services are ‘products’ just like any other product. The fact that no one can predict his or her medical future doesn’t change a thing. Those products should be subject to one of the central axioms of capitalism, and cost “what the market will bear”. In this instance, where access to those products and services can be a matter of life and death, ‘what the market can bear’ can be quite a lot. Having the proprietary rights to these products is akin to owning the sole toll road or ferry to get to where you want to be, (as in * healthy *). Can I get a ‘Ka-ching $$$$’? Anybody?
I guess this is what I don’t understand - what’s the difference? Why is the state inherintly better than the federal? It’s the same thing, just bigger. In the same way that I could move to a place with healthcare and you could move somewhere without it, how is that different from me moving to France while you move to Somalia? Is it really just a matter of scale? And if so, at what point does size switch a government from good to bad?
Miller, the distinction between health care (or health insurance) being a need or a luxury is meaningless to me. I think that, when evaluating whether the federal government should do anything, the question should be asked whether the proposed action falls within the limited role the fed gov should play in our society. I think the fed gov should protect society from enemies (such as other countries and terrorists) and not much else (I think certain aspects of the FDA are fine, too, for example). Therefore, providing health insurance or high-end cars to poor people is not something the fed gov should do, and it doesn’t matter whether one is a need and the other is a luxury.
A US citizen cannot simply choose to make France his permanent residence in the same way he can do so with Arkansas.
Really? What taxes were that?
The trouble is, this is definitional and meaningless. Without more, you have simply set an arbitrary line that says federal government here, not federal government there. It’s no more rational to state that the government should protect from enemies, and little else, than to state that the federal government should protect from enemies and provide health care, and little else.
Is it to do with whether the market can provide something? Whether it can provide something more efficiently than the State? Or what grounds is the basis for the dividing line?
Moving to another state because you don’t like the way your current state does health insurance (if states were allowed to make their own rules) wouldn’t be exactly easy, either. Not every career is guaranteed a job in every state.
And what happens when you visit another state and need to use your health insurance? Better hope your current provider approves out-of-state claims, huh?
Wrong. Your worldview is all about taking. Mine is all about exchange. I got everything I have through a fair value for value exchange. You don’t understand that concept, so you see that I have something and think that I must have taken it.
Also, you leave to bring up the one time on this board where you think I said the weak should perish, which is not what I said at all. The statement I made was at the end of a long conversation about what to do with poor prople, and what I was trying to convey was that society does not have the absolute obligation to take care of those who refuse to take care of themselves.
Replace “refuse to” with “can’t” (as you seem to be unable to comprehend that not everyone has been as lucky in their births as you have been) and I think that’s the very definition of what society should be. Otherwise, all you’ve got is a bunch of individuals, fighting each other for resources.
It does, of course, have an obligation to provide those services RandRover thinks are justifiable. Such as protecting his private property. Just not the services other people think are justifiable.
Uh, yeah. I think the fed gov should do what I think it should do, and you think it should do what you think it should do. I don’t see why you seem to think I’m being hypocritical or something.