Yeah, but you and I are odd ducks, Lib. Just face it.
Generally, I’d say it’s defined as a Christian fundamentalist who wants US law to be based around (or at least very strongly reflecting) their interpretation of the Bible.
Here’s my hand waving in the air. I don’t see why the things can’t coexist. I am a supporter of the free market as the most efficient wealth-generating economic model, but I see healthcare as a bedrock of society - like roads. Would you support private road ownership a la Libertaria?
The National Health Service is still going in the UK (albeit creaking a bit), which also has one of the biggest financial markets in the world. What’s wrong with cherry-picking the good ideas from the left and from the right?
Also, one of the reason healthcare is so damn expensive in the US is that it’s run for profit (not to mention the insurance/litigation cabal).
I have witnessed some very spirited debates here on abortion and changing definitions of marriage, and they wouldn’t have been spirited if everyone had been arguing the liberal side. Admittedly, this doesn’t prove my point, because, as you point out, there are other issues that complete the definition of an evangelical.
I don’t mean to be disrespectful in saying this, but I think it’s possible that the mindset of a fundamentalist is not one that is drawn to debating. Although anyone with a valid email address can take part in the SDMB, it requires a certain degree of intellectual curiousity to want to take part in a dialog with such a diverse community.
And in my experience, most of the conservatives who do post here are quite intellectually curious.
Also, are you sure that more than twenty per cent of Americans identify themselves as fundamentalist or evangelical? That seems high. I could see twenty per cent agreeing with some (or most) issues favored by fundamentalist or evangelicals, but as we’ve both noted, this would include people who don’t identify themselves as such.
What criteria did you use for your assessments?
Chalk me up as a conservative doper. I do believe that the conservative dopers are at a disadvantage in this forum.
This situation is an analogy to the Pro Choice/Pro Life debate. There are more Pro Choice people out there, but the Pro Life people are much more, uh, loud.
Chicago, do you mean that the liberals on the SDMB are fewer but more vocal? Or that liberals in the general population are fewer, but more proportionally numerous here, and thus more vocal? Please clarify.
I’ll bet that if you looked at statistics from 1980, you’d find that the US spent a larger percentage of GDP on food than the USSR did. Would you then propose that the US nationalize farming?
Another reason is that is so much more bureaucratic. Yeah, I know that the pro-free-market types tend to believe that bureaucracy is a word that can only be used in the context of government, but the fact is that there is a ridiculous amount of bureaucracy and duplication of effort when you have reimbursement for medical procedures being carried out by so many different companies. As a doctor in Vancouver once explained to me, in his practice with several other doctors, they had one office person who worked part-time on reimbursement paperwork. He learned that, in talking to colleagues in the U.S., an equivalent-sized practice would need to have a few people dedicated full time to this.
John Mace, as for your comment, the point is that we are spending a considerably larger fraction of our GDP on healthcare and, yet, by many measures we are not getting as good health in return as other nations who spend less. If this were happening in regards to a government program, you’d be up-in-arms.
Libertarian said…
…the natural tendency of liberals to be so shrill, to form together in hysterical packs, and to peck like mad crows at every conceivable potential offense.
Then you said…
Is this a defining characteristic of liberals? If people do this that means that they’re liberals?
Or is this just hysterical shrillness?
Up to this point** SimonX**, your classification was as neutral as pea bland soup because your earlier post was judged as * fair and balanced* as a **FOX News ** report.
But then you just couldn’t help yourself,could you? You had to jump on our libertarian friend and defend the shrill hysteria of the pecking mad crows, that is, the liberals.
I therefore pronounce you a mad crow pecking liberal.
And don’t say it. I never said my study was fair.
My actual point was that the high level statistics really don’t mean much. If you looked at the average expenditure on health care, and the average level of health, what does that tell you? One needs to look at whether individuals who spend more on health care are getting more for their money.
But the US health care system is hardly a model of free enterprise. We’ve institutionalized the concept of obtaining health insurance thru your place of employment. There is little insentive for people to be cost conscious when dealing with health care expenditures.
As for being up in arms, I’d never give a hoot about how much money we as a nation were paying for somthing if it were truly voluntary. People should be free to spend as much of their own money on whatever they want. If that turns out to be health care, then so be it. As long as the gov’t isn’t either directly or indirectly contributing to increased costs (eg, tax breaks for health care costs will cause those costs to increase.)
Sadly, John, that’s not how it works.
The system, as currently set up, allows those who do NOT spend money to take care of themselves to spend taxpayer money to take care of themselves when they reach a crisis stage.
Toss in the fact that health issues tend to cost more to treat when a crisis is reached and I’m thinking that a national health service of some sort that includes prevention and health maintenance will save money in the long run.
And I stand by my statement that, no matter what anyone’s personal beliefs are, some form of national health care, funded by taxpayer dollars, will be established in the United States in the first half of the 21st century.
Also, John, where you mention cost-consciousness (and the lack) in terms of health care I’ve always viewed that on the flip side. With the establishment of large scale insurance to pick up cost there’s been no incentive on the healthcare providers side to cut costs and improve efficiency. If, magically, suddenly 95% of Americans no longer had health insurance there would instantly be severe pressure on the part of healthcare providers to improve services, lower costs, or go out of business. The fact that high health care costs are paid by insurance only service to minimize that pressure.
Funny. I would’ve flipped that around. I’ll have to think about that
However right now it seems that by not imposing conditions of behavior on people, outside of criminal acts, conservative policies appear to rely on the inherent good will of people. Liberal/leftist policies layout how people should behave to one another in various contexts. The idea that a person would not help the poor on their own and so must pay (i.e. be taxed) to support social programs seems to imply that leftist policies do not trust individuals.
But wouldn’t the libertarian stance on that be to eliminate the tax subsidies to uninsured people and to rely on private charities?
While that may be true and, if it is, a pragmatic approach would be to try to influence the way that system is crafted so that it contains as many free market elements as possible. However, that still would not be a reason to accept a gov’t controlled health care system as the best way to go.
It’s unclear if you are accepting this as a good thing or just an inevitable thing. If the former, can you clarify why health care is so fundamentally different from other industries that it needs to be controlled by the government?
Of course it works both ways, as you say. Same as any industry.
I agree, and was thinking exactly the same thing when I read the post you referred to.
I don’t have much to add to this thread, but in case anyone is still tabulating, I wanted to increase the libertarian post count.
A parallel thread (“Who was the worst prime minister in history?”)discusses non-American politicians. Of those non-Americans who posted in that thread, and either (a) self-identified, or (b) attacked a politician on ideological grounds, 12 appear to be liberals and 4 conservatives.
So the skew is about the same outside of the U.S.
Indeed it would. While I’m a libertarian (though unregistered with the party) I’m a practical man. There’s simply no means to get that past the voters in the American political arena.
I view it as an inevitable thing given society’s need to contain health costs.
While healthcare can be viewed as just another industry it is (to me, at least) self-evident that it is not. Healthcare falls under the ‘desirous under any circumstances’ sort of need. People who will skip vacations or other goods and services will spend every penny they have to protect their health in a crisis. This gives healthcare providers an effectively unlimited market with little price sensitivity. And that’s a circumstance ripe for gouging.
Or is it really gouging? After all, with your life on the line what price is too high?
We’re going to have to answer that question as a society if cost keep escalating. Eventually do we just turn to the sick and say, “Sorry, no can do. Go die. We’ll be better off for it”?
That strikes me as a fine way to get voted out of office.
Which is another reason national health care is coming. The voters will eventually demand some serious restraint on health care costs. Or even on insurance costs. Look at the rise of secondary insurers over the last 20 years. Insurance companies to cover what your insurance won’t. How surreal is that? And what happens when the premiums alone get to high to afford?
It’s coming. And nothing but a complete sea change in:
Voting Habits
Citizen Healthcare Expectations
Insurance Premium Patterns
can stop it.
I’d hoped that you really had some sort of relevant thought process behind your assessments.
Here is one site on my claim of the percentage of Americans that identify themselves as evangelicals. Take a look at the numbers that believe in Creationism, my eyes popped out.
Sounds like the scene outside a certain Alabama courthouse.
Yo!
No one waves a flag for prgamatism, which is the best endorsement one gan give it.