It need not be emotional at all. Human values like compassion and fairness have a solid ethical basis as foundations for a civilized society, which is why every advanced democracy on earth has moved forward to universal health care, to their economic and moral benefit, except the United States. In the US, sadly, the plutocracy is still propagandizing about “higher taxes” and “government-run health care”, not to mention the famous death panels and “the end of freedom as we know it” (a line used throughout the heated Republican battle against Medicare in the early 60s).
Not me, and not the Democrats. But as I recall, there is one party whose presidential candidates were asked, in the first presidential debate of this past election cycle, when the last time was that God had spoken to them, and what advice God had given them. This was taken as a routine and perfectly normal question, considering the party that the candidates represented. There is indeed one political party that is totally on board with having Jesus run the place – at least, according to their concepts of what Jesus would do – and I think it’s a party that you’re quite familiar with.
Its even worse than that. As I said upthread, one of the fundamental problems of American healthcare is trying to run a large number of overlapping systems in parallel, with all the duplication of work and cascading bureaucracy that implies.
If you really wanted a universal system, that’s not going to work. You can’t fix that by adding yet another, bigger system. You’re going to have to either sweep it all away and use the money for a new system, or expand one of them until it covers everyone.
So Medicare, Medicaid, VA, IHA, etc… say good by. Or at best, pick one to keep.
That’s not going to be popular. To put it very mildly indeed. I know it is popular to blame the politicians, but if there is one thing I have observed from outside the whole healthcare omnishambles, it is that the American public is very sensitive about changing their healthcare. Because losing healthcare and being without is a realistic worry in the US. From elsewhere, it looks like fear of witches, something medieval. But it is a realistic worry in the US (losing healthcare not witches).
So people who have healthcare, which is the voting majority, is very negative to having it mucked around with. They are intrinsically disposed to believe the scare stories, because their local observations are their situation can only change for the worse.
Well how strange. Clothahump seems to have mislaid his bookmark to this thread, and he’s normally so chatty. I guess all those with pre-existing conditions who were asking how to avoid dying in a ditch in the Brave New World that he favoured are just going to have their curiosity left unsatisfied.
…because the United States is not everywhere else. That’s kind of the point of sovereignty is determining what’s best for your citizens regardless of what anyone else may or may not be doing. The citizens of the United States for, whatever reason(s), may determine that’s not the system they prefer to use or the system that works best for them.
The citizens of the USA are Different and Special. They don’t like playing nicely in a group. They don’t like pooling their resources so everyone in the group can have a better life. If someone else’s life is difficult, tough shit. They want to sit on their personal sack of money (however paltry it may be) behind their own closed and locked door with a gun in each hand. Woe betide anyone who comes to the front door who doesn’t look/talk like them. (This goes double in Chicago.)
Oh, wait… that’s not all Americans. Just Republicans.
The citizens of the United States are different and special for their unique self determination. The citizens of the United Kingdom are different and special for their unique self determination. The citizens of France are special and unique for their unique self determination. The citizens of Venezuela are different and special for their unique self determination. Don’t know what to tell you, that 's how it works.
As an aside. every day you seem to edge closer to posting as the love child of a weird Der Trihs/Reeder weekend. That’s not a good thing outside of it’s relative entertainment value.
It’s pretty clear that 100% of the citizens are not going to agree on a solution. And many people are very vocal that they only want a solution which benefits them personally. So when you have millions of people each wanting their own solution, you’re not going to reach consensus. If you will only accept a health care solution which doesn’t negatively affect you personally in any way, you’re not really looking for a solution to America’s health care problem.
I think single-payer is the solution for America. Even though it will raise my taxes and I personally will likely get lower-quality of health care, I support it. I would accept the degradation of my current situation to know that everyone can be free of the health care burden.
I look at SS and Medicare the same way. I have been fortunate and personally likely won’t need either when I retire. However, I still strongly support both programs and would support expanding them. The overall massive benefit they bring to the country outweighs the financial burden placed upon me.
That’s a perfectly valid opinion. But as you said, there is no one opinion that is satisfactory to all and, as valid as your opinion is, it bears no more weight than anyone else’s opinion. A person who feels that single payer is NOT the solution even though it negatively affects someone else is similarly as valid and carries the same weight.
Strictly speaking, it should do neither. The average UHC system cost less than the US government spends on health care today. Per person. And gives better quality care.
However, the US seems to have accepted as a fact that every aspect of health care costs a lot, so hitting the average may not be doable. Still, you could have a pretty expensive system without spending more then your government does today.
And maybe you personally have a quality well above the US average. Every other country bar Canada has a private sector, and they are going to have to compete on something, so I expect there will still be a platinum strata.
That’s true, but we have to come up with a solution for a very large group of people.
It’s like when you’re trying to decide anything for a group. Rarely will everyone agree. Even if it’s something as simple as where to go for lunch, there will be wildly differing preferences. We can’t go to the Pizza/Burger/Indian/Vietnamese/Vegan restaurant because that doesn’t exist.
You seem to have strong opinions on this. What is your solution? Please be specific. If not for the whole country, then come up with the popular solution for your state. And you can’t be just saying “I don’t like this, I don’t like that”. Just like when picking the restaurant for the group, you can’t just shoot down other ideas. You have to start putting your ideas out there.
My opinion is that we already have a national healthcare initiative that may need to be enhanced and broadened in terms of eligibility. It’s not great but it covers the basics and catastrophes . It can be combined with privatized insurance for added coordinated benefit.
Which leads me to conclude that you’re OK with the US being more stupid and cruel than the rest of civilization.
Or the citizens of the US can be misinformed, ignorant, and make the wrong decision.
And… what “national healthcare initiative” is that? Because I am unaware of anything that covers everyone in the country, except the law that the ER can’t turn you away if you’re in imminent danger of death. Which does NOT cover “the basics” like routine check-ups and vaccinations, and only limited forms of catastrophe - if you’re gut-shot they’ll do surgery to save your life, but after that no one is in any way obligated to do any sort of follow-up like, say, reversing a colostomy so you can shit normally again. Or, if the ER finds you have cancer, absolutely no one is obligated to treat you for that if you don’t have sufficient funds.
So, do please tell me what this “initiative” may be, that covers both basics and catastrophes, and is actually available to all.
That has to be one of the most vapidly idiotic comments that’s ever been posted on the subject. For someone who presumes to pontificate on how things work, you appear to have an appalling lack of understanding of how health care works. Health care economics is an academic discipline that can be empirically studied. The administration of health care systems can be empirically studied. The ethics of health care – and notably the fact that everyone will have a need for it at various times in their lives and most likely a critical need for it at some point – can be studied with respect to the moral obligations of a civilized society.
None of those things are particularly difficult things to study, and it’s a mystery to no one that the US health care system costs more than twice as much per capita as the OECD average, results in poorer outcomes, and leaves behind a swath of personal bankruptcies every year along with morally untenable consequences including preventable suffering and deaths. It’s a mystery to no one that despite vast differences in government and ideology every single industrialized democracy on earth has embraced universal health care as a basic human right – except the United States. Different nations have different implementations of their health care systems, but all embrace the same fundamental principles of universality and shared responsibility – principles that Republican ideology rejects out of hand.
The problem in the US isn’t about lack of empirical evidence, it’s the fact that the Republican agenda and much of the misconceptions of popular belief are based on a pack of lies, and have been since at least the late 50s and early 60s when Reagan railed against Medicare, introducing scare words like “socialized medicine” and warning that it would be the end of America as we know it, and that if Medicare wasn’t stopped, “one of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children, what it once was like in America when men were free.” Today exactly the same excuses and scare tactics are directed against any kind of meaningful health care reform.
