ITT: proud parent Rand Rover dances on the grave of American children, given the lower infant mortality of UHC.
What do you say to the parents of the dead, knowing you’re rooting for their children’s death?
How about the people facing death or ruin after Big Insurance money whores figured out a way to weasel out of their contract?
They aren’t real. Why should he care?
43,000 people die from a lack of health care in America every year. We have doctors without borders setting up rural clinics in America and people drive hundreds of miles to stand in long lines hoping to get some care. They want to have hope and want the pain to go away. Many jobs ,and that is more everyday, don’t offer health coverage. With many jobs you can not afford to pay for health care. The cost goes up, up and up. We have a huge unemployment problem. When you lose your job you lose your health care. Cobra coverage will take up to 80 percent of your unemployment check. It is unaffordable.
Health care is worried that if the Dems are successful in passing some health care reform ,there will finally be some downward pressure on prices. In anticipation ,they are cranking the premiums up by huge amounts.
Yet some defend our health care system. I wonder why? It is rated 37th in the world. It costs much more than other systems. It leaves millions uncovered. Many more can not afford to use the coverage they have very often. Copays and deductibles keep climbing.
It may be that our system serves the wealthy very well. Their companies still have great coverage. Insurance companies know they can not screw over the rich and powerful. If they get well taken care of, they will defend the health care industry. It works fine. The rich and those with good coverage are disconnected from the problems. After a while they forget there is a problem at all.
Nonsense. You are asserting a positive, you insist that the long-term detriment of “big government” exists, and that those effects will destroy the benefits of helping people remain healthy. I don’t have to claim that they don’t exist, I need merely point out that you cannot base your objection on any facts. It is political theory buttressed only by your insistence.
Point of fact. my personal opinion can be regarded as irrelevent. If another poster walks in and says “Well, I don’t have any opinion on this whole ‘big government’ thingy, please show me why I should believe your view”, you’re no better off. Again, in case you missed it, you are the one asserting a positive: “this is so”. Asking that you support that assertion with fact is entirely reasonable.
And if you cannot, which apparently is the case, that does not make you wrong, it merely means that your political theory is simply that: abstract theory. Philosophy, and nothing more. So long as you don’t pretend it is any more than that, fine.
I think you’ll find that “lawyer” of any stripe is the least *übermenschlicke * occupation possible.
Whoops, looks like I left a little übermensch out of Strinka’s quote there, sorry, my bad for drag-and-dropping.
Rand Rover,
On this issue you are like a creationist arguing against evolution.
I have no particular attachment to government. In fact were I in charge I would fire quite a few government workers.
However it cannot possibly be denied that our current health care system is free market based and that it does not work. It’s expensive and inefficient. Other countries have UHC and have longer lives at less cost.
Your only answer to this is the government sucks. Oh and Americans are fat.
That’s not an answer. That’s a philosophy. And I’m no more interested in giving a damn about your philosophy than I am in giving equal time to the local idiot who wants to teach my daughter the bible in place of Darwin.
Actually, if you’ve read other threads on this subject, many conservatives and libertarians do deny this. Specifically, they claim that the current system is NOT “free market based” because it is saddled with so many government regulations that of course it’s failing.
If you want to convince them, this is one of the major points to go after.
To follow up, more outright denials that there’s anything wrong with the health care system in this country. One of those quoted even says that it’s the countries with UHC that are the ones in actual crisis.
The fact that you weakly defend a system that is good for those on top, and provides less and less as you drop down the income ladder makes you appear to be pretty selfish. You have made it clear you are among the top earners. You have great health care. (as long as you don’t use it too much). How does keeping that system in place benefit the less advantaged? It does not. But spreading care out so all can live without living in fear of getting sick and being bankrupted , just pisses you off. Then you claim taxes are doing violence to you. You should not have to pay them I guess. The reason we think you are uncaring and selfish is because you have taken great pains to make it obvious.
The other goodie is how America has best health care in the world. Artfully worded, when they stick to the script. It would be more nearly correct to say we have the best health care money can buy. And therein lies the problem.
Alright EP, here’s the post I promised. This post (i) provides cites for the claims in my original post and (ii) responds to your responses to that post.
As you pointed out, here is the claim I am supporting with this post:
Here’s how you started your response:
Just wanted to note at the outset that my comments applied to more countries than just Canada. Canada may be an exceptional case. We shall see.
I said this:
You said this:
My response:
Here is anarticle (warning: PDF) quoting many studies about the negative effects on the economy of high tax rates.
Your response does not address the main issue, it only raises a narrow point within the main issue (which may be valid by itself but doesn’t refut the main issue). In other words, whether or not it is easier to start a small business instead of working for someone else does not necessarily counteract the negative effects of high taxes on economic growth and innovation. Your response is unresponsive.
I said this:
You said this:
My response:
You are looking only at the unemployment rate RIGHT NOW, as opposed to historical unemployment. Unemployment over the long term is generally higher in countries with large social programs.
Here’s unemployment in the US by month from 1948 to the present. I couldn’t find a similar graph for all of the countries I wanted to show for that entire period. However, this graph shows several countries (including Canada) from 1975 to 1997. This graph shows higher historical unemployment in Canada (i.e., it was north of 9% for a long time, while the rate was around 5% in the US). Also, the unemployment problem in Europe is worse among younger workers, which indicates that the economy is failing to create new jobs.
I said this:
You said this:
My response:
Yay, go Canada. Now look here at European countries. Predictions for growth are substantially worse than for the US and Canada.
Also, my comment was also addressed at qualitative differences (i.e., less ability to shift into war production, if necessary, etc.).
Finally, where are you getting those numbers for debt/GDP ratio? Looks to me like the US is at 39.70%, which is substantially lower than Canada and European countries.
I said this:
You said this:
My response:
I had the UK and France specifically in mind in both cases. You can google yourself to find articles on young people in France protesting laws making it easier to fire them and both countries having issues with immigrants. Note–there is no bigotry in my comment (not sure if you implied there was, hard to tell). I personally favor completely open borders (with security checks, naturally).
I said this:
You said this:
Response:
First, I think the **opportunity **to obtain favors from the government is bad, and increased tax and social programs increases the opportunity. Also, I wasn’t talking about tax breaks for people in government–I don’t think I need to google up articles on business obtaining tax breaks in the US, I’m sure it works much the same way in Canada and elsewhere. Higher taxes means more incentive to lobby for special tax breaks. Finally, here is a google searchshowing many articles discussing line jumping in Canada
I said this:
You said this:
My response:
You offer two dreadful effects of “big government” (By the way, are you ever going to take a stab at defining this dreadful thing, or are we simply to accept a phantom?)
One is stifling of innovation, the other is the “Galt effect”, productive and innovative people buggering off for a better option.
EP handily answers the first, then you move the goal posts. No, no, its not about those two things I said it was about, its about the negative effects of “big government”. If those two things are important to your argument, then rebutting them weakens your argument. If they are not important to your argument, then why did you bring them up?
You put two points on the table, lose one, and claim victory? What kind of debating is that? And please note: you don’t support the second claim at all, you simply assert that it is the necessary result of your premise, and since your premise is correct, it must be true as well. Buggering the question.
You know, RR, you’re not very good at this. Have you considered needlepoint as a hobby? This one doesn’t suit you very well, its got too many rules for an innovative, creative individualist like yourself.
Denmark: The happiest country on earth.
But in the Land of Imagination in which RR resides, along with Sam Stone to keep him company, only the opposite is possible; therefore the opposite is true.
I just talked to my brother again. He has brain cancer. His insurance company is putting him through hell. His wife and son are fighting with them all the time. They are on the phone every day. If he were alone they would have won. He is too weak to fight then. They just deny, deny, deny. Then you spend a day fighting with them to get them to pay. Of course they escape contracted payments by doing so.They make money doing violence to their customers. How can anyone defend those lying vultures? Insurance companies are the problem, not the solution. He of course was an exec with a Cadillac type coverage.
You seem to think I care what the Congressional Budget Office predicts; I don’t. I want to run the experiment, with a free market, instead of declaring ahead of time that it wont work – or that it will work. I of course hope it’ll work – but if it doesn’t, we can then go for the government takeover as a last resort. Don’t ask government employees whether killing the antitrust exemption and dropping barriers to sales across state lines will suffice; try it, and then meddle as little as needed to make whatever changes can garner popular support at that point. First kill the artificial monopolies, give consenting adults the power to contract with genuine competitors for at least a little while – and then demonize the free market, once we’ve had one up and running for a bit.
You say that, in the absence of evidence, I have a political bias in favor of free markets; that’s absolutely correct. And I feel you have a political bias against them. The difference is, I’m only relying on my bias until the evidence comes in; once people actually have the chance to make their own decisions in a fair-play context, I’ll then be willing to guide off the results.
So…
Uh . . . what? I guess you didn’t read the article I cited, which quotes several studies on the negative effects of high tax rates. I’m not sure what you are on about. I didn’t change my argument or move the goalposts.
That wasn’t you? Dammit, Euphone, it is totally wrong to enter bogus quotes in some other guys name! Shame on you!
The claim that it is the happiest country in the world is apparently based on a “survey” conducted by a reporter asking random people on the street.
Let’s assume it really is the happiest country on earth. It is not necessarily the case that Danes are happy because they have big government. It may be the case that they are happy in spite of their big government–it is possible that they would be happier if their government adopted the Rand Rover theory of government.
So, who’s really residing in the land of imagination? You have imanged that Danes are happy because of their big government with no factual support whatsoever.