Actually the Sister’s of Mercy do good work, IIRC. However **Bricker **has stated elsewhere, that if he lost his health insurance he should die because it was God’s will to see him sooner.
In the same thread he paraded out his idea that if we, as Americans, outlawed abortion he would support UHC. So basically he’s into punishing the poor and unemployed because of the evils of abortion. Makes sense to me.:dubious:
Which basically boils down to: “No health care for you or your family because the harlots are having abortions.”
Property rights are wise social policy for reasons that deserve their own thread. Briefly: adopting this policy encourages greater productivity than otherwise.
Meh. Both are per capita. I don’t see any reason to believe the incidence of kidney transplants is higher among a hundred million people than it is among one million. The total expense is higher, but so is the revenue-bearing population.
But neither you nor almost any healthcare opponent actually think that public roads, law, and defense are mistakes. My argument is that the healthcare battle is in most respects formally equivalent to the battles over law, defense, and roads. People will naturally have different preferences over the provision of a particular public good because they may bear the burden disproportionately or they simply have better non-public alternatives. This is understandable: one does not need to have identical preferences over public goods in general.
I simply do not have very much respect for the arguments that somehow healthcare is a different sort of good that requires a different treatment from government than any other kind of public good. It doesn’t; one non-exclusive public good is pretty much the same as any other.
So why are we in favour of encouraging greater productivity?
And, if I may;
It doesn’t seem particularly fair to me to talk about a double standard, when, going by my reading of the situation, you’re comparing one person’s statements with another person’s statements. Fair enough if the two are linked in some way - let’s say, both members speaking on behalf of an organisation - but why is it that it is acceptable to hold CJJ* in this instance to the standards of another person, and then declare him/her wanting? Unless CJJ* has agreed with your someone in another thread, or they with he/her here, then i’d say you’re sick for nothing.
Whack-a-Mole’s debate partner engages in some smoke and mirrors.
First, the cite from the advocacy group was itself quoting from a report published in the American Journal of Medicine.
Second, that is an ad hominem attack by criticizing the source rather than the substance which is easily verifiable. Do you dispute the figures cited for bankruptcies?
Third, acne IS deemed a pre-existing condition (I cited the Washington Post on that one for you…are they not to be trusted?) and if you did not write that down on your form when applying for health insurance they can, and do, revoke your insurance. They do it a lot. They even have a word for it: Rescission. Here are some other pre-existing conditions: Cops, Firefighters, Expectant Dads, and Those Suffering From Allergies, Acne and Toenail Fungus
I’ll leave it to the judgment of the Board on who is engaging in dishonest or evasive debate tactics.
As a liberal who has donated to the democrats, they do the exact same thing. They will send out emails designed to play on our anger and fear or outrage all the times with a link at the bottom so we can ‘do something’ by donating money.
Yeah, except if you’re being pursued by a swarm of mosquitos, it’s tough to deveop an appreciation for the foibles of each insect.
It’s true that CJJ didn’t make those statements. But that ignores the dyanmic of this message board, and it’s that dynamic that makes me sick, not the individual statements of CJJ, who, for all I know, is remarkable internally consistent.
But CJJ’s comments pass without any negative reaction. In the other thread, those comments also pass without huge amounts of negative reaction. (There was one poster who criticized the statements in the other thread, and a second generalized statement of disgust that I assume also was intended for that poster, if not specifically that post).
Upthread, I said, “There’s one of me, and a zillion of you.” This is when that dynamic becomes key. The masses sit backand let crap pass unchallenged when its “their side,” and leap on faulty logic when it’s used for a cause they don’t like.
“Some insurance companies…” do that stuff. How many? How prevalent is the practice?
By outling the worst, most abusive, borderline practices and claiming that’s the state of affairs, I’ll also take the judgment… well, not of the Board, because, thank God, the Board’s membership does not reflect the voting public’s beliefs. It’s amazing how satisfied with their health insurance most people are, given this wide swatch of acne-related denials.
So, these wild stories we are hearing are all made up? Those people who testified to these abuses, they were either making shit up or wildly exaggerating a few random, isolated incidents. Incidents that were, no doubt, quickly resolved once responsible insurance executives were apprised of the situation.
But by no means is this a standard practice engaged in to advance profitability.
This is appears to be what you would like to imply, without going so far as to put yourself behind it. You seek the benefit of insinuation without the responsibility of support.
But you did develop that appreciation. Your complaint about double standards was phrased very much in terms of two particular posters - the someone in the other thread, and CJJ* in this one. You identified particular arguments, and called one of them out by name. You can’t fall back on this argument when you’ve already developed such an appreciation - it is a double standard to highlight and identify to make your argument, and then say it’s too hard not to generalise when asked about it. If it is so tough, why use CJJ* to make your point? Why refer to two specific instances, two posters?
But your own arguments explain it, to an extent - there’s a zillion of us, and one of you. If you, the sufferer of the swarm of mosquitos, cannot be expected to differentiate, to not generalise, to not treat them all in the same way, how on Earth can we mosquitos be expected to keep track of the statements each and every one of us make? At least, with you, there is the excuse that you are the focus of the “stinging”; it’s easier to keep track of what you say because there’s only one of you, and because everyone else is quoting you and arguing you. How easy is it to miss a single post in a thread, for whatever reason? I very much doubt that everyone on “my” side is reading every single one of my posts, but i’d be suprised if most weren’t reading yours - not because of a bias, but because there are so many of “us” that missing out on my post does not, frankly, miss out much of the debate, whereas missing out on one of yours misses out on an entire side. It’s unreasonable to expect even an entirely unbiased, fair-minded group to pay equal attention to every member of a side of one and a side of many. Even more so in that you’re apparently assuming that everyone agrees with you that the two situations you compare are equivalent.
“Some insurance companies”? Yeah, well, if you read my cite you’d see that they were looking at three huge insurance companies. One, WellPoint, says on their website homepage that, “One of every nine Americans is a member of a WellPoint affiliated health plan.” That is just one and my cite notes that Well Point has staff who work on rescissions and are judged by how much money they save. Given they have people dedicated to this task I would not surmise these are just one-off exceptions.
Further, I cited that 62% of bankruptcies were health related. I do not know the final number but it seemed 2009 was on pace to see 1.5 million bankruptcies filed. With a little math we see 930,000 were health related. The cite also noted that most of those were well educated, middle class people. I’ll be generous and say “most” means 50%+1 so, more math, that makes it 465,001 working, middle class people. Presumably most of them have insurance. Heck, assume only half of them had insurance and you are at 232,500. Say 10% of those were rescissions and you have 23,250 people who thought they were covered and found out otherwise.
We can do this all night but I think the picture is becoming clear that rescission is not an aberration that happen here and there but standard operating procedure for the health industry. Unfortunately only four states (Hawaii, Kansas, Texas, and Washington per my earlier PDF cite) were able to provide actual rescission numbers but nevertheless there is enough circumstantial evidence to show this is going on and not a rare occurrence (indeed admitted to by major insurance companies).
This of course does not even get into being denied health insurance because of pre-existing conditions as cited above.
I’m willing to accept this as-is…and I say that in the most unironic way allowed by an internet message board:-)
I can sympathize, but my problem isn’t really with faulty logic, just the ease with which current political discussion can be sidetracked by using hot-button words–precisely the point of the OP IMO.
Speaking as a productive person, I’m tired enough of being forced to pay the freight of extra costs and a less efficient healthcare system just so conservative ideologues can feel smug about “sending signals” to lazy people. Now THAT’s “non-productive”.
I’m reminded of the story of the shopkeeper who decided he’d rather sink 5% of his annual profits into maintaining an expensive and unpleasant zero-shoplifting security system than put up with losing 1% of his annual profits to shoplifting with ordinary security. He didn’t care that he was actually sacrificing MORE money for a system with more hassles and pissing off his valued customers by making it more difficult to shop in his store, as long as he could feel that he was sticking it to those goddamned thieves.
Two shining examples of the victory of blind self-righteousness over ordinary common sense.
Yes, why has this thread become yet another whine session about how bad modifying the health care system would be instead of a discussion of Republican campaign tactics?
Who started that hijack, and why?
I wonder… but not very damn hard. It’s standard GOP tactics.
Precisely the point. It doesn’t apply to me, because I’m not a member. It doesn’t apply to policy, because the US isn’t a theocracy. Does it apply to you?