Well, just from reading the first page, it looks like a lot of philosophical outrage at the idea, rather than a recognition of what may be more efficient and (as the population ages) necessary, or at least of better results to the country than an increasing rate of bankruptcies brought about by medical expenses.
I daresay the United States is sufficiently wealthy to offer significant medical care to a significant majority of its population (infinite care to keep an end-stage cancer patient alive is not practical, of course, nor for someone who refuses care out of mental illness). I somehow don’t see this is as a moral issue but just a pragmatic one.
Christ yes, I think you are saying deceptive things. It’s your [gerund] stock in trade. You use second definitions, legalisms, connotations, partial quotations, and implications, all with deliberation and every appearance of pride.
You know the concept of “meeting of minds?” Where people try to figure out how to put together terminology that all can agree on? You practice exactly the opposite, mining every phrase in whatever way causes the widest difference of communication.
You have good taste in music, and you pay your bets. You aren’t the worst member of the board. But your technique is based on hyper-legalistic exaggeration of distinctions, not on any honest effort at communication.
Now that someone has played the same game on you, I, for one, find it a refreshing exercise in karma.
Which was precisely the subject of the additional discussion that took place. I pointed out that if it cost ten million dollars to keep a ninety-five year old alive for an additional week, it would be an acceptable decision to refuse to spend that money.
Well, I see that thread was a continuation of an earlier thread, and it spawned at least one sequel thread, so a full and complete analysis looks like several hours of reading on which I’ll pass at the moment, but I only note that discussions about what Americans have a right to (which delves into one’s particular philosophies on government and the social contract) and what can be feasibly provided to them (an economic issue) are not the same thing.
Somewhere along the way, someone (you, I think, but I was skimming) made a reference to the “thousands for defense, nothing for tribute” concept, which suggests to me a certain moral objection. That’s all well and good, but I don’t personally see single-payer health insurance as a moral issue, merely a practical one.
i didn’t ignore it. I made the mistake of assuming the context of the conversation was clear, and failed to make it explicitly so in that very post.
And I’ll repeat it: It is acceptable for people to die because they can’t afford the proper treatment.
What I should have done in that post is then follow the statement with the explanation, again, the context for that statement: how can it be otherwise? ANY system of health care must ration its care in some way. There has to be some method to weigh the expense of the necessary care against the prognosis of the patient, and against the needs of the patient population at large.
It is acceptable for people to die because they can’t afford the proper treatment. That doesn’t mean, “It is acceptable for every single person to die because they can’t afford ordinary care.” It means what it says: there is a use case in this system in which the care needed by an individual to survive cannot be justified on the basis of cost, and so should be denied.
If that 95-year-old I mentioned above is Larry Ellison’s grand-uncle, and Larry wants to spend ten million of his dollars to keep Uncle alive another week, he’s welcome to it. But a health care system that decides to spend money in that way will shortly cease to exist.
The only relevance I can see this sidebar having (aside from it being another dogpile of Bricker) to the Wisconsin abortion issue is that Wisconsin is not just not paying for abortions but actually making them more difficult and more expensive. Simple pragmatism and efficiency can justify some degree of government health insurance, but barriers for the sake of barriers… where’s the logic in that?
Last summer, an elderly family member needed a total knee replacement. There was no other option by that point, and this person was still sound of body and mind otherwise.
There is no way she could have borne all the costs on her own, and if the rest of us fam had kicked in everything could, it would have caused real financial hardships. (9 days in the hospital added up to 60 grand, and who knows how much it was for 2.5 weeks in rehab/nursing home which Medicare paid for, and after the discharge from there, there was more to cover such as home visits from nurse and therapists, equipment, and meds.)
I’m just glad she had a PPO and Medicare. Had there been any further delays or denials, she would have continued to suffer horribly, virtually bedridden with pain and lack of mobility.
For fuck’s sake people, stop making me defend Bricker… but of all the totally reasonable things to pit him about, you guys have to (a) take a really extreme strawman exaggeration of a fundamentally reasonable and in fact clearly inarguable position that he posted about once, many years ago, and then (b) claim that he’s being a deceptive liar when he attempts to clarify what his position is. As if clarifying one’s posts which are being misinterpreted is in some way a dishonest thing to do.
I mean, come on. The SDMB is better then “hey, some guy we disagree with made a statement that, when taken out of context, seems cruel and unreasonable… hurray! We win! We can just pull that statement out, summarize it, and bludgeon him with it whenever we want, in any thread, forever! Victory shall be ours!”. Or at least it should be.
While I do agree that his clarification of his intent does make the statement innocuous, the fact that his perceived stock in trade on the board is taking people’s statements, stripping them of context and applying a strictly literal interpretation does make the situation ripe for humour.
Don’t abort the fun before it even has a chance to be born.
I don’t think that’s really a fair summary of what it is that Bricker does that pisses people off. I think the two main sins he’s guilty of are: (1) “wait, didn’t some liberal do something similar once? Hypocrisy!” and (2) “hey, I’m not APPROVING or DISAPPROVING of that, I’m just discussing whether it is, technically, legal. And then I’m going to get all huffy when people for some reason don’t utterly and completely buy into that distinction”. I’ve spent a LOT of time arguing with Bricker, and of all the things I ever remember getting upset at him about, none of them were cases where he jumped on something I said, insisted on taking it out of context and interpreting it purely literally, and wouldn’t accept a clarification.
Oh. So you want to just ignore those posts that show that people that are not Christians can, and do, oppose abortion? And that opposition to abortions needn’t be rooted in religion, as per the atheist link?
How surprising you would chose to do that. :rolleyes:
I’m not ignoring it. I already said that Bricker’s position would be reasonable if it weren’t rooted in his Papacy Fan Club membership. But if you recall, which I doubt you can, Bricker thinks abortions are bad for nebulous reasons. He says that it isn’t because of a soul, but he can’t state why, other than, “Humans are special.”
So since Bricker is habitually dishonest, I assume he is just squirming to cover for his indefensible desire to inflict the stupidity that is Catholicism on the rest of us.
Missed the edit window, but also: You’ve been shown people can oppose abortion from Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist, Mormon, and non-Catholic Christian faiths as well as no religious faith at all, but since that removes the ad hominem bullet from your gun, you DO ignore it.