I don’t disagree with you Blalron but I think (just speaking for myself) there is a fundamental difference between what is a “right” and what is something “government should do.”
Now I think what each of us is going to define as a right will vary somewhat, and that is fine we are all individuals with different opinions.
It is to the nation’s benefit to have an educated populace, so the government provides for that.
It is to the nation’s benefit to have a military to defend the nation, so the government provides for that.
Now… is it to the nation’s benefit to have a healthy populace? Or, conversely, does it benefit the nation if its citizens are sick, diseased, and/or in poor health?
Sure… off the top of my head, I can think of a few things the government shouldn’t be doing. Like arranged marriages! That would be a terrible idea. But healthcare? That seems to work. I don’t see how it fundamentally differs from other government services like education.
What’s the worst possible thing that could happen if we had universal healthcare? Honestly. I’m not seeing the downside here. It’s not like living in Canada or Europe is a complete nightmere, is it?
You now perfectly well there’s no comparison between slavery and paying taxes to fund healthcare. There’s no need to go into this in detail. You’re advocating for libertarianism, in this thread, not discussing about whether an universal healthcare system should be implemented or not, in your society that isn’t libertarian. If you want to state that it should become libertarian, then open another thread. You already pay taxes to fund healthcare, anyway. So, all your arguments would be as valid against the current system.
You’re right. But said society is necessary to achieve this goal. You wouldn’t have done anything without it. Likely you would have died during childhood, or of hunger during a cold winter, you wouldn’t have acquired the skills you have, etc…You would have had no means to be in the position you’re in, hence you’d never have had this money you insist is yours and only yours.
And not dying when we’re ill or wounded, but instead being cared for and fed when we can’t do it ourself is generally one of these goals we think we’ll better achieve by being a member of a social organization.
Of course I am.
Yes, it is. If you disagree, your only option would be to try to opt out of society. And you’d have a hard time having your needs met in this case.
I didn’t say any needs you might have. And once again, you wouldn’t have this money you’re cherishing so much if it were not for all the rules you hate having to comply to. Like paying taxes to keep society functionnal.
They have to be paid for. They are paid for by the collectivity. Ergo, the collectivity offers them to you.
Once again, you’re derailing into a debate about libertarianism. Anyway, I mentionned a number of things : how much did you pay for accumulated knowledge before you could benefit from them (that would be before you were born), how much did you pay to go to primary school? How much did you pay to live in a functionnal society, generally speaking, before you were even able to earn money? Essentially every thing you take for granted, apart from the oxygen you’re breathing has only been made available to you because you were a member of this society. Provided to you by the work of former generations and current people. Paid for by taxes. Yet, you insist that it’s your money, and yours alone, and that you don’t owe anything to anybody.
Yes, I do. Once again the alternative is going without a functionnal society. I might want not to pay to fund the justice system and the police because i’m a criminal and I’d rather steal your money. But i’m sure you intend to have me pay for this. And most probably for plenty of things that I actually wouldn’t want to pay for.
This thread isn’t about libertarianism.
Essentially, yes. For some reasons, you’re thinking that funding healtcare is “socialist” (which is, I’m sure, a dirty word in your mind) while funding the police force isn’t.
And probably not even to the cave age, because you would probably be evicted from the caves if you didn’t want to play by the rules collectively agreed upon by the cave dwellers.
There no discrepancy. The government isn’t offering coffe, but it’s offering all the conditions necessary for coffee to make its way to you. You just don’t want to look at the bigger picture.
They had. Because they already had a functionnal society. Without it, no, they wouldn’t have had anything because they would be dead.
Indeed. But the reverse is true. Without the collective, individual people would have nothing. This is the part you insist on ignoring.
And because they’re willing to risk losing everything to protect the tribe, willing to feed the babies so that they’ll grow up into hunters that will feed them when they’ll be too old, and so on… “Trading” isn’t only about material goods.
Nope, they wouldn’t. Farmers relied on the protection of warriors, on the existence of irrigation systems, for instance. Once again on the existence of a functionnal siociety. Yes, indeed, except if you happen to be a subsistance farmer who rely on self-made tools to grow his food, you wouldn’t have anything. Everything you ever used apart the air was dependant on the continuing existence of an organized society.
Sure. But if we want to make sure that these things are paid for, it must be enforced because otherwise, they wouldn’t be funded. Let’s be realistic.
[quote]
The fact that you think that universal healthcare is Good For Society does not mean that it is, nor does it mean that everyone else agrees. [/qote]
Nope. But why are you singling out healthcare? It’s true for everything you pay taxes for.
There’s opposition between these two elements. The needs of the individual can’t be fulfilled without a collective.
And from where I sit, not providing healthcare isn’t okay, either. You had your ways with slavery. Or more exactly, a former incarnation of society made sure that slavery would dissapear, and the current society make sure you can’t be enslaved by someone who happens to own a bigger gun than you.
You might favor social darwinism and think that slavery is a logical result of it. In which case, it’s too bad for you, because your society has agreed upon banning t slavery. You might be a member of PETA. In which case too bad for you because society has agreed upon allowing eating meat.
Like it or not, you have rights only as long as the collective is agreeing on granting them to you and enforcing them. You might not have the right not to be enslaved tomorrow. You might not have the right to eat meat, either. If your moral position or your political inclination make you think that you should have such or such right, you have to convince a majority of people, or to organize a coup.
You’ve have every right to try to change the rules by forbidding taking money from people to fund medicare. I’ve every right to change the rules so that more money will be taken away from people to fund universal healthcare. And we both have this right because the collective makes sure we do.
Then, any taxe is wrong for the exact same reason. Including funding the court system.
It’s in each case a moral issue. Your opinion against mine. Ultimately, it will be a collective decision. And you’ll have to comply with it or to find a way to live by yourself without the support of said society.
You’re a freeloader because you’re benefitting from a number of things provided by the collective. Once again, everything you’re benefitting from is or has been made available because you were living in an organized society. But you’re looking the other way, and taking one thing for granted and an inherent right and consider another as slavery.
If you think it’s immoral to force you into funding public healthcare to protect people against tuberculosis because you’re willing to pay for it yourself, I’m then allowed to think it’s immoral to force me into funding the police to protect people against slavery because I’m willing to pay for my own thugs to protect me. As you put it above, both are true for the same reasons.
Meanwhile, we’re both avoiding slavery and unconstrained tuberculosis epidemics. And both have the moral satisfaction of knowing that people aren’t enslaved nor dying from tuberculosis.
And the collective act as an arbitrator between these conflicting points of view.
What you’re doing here is weighting the current benefits of an expense on healthcare against the future benefits of a current expense on education. This is really not genuine to the issue at hand. It doesn’t need to be your daughter. It can be mine. Or someone else’s. The future benefits are the same.
My daughter going to school to be a doctor and perform life-saving surgery on yours if she can’t afford it with her floor sweeping job would take precedence. As long as I’ve a bigger gun than you, or more powerful friends than you. That’s how it would work without us defining rules we have to comply with.
It seems to me we’re agreeing on this last point. But not on the previous one, that I’ve adressed before.
Well, at least you have made one statement I can agree with.
Once again, we’re here in a political debate about whether or not libertarianism is sound, how should the political system be organized (in particular regarding constitutionnal rights. I happen to have a constitutionnal right to healthcare. Or at least I could argue I have on the basis of sound arguments if there were a debate about abolishing it)., and about the actual existence of inherent, natural, or god-granted (depending on your point of view) rights. We’re a long way from a debate about what should be included in a public healthcare system in your society as it is (that is : in a society where public healthcare does exist, not in a hypothetical libertarian society).
[…]
I’m jumping over the other points you made because I’m a little fed up with this long post. Basically, we’re disagreeing on whether such or such thing could actually be functionnal without the governement being involved.
Nothing. What makes yours more valid even if you are in the majority? Fact is, you’re already paying taxes to fund a certain level of public healthcare, whether or not you agree with the current system. Because the majority has decided that you had no inherent right not to pay for it, and that funding it was a good thing.
Once again, it applies also to funding the military or the courts. Either taxes are theft, either they aren’t.
What you’re doing is arbitrarily deciding that taxes to fund A are theft, while taxes to fund B aren’t. Probably on the basis that we have some natural right to benefit from A and no right to benefit from B. I can select a different set of natural rights, and come to the opposite conclusion.
Then you’re agreeing that I can opt out of funding the military?
Yes and yes. See the beginning of my post.
More exactly I think that libertarians advocate the abolishment of certain rules, on the basis of arguments that could be applied as correctly to all other rules on which said society is funded.
Can you tell me, for instance, from where comes you right to own land? Did you make the land yourself, or traded it with/ inherited it from someone who made it?
I just decided that if you don’t, you have no legitimate claim on it and I can build my house on your lawn.
Once again, it’s a constitutionnal and political issue. What is protecting you from being so bullied, if not a general agreement about what would constitute a tyranny of the majority, embodied by your constitution ? Without this general agreement, you could lose tomorrow the right not to be enslaved.
You might disagree with this consensus, and for instance state that the government has no right to tax the citizens, or that people have no right to voice religious opinions you don’t like. What makes your opinion of what is “bullying by the majority” and what isn’t more valid than mine? On what absolute standard, that can’t be disputed, are you basing your opinion about what is legitimate coercion and what isn’t?
Nope. I’m on the winning side because I live on the other side of the pond, where the majority has voted for us to have universal healthcare.
Same answer as usual. I’d rather hire a bodyguard than pay taxes for a “public army” that might do thing I disagree with. You’re free to contribute to the military budget. On the other hand, I’m not free to chose. Is it fair? Should I be allowed not to contribute (in which case : what exactly should be left from the social organization?) or not (in which case, why have you an inherent right to enforce on me the funding of A while I’ve no inherent right to enforce on you the funding of B?).
[…]
Nope. Except if you’re a complete idiot, what you’re happy with is a solution that let us get what we think is best in some cases, and force us to contribute into what we don’t necessarily think is best in some other cases.
And we’re are strongly disagreeing on where the line should be drawn. And you can prove objectively that the line should be drawn where you’re drawing it.
“The great god State is a great god only because it is expected to do exclusively what the individual advocate of interventionism wants to see achieved. Only that plan is genuine which the individual planner fully approves. All other plans are simply counterfeit. In saying ‘plan’ what the author of a book on the benefits of planning has in mind is, of course, his own plan alone.”
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action, p. 733
On a per capita basis Americans pay more out of their pockets and more through their taxes for health care than Canadians do, but that extra cash has not resulted in as good a level of health or longevity. Please review the WHO stats cited previously.
I find it odd that there is so much resistance in the USA to getting the biggest bang for the health care buck that Americans are already paying.
Noperooni. We buy the same medical hardware from the same suppliers at the same prices, but since we pay in Canadian dollars, which are worth less than American dollars, the hardware costs us more.
No one has suggested that doctors are profiteers, or that they should not be well rewarded for their efforts. In general, doctors are very well regarded in Canada, and earn far more than most Canadians. Please provide your cite for Canadian doctors earing $50,000 per year, for that is utter nonsense.
Similarly, your contention that socialized medicine is a barrier to people wanting to become physicians is utter nonsense. In Canada we have more than enough people attempting to get into medical school. Furthermore, there is no such thing as “equality of result” as you put it. In Canada, just as in the USA, there is a broad spread of incomes for physicians depending on type of practice and location of practice.
Although you have not directly stated it, I am concerned from the direction of your posts that you believe that Canadian physicians are employed by the government. This is not the case. Most physicians are in private practice. A more accurate way to look at it is that in Canada the government is the primary insurer rather than private insurance companies.
One would hope that if the rest of the first world nations can do it, then the USA could also do it. Socialized health care has not bankrupted Canada, and in fact we pay less for better health than Americans. If a major barrier to developing a healthier populace in the USA is pork, then deal with the pork problem.
“PINKY: What are we gonna do tonight, Brain?”
“BRAIN: The same thing we do every night, Pinky. TRY TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD!”
Guess what? The world won’t shed a tear if you stop trying to run the show. Crying “burden” is no more than self-flaggelation.
That the USA prefers to spend an absurdly high proportion of its GNP on killing (fill in the blank . . . Iraqis . . . Vietnamese . . . etc.) rather than on improving Americans’ own health, is a great tragedy.
The answers are right here in this thread. Observe the fusillade of arguments: It will lead to the govt:
“enforcing equality of results”
ending all choice
exacting taxes that are the precise equivalent of both theft and** slavery**
instituting a “socialised” regime controlling every aspect of life in the US.
Nonsense. If I buy a plank measured in centimeters and you buy the same measured in inches, mine isn’t longer than yours. They’re both the same lenght.
Similarily, you pay more canadian dollars for the medical hardware, but since the canadian dollars are worth less, you pay the same price.
The USA already has socialized health care through programs such as Mediare, Medicaide, and VA Benefits. This is being paid for primarily by the working Joe, who is not receiving such benefits, and who often falls through the cracks of the private insurance system. Why not fix your system and extend coverage to the people who are already paying for most of it?
The reasons posited so far:[ul]
[li]Too much fat in American bodies[/li][li]Too much pork in the American body politic[/li][li]Individual Americans have a propensity to shoot each other[/li][li]The American government needs to shoot people in other countries[/li][li]A healthier American populace will drive Americans into slavery[/li][li]Americans are really bad drivers[/li][/ul]
Look, folks, your reasons for not wanting better health for less cost are pretty silly.
Because you refused to give up buying all those DVDs and having dinner out so that you could afford to have your knee treated?
A lot of whether or not a person can ‘afford’ health care is based on whether or not they choose to afford it. Which is why instead of having $250/month in disposable income prior to having my employer pay for my health benefits, I paid for health insurance. Bigger apartment, newer car, those things would’ve been nice. It was, however, a matter of priorities. Lots of people who bitch and whine that they cannot ‘afford’ health care are really saying that they placed health coverage as a lower priority than something else, and got bit in the ass with a bad decision.
Yet you’re still forced to pay for the state-sponsored insurance even if you opt out of using it in favor of private coverage with more benefits. Here, if I don’t like my insurance company (or rather the one my employer selects), I am free to opt out of the coverage my employer pays for, and shop around for other coverage. Because my employer would no longer be paying for benefits, I’d see a larger sum on my paycheck.
That’s a matter of your priorities. Why should you want me to pay for you get that mole looked at when you’ve already said it’s less important to you than everything else you already spend your money on?
The planks have the same length, but in actual economic cost, those same planks cost more in Canada because we have less purchasing power than Americans (unless it is a softwood plank, but don’t get me started on that one).
Overall, in international dollars, Canadians earn less than Americans, as is reflected in our respective GPDs, which means that the same products sold at the same price on the open world market cost us more. Let’s work this through with a very simple example:
How long would it take an average Joe in impoverished Hati to earn enough to buy Liberal compared to how long it would take an average Joe in the USA to earn enough to buy Liberal (assuming no tariff or delivery costs)? An average Hatian would have to work a heck of a lot longer to earn enough than would an average American. The price of Liberal would be the same, but the cost in real terms would be far greater for the Hatian than for the American.
Now apply that idea to Canada, which while tremendously more prosperous than Hati, still is not as prosperous as the USA. We have to work a little longer to buy goods on the open market than Americans do.
Here is a simple example that should help illustrate how it works, based on the assumption that each year in per capita international dollars a Canadian will have a purchasing power of about INT$28,000 and an American will have a purchasing power of about INT$34,000 meaning that an American will have very roughly about 20% more purchasing power than a Canadian (http://earthtrends.wri.org/searchable_db/index.cfm?theme=5 , where GDP is converted to international dollars using purchasing power parity rates, and divided by the population of the country that year, such that an international dollar has the same purchasing power in a given country as a United States Dollar in the United States, and such that an international dollar buys an equivalent amount of goods or services in that country):
An American builds widgets and sells them for US$80=INT$80=CDN$100 on the open world market. Another American works 8 hours to earn enough money to buy a widget. A Canadian works 10 hours to earn enough money to buy a widget.
A Canadian builds similar widgets and sells them for CDN$100=INT$80=US$80 on the open world market. Another Canadian works 10 hours to earn enough money to buy a widget. An American works 8 hours to earn enough money to buy the widget.
What is comes down to is that regardless of who makes the widget, a Canadian will have to work longer to earn the money with which to purchase it than an American. The price of the widget will be the same regardless of who buys it, but it will cost a Canadian more in terms of economic effort expended to pay the price.
Infants don’t have choices. Infants don’t have a say in what sort of medical treatment they receive. Infants do not get to plan their lives. They simply live or die.
Canada, Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Australia have the same infant mortality rate.
The USA and Cuba have the same infant mortality rate.
Anyone care to guess which group of nations offers a better chance for an infant to survive?
http://earthtrends.wri.org/pdf_library/data_tables/pop4_2003.pdf
Well, no. You have a lower income, but the plank still cost the same. You just can’t buy as much planks.
If you’re refering to the cost of things in hours of work, you’d better mention it, because it’s usually not what we think about when we refer to prices. Besides, evaluated this way, not only the plank doesn’t cost the same to an american than to a Canadian, but they don’t cost the same to me and to my brother, either.
My first post in this thread, where I set out relative health care costs, specifically stated “international dollars”.
The next time I use a term that you do not understand, just ask me about it and I will be glad to explain it as best I can to you.
Why doesn’t anyone care then? Are you more concerned about per capita spending?
http://www.pacificviews.org/weblog/archives/000095.html
per capita spending on health
US 4499
UK 1747
Canada 2058
Japan 2908
Germany 2422
France 2057
Australia 1698
Italy 1498
So why does it matter if your tax burden is lower if you just end up paying more for private products. And does anyone have a chart showing tax rates (% of annual income paid in taxes) per country anywhere?
Granted and yes, to a degree it is a matter of personal responsibility. However unhealthy people cost more than healthy people, would you rather have a potentially productive person sit in a wheelchair all day to ‘teach them a lesson’ or let them get healthy again and go back to work? Besides it costs 2x as much to not cover the uninsured as it does to cover them.
$34 billion to $69 billion: Annual cost of covering care needed by 43 million Americans without health insurance.
$65 billion to $130 billion: Yearly cost in terms of diminished health and shorter life spans for uninsured Americans.
DVDs are about $20 each, as I will explain below healthcare for a family can cost $500/month or more for a high deductible plan with few benefits. Here in the midwest you can get an apartment with a roommate, pay your utilities and get a car loan, gasoline and car insurance for an economy car for $500/month. So assuming its a matter of DVDs vs health insurance is not true at all unless you are 23, have no health problems and a $2500 deductible plan.
Yes and no. On one hand my older brother, when he was in grad school and lived with his wife managed to get a $40/month plan even though their combined budget was $1100/month. Quotes for me start at $31/month since I am 25 with no pre-existing conditions and nobody else on my plan. However if you have to pay for a whole family, have a pre-existing condition or are old then medical insurance can get pretty high. A healthy young family’s plan with a high deductible costs about $250/month to start. Throw in a pre-existing condition and make the parents 50+ and the costs can get to $500/month, I just did a search on ehealthinsurance and the best deal for two 54 year olds with 2 kids is $473 a month for a $5k deductible plan and that assumes no pre-existing conditions. It is $685 for a 2500 deductible plan, and this is a website that compares plans to get you the best deals. Why should people in the US pay 50-100% more for healthcare than people in other developed nations do? It doesn’t matter to me about personal responsibility, the issue of universal coverage is an argument about good economic sense.
And you are forced to pay insurance premiums whether you use insurance or not. ANd you are forced to pay $1300 more for a car because of our insurance costs. And you are forced to take a wage deduction due to your employer paying your insurance costs. In the end you still pay 50-100% more for healthcare. And you still pay your share of the $800 billion in taxes that the US spends on healthcare annually.
The tax burden for health care is lower in Canada than in the USA. See my original post and it’s WHO data. Refer to that WHO link for the stats on all nations.