I wondering that about the OP, if the Republican spends his/her time defending what is an irrevocable right and the Democrat supposedly spends his/her time trying to take that away, aren’t they equally wasting their time making a decision between them moot? 
Doctors like to get paid what they’re worth. If they come to the US then that is what the market price is for their labor. You can vote in UHC but you can’t force someone to become a doctor.
Your link doesn’t work and nobody in the US is denied emergency care. The current SCHIP funds cover children in poverty and near poverty. States have been returning about half of what they were allotted. That’s where the problem lies, how to best utilize the money that’s already available. Pouring more money into the system won’t fix this. Screwing the people with good medical service is simply not necessary.
Try this.
The child did get emergency care, $250,000 worth. But the problem was that because only one in seven dentists in Maryland accept Medicaid, a minor medical issue caused a needless death and huge hospital bills to be footed by the public. I’m boggled how you can defend a health care system that is incapable of preventing disease at low cost to the public, but will treat avoidable, catastrophic cases at huge expense.
Wait… it’s a good idea for individuals to pour ever-increasing amounts of money into a health care system that works only for the people willing to pour more money into it, but not a good idea for the government to spend money so that access to care becomes universal? Every industrialized country but the US provides universal coverage, and yet the US spends 50% more of its national wealth on health care than any of them. And by many measures, the outcome of all that spending isn’t all that great. Yeah… “Let them eat cake.”
Let’s just cut the bullshit on this “stealing money” thing right now. It’s a red herring. Where is the outrage from the Right over the countless billions being thrown away in Iraq on military defense contractors? Or is “stolen money” only bad when it’s used to actually help people instead of kill them? I think conservatives are just philosophically opposed to using the government to help people. And by “people” I mean the common man. Halliburton and Blackwater on the other hand, get plenty of government welfare.
You don’t want to help the average joe, fine. Just be upfront about it. If conservatives actually cared about government waste in general they’d be supporting Ron Paul.
I have to say that I’ve sort of lost interest since this became a debate, and after some long days working. But to answer your question:
Whether the RTKBA is ‘irrevocable’ is open to debate. The way I read the Amendment is that the first part is a single justification for the second part, but not the only possible one. Basically: ‘Since a militia is necessary, and since a militia is made up of the People, and since the People are expected to bring their own military-suitable firearms with them, we recognise the People’s right to own arms.’ (Notice also that when ‘people’ is used elsewhere it refers to individuals, so I don’t think the intention was to redefine ‘people’ for this one Amendment.) The Framers, in their debates, also clearly believed that the People should be armed. In addition, it was assumed that people would hunt and they needed the tools to do that. And in the vein of ‘A man’s home is his castle’ a person has the right to defend himself. There are lots of reasons to own firearms. Unfortunately the Framers decided to cite one single reason in the Amendment and people have latched onto that.
Another argument against the Amendment is that the Framers could not have known that there would be cartridge arms capable of firing rapidly. The counterargument is that that doesn’t matter because it is assumed that the citizen soldiers would come equipped with arms suitable for military use, and that as advances were made in military arms citizen soldiers would adopt the same advances. (And just to head it off, I personally see a difference between ‘aimed weapons’ and ‘area weapons’. So grenades and nukes don’t count.)
The point is that a right may be eroded to the point where it is no longer a right. ‘Free speech zones’, anyone? Seventy-odd years ago fully automatic firearms, short-barrelled rifles and shotguns, and silencers were essentially banned. It’s true that one can still obtain them according to federal law. But they are in fact banned in several states. One has the ‘right’ to own an M-16, but in many places it’s impossible to exercise that right and everywhere else it is difficult and expensive. In 1968 further restrictions were enacted. For example, the Walther PPK semiautomatic pistol can only be bought if it came to the U.S. about 40 years ago. (The PPK/S is slightly larger.) And there’s no more direct mail-order.
I remember in the 1980s there was a study that said most armed criminals used handguns, and most of those were revolvers. But Miami Vice made it appear that the crims were all toting Uzis and Mac-10s. People began to notice that AR-15s (which had been sold for a long time as a varmint rifle) and AKMs could be bought at gun shops. And they’re scary looking. They’re no different functionally than any number of non-military-derived rifles, but they are cosmetically offensive. And so they were banned. The federal ban has been lifted, but my native California still bans many of them. There are outright or virtual bans in many places in the U.S.
So the ‘gun nuts’ do have something to worry about. The hypothetical Republican in the OP would help them protect their rights. The Democratic candidate would definitely not think it was a waste of time.
As for health care, that may or may not be a ‘right’. However many of us believe that since we support the government the government should help the People in return. It does this by building roads, providing police and firefighters, maintaining the military, looking out for our interests in foreign relations, and in many other ways. Why not help to ensure a healthy populace?
As has been previously pointed out, healthy citizens are more productive and add value to the economy. Catching health problems early is more cost effective than waiting for them to become critical. It just makes more economic sense to provide health care than it does not to.
I want to have the freedom to go down to the shooting range and launch projectiles at paper. (This supports businesses that sell ammunition, people who transport it, gas stations that fuel the trucks, etc.; and every one of those businesses pay taxes on the money they make from my hobby.) But I also want the freedom to not be locked into a given career or job and not have to worry if I’ll be injured in an accident or come down with some horrible disease. People say ‘freedom’ and ‘liberty’, but they don’t like to say specifically what they mean when they use those words. They say ‘Freedom isn’t free’ when they want to support military adventures, but when it comes to cash they call it ‘stealing property’. For me, freedom isn’t ‘the ability to do whatever the hell I please’. Freedom is being able to do as I please within the confines of accepted behaviour – and freedom from being destroyed by people who are out to make a profit from other people’s misfortune.
The choice in the OP is what is more important to you. Is it better to be able to own a gun (in this specific case) and potentially lose everything to accident or illness, or is it better to give up what is essentially a hobby (and yes, risk that you may not be able to defend yourself in a dire situation) in exchange for some sort of assurance that medical situations can be addressed before they become dire and without the risk of losing one’s financial security?
That said, I would vote for the Democrat because of the old saying ‘At least I still have my health.’ If all guns were banned tomorrow I wouldn’t be happy about it. But I’d still be healthy to be unhappy about it. If I were to be financially ruined because of some medical issue I’d lose the guns anyway (because I’d have to sell them) and a fat lot of good they’ll do me when I’m dead.
I didn’t start this thread to debate UHC. I started it for opinions on which of two issues is more important to the readers. Given that this started with a limited choice, I don’t really want to debate the whole UHC issue here. That it became a debate is unfortunate. I’ll save the debating for other threads.
Johnny L.A.: That is an excellent post and I agree with nearly everything you said. Well done, sir.
I’m boggled at the fact that you ignore the extreme failures present in countries that have UHC.
I’ve posted the delays found in Canada. You’ve posted a single example of a system where coverage existed and would have been available had more effort been made. You can make all the effort you want in Canada trying to see a physician. The line is still the same.
You can pour all the sentimental drivel you want but the reality is there is better care for more people in the United States with the current system we have.
UHC is only universal if you actually get it. We have immediate access to operations such as heart by-pass surgery. There’s no wait involved. I’ve already posted the delays found in Canada. You responded by saying: Forget waits for specialists who can perform complex heart bypasses, there have been children in this country who have suffered – even died – because they couldn’t see a dentist. Your only response has been a single child who was actually covered by our current system. The fact that the connection was not made does not negate the availability of the care. It’s immediately available. It may not be as convenient as Canada but inconvenience is different than life threatening delays. Those delays would have killed the child outright. There would be no option in the wait to see a doctor over a toothache. That’s where lives are saved. Actually getting to see a doctor for routine events that are more than they appear to be is a big deal. Look at the headlines today. Some kid just died because he got a staff infection that got into his lungs. He felt bad on a Thursday and had pneumonia in 2 days. He was dead in 2 weeks.
You still haven’t supported this claim convincingly. All you’ve shown is that a lot of Canadians think their system has problems and want it to improve. There is no evidence whatsoever that Canadians in general want to trade their UHC system for a system like ours, with its complicated patchwork of incompatible for-profit insurers and huge gaps in coverage.
In fact, the satisfaction of Americans with their health care system is far lower than that expressed by people in other industrialized democracies with UHC systems, including Canada. As this report notes (and it’s a Fox News report, too, not some lefty blog):
Yes, everybody complains about their health care system, because no health care system is without serious problems. However, if you’re taking citizen dissatisfaction as a measure of the unsuccessfulness of a particular system, then you’ll have to agree that the US system is the least successful, because it garners the most dissatisfaction.
Where did he show that? He linked to an editorial that claimed it, but I didn’t see any actual data.
For people who have the right insurance. Life expectancy and infant mortality are measurably lower in the US than in Canada, and yet we devote nearly 50% more to health care spending than does Canada. Those aren’t anecdotes, those are facts.
Let’s not dance around the issue: Are you claiming that medical care is more available to the poor – including poor children – in the US than in Canada?
The fact is that we have a much higher mortality rate due to crime.
Yes, that’s what I’m saying. If you have 2 tax funded programs and one of them creates long waits, then the one that doesn’t would be the better system. Between Medicaid and SCHIP funds (which are not all spent) the poor have better access to medical care than Canadians.
Conversely, if you don’t like Medicaid (and how it functions) then why would you want to expand the program? The obvious outcome would be…. Canada.
Which spends less than we spend per capita on health insurance and more of their population likes than our system. That Canada?
Man it would suck if we spent less money and had a system that everyone could use and more of the populace liked.
/sarcasm
I posted a Canadian government web site that addressed the shortfalls of their own system. They ration their care because of doctor shortages and a smaller ratio of diagnostic equipment in comparison to the US. It’s not efficient and more importantly, it lacks any choice for people to escape a universally bad situation.
Dying in Queues bolding mine. Canadians who wish to live have to seak medical attention across the border because it’s illegal to purchase services in Canada.
In 1999, Dr. Richard F. Davies, a cardiologist at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute and professor of medicine at the University of Ottawa, described in remarks for the Canadian Institute for Health Information how delays affected Ontario heart patients scheduled for coronary artery bypass graft surgery. In a single year, for this one operation, the doctor said, “71 Ontario patients died before surgery, 121 were removed from the list permanently because they had become medically unfit for surgery,” and 44 left the province to have the surgery, many having gone to the United States for the operation. (According to the Canadian Institute for Health Information, 33 Canadian hospitals performed approximately 22,500 bypass surgeries in 1998-99.)
In other words, 192 people either died or became too sick to have surgery before they could work their way to the front of the line.
American health care Vs Canadian UHC from the same article:
Fifty percent of the Canadian hospital administrators said the average waiting time for a 65-year-old man requiring a routine hip replacement was more than six months. Not one American hospital administrator reported waiting periods that long. Eighty-six percent of American hospital administrators said the average waiting time was shorter than three weeks; only 3 percent of Canadian hospital administrators said their patients had this brief a wait.
Candians spend more than other UHC countries and recieve less. Same article as above.
High Costs, Low Quality
A July 2004 study by the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute, Paying, More, Getting Less, concluded that after years of government control, the Canadian medical system is badly injured and bleeding citizens’ hard-earned tax dollars. The institute compared health care systems in the industrialized countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and found Canada currently spends the most, yet ranks among the lowest on such indicators as access to physicians, quality of medical equipment, and key health outcomes.
If you have 2 tax funded programs and one of them fails to cover a large chunk of the non-wealthy population, which then has to choose between doing without needed medical care and ruining themselves financially to obtain it, then the one that doesn’t would be the better system.
Yes, the universal nature of Canada’s healthcare system does put a strain on their medical services. They need more doctors, and they would probably be well-advised to pursue a “two-tier” system with optional private fee-based health services available for those who can afford them, in addition to the universal tax-funded system, to take some strain off existing providers. (New Zealand’s UHC system has combined these public/private options with notable success, as have other UHC systems elsewhere.)
But overall, Canadians are more satisfied with their healthcare system than we are. In particular, few or no Canadians have any desire to discard their tax-funded universal system in favor of the sort of random patchwork of for-profit private insurers that we use. A sizable and growing percentage of Americans, however, want to trade in our system for something more like the Canadian one.
No, Americans don’t like the prospect of long waits for medical care, but we also dislike the reality of unreliable health insurance, unaffordable medical costs, and lack of access to coverage. More and more Americans are getting really sick and tired of having the so-called “best medical care in the world” which they themselves can’t afford access to or can’t get an insurance company to pay for. In the last analysis, most people would choose second-best medical care that’s actually available to them over a superior version that’s out of their reach or can’t be depended on.
Are you claiming that differences in life expectancy between the US and other industrialized democracies are due to a greater rate of violent deaths due to crime? (I presume you’re not putting that forward as an explanation of the difference in infant mortality rates.)
If so, could we see a cite for it? Because AFAICT, homicide is a comparatively small contributor to US mortality rates, as this table (pdf) shows. You can see there that homicide ranks no higher than 15th among leading causes of death, behind heart disease, cancer, stroke, respiratory diseases, accidents, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, influenza/pneumonia, nephritis, septicemia, suicide, liver disease, hypertension, and Parkinson’s.
In fact, homicide accounts for only 6 deaths per 100,000 US population annually, an almost negligible number when compared with the leading causes of death which rack up about 200, and even significantly lower than the death rate from blood poisoning or suicide.
The Canadian death rate from homicide, in comparison, is a little over 2 per 100,000, approximately the same as other industrial democracies. I am rather skeptical that this difference is enough to account for the several years’ difference in life expectancy that we see between the US and other developed countries, and would like to see your evidence for making that claim.
In other words, there are better UHC systems out there than Canada’s. That isn’t an argument against having a UHC system; that’s an argument for having a UHC system that resembles, say, New Zealand’s or Holland’s somewhat more than Canada’s.
And again, even with the problems in the Canadian medical system, Canadians still report higher satisfaction with it than Americans do with our system. Apparently even a mediocre UHC system is considered by its users (and a growing number of Americans too) to be preferable to a non-universal hodgepodge of a system like our own.
In 2006, there were 17,034 murders in the US. The University of Michigan published a paper saying that an estimated 18,000 Americans die each year due to lack of health insurance.
The same paper says that 75% of insured children in the US saw a doctor in 2001, but only half of uninsured children. Wait – let me guess – you’re going to say that the uninsured children were actually healthier than the insured children, so they didn’t need to see a doctor, right!
I say there are problems with the system because too few doctors take Medicaid patients. But are you denying that there are problems with Medicaid? Because you sure seem to be.
I think the first reasonable step is extending the health care plan for Federal workers to all Americans. People would have a choice to sign up for a cheapie HMO at a low price or a comprehensive plan at a big price. I bet businesses would love not having to worry about shouldering additional health care costs each year.
Let’s see, take potshots at squirrels and the occasional Mormon missionary on weekends, or ensure health for me and my family? Gee, that’s a tough one …
A woman walks into a butcher shop and asks how much the steaks are. The butcher tells her, ‘$11.99 a pound.’ The woman looks a little peeved and says, ‘But the butcher down the street sells the same cut for $8.99 per pound!’ The butcher says, ‘Well, why don’t you buy your steaks there then?’ The woman tells him that the other butcher is sold out. ‘So?’ says the butcher, ‘When I’m sold out I sell it for $7.99 a pound!’
Heh heh. That old arguement. Would they not turn against their own people because those people have guns due to the 2nd?
Anyway, they, the soldiers, wouldn’t be turning against “their own people”, they’d be protecting their beloved country from a bunch of wierdo radical insurgents who are trying to enslave the common majority.
I have several guns. I have them because my local laws say I can. I have them because it’s fun to go shoot at paper once in a while. Self defense is just not happening with me.
Only once in my life have I ever been “at gunpoint”, and that was many years ago in Bakersfield when some drunken redneck “drew down” on me. I took it away from him (grabbed it) and gave it to the cops when they showed up. He was pissed. 
So, the second ammendment has little real meaning for me. I mean, I can’t get really emotional about it. I don’t feel physically threatened by the government.
As for universal health care, it’s about time.
There ya go.
Peace,
mangeorge