Where's my fucking affordable health care, you fucking fuck? [lame]

The BBQ Pit
101

Hmmm. “Hardcore.” You mean that in the sense of “stubborn,” or “uncompromising,” right? That strikes me as particularly ironic.

The ideological belief that “socialism in any form, no matter how limited, is by its very nature loathsome and evil” is largely peculiar to a people like you, Weirddave. There are an awful lot of ideologues of that particular flavour in your population, so it’s understandable that you feel you have a handle on a Universal Truth.

Socialism and capitalism are opposing economic ideas, yeah. Reasonable people consider the approaches on their merits, relevent to the task at hand. Like you, I don’t think that socialism is a practical approach to a whole economy. That doesn’t mean the approach is totally invalid. Capitalism isn’t a practical approach to a whole economy, either.

For most of the needs of society, capitalist ventures fit the bill pretty well. Socialized fast food would suck. A totally socialized film industry would probably be utter shit. (The availability of film grants isn’t a bad thing by any stretch of the imagination, though.) Many things benefit from the competition that is inherent in capitalism. Of course.

Some things work better when socialized, though. Roads, for example, aren’t something that should be determined by market forces. If they were, a cross-country trip would be pretty near impossible. You’d have toll-booths everywhere that one patch of road ended and a competitor’s started. Most rural areas wouldn’t have real roads at all, because there’s no profit in maintaining them. If you privatized the roads, you’d pay more for them and not everyone would be able to use them – much like the way your privatized health care is much more costly every other developed country’s, on a* per capita* basis, and yet many people have no health coverage at all.

Healthcare is a basic service that makes sense to socialize, because that’s the most practical and beneficial approach – in the specific instance of delivery of health services. A reasonable person would see that.

I’ve never heard even sven argue that the fast food industry should be socialized because “SOCIALISM GOOD! CAPITALISM BAD!” I’m sure she is willing to admit that in the specific instance of fast food delivery, the capitalist model serves the public best. If someone can provide a burger that’s better and cost-competitive when compared with a Big Mac, let them edge out McDonald’s. Good for them. Hamburgers aren’t a basic need, though, and “all the market will bear,” isn’t too difficult to pony up when compared to, say, all the market will bear for chemotherapy, heart medication, surgery, or birth control pills.

Weirddave, you are a hardcore ideologue, when it comes to economics. You’ve got a lot of like-minded neighbors, which may give you comfort – but it shouldn’t, because it’s costing you dearly.

Reasonable people don’t pick one approach and apply it to every situation. Hardcore socialists fuck up their countries, if given the opportunity. Hardcore capitalists fuck up their countries., if given the opportunity.

The economic model that serves the public best is Reesist: “Hey! You got your socialism in my capitalism!” “You got your capitalism in my socialism!” Together: “Mmmmmm.”

102

Yeah, I’m a starry-eyed pinko idealist and it’s probably a good idea that I don’t run the world because I have some pretty odd ideas. I feel like since I have absolutely no chance of changing the world much, I have a right to my overboard beliefs. And I actually do have a plan for government fast food (cheap, healthy food, plus reasonably paid jobs in the community, and a good use for agricultural excess- what can go wrong?!) I assure you that you are in no danger of this coming true.

However, this is one of the places where socialization actually does work quite well, and you have to be purposefully obtuse to claim otherwise. Dozens of nations do it. It works in dozens of nations. This is compared to our nation, where healthcare does not work for millions of uninsured, nor particularly well for a good chunk of the insured. It may work for you, it may one day work for me, but on the whole OUR SYSTEM DOES NOT WORK.

No, I don’t believe that the government can provide healthcare at 1% of the cost of private business. I was commenting on the common attitude that giving money to the government is a fate worse that death (or at least, worse than the death of a few fellow Americans) whereas spending that same money on a business that is so bloated and corrupt it makes the government look anorexic is just great. We spend 24% of our tax budget on medicare and medicade- programs that come nowhere near providing health care to everyone that needs it. We spend huge chunks of our GDP on healthcare costs- most of which doesn’t actually reflect how much it actually costs to help sick people. And yet here you guys are saying our system is just peachy keep and anything we do to change it will cost more money- and more importantly, put a bigger percentage of that money in control of the government. There has to be a better way.

103

Well, no system is perfect and everyone will have horror stories to tell. FWIW, I’m a Dane who lives in California, and - as luck would have it - I’ve never been seriously involved with either system as a patient. I have seen friends and family (including my wife) being patients in both systems, however. Incidentally, I have close relatives who work for the national health care system, so I’ve sometimes been a little privy to some inside information.

It’s extremely rare to hear a Dane express any desire for a US-like system. It’s not that Danes don’t complain about the system in place - quite the contrary - but the idea that any of the problems would be alleviated by having private insurance take over is not a widespread one at all.

The Danish system is a hybrid right now - by far the majority use the publicly provided services and most are, in the end, quite happy with the quality of the care. There are, however, private clinics and hospitals for those who’d rather go that route, and you can purchase insurance for that purpose, too. (The private hospitals basically sell themselves on two points: Better creature comforts (hospital food appears to be a universal problem), scheduling on the patient’s terms and no waiting, ever.) Again, looking at the care my family has received from the public system, I’ve rarely ever seen any cause for complaint. Certainly, my family would have been hard up to finance the care that my paternal grandmother received in her final years. It is a pretty good feeling that bad things can happen and the safety net is just there, no paperwork, no deductible, no need to take out a second mortgage, no input from anyone who’ll profit from reducing care - it just swings into action. So from what I’ve seen from my family’s encounters with the Danish system, I would have absolutely no desire to move towards the US model.

From the generally healthy person’s perspective - and speaking as one who thinks that being healthy sort of obliges you to help out those who are less lucky, even if - like milroyj - they’re disinclined to return the favour: It’s way, way, way less of a hassle.

Case in point: I just changed jobs. The amount of freakin’ paperwork involved in getting moved from one plan to another - to say nothing about getting medical care while still being processed into the new plan - was comparable to the insurance paperwork involved in processing a car accident and about as enjoyable.

Even if for some bizarre reason I actually liked doing paperwork, all of that paper has to be looked over by some undoubtedly hardworking, qualified and careful people - whose salaries are paid out of my healthcare dollar. None of their efforts go into training a doctor or paying a nurse or buying an aspirin.

It has long been an article of faith that government involvement triggers more paper-shuffling, not less. In this case, it’s quite the reverse - actually, remarkably so.

104

Larry, I don’t think I have ever seen a post that made so many points that I agree with (not all, but a good many), and yet so completely missed the mark on what I think. To clear the air, what I meant when I said that Sven is a hardcore socialist is that she has the attitude you are accusing me of having: she does ( as evidenced by her posts I’ve read over the years ) believe that everything would work better if it was socialized. She would ( and unless I’m misreading what she just posted, she just agreed with this ) socialize fast food. I think there are a good many things that have to be “socialized”, roads, as you mentioned, police, fire, national defense amongst other things. I just am not sure that Health Insurance is one of those things. By and large, the states that have the most government interference in the health insurance industry also have the least affordable health insurance. (I’ve given the New Jersey example already.) Canada is an anomaly in this, I believe in a large part because they are so large with such a relatively small population, but ( Here, I’ll get this out of the way to head off complaints: THIS IS ANECDOTAL) from what I understand by asking them about it, most Europeans pay much, much higher taxes than we do. A friend of mine in Holland told me he pays 45-50% of his income in taxes. (Arwin, does this sound right to you?) Sure, he gets oodles of services for the money, and he actually likes the system. I wouldn’t like that system.

Let me give you an example. When my wife and I were purchasing our health insurance, we looked at the cost of covering routine doctor’s visits, we looked at the number of times per year we actually went to the doctor ( almost never ), we looked at the fact that my dad is a retired doctor and usually sees us on those rare occasions when we do get sick, and we elected to omit coverage for doctors office visits from our policy. This saved us almost $1100/year in premium costs. If the system were federalized, even if policies cost the exact same as they do now, I seriously doubt we’d have that option. We’d have to pay the $1100/year for a service we wouldn’t be using. That doesn’t strike me as being a more efficient system.

105

Hey, it’s not our fault that your dad doesn’t offer free medical care and advice for the rest of us.

106

:rolleyes:

107

Strictly speaking, that’s not Dave’s “fault” either.

108

I’m not sure what your point is. I mentioned things that factored into our decision. We most likely would have done the same if dad was a plumber, but the fact that he’s not was the icing on the cake. The fact that we aren’t forced into a one size fits all government plan is what was important.

Oh, and TYM, what’s the rolleyes for? Your only factual objection to my posts has been that I used the term “only a couple” when there are 13 companies, and I conceded your gramatical nitpick. You have anything of substance to add, or are you just going to stand on the sideines and snipe at me because you "have a natural skepticism of anything that comes from (my) keyboard. "?

109

That’s probably correct. There’s a thread in GD right now about American and European tax perspectives which gives more details. But we don’t pay more for health care. As others have mentioned in this thread, USA pays more for health care per capita than Europe and Canada does. My “extra” taxes go to other evil commie welfare handouts, like getting 52 weeks maternity/paternity leave with 80% wages for each child, and mostly free education up to and including university level. (I was puzzled the first time I came across the concept “college fund”, and pretty shocked when I realised that to get a good college education in US, you apparently have to fork over somewhere in the neighbourhood of 100 000 dollars from your own pockets.)

Health care like America? * shudder * No way. I won’t claim it’s perfect here, but it works.

110

Because you keep insisting that your New Jersey example proves some sort of point when as far as I can tell it is merely unsupported bullshit. As is the bulk of what comes from your keyboard. You’ve not bothered to answer my questions; you’ve only shrieked at me that you are an authority. I honestly didn’t think my rolleyes would be that difficult for you to interpret, given our exchanges in this thead.

111

That it’s easy to dismiss people looking for affordable health care as “socialists” when you’re benefitting from an inexpensive alternative that other folks don’t have access to.

But then, that’s the Republican philosophy in a nutshell: I’ve got mine, so screw you.

112

And which questions were those? I haven’t shrieked anything, merely pointed out that I am a senior agent in an office for a national insurance company, my office’s territory includes Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, Delaware and Pennsylvania, before the laws were changed and we left the state, New Jersey was part of our territory too. I am required to be conversant on local laws, to maintain a valid insurance license in any state I or anyone under me does business in and I deal with this every day of the week, and have been doing so for almost a decade. In other words, I am a professional. This is what I do. I do not claim that that makes me an authority anything, but it certainly means that I am speaking from a base of knowledge and experience. You are…what? Someone from Colorado who has demonstrated the ability to Google a .pdf file? If, say, danceswithcats told you that in order to fight a fire effectively, you needed to do a specific thing, would you disagree with him because you were able to Google the picture of a Dalmatian and a fire hydrant?

Oh, BTW, I made a couple of assumptions before checking on rates (that you are female and don’t smoke, and I picked a random Colorado zip code for your location), but if you’re paying over $400/month for “crappy” health insurance, you’re getting reamed. Good coverage is available much cheaper than that in your state. You might want to look into it.

113

But then, that’s the Republican philosophy in a nutshell: I’ve got mine, so screw you.
[/QUOTE]

Thanks for the tip. If I ever become a Republican, I’m sure to ace that question on the entrance exam!

OTOH, if one were to judge by you, then apparently being a liberal means that you ignore anything anyone says that disproves the assumptions you want to make, kinda like this:

Feel free to continue to ignore any facts that disprove your preconceived notions.

114

I see that that is so. (Socialized fast food? even sven, I think you’re swell, but that’s hilarious.) I’ve clearly inscribed the wrong name on the SDMB’s Most Rabid Ideologue trophy.

I assumed that your preference for privatized health care was purely ideological because it can so clearly be shown to be less advantageous than socialized health care. With respect, I think that your preference is based on poor reasoning (which is at least better than stubborn ideology.)

The flaw in your reasoning is that socialized systems demonstrably are more efficient. Canadians, on average, pay about $1700 per year less than you do – and we don’t have to forego office visits in order to do it. And everybody’s covered. Even leaving aside the benefit of universal coverage, your example doesn’t make any sense. Suppose you’re shopping for a new computer. You can buy from an inefficient outlet with a huge markup, or a sleeker operation, for a little over half the price. If you go for the BloatStore option, but skip a bunch of peripherals and recycle your old keyboard, mouse, 15" monitor, etc because you can get by with that much, and it costs 30% less that BloatStore’s sticker price, are you saving money because you opted not to buy the fully-featured, complete computer from CornerShop for 52% less than the BS stickerprice? Hooray, your money went towards television advertising, twice-weekly full-colour saturation mailouts, an obscenely wealthy CEO, teams of BloatStore lawyers, the maintenance and real estate costs of BloatStore’s city-block sized building, all that good stuff that comes with an inefficient organization. Are you getting a better deal than if you’d spent less and got the complete package from a leaner operation?

115

The sentences in my previous posts that ended in question marks.

Incorrect assumptions. Though I am working on the smoking, I think I’ll stay male.

Tell you what, I’ll drop out of this thread, not even contributing rolleyes from here on. It seems apparent that you and I cannot communicate (on this subject, at least) even if our lives depended on it.

116

This is the part that most confuses me. Personally, I’ve always felt that insurance (of any kind, not just health) was the closest thing to socialism in a capitalist society. When I buy insurance, I’m not buying it with the expectation of using it on a regular basis. It’s simply a pool of people that have each pitched in money, with the assumption that if an unforseen emergency should befall us, we’ll be covered. In other words, a safety net. Other than the fact that the government isn’t directly in control, that looks like socialism in action to me.

If your problem isn’t with socialized health care in principle, but is instead with how you imagine the government would run it, that’s just peachy and we can have a different debate. If your problem is with the level playing field that socialized health care brings, then you really are in the wrong business, and should even cancel all of your insurance policies, as you’re just subsidizing others right now (or being subsidized if you make frequent use of those covered services).

Which is it?

117

Which it just might.

118

A 47yo male smoker rates about the same as a 47yo female non-smoker, so my point stands. As for the rest, you’ve thrown a bunck of questions around in this thread, and I answered some of them. I’m not sure we will be able to communicate if you are not willing to specify exactly what it is that you want to know.

119

Hmmm, could this possibly be why you’re so opposed to health care reform? Because you work for the industry whose greediness is at the heart of the health-care crisis?

I work for them too, our biggest clients are some of the major associations representing the health care industry. But that doesn’t cloud my vision. Working for them, I get to see from behind-the-scenes exactly what types of tactics they use, and that is why I get so disgusted with them.

120

Meh. Voluntary associations are not socialism. If someone was forcing you to kick your money into the pot, that would be socialism. The bigger problem is that while you seem to get it (“When I buy insurance, I’m not buying it with the expectation of using it on a regular basis. It’s simply a pool of people that have each pitched in money, with the assumption that if an unforeseen emergency should befall us, we’ll be covered. In other words, a safety net.”), most people don’t. They want health insurance to be something that they’ll use all in time. They want HI because they don’t want to pay for their own health care, period. They want HI to pay for fertility treatments, bariatric surgery, pimple cream, nose jobs and liposuction. They want to get services without having to pay what those services cost. If car insurance worked that way it’d cover oil changes and cost more than the car itself. If homeowners insurance worked like that, each policy would come with a maid and a butler. Most people don’t see HI as a a protection against a catastrophic loss anymore, but rather as an entitlement. Please, before you tell me that I don’t know what I’m talking about, believe me, I see it every day. My greatest fear about universal health care is not the catastrophic loss aspect of it or the safety net issue, it’s that politicians, seeking to curry the favor of their constituency and get reelected, will institute a plan that promises to pay for everything from removing grandma’s liver spots to circumcising junior’s penis without requiring the recipients of these services to pay a thin dime. Providing that level of care for everyone, including the 50 million people who don’t have coverage now, will cost a staggering amount of money, and government has NEVER demonstrated an ability to show any type of reasonable fiscal restraint. Can you tell me honestly that if the government announced that they were putting together a universal health care plan that the American public as a whole would NOT demand blanket, cradle to grave care for everything even remotely medical in nature? After all, aren’t we “the greatest country on earth, and if we’re going to provide government health coverage, by gum it better cover everything.” Do you really think that the government wouldn’t be forced by the demands of the constituency into instituting bloated, inefficient, expensive coverage? You live here, am I misreading the “me, me me” attitude of Americans in general? Private insurance companies are at least limited by their need to stay competitive and turn a profit, the government has to do neither. All it has to do is raise taxes.