How does it work in your neck of the woods? In the US, people have been told for years that we have the best healthcare system in the world. It is hard for many to accept that this isn’t the case based on real data.
Can anyone explain to me why a user-pay system would be cheaper for the average person?
Current system employs a larger bureaucracy, many of whom are at odds with each other.
Sal, this is very disappointing. Labeling me an extremist and calling it a day will not cut it. Did you read the cites and arguments that demonstrated why the FDA does more harm than good? Yes? No? Maybe so? Any comments or refutation on those? Or are you going to label people like Gary Becker and Milton Friedman as extremists too, because they disagree with you and agree with me? (See the “appeal to authority” cite listed earlier.)
My positions are extreme, yes. Why? Because I take a step back. The question you all are asking is “What role should the government play in health care?” I ask, “Should the government play a role in health care at all?” It’s a question that few people ask, and as such, the arguments I present will be different from ones you’ve heard before.
Your thinking is muddled with regard to rights. The idea of having a “right” to health care is bizarre…because the labor of the doctor and the hospitals are all someone else’s property. How did you derive the principles behind this “right to see a doctor without going bankrupt?” Are they anywhere near as universal as the idea that each man owns his own life, and as such has the rights to his life, liberty, and property? Certainly, you have a right to voluntarily exchange for health care, but you have no inherent right to someone else’s labor. There’s a word for that. Slavery.
Here’s the thing. We both desire the same outcome - cheaper, higher quality healthcare. But by deeming such healthcare a right, you imply that it is ok to violate other rights in order to grant every person that right. It’s not.
clairobscur, I’m done responding to you. Have a nice life.
I’ll content myself with saying that this is a thread about what conservatives think about universal healthcare, not about why society should be set up on “anarcho-capitalist” principles that few other than yourself believe in – a subject about which no one is stopping you from starting a thread, by the way.
Sal did not say your position on the FDA was extreme, but your position on licensing physicians. Suing is hardly a satisfactory response when a quack has mistreated someone beyond the recovery point. As for drugs, I’m sure you’re correct that consumers will study the market and the research and never buy, say, distilled water marketed as medicine.
Oh wait…
We live in a civilized society, not in anarchy. Every man has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, as it says in the Declaration. We have the right to expect a degree of protection in our homes and on the streets. Doing so requires taxation for the greater good. I’m sorry if you think paying for the police is a violation of your rights - an absolute right to your income is a right you have made up - it is not a defensible one in any workable society. The right to some degree of health care is just as valid as the right to police protection.
If you don’t think so, you are invited to find some like-minded people and buy an island in international waters. It would be interesting to see how your experiment goes. I think you are as unrealistic as the most utopian of pure communists.
Fair enough. All: I’ll stop hijacking the thread now.
Can you elaborate on this? Perhaps you might include some cites.
Note the European cites all discuss national, not EU/continental solutions. Why should the Federal government of the USA be given the task of implimenting Medicare/Medicaid Plus? Isn’t a system that’s farthest from its consumers, the more wasteful, sluggish and impersonal? Was the recently signed, statewide, nearly universal Massachusetts Health Care Plan a compromise the left and right can embrace?