I’m 56 (thanks for calling me young though - I do feel very old at times) and paraplegic. If you go back in this thread far enough you’ll see my comment about needing 3 extended hospital stays (and 3 plastic surgeries) in 2 years for a very stubborn pressure sore. I’ve also had quite a few other hospital stays in the past for other reasons. All of this was covered automatically; I didn’t have to ask the government (federal or provincial), nor did my doctors ask permission of the government before they did what they had to do. At the moment I am employed part-time (I’m slowly getting back into the working world from my above-mentioned pressure sore issues) and will hopefully be getting back full-time in the near future; I haven’t had to sell everything I have to pay my medical bills, nor is all my present income going to medical bills (in fact, none of it is).
Yes, I took (and am taking) much more out of the system than the majority of people, especially those are healthy. However, the point is that you can not possibly know whether and when you might be placed in a situation similar to mine. UHC insures that nobody including those foolish enough to think “I’m healthy so I don’t need insurance - it can’t happen to me” loses everything they have because of unforeseen medical issues.
It goes back to my cockroach comment. One ill-informed, ignorant, asshole posting on the Straight Dope represents millions of ill-informed, ignorant, assholes nationwide. And they get the same right to vote that you do.
Which means when another election comes around, an even half-way wise politician will look at that massive block of block-heads and conclude and easy victory is at hand if he plays to the crowd.
Sarah Palin made $12million over the past year off of these assholes.
And what bothers me the most is that there are actual and legitimate criticisms of single-payer health care. If you are in Canada/UK/France/etc during an election cycle you’ll hear lots of discussion about how best to alter/improve their versions of UHC.
But instead, nearly half the voting public thinks the same moronic bullshit that Starving Artist thinks–and then try to claim “it’s just a differing view point.” Which is just another one of his many lies, it’s not all relative or shades of gray. The shit he bases his “opinions” on have no reflection on reality, but he still gets to express it and thereby influence other gullible Palinites, who read the email and hit “forward to all in address book.” Spreading disinformation has gotten waaaaay too easy. The SDMB shouldn’t be another vector for their viruses of stupidity. I will gladly bump this thread every day to make sure everyone realizes how stupid Starving Artist and his opinions are. Which reminds me, someone should go bump Rand Rover’s death to HCR thread.
First of all, you genuinely have my sympathies for what you’ve been through and I’m glad that you are on the mend and beginning to get your life back together.
But having said that, I think people SHOULD exhaust their own recources before they turn to everyone else for help. Why should people be deprived of hundreds of dollars a month for decades out of their lives - money that could have been spent on nicer homes or automobiles, or food and clothing, or education for their children or vacations in Europe or whatever - simply so that someone in your situation doesn’t have to give up some of their own stuff or borrow against assets or future earnings in order to pay for their own health care?
This just absolutely does not make sense to me and is all kinds of wrong. It’s destructive to the principle of self-reliance and freedom from government control, and it’s extremely unfair to the people who are forced to pay to finance the peace of mind and asset retention of others with their own hard-earned dollars.
And someone might want to quote what I’m about to say so that kaylasdad99 will see it. Why he keeps up this silly game of responding to things I say while still pretending to ignore me is anyone’s guess:
“Smidgeon” is a perfectly proper and cromulent variant of the word “smidgen”. You can look it up.
UHC: get sick, get medical help that you have paid for through taxes, continue on as a productive member of society vs. Non-UHC: get sick, lose everything, do not get medical help, do not continue on as a productive member of society, live on welfare.
It still comes back to us living longer, living in a healthier state for a longer period, paying less individually and paying less through the government than you.
Simple. People put money into a pooled-risk health care program to spare other people with health problems from having to make a choice between lack of treatment and crippling financial costs, so that when they end up with health problems of their own, they can be spared having to make a choice between lack of treatment and crippling financial costs too.
What happens when people who pay premiums into the system never experience enough health problems of their own to “get their money’s worth” out of the system, you ask?
Well, if they’re decent human beings, they go around singing “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah” and thanking their lucky stars and/or offering hymns of gratitude to the deity/ies of their choice, if any.
If they’re selfish arrogant assholes like Starving Artist, on the other hand, they go around complaining about being “deprived” of “their” money in order to help support “freeloaders”.
You got it. Why should millions of people and their familes be deprived of the benefits of their own earnings simply so that the small minority of people who lack sufficient assets to pay for their own care don’t have to live on welfare?
No it doesn’t. The idea that we pay less individually is a fiction. Millions and millions of people will be forced to pay into UHC. Tell them that it’s costing them less. Plus there’s no way to prove return on investment. It’s a specious and unprovable meme that people will get back a return on what they’ve paid when the time comes that they need care. Some people will need a lot of care and it will be expensive, while others will require relatively little.
And I’m sorry, but but people would live in heathier states now if they were willing to cough up the money needed to maintain it. But the reality is that people will spend their money on things they want and put off or ignore health care concerns in order to do so. Then once they’ve developed a condition that is serious enough or painful enough, they’ll finally break down and go to the doctor. Again, I see no need for people to have to spend huge chunks of money that could otherwise go to benefit themselves or their families just so Joe Blow can spend his wages on large screen TVs and furniture and cars and boats and beer and strip clubs and be freed from the need to divert some of them maintaining his or his family’s own good health. The fact of the matter is that health care is most people’s last concern when it comes to spending the money they make, so why should it be enough of a concern of mine that I would be willing to pay hundreds of dollars of my own money every month in order to provide them with access to care they don’t want to pay for themselves?
More of the selfishness and dishonesty so typical of the left on this issue. Selfishness as illustrated by Kimstu’s use of quotes on “their” money…as though people have no legitimate right to want their own money to begin with; and dishonesty by portraying me as having referred to the recipients of UHC as “freeloaders”. This is exactly the kind of behavior I was referring to upthread when I said:
Although SA’s recent “The peasants have no health insurance? Let them mow lawns!” comments show a similar disconnect from reality, they lack the creepiness necessary to replace his youthful sexcapades as a thread low point.
However, don’t tear up those tickets: There’s no telling what SA might say next.
It’s not selfish for me to point out that you are being selfish in refusing to consider the ways in which what you call “your own” money accrues to you partly through the efforts and sacrifices of others. If you really don’t see how all of us in a society are to some extent mutually indebted to one another for the ability to get and keep what we think of as “our” money, then you’re not only selfish but a moron.
You certainly implied that very thing not just in your most recent post, but a few posts back as well. And if you think we can’t remember what you said or understand what you meant by it, or that we’ll let your false accusations of dishonesty scare us away from pointing it out, then you’re an even bigger moron than we took you for.
Do you feel this way about all forms of insurance and shared risk? When a year goes by that you don’t get in a car accident, are you mad that you frittered your money away on car insurance premiums you didn’t use instead of a new television?
Why should people give up everything when they get sick, is that your way of teaching them a lesson?
I’d like to point out that 1 million families cannot buy themselves a new car with a buck, but they can help many others by sharing those dollars into a health care system. Then, oneday you may become ill, or your child or grandchild. And because your contibutions helped put somebody else back in the work force, you, or your kid or grand kid, get help when you need it.
This could happen to you, or someone you love. I’m perfectly happy paying a bit extra in taxes so that nobody you love has to ever go through what she went through.
That’s why in Canada, everyone who pays taxes coughs up the money needed to maintain health insurance. With UHC up here in the Great White North, everyone who pays taxes pays into the insurance pool. People up here can not skate on paying into health care insuance the way they do in the USA.
This is the same b.s. that the left has been using to justify taxation for social purposes for decades. At what point do think a person’s taxes equal the benefit they get by having the privilege of earning money in this country? There seems to be no limit; whenever the left wants to raise taxes, it’s merely a justifiable quid pro quo in return for the money earned. When taxes were 10%, that was the justifiable return for the benefit of being able to earn money due to America’s prosperity and economic system. When it was 20%, that was the justifiable return for the benefit of being able to earn money due to America’s prosperity and economic system. The same was true when tax rates hit 30%, 40%, 50%, etc. This has also been the excuse for disproportionately taxes the rich (or, as it stands now, the affluent). They allegedly derive greater benefit for living in the same country as everyone else, and so it is therefore justifiable that they pay an even higher percentage in taxes. You people will be endlessly claiming a tit-for-tat relationship between earnings and higher taxes until we finally get to the point that government is taking it all.
The people I’ve referred to are not freeloaders. Take Canadjun, for example. Under his country’s system he was able to get the treatment he needed and so he did so. I disagreed with the type of political philosophy that made that system possible but I cast no aspersions whatsoever upon him. I did cast aspersions to at least some degree on people who spend their money on more trivial things and then don’t have money when the time comes to pay for maintaining their health, but even then I didn’t refer to them as freeloaders. I don’t even regard politicians who champion endless taxes for everything as encouraging freeloading themselves, because obviously people have to work to get the money for the government to take.
So you’re either wrong or a liar. The first is unlikely because it is all perfectly obvious. So that leaves what I said: the typical liberal response to disagreement, which is to lie about what they’ve said and call them names. Both of which you’ve been doing in spades.
Nope. I have no problem with people choosing on their own to spend their money paying for insurance. It’s one of the ways people spend their own money in order to take care of themselves and their own, and is in fact precisely the kind of expenditure I think they should be making. I do not think the government should be making that decision for them, nor do I think the government should be administrating the care they get.
Here we have yet another example of how liberals love to dishonestly distort an opponents position and beliefs so as to paint them in negative and hopefully anger-inducing ways. I have said nothing, nor even thought anything, along the lines of how sick people need to be “taught” some kind of lesson. You people are really starting to grasp at straws here, and you’re illustrating perfectly the depths you’ll sink to in order to get your way in the bargain. I regard this as victory.
Do you really regard the astonishing arrogant ignorance you’ve demonstrated in this thread as victory?
:dubious:
You assholes. You raided the fucking treasury to pay for a war we didn’t need, bailout for bankers and god knows what in Alaska.
But we try to do one reasonable thing for the middle class in this country – one reasonable thing that actually would cost most of us less – and you act as if we’re poisoning your dog.
variant of the word “smidgen”. You can look it up.