I’d be grateful if people who reply with quote to Liberal’s posts would take a moment to disable that font.
Thank you.
Interesting. Say you live in a flood plain. Is there a right to expect the government (the collective will of the people) to build the appropriate protective structures? After all, if 50% if the city is drowned, no one is doing it to them, no person is taking their property, so they should not expect the government to protect them as a right?
Is your statement here a reversal of your statement that the government should stop your bleeding? (I take that to mean that the government should do something to prevent you from dying.)
Let’s say the government should keep you from dying. Preventing germs from killing you seems no different from preventing a hood from killing you. If it should, then it is stupid to pay $100,000 to keep someone from dying while not paying $1,000 earlier to prevent someone from getting sick enough to need the $100K of care. As an extension of this, do you believe in water and sewage treatment? Clearly, we could just treat cholera. Does that make more sense to you? We are pretty much forced to get water from the government, and are forced to pay for prevention whether we want to or not.
You do believe that government should keep people from killing each other. Let’s say X stabs Y. Not quite enough for Y to die, but bad. X doesn’t have the money to pay for Y’s care. Should the government pay, or should it let Y suffer? Is protecting us from each other extend only to life and death issues, or is the right not there if people just get beat up, not killed? Putting X in jail doesn’t help Y get better.
Finally, not treating a contagious disease might mean it will spread. If Z is walking around with the disease, without enough money to treat it, and infects me, does or does not the government owe me protection? Should we take Z’s money for treatment? If he doesn’t have enough, should the government pay. Is this any different for a contagious disease that is painful vs one that is fatal but long term?
Your quote shows maybe 1 in 20, and we would need to control for HC costs that come because of an injury that also cost someone their earnings as well.
I am not excusing, but I deplore poor methodology in gathering data, especially when said data will be used in a volatile discussion like this one.
Or Miss Hilton would get it for free, as a courtesy from some hospital hoping for promotional value. The cardboard box guy served in the military, losing a leg protecting Miss Hilton’s hotels, and got poor VA medical care.
Choose either fantasy.
Sailboat
Uh, right. I’ll take the real, economically sound one, thanks.
I’m certainly no expert on the Irish healthcare system, though I do have some experience with it, so let me share what I know.
I pay about €450 a year for health insurance for myself. This is paid out-of-pocket and is completely independent of the employer (in fact, I was unemployed when I enrolled, and have changed jobs since last summer). However, it is my understanding that this only gives me a few more benefits or choices than if I did not pay for any insurance at all. Being a reasonably healthhy guy, I’ve never put this to the test, but from what I’ve gleaned from others here, even without spending that modest yearly amount, I would still be covered for the most part on hospitalizations and the like even with no insurance. However, when I want to see a doctor, it’s €50 out-of-pocket, which I have to wait up to a year to file a claim with the insurance company to get reimbursement.
For those over 70, like my parents, medical care is completely free. Just this past year, my father had been in and out of hospitals with a terminal bone marrow disease (until his death in May) and paid not one cent. This same treatment would have cost tens of thousands of dollars (if not more) in the US, less whatever Medicare would cover.
However, I have also seen the downside of socialized health care: rationing of scarce resources. My father had to have a pacemaker implanted 5 years ago when he was 74. He could not have it done in Ireland - I don’t recall if it was flat out a denial of treatment, or whether the waiting list would have been prohibitively long - but the point is that he went outside the country to have it done. To India. (They did a great job, but most people don’t associate India with quality medical care, and for the most part, they’re correct).
All in all, as a healthy (for now) dude, I like this system better, and am not looking forward to having to deal with the whole clusterfuck of a healthcare system when I return to the good ol’ US of A.
Not unless you have slave labor. More likely, the 69-year-olds are paying for it.
By getting the surgery anyway, paying what I absolutely had to up front with a credit card, and mortgaging my future. I am now in debt for years because I wanted to stay alive.
Here’s the thing: Liberal and Martin aren’t just heartless, greedy bastards, they’re also dumb. Dumb because they don’t understand that health care is in many cases a “Pay me now or pay me later” kinda deal. Right now, we are willing to treat people when they come to the emergency room as a result of a stroke or a heart attack, but that’s all. Often, these conditions, and many others, are easily treatable with inexpensive drugs. But the thought of some bum with high blood pressure getting a bottle of HCTZ off the people’s dime so deeply offends Martin and LIberal that they wet themselves and scream like little girls at the prospect. Even though a lifetime supply of the stuff is probably cheaper than a single trip to the emergency room for a stroke, not to mention the aftercare and the lost productivity caused by the stroke’s side effects.
As a result, we have the most expensive … and the STUPIDEST … health care system in the world. You wanna know what’s wrong with America’s health care system? It’s Martin and LIberal and people like them. Not just heartless bastards, but STUPID heartless bastards.
To be as polite as possible, I made it very clear that I think there is a difference between rights that government should protect, and things that government should do they are two separate issues. A third issue, the one that was originally brought up by me is the definition of “basic humanitarian need.” I made it very clear I do not view health care as a basic humanitarian need, period. Reasonable people can disagree on this matter, but I view basic humanitarian needs to be food, water, and shelter.
Note that that’s still different from rights. I don’t believe that there is an inherent right to have your basic humanitarian needs filled. Rather I believe it is something government should do (with certain restrictions.)
Your question, “is there a right to expect the government…” is answered by “yes.” You have a right to freedom of opinion, and you can expect anything you want. A more apt question would be, “do you have a right to government protection from death?” Again, I made it clear that I think there are four rights that need to be protected in order for the proper operation of society. One of those is the “right to life” when I enumerated the rights I did so in a simple manner, and to avoid confusion I expanded on them later in that same post. I explained that the right to life should be construed to mean that you should be free from the government killing you, and that the government should make sure no one kills you, too. The only time it is okay for an agent of the government or an individual to kill another person is in self defense (in the operation of civil society, we’ll leave matters of a military nature out of the discussion.)
That is as far as I believe that right should extend. Should the government build flood walls to protect people from death because of a respect for the right to life (as I define it)? No. Should the government provide medical care as an aspect of that right? No.
Again, these are just my opinions. Everyone can have different opinions about government, about rights and et cetera. Some people believe very strongly in the concept of “natural rights” that human beings are endowed with simply by the virtue of being human. I do not believe in natural rights. I believe that a properly functioning government should make certain rights (the ones I’ve enumerated) and then protect them vigorously, to insure that society functions properly.
The Constitution of the United States lists far more rights than I did, those are constitutional rights, and since the Constitution is the governing document in the United States, the government should protect all of those rights constitutionally. But that’s a separate matter from my personal opinions on what I think are the fundamental rights a society should protect.
I’ve also made it clear in previous posts that just because I don’t think something is a right doesn’t mean I do not think government should do it. I do not believe that you have a “right to paved roads” but I believe government should pave roads. I do not believe you have the right to flood walls, levies or et cetera, but I believe government (on a case by case basis) sometimes should build those things.
Let’s not. I don’t think the government should blanketly have as one of its goals “keep people from dying.” I’m going to say something very controversial; there are (roughly) 68,000 people who have registered to post on the SDMB. Of those 68,000, exactly 100% of them will at some point die. That includes me, that includes you, and anyone else who is an actual, real life person. Dying is part of human existence, and government shouldn’t be in the business of trying to stop all deaths.
Maybe I’ve seen too much death in my life and have become desensitized to it, but I do not view death as a great tragedy. Even if I wasn’t religious I wouldn’t view death as a great tragedy. Things have to die, it’s natural and necessary for a balanced world.
Government should be concerned with making a society of humans as good as possible. Decent, honest humans are going to have different ideas about how to make a great society. I believe that government has to approach spending with a cost-benefit analysis. Should government provide universal health care, without restriction, to every citizen? I think there is no one who would answer yes to that. I mean, say someone has suffered a spinal cord injury and is paralyzed. How far should we as a society go in treating that one person? How many experimental procedures should we pay for? Should we pay for stuff that has little chance of improving said person’s life, just because there is a small chance it might?
I think most people would say, we have to cut the line somewhere. Looking at it from a cost-benefit analysis, I do not think it is in the interests of society to provide universal health care coverage. It is not necessarily a good thing to have a bunch of people who die. High mortality rates hurt society. I believe that providing basic emergency medical care significantly reduces the mortality rate. I mean, is it really the worst thing in the world that a seventy year old, even if he’s the nicest, greatest seventy year old in the world, gets cancer and dies because he can’t afford treatment? He’s lived to seventy, he’s almost certainly contributed to society already, he’s a losing investment. Are there some septuagenarians who society should save? Sure. But the ones that are worth saving society will save without having to take my money to do it. If a famous composer or author was sick and needed help, his fans would donate money, or some philanthropist would.
Or take the guy from SiCKO (or however it is spelled) who lost the end of his ring and middle fingers. The cost to fix both fingers was something like $72,000, at least according to Michael Moore. Let’s assume government pays for that, and let’s assume somehow (fat chance in real life) that government could do it more efficiently, and it only costs government $36,000 in tax payer money to fix that guy’s finger tips. What societal purpose is actually served in spending $36,000 in tax payer money to fix a guy’s finger tips? I mean, I’m pretty sure unless he is a secretary and has to be able to touch-type with a high WPM, society can still get plenty out of a guy without two of his ten finger tips.
Yes, I believe it is in government and society’s interests to keep people from killing one another because without restrictions on killing others, a lot of day-to-day societal issues would be very hard to resolve. Say my neighbor is pissing me off with his barking dog, instead of calling the city, I decide to just shoot him and his dog instead. It’s obvious why it is not in the interests of society to have that kind of thing happening, so yes, government should stop people from killing one another.
If someone gets stabbed, government should provide emergency medical care. I don’t believe “Y” has a right to emergency medical care, I just believe on a cost-benefit basis, government should provide it (let me make it clear government should cover said bill only if the person can’t or won’t pay, otherwise you need to pay the hospital for your care.) The ER will fix you up after a stabbing even if it isn’t a fatal stabbing.
In this case, if your tax dollars are appropriate for programs to stop the spread of infectious disease, then as a citizen you are owed that protection since you have paid for it. However, you have no basic right to protection from infectious disease. Government probably should provide it, because it is in the interests of society to stop the spread of infectious disease. That’s sort of like how society should pave roads, it should provide emergency medical care (even if you can’t afford to pay for it), it should also try to stop the spread of infectious disease. However there are of course, limits to that. Government shouldn’t try to stop the spread of all infectious disease, some aren’t of big enough issue to deal with using societal resources. So yes, government should in general try to control the spread of (certain) infectious disease, but no, you don’t have a right to protection from infectious disease.
Well then obviously you were able to secure funding. It’s unfortunate that sometimes difficult situations come up, but society shouldn’t (on a cost-benefit basis) be involved in the business of giving subsidies to people who can otherwise finance their own care.
IF you absolutely could not have financed your care at all, and you would have died otherwise I might support the idea of government stepping in. I’m not sure. I think if government is going to step in to stop someone from “slowly dying” from some medical condition then it has to be limited to people who have sold down their assets and are genuinely completely unable to finance their own care.
I think Fuji’s dad is someone Ireland was foolish to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in to save. He was in his seventies, he had a progressive terminal condition. Society paid for the treatment, the guy still died. How does society benefit from spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on patients who are going to die anyway, and I don’t mean “die” in the philosophical, “some day we’re all dead” sense, but you know “he’s still going to die of this condition, but if we invest tons of money in treatment he may live two more years.” I think time is very valuable, and I’d pay a great deal of money for two more years, but I don’t think someone else should have to pay a great deal of money to keep me alive for two more years if I have a condition that is going to kill me anyway.
I’m not saying Fuji’s dad didn’t deserve care. I’m not unsympathetic to the condition he was in, I am sympathetic to that. It is very hard to lose a family member and it’s very hard to lose one to a progressive disease that takes its toll over many brutal, agonizing years.
However, there are finite resources in the world today. And to be brutally blunt, if we’re going to be paying for medical care I think there are people more deserving than those with terminal conditions who have no chance of being “saved.” That’s like paying to repair the sails on a ship that is taking on water and is going to actually sink within a few hours.
I disagree, sir. On all counts!
“Contributed to society already”? “Societal purpose”? :eek: Good golly. I haven’t seen this level of hard-core social-utilitarianism propounded non-ironically since the days of Soviet Premier Krushchev.
Most of today’s liberals aren’t willing to go as far as some of you conservatives apparently are in exalting the needs of the state to justify spending state money on individuals. Most of us liberals who support universal health-care aren’t advocating it because we think each individual health-care expenditure should provide a specific societal benefit. We just think that overall it’s a good thing to heal people when they get injured or sick, without requiring them to destroy themselves financially before we’re willing to help them.
Sure, since resources are finite, the line always has to be drawn somewhere. A universal health-care system will always face some tough choices about how much to spend to prolong the lives of terminally ill patients, or how many hugely expensive experimental treatments it’s feasible to provide. But I don’t think we need to justify our choices with the kind of fanatical bean-counting calculus of “benefit to society” that you seem to be advocating.
You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. I’m assuming you live in the United States, and if you do, that means you live in a free society. Ultimately what this means is you can find my reasons for thinking something to be absurd, and that’s fine, reasonable people can and will disagree.
I think that when we are taking money that people have earned themselves, or taxing their assets that are rightfully theirs, our government has a responsibility to spend it wisely. That means our government can’t be a bleeding-heart, our government has to make cost-benefit analyses. Government should not be about passion, it should be about pragmatism.
And once again we get hit with the idea of American exceptionalism.
You know, if American government is uniquely incapable of providing certain services, and American government is made up of Americans, all that really shows is that Americans are incompetent.
Strangely, I sincerely doubt that all of the people claiming that American government is uniquely incompetent would embrace the idea that American militaries, or American corporations, or American businesspeople are uniquely incompetent.
It’s a little funny coming from the “You hate America!” crowd.
In general, sure. But don’t you think that when you talk about its not serving any “societal purpose” to reattach somebody’s severed fingertips “unless he is a secretary and has to be able to touch-type with a high WPM”, that’s taking it a bit far? Pragmatism run amok, so to speak?
Pragmatically, we can’t afford to spend an unlimited amount of money on tax-funded universal health care. But pragmatically, based on what we see other countries achieve, our society would get better health care than we have now, for the same or less money, if we had a universal health care system.
It’s basically a matter of simple business efficiency. Private for-profit insurers are, not surprisingly, trying to maximize their profits, which involves denying coverage to high-risk patients and refusing to pay for care whenever they can manage to do so. This interferes with the health-care industry’s fundamental objective of providing people with the medical care that they need.
Getting rid of this expensive and counterproductive middleman, as every other industrialized country in the world has found, ends up saving a society money overall on health-care costs.
Oh, for fuck’s sake, I was using “free” in its commonly understood meaning as in “I personally do not have to directly pay anything for this good or service” as opposed to “free” in a philosophy of government sense.
But hey - at least you responded to the crux of my post… or…
Where did I say America was incapable? We could set up a completely government-run health care system, and it’d work fine. It’d just be a poor use of taxpayer resources and it would be less efficient than a private health care system. It’s arguable that our current mixed system is less efficient than both, although that may not be true.
I’ve never seen evidence that any society has “found” this to be the case. You’re not getting rid of a middleman at all, you’re replacing the middleman with the government. Societies have found that they like getting government handouts, it’s sort of like an addiction, and its an addiction we’d do very well to keep our people from getting. It’s a big part of the reason many European countries and their social security institutions are becoming increasingly unwieldy. You have an unrealistic amount of services, an aging population, fewer taxable working hours and et cetera.
Thanks but no thanks.
The idea that we have a worse health care system than the UK because we don’t want to pay $72,000 to reattach a guy’s finger tips is ludicrous. Any health care system that would pay that up front with no strings attached would be ludicrously stupid. Finger tips aren’t actually all that important. $72,000 could do a lot of good, a whole lot more good than reattach some clumsy dumbass’s finger tips.
Not Ireland. 6% avg. GDP growth over the last 11 years and a per capita income higher than the US.
Source: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/print/ei.html