Glad to see the Republicans are still running Congress

The BBQ Pit
101

We don’t really have a free market system in this country. The primary determination in how and where you get your health insurance is who you work for. And this is the case because the government intervenes in the market with tax policy and practically forces you to get a provider through your employer.

You don’t actually personally shop for the service, you generally don’t compare competing companies, have a variety of available services, etc.

People often can’t make good decisions on their insurance contracts because they don’t truly understand what they’re paying for the service, nor do they understand what they’re getting from the service until some company decides to dump them when they get cancer because they forgot to dot an I on their application.

Free market incentives do not line up well with the current health care market. You could make a case that in general the nature of medical services do not line up well with free market incentives, but you can’t use the failure of the current system as proof that a free market system has utterly failed. We’d probably be better off with either an actual free market system, or a government run system - this half-ass intervention that only exists because of the status quo and the influence of lobbyists is the worst of both worlds.

102

We can.

The military. :smiley:

Still, agreed.

Here I have to disagree. Government has clearly discernable characteristics, beaurocracy being one, waste and ineffectiveness being others, and a clear ambition to grow and expand being perhaps the largest and most difficult to contain.

History has shown that most government social programs are impossible to get rid of. This because a point gets reached where people have either been forced to pay into it for so long that they will not stand for its dismantlement, or they have become so dependent upon it over time that they can’t survive without it.

Social Security is a prime example. Except for recent times when people around here feel compelled to defend it in the hopes of UHC, Social Security has largely been regarded as almost hopelessly flawed and broken, with most people over the last several decades becoming convinced that it will collapse before they ever get to it. And they are largely correct. The only reason that it hasn’t collapsed is that the government keeps taking larger and larger bites, percentagewise, out of peoples’ checks to keep it going.

Medicare is another example. Many doctors won’t accept Medicare patients, medicare pays much less than private care, people have to pay for it out of their meager Social Security checks, and almost anyone I’ve ever known who has it hates the fact that they have to depend on it. But again, it’s so thoroughly entrenched that it’s impossible to get rid of.

Now, I expect that your position is likely to be that if people are so concerned about losing these programs that politicians won’t dare try to eliminate them, then they are popular and government is giving people what they want.

But there is a difference in giving people what they want vs. making them dependent and unable to survive without government largess.

103

Wow. Could you imagine the things that could happen if companies or private individuals had their own military? Corporate takeovers could be armed invasions of the other guys stores and Price WARS could take on a whole new meaning.

Forget Uncle Sam Papa John wants YOU :smiley:

104

My great great great great great great grandpa was mentally ill, and his insurance company wouldn’t cover an excorcism OR drilling holes into his head. They did offer to amputate his leg and replace it with a nifty peg leg though.

105

Cool!

:wink:

106

It’s easy to aim invective at the GOP, but ultimately if health care reform fails it will be the fault of the Democrats. If they had party discipline, Republican opposition wouldn’t really matter.

107

What’s interesting to me is that in terms of interest, I see democrats as a more homogenous group. In the Republicans you have religious assholes, a few actual small-government conservatives, imperialistic neo-cons, what libertarian types haven’t bailed on the party, the rich and/or people who want the government to favor big business, racists, “the 50s were a more polite time” types… certainly there’s a lot of overlap but there’s also a lot of disparate views in those group, often completely opposing - ie big government imperialist neocons vs libertarian non-interventionalists.

The democratic party is more cohesive, with fewer groups with completely opposing views.

And yet the republicans are the ones in lock step, who buy into the idea that you have to support your party no matter what, even if they’re wrong or they’re doing something you completely disagree with - because hey, DEMOCRATS COULD BE DOING IT INSTEAD! I’ve actually seen this on gun boards, where one issue voting is common - “You gotta vote republican, otherwise the democrats will pass [x gun control act]” “Yeah, but my republican congressman has already said he’d vote for that act” “doesn’t matter, you can’t elect a democrat!”

But it’s to their detriment. It allows what you see happening - the theocratic base of the party gets out the vote, and the neocon/imperialist/rich/big business branch actually runs the show, throwing some token bones to the theocrats (it’s not like they’re actually going to make a push to ban abortion, and yet religious people will continue voting for them cause… you know…IT COULD BE DEMOCRATS!). And actual principled conservatives, people who believe in small government and fiscal conservatives and libertarians are left unrepresented. And yet many of them still feel a loyalty to the party because they’ve bought hook line and sinker into the complete partisan mentality, even while the party shits on everything they stand for.

So the leadership of the party stokes the fire of the ignorant to form the base while they hand out big contracts and rig the markets to favor their rich supporters. And actual reasonable, principled conservatives go without a voice. What could be a loyal, reasonable opposition to fuckups of the democratic party has instead become the party of “WHERE’S HIS BIRTH CERTIFICATE?”… it’s quite sad.

108

I just wanted to repeat this.

I too currently think the bill as it currently stands is not worth passing, but this in no way suggests that I support the current system. Obama had a sensible proposal for a health care bill and, like Cap and Trade before it, everything meaningful has been taken out of it and everything left has been watered down to a thin gruel, resulting in a pointless waste of time and money that would have been better off unpassed. Of course support is waning - but not because people are happier with the way things are.

And Senor Beef - since when have the Democrats been cohesive? They’ve been masters of the circular firing squad for as long as I can remember.

109

As often happens, I’m drawn to comment on what I see as inconsistency here. The actual merits of the proposal are not what I’m talking about here; reasonable people may disagree about health care policy, starting from the basic proposition of is it the proper role of government to provide universal health care? and going from there, since it seems that how feel about the answer to that question will necesssarily shape your future debate.

But I’d like to talk about the polls.

When support for a public plan was over 60%, I heard “The vast majority of people support it!” Now that it’s dropped to less than 50%, I hear, “Well, the vast majority would support it, if not for the mendacious tactics of the opposition!”

That’s dishonest. Either public support is a meaningful bellwether, or it’s not. You cannot claim it’s relevant when it supports you and meaningless when it does not.

110

Polycarp, thank you for this.

Regards,
Shodan

111

Ah well, they gave it a go, sort of.

I already have great insurance. I was willing to pay a little extra for a system where less fortunate folks could visit doctors in this country, but stupid me, I forgot to publicly go gibberingly, raving mad over my sober, rational position.

I guess I’ve learned my lesson :rolleyes:

112

Normally, I would agree with you.

However, in this case, unless you can point to evidence of proponents of the plan or UHC in general using misinformation or outright lies in support of their position, it’s reasonable to argue that the electorate would support it if not for mendacity, etc., because we know that the opposition have used misleading and false information to change people’s minds.

113

And this point is why I think you are all fucking morons. Because it’s obvious that the polls have been pushed by an aggressive misinformation campaign through MSM. And yet you assholes think this is a victory for democracy and freedom and probably still think the media is liberal. It’s one thing to be against UHC, but it’s quite another to gloat about the effectiveness of what you all know are outright lies pushed by corporate lobbyists.

114

Oh, yeah? Well, you just wait till the government gets its hands on Medicare!

115

Or wait until you get laid off and find out the next day you have cancer. Don’t expect the lobbyists and nutcase pundits that have been rogering you so gleefully to even give you the reach around.

116

Frankly, I believe proponents of the UHC plans have vastly understated the costs reasonably expected to be incurred by the plan.

117

This thread is chock full of irony.

If you are an American with a job, such as from a corporation, or from a government agency, you likely have access to very good medical coverage. You pay a small bit out of pocket and your employer picks up the rest.

You get MRIs an Xrays like they are handfulls of candy from the penny store. You have access to medical technology that blows the human mind. You could have stage four lyphoma with a 85% death rate for year one and 95% death rate within five years and you will still get millions of dollars worth of care, treatment and procedures that boggle the human imagination.

But… you need a job. Companies (OMG ‘corporations’) tend to get you good coverage… even decent dental plans. Vision plans, too.

No one has been more successful at dolling out health and happiness to be people as have businesses, industry… ‘corporations’. When there is a nice balance between working people and big business (like a legit union), and companies are allowed to thrive and expand, they expand employment.

You don’t have to work your own land and die of tooth decay anymore.

I understand this need to help ‘poor people’, but because such a large chunk of people are experiencing life with good medical coverage, it’s a helluva gamble for them to get in the government line when they drive past the noble ‘poor people’ in the government line getting the life sucked out of them.

Curse the evil corporations that feed everyone I know, and provide them with care.

Just who the fuck do you think you are to benefit from everything you are incapable of producing? Who the fuck do you think you are? MRI machines are not made by poor people. They are made by rich corporations. 2% of the people in this world invent, create, patent and cure. The rest of you fuckers better get down on your fucking hand and knees and thank all of the people who made something of themselves and created the fucking scan that saw the lump in the tit of the woman you call mom before it killed her.

Find a way to make business thrive… endlessly, and let’s employ, insure, invent, create and cure for everybody we can. But don’t forget, you ain’t done jack shit to make any of it happen.

118

Listen, I absolutely agree that the opponents of the plans have used disinformation and outright lies as a major part of their tactics.

But I also believe, as I suggest in the post above, that the proponents of the plan were not presenting a neutral, honest, detached appraisal either – the cost of their various proposals were understated and manipulated. Frankly, if I had to make a shoot-from the hip estimate of the degree of lies offered by each side, I’d say 20% of the stuff offered by the pro-UHC side was deceptive and 85% of the anti- info was deceptive.

But the original point remains: you can’t crow about the validity of public opinion only when it supports you, and deride it as the product of the foolish masses believing lies when it doesn’t.

119

How do you account for the fairly obvious fact that all the other industrialized democracies that have had UHC in one form or another for a long time are still free countries, and not totalitarian socialist countries?

120

But one can, apparently, assert equivalence between a spoonful and a dump truck.