Dry counties are probably because of the guns.
I’d think it’d be the other way around…
You can pry my bottle from my cold, dead hand.
BANG!
Is “you can’t drive on these roads unless you have insurance” any better, really? That’s the case in my state and is pretty normal, I believe. We are unwilling to deny healthcare, so we have to make people pay for it instead.
On the other hand, I do. Doesn’t mean you have to be Christian. But the reason I’m a Christian is that I believe those principles are right, so why wouldn’t I want them in the government? Why would I want wrong ones in the government?
In fact, it leads me to ask why you became a Christian if not because you think the general ethos is correct?
Note: I’m all for removing anything that contradicts the concept of the government being secular, but that’s far less than removing all the principles. They all work on their own, with or without a God.
Yes, yes it is better, and it’s super cheap, comparatively.
A God that needs to enforce his will by the threat of eternal damnation is not a being to be worshiped, but defied, and, if possible, overthrown.
I’d amend it like this:
A religious authority who needs to enforce his will by the threat of eternal damnation by God is not an authority to be followed, but defied and overthrown.
“I believe a man, should be beholding to his neighbour, without the reward of heaven or fear of eternal hellfire.” - (some old song)
I like the car driving analogy. As far as I’m aware, insurance is only needed for cars in operation. So health insurance should only be required for people using public roads or footpaths too. If they never leave their house, no problem. No coverage, no cost.
Eventually you’ll get shit on.
Bullshit. There’s no profit motivator and no top level management compensation. Compare operating and administrative costs for charities like Movember and government agencies like Social Security: the latter ones are minimal.
Bullshit. In the UK, taking into account per capita taxation costs and the highest rate of insurance (no copay), one still pays less than the per capita costs in the US. You’d need to demonstrate that insured individuals live longer in the US than insured individuals in the UK in order for this statement to hold true.
As it happens, despite your frequent protestations of being a “liberal anti-corporate democrat” I think you’re a corporate troll of some sort. Perhaps blighting us from Business Insider or Forbes or something. You’ve spent far too long engaging in apologetics or “just asking questions” for talking point Republican positions to be taken seriously.
Also, this.
Profit and compensation are not what makes insurance insurance.
You pay a premium, and you get benefits. That’s insurance. Government-run insurance is still insurance. It may be better than private insurance, but it’s still insurance.
Fine. But it’s still insurance.
Lifespan is a relatively poor measure of health care quality. Too many other variables. And health is about more than just surviving as long as possible.
I don’t give a flying fuck what you think I am. Nor should anyone. It’s not relevant to whether my views are correct or not. I am not here to impress you or prove that I’m sufficiently liberal for you. I’m quite confident in that without proving it to you. Nor does it matter. If I’m not a liberal, so be it.
That said, I find just spewing the same old crap to be boring. I challenge right wingers when there’s something interesting to talk about, but I find it much more interesting to challenge my fellow liberals. I think it’s useful too because it will strengthen their arguments in the real world and stop them from wasting their time and energy on pointless bullshit they can’t, and shouldn’t, win. For instance, Citizens United.
If you don’t like it, too bad.
I’m not sure whether you’re being obtuse or just ignorant, but the only other industrialised country (that I know of) to run a healthcare version similar to the individual mandate for the majority of citizens is Andorra. Singapore uses a mixed system where 31% of costs are paid by the government.
Extrapolating that all healthcare is a form of insurance (when there is no monetary profit motivator) is to debase the term beyond conveying any useful information. At the moment, we can distinguish between government run healthcare insurance, government mandated healthcare insurance and public healthcare paid for from taxation. We may as well define the fire department as a subsidiary of the public contents insurance group.
Provide a metric other than lifespan or infant mortality then. Most analyses I’ve seen have concluded that US healthcare is the best in the world if we ignore the pesky poor or black “citizens” (they’re hardly Real Americans™, anyway).
Anyway, I address some concerns about confounds here. California has a murder rate of 4.9, slightly higher than the national average. Its obesity rateis slightly lower than the national average (higher than the UK, though, for instance). Their population is pretty heterozygous. They’re pretty much middle of the road when it comes to road fatalities.
Yet they’re the third highest state in terms of life expectancy? Which factor is behind that? I’d put money on the rate of insured Californians, which is significantly higher than Texas. We’re back to “there, it’s the best healthcare money can buy”, which misses the point that the average US person pays more than Japan for significantly worse outcomes and even the healthiest states (I hear the Seventh Day Adventists in California may skew the results) pay more than Japan for worse outcomes. Will extending coverage somehow diminish the healthcare for the rest of the people with outcomes higher than some of the public healthcare states?
Ignoring the grave threat of repeating myself, but… bullshit.
All I said was that government-run insurance is still insurance.
Are you talking about government-run health care, like the National Health? Or just a single-payer system with private providers paid by the government, like Medicare?
You should probably do that.
You can’t read my mind, son.
Those statements were simply made to disprove various bullshit claims that only a conservative could support Citizens United. Don’t flatter yourself by thinking that they have anything to do with you or what you think of me.
Can we get back on topic now?
And it shouldn’t be.
The hell? It’s your contention, support it. I’ll determine whether it’s warranted or not, just as I did in the other thread with Rand Rover.
If you’re talking about a government-run medical system - the doctors all work for the government - that’s different.
If you are talking about a single-payer system where the doctors are not employed by the government, but get paid by a government system like Medicare, then that’s akin to government-run insurance.
The latter would function alot like private insurance. Not the same, but similar. There would be limits on what is covered. The amount you pay in premiums/taxes might vary according to your risk or age. You might be responsible for part of the payment due to copays and deductibles.
That’s all I’m saying. And it’s not controversial.
Ok, sorry, it was a confusion in terms. There are tax only systems of funding universal healthcare. I was aware of insurance based alternatives, but claiming “government run UHC would still work like insurance” is false.
I’m more interested in seeing factors on quality of life outcomes other than access to health services. I thought of another, patient doctor ratio, but like all others variables I’ve looked at (homogeneity of population, obesity, murder rate, automotive accident rate, cigarette and alcohol consumption), it doesn’t provide an adequate explanation for health outcome disparities.
New Hampshire has an obesity rate of 25.6%, with an overweight rate of 37.4%. slightly lower rates than New Zealand. Its murder rate was slightly lower too. Yet lifespan in New Zealand is higher.
Which is why I didn’t say that. I said “government-run health insurance would still work like insurance.”