Actually, that sounds pretty terrible, not “well and good.” This sounds suspiciously like an instance of a conservative ascribing stupid or evil motivations to liberals. Weren’t you just asking for examples of that and/or claiming it never happens?
Nope, I’m a Canadian. As I have pointed out before, and as you have pointedly ignored, we live longer than Americans, live in a healthier state for a longer period than Americans, pay less for health care out of our own pockets than Americans, and pay less for health care through the government than Americans.
Holy shit this is a massive strawman. Have you learned nothing from this thread? When making a strawman, you need to pick topics that you can easily argue against. The Soviet Union might have been a good one a decade ago. But China? Are you use you want to do there? Please, I want you to continue to use strawmen for all your arguments, it makes reading your nonsense that much more enjoyable. But for the love of god, remember that the point of strawman is to construct an argument you can win.
I’m starting to think you took the Cold War a little too seriously.
Is that just life? Or is that just death?
Horseshit. 100% pure Colombian Horseshit.
The rest of those two posts were equally full of nonsense and horseshit.
You may or may not have noticed that countries with UHC have yet to go full-socialist. But do continue with your strawman ballet, it is extremely amusing. I’ve realized that your anger has nothing to do at all with health care, you’re still living in the McCarthy era.
If you want to have some fun, take a look at what the free market brought to Russia. Good times had by all.
It appears that SA feels that the opposite of the view that “government is inherently bad and we should have as little of it as possible” is the view that “government is the bestest thing ever and should run everything”, with no middle ground. If he does acknowledge the existence of the middle ground, I haven’t seen much evidence of it.
In fairness, given his beliefs, his caring about the future is an entirely appropriate response. Most non-sociopathic humans realize that actions taken today will have an effect on generations yet unborn, and hope to leave them a better world.
That argument could be turned around, and you could ask me why I’m concerned about global warming. After all, I’ll be dead and cremated long before the really bad things start happening.
Despite his beliefs being completely wrong-headed, bull-headed, and pin-headed, his worry about the future and his attempts today to affect the future are completely appropriate, and even ethical.
If you could tell us, in advance, which few of those 46 million are going to need urgent and expensive care, it would be a lot easier to target the help just to them.
Yeah, I guess. It’s just he’s been arguing against this specific bill, and now suddenly it’s not even really about the bill, it’s about preventing this insanely contrived master plan to run everyone’s lives, and it just doesn’t seem like a concern that merits this kind of immediacy.
Gotta wonder about that elusive quality of government, that essential nature that ensures the inefficiency of all governmental endeavors, regardless.
I mean, suppose you got Wally’s Widgets, been producing a quality grade of widget for lo, these many years. Profits have always been comparable to other giants of the widget market, productivity good to excellent, that sort of thing.
Then one day the Homeland Security Dept says that its important to control the domestic widget manufacturers, so the government buys Wally’s Widgets. Naturally, as it is clearly written in the Gospel According to St. Arving, productivity and efficiency will plummet like a lemming doing a swan dive.
But right away? Will it happen when the ink dries on the signatures, or does the magical governmental voodoo happen when the government cuts the first paychecks? If the government bought Wally’s Widgets by stealth, and did not reveal its ownership, and left all management and workers in precisely the same roles…would it founder as quickly and as thoroughly?
Is government ownership an irredeemable fall from grace, regardless of who knows about it, the deadly mojo poisons all efficiency, by its very presence? What, then, of free will?
Me, I think Wally’s Widgets would be better off with a workers collective assuming ownership, and if they need an owner to take a cut, they can hire one.
Sure. Why not. I mean, if you’re the United States government and you’re supported by the American taxpayer, you don’t have to worry about making a profit and you can do all sorts of shit to make life easier. You can hire employees you don’t need, pay them more than they’d ever make in a true business environment, give them guaranteed raises plus lots of time off and generous insurance and retirement benefits. You can also make them virtually unfirable. A worker’s paradise if ever there was one.
Only problem is, real income earners must be bled in order to provide the funds for this untenable kind of employee compensation, and so the larger government gets, the fewer private wage earners there are, and eventually you reach the point of diminishing returns where there simply aren’t enough workers to bleed for funds to operate with and so the federal gravy train begins slowly grinding to a halt. Oh, wait…no, it doesn’t. Taxes can always be increased and…oh, wait, no, they can’t. Eventually even a 100% tax rate won’t pay for everything that government…
Oh, well, nevermind. We’ll just let people drive off that bridge when they come to it.
It’s too bad this country’s leadership isn’t as concerned about its unsustainable economic policies as it is about global warming. We’re likely to collapse under our own financial weight long before we’re drowned by melting ice caps.
More like life is my cite. For, as the wonderful conservative quote-meister William F. Buckley, Jr. once observed of the struggle between conservatism and liberalism, “Life is our secret weapon”.
Really? I’m pretty much your exact contemporary and life has taught me quite different lessons.
I remember when there were intelligent conservatives; alas, William F Buckley is dead. Sarah Palin & Rush are your new intellectual leaders–since you mentioned her in the OP & you evidently stole the whole wrong-headed idea from Limbaugh.
I must say, it is certainly helpful to know that this thread has NOTHING to do with health care, and everything to do with a soviet take over of the US. All that shit about death panels and mediocre care was a smoke screen for what was really bothering you.
But serious question: on a scale of 1-10 where 1 is minimal government and 10 is the USSR, where do you see the US now? And where do you see it after UHC? And I guess as a comparison, where do you see Canada and Europe?
Clearly, you haven’t the slightest idea what I’m talking about there. I think you read the word “collective” and went into spasm mode. Worker ownership is not a new idea, nor a particularly radical one, and does not suggest government ownership. Its like I was talking about Methodism, and you answered as if I were talking about voodoo.
But if you ever find the time to answer the question I was actually asking… Its in that section above the part you quoted.
The sad thing is that there are quite legitimate criticisms to be made about UHC, just as there are legitimate criticisms to be made against any system, and yet they have not been made here because making them requires an understanding of the actualities of how UHC works, rather than creating some cartoon boogeyman with no basis in reality to rail against. When you have no facts, no evidence, no informed anecdotes, nothing but a worldview and the reassuring voices in your head that you cling to in the face of all evidence to the contrary, it’s not surprising that you have trouble remembering which bits are real and which are imaginary.
I believe the US should step into the 20th century and adopt single payer yesterday, but I hope you realize this entire post could have been copy/pasted with the private/government entities reversed and made as much sense. If you want to call it that.
I have pretty good health insurance. I can see any doctor I want and they pay the bills without push-back. Sometimes they’re slow in getting me a reimbursement check, but whatever. Sometimes I’m slow paying the electric bill.
So yeah, I’m happy with my insurance. Do I still think healthcare needs to be reformed? You betcha.
Quite my point, my bad for not being clearer. I don’t believe such an entity as “government” exists, in the sense of having some innate qualities that apply universally to all such things. It is a central dogma of the conservative catechism, and it has precisely the same objective reality as the Immaculate Conception, whlich is to say, none.
