Virginia Senate Says "No Thanks" to Mandatory Health Insurance
If it's up to the Virginia Senate, there will be no individual mandate to purchase health insurance for the state's residents. The Washington Post reports:
Virginia's Democratic-controlled state Senate passed measures Monday that would make it illegal to require individuals to purchase health insurance, a direct challenge to the party's efforts in Washington to reform health care.
The bill passed on a 23 to 17 vote, with five Democrats joining all of the state's Republicans.
Now, I'm on record as arguing that health care reform is already dead. That's mostly because of the vote count, which doesn't add up; but it's also because of stories like this one, which suggest the potential strength of its opposition. Yes, it's just one state, and yes, the yes votes were mostly Republicans. But a handful of Democrats joined in, giving Republicans a win in a legislative body controlled by Democrats. And either way, it's the sort of thing that moderate Democrats—the moderate Democrats who were reticent to begin with and are proving so frustrating that their liberal counterparts have floated the idea of running ads against them—take notice of. Meanwhile, the best argument that poll-savvy liberals can come up with for Democratic legislators is "you may as well do what you believe is the right thing, since you're screwed either way!" Good luck with that one, guys.
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It’s one thing to vote down a bill that establishes a mandate. It’s quite another to make it illegal to establish a mandate.
Nice work, VA.
I’ve been proud of The Mother of Presidents lately. First, McDonnell supporting the push to get rid of the ABC stores and now this? Yes, very proud indeed.
Three cheers for paying double per person than the rest of the world for health coverage that 30 million people don’t even get! Thank you for standing up for freedom, reason. Today, we are all Aetna.
You WANT a mandate to force people to pay double what the rest of the world does?
Q: If you mandate purchase of insurance, then the demand for insurance:
A) Increases
B) Decreases
C) Stays the same
D) Whatever Tony says
E) All of the above
Q: If the demand for insurance increases, the price will:
A) Tend to increase
B) Tend to decrease
C) Stay the same
D) Whatever Tony says
E) All of the above
Q: An increase in insurance prices helps:
A) The rich
B) The poor
C) AEtna
D) Tony’s mom
E) None of the above
No, I want a universal single payer system, which evidence suggests will bring down costs per person significantly while saving thousands of lives per year.
Then mov e to North Korea you floating piece of shit.
How does the evidence suggest this? Medicare in the US is also twice as expensive as old-age programs elsewhere. Perhaps the added expense in the US is due to other factors.
Could one of those factors be the lack of universal coverage prior to old age?
No, very unlikely that it would make a significant difference. If lack of coverage prior to old age really made people die prematurely as you said, then they’d die prematurely. Whether dying prior to getting on Medicare or later, that wouldn’t affect Medicare’s numbers. If they lived longer, then the money to treat them would just hit Medicare later, but it wouldn’t make them cheaper. Almost everyone’s care is expensive when they die (ok, we can “save” money through fatal accidents.) Dying sooner could even save the government Medicare money, e.g., smokers end up “saving” the government money on Medicare, because they would have died of something else later.
The spending difference does have to do in some cases with people getting chronic diseases that they can live with but cost a lot, but a lot of those have causes that I don’t think single payer health care would fix. Unless you think that government health nannies would be incredibly successful in getting people to stop smoking or to eat less fat or not get diabetes.
Observation of medical spending and lifespan doesn’t show a step function when Medicare starts. It’s expensive before and afterwards.
Any reasonable analysis would assume that a single payer health care system in the US would look a lot like Medicare– still the most expensive in the world.
I suppose we could break the AMA and bring down doctors’ salaries, though.
Only thousands? We could save that much by allowing compensation for kidney donors. It would save money, too, since dialysis, in addition to making people die sooner, costs taxpayers way more money than a transplant plus compensation would. (Taxpayers pick up the cost for dialysis under an understandable government program.)
You want a universal single-payer system. So you condemn people who are against mandatory insurance, and claim they are in bed with the insurance industry.
Your logic is mindboggling in it’s complexity.
Q1: A. If everyone is getting it, then the demand is going up.
Q2: B. If everyone is getting the insurance, then the demand will increase, thus leading to a drop in price.
Q3: A.
So, it looks like you’ve proven that this is a good idea. Thanks!
Today, we are all Aetna.
Um, Tony, it’s your guys who want to force us to buy AETNA’s product.
How exactly is being AGAINST mandatory insurance being pro-AETNA?
May I remind you that the insurance industry *supports* the health care bill?
They support it because they wrote it. If Obama had presented a serious bill the insurance companies would become a small fish in a big pond of competition.
Kind of like Phillip Morris supports anti-smoking legislation. Hypocrites.
As to Tony, consider this. If a single payer system was so good, people wouldn’t come to the US for medical treatment. Don’t let Michael Moore fool you.
And I despise anyone telling me that I have to buy something “for my own good.” It’s just bullshit.
No the VA senate says no to ambulance chasers that are driving up heatlhcare costs. We waste $400 BILLION a year due to our tort laws, trial attorneys, malpractice insurance and defensive medicine.
The sooner we end the gravy train for these crooks the faster we can cover more people.
Isn’t it strange that the PM from Newfoundland is coming to the US for heart surgery, what happened to the highly praised Canadian system??
Somebody change Tony’s diaper. He’s getting fussy.
To Tony, being forced to buy insurance you don’t want = freedom.
Being forced to pay for your appendectomy because you were too stupid to buy insurance doesn’t equal freedom either.
How so?
How so what? Isn’t being forced to pay for other people’s upkeep the exact equivalent of theft, not to mention Hitler?
Right now if you don’t have insurance but have a medical emergency, I have to help pay for it. Except it costs twice what it would if the risk were spread universally and there weren’t a middleman taking a profit.
So logically you must be admitting here that many people without insurance can afford it, and blaming those people who choose not to purchase insurance.
1) If the only people who don’t have insurance couldn’t afford it, then
2) They couldn’t afford to help bear the costs, so
3) If everyone with insurance helps pay for it, then
4) The risk is already “spread universally” among everyone who can afford to bear the costs.
Alternatively, even people without insurance are already helping pay for it, but somehow it would be more “universally” spread if we were all paying for it with insurance instead of somehow else.
Medicine is no cheaper when its government Medicare paying non-for-profit hospitals, so I don’t see what you mean about a “middleman taking a profit.”
Lets see illegals account for 75% of unreimbursed emergency healthcare costs. Focus on where the real damage is being done
See, this really pisses me off when liberal mention Hitler whenever people don’t agree with them without knowing the real history. If Tony is for universal healthcare then he is agreeing WITH Hitler’s policies. Nazi Germay had universal health care. How’d that work out???
Being forced to pay for your appendectomy because you were too stupid to buy insurance Having to pay for the goods and services you receive doesn’t equal freedom either.
To the Tonys of the world, real freedom is freedom from responsibility.
Sorry for being unclear in my post. I was referring to the fact that people are treated for medical emergencies without the ability to pay, so the cost is spread to others.
What do you say about people who can’t afford medical care but need it? Should they just die?
If you are forced to buy insurance then you are being forced to subsidize others’ care esp if you are relatively healthy. I don’t see how that is different from being forced to pay for others’ emergency care.
Re: “what to do about people who cant afford care” no good or service including health care is unlimited. It doesn’t just fall from the sky. There will always be some people who are hungry and homeless just as there will always be some people who cant get the medical care they need. Central planning for distributing and controlling such goods and services has either failed (USSR) or produced poor outcomes compared to a free market.
The worst part about getting the young-‘n-healthy to subsidize the old is that it doesn’t work to say that “well, the young will get it back when they’re old.” Not everyone survives to old age. So you’re saying that you want the unluckiest bastards of all, those who die young, to subsidize those who make it into old age.
Getting old sucks, but it beats the alternative. Why have the latter subsidize the former?
That is exactly the system we currently have. Once you reach old age you have access to single-payer healthcare. Interestingly, US health metrics comparatively are pretty good if you’re old. They suck for the rest of us who are forced to get healthcare in the for-profit system.
But no cheaper.
Yes. And you want to make it more so.
…well, the young will get it back when they’re old.
Not only will the old have spent their entire working lives paying into the system, but if they do live long enough to collect anything, they will be accused of being parasites upon the young. Besides, even those collecting Social Security have to pay a certain amount of their “benefits” each month for Medicare – and the proportion they pay is scheduled to go higher and higher in the future.
This is about 2% of all medical expenses in the US. The real reason they want to force people to buy insurance is so they can overcharge low-risk people and thereby subsidize health care costs for high-risk people.
+1
Will Medicare Part D be grandfathered?
Somebody change Tony’s diaper. He’s getting fussy.
Naw, dude, he likes the squishy feeling and the unholy stench.
True. Without a filled diaper how would he have anything to post?
He wouldn’t have anything to play with either, since the dog ate his Litter Critters.
I thought he was getting fussy because he wanted to nurse at the public teat.
I’m lactating, but I’m not letting Tony anywhere near my tits. Let ‘im fuss.
Just found this ridiculous article from the BBC, thought people might be interested in shredding it:
Why do people vote against their own interests?
Because socialized medicine is “of obvious benefit to voters.”
Publicly funded news. PBS with snooty accents.
From the BBC article:
Seems to me that when the SEIU goons beat up that one protester in St Louis(?) the violence wasn’t suppressed at all.
Unlike what Auntie Beeb seems to think the violence wasn’t from the protesters.
Actually part of me wishes they would have tried to enforce a mandate. There would have been so much civil disobedience that it would have fallen completely flat and been repealed within a year. And who knows what other edicts from the government people would have started disobeying. It might have really been a blow to government power.
“And who knows what other edicts from the government people would have started disobeying. It might have really been a blow to government power.”
Here. Take another hit.
Once people start disobeying the government, it is like a woman losing her virginity. The second time is much easier and more fun than the first.
What? She can lose it more than once? 😉
“””There would have been so much civil disobedience that it would have fallen completely flat and been repealed within a year.”””
Like Romeny care did?
You put way too much faith into the citiznery ability to escalate beyond complaining.
I’ve heard more complaints about cost, than mandates. If they could make the mandate afforable, there would be little complaining. Hell, there’s a conservative arguement FOR the mandates.
It’s like the Real ID act. All but one or two Govenors didn’t mind the mandate as long as the feds paid for it.
I want a universal single payer system, which evidence suggests will bring down costs per person significantly while saving thousands of lives per year.
*guffaws, slaps knee*
I want to apologize for my participation in mocking Tony. He is beneath even contempt and mocking his rampant stupidity and blind-faith partisan shill spewings is more attention than he and his sockpuppet Chad deserve. His puerile rantings are best ignored for he is the filth that even human garbage would scrape off their shoes.
He’s really gotten unhinged lately. Not even making an effort at honest debate. He just yells “right-wing talking points!” at people when they criticize Obama’s black-hole sized budget deficits.
Sock puppets within sock puppets within sock puppets.
The turducken of trolling.
That’s funny. I hadn’t even heard of that until a couple of weeks ago.
Would that be a Russian sock puppet?
I saw that BBC link the other day. Somebody should take those whiny little socialists (and Tony, too) aside and explain short term versus long term interests to them. And printing money not same as creating wealth.
I don’t even have children, so I shouldn’t care if a succession of Presidents and their Congressional enablers bankrupt the country handing out free shit to baby boomers (of which i am most definitely one).
But I look at the long term consequences, and it pisses me off.
Go figger.
Being forced to pay for your appendectomy because you were too stupid to buy insurance doesn’t equal freedom either.
So you’re not free if you have to compensate those who provide a service to you? What about goods? Is the Farm Fresh enslaving me by charging me for groceries, since i’m “too stupid” to be a farmer? I think what you’re saying implies that in a perfectly free society everybody is everybody else’s slave, but it’s hard to really get inside your head because i’m not fucking retarded.
Sorry, I mean my having to pay for your appendectomy isn’t equal to freedom. The alternative is just let people die who are too poor to afford medical care. That is in fact the pure libertarian solution, but nobody admits it because there’s no way you’d be able to sell it to sane people.
Everyone will be treated, regardless of ability to pay. Might it bankrupt you? Sure, but bankrupt and living in a shitty efficiency eating ramen is how I paid for college, and it really beats being dead.
And as for you, I think the taxpayers deserve a refund for your education.
I went to a private university. Granted, it was on a full scholarship and I ate pretty well.
You’re right though, going bankrupt beats being dead. This is precisely why it’s a fantasy to think normal supply and demand rules apply to medical care.
Editor: Citation needed.
Then why do you want those who die young (but healthy) to subsidize the elderly so that the elderly won’t be bankrupt?
It seems to me like you’re saying that dying young beats going bankrupt, since you’re willing to take from those who will die young to subsidize those who would be alive but bankrupt.
Odd Tony, in one post you say you don’t support mandatory health insurance, you want single-payer.
Then a couple minutes later, you’re repeating the D’s bullshit talking points on why people should be forced to buy insurance.
Odd that you think you’re the intelligent one here.
This is precisely why it’s a fantasy to think normal supply and demand rules apply to medical care.
Believing that you can legislate the law of supply and demand out of existence, is like believing you can legislate away the law of gravity.
Where did you go to school, boy? You really need to start a lawsuit against them asap. They ripped you off big time.
How did he get ripped off? He claims he got a full scholarship to a private university. Man, it’s getting to where those schools let just anyone get in anymore. Degree devaluation, that’s what it is.
“Sorry, I mean my having to pay for your appendectomy isn’t equal to freedom. The alternative is just let people die who are too poor to afford medical care.”
Yeah, or, you know, make people pay it back as they’re able.
just let people die who are too poor to afford medical care. That is in fact the pure libertarian solution
You statists sure do love false choices.
The pure libertarian solution is to remove force (i.e., government) from our lives. A libertarian “solution” does not preclude voluntary action; e.g., charity. Indeed, voluntary action is preferable to government coercion in all human endeavors.
But no statist ever admits it because you’d have to be sane to understand it.
Not to mention that, absent the government’s spending, costs would probably be half of what they are, making EVERYTHING medical related cheaper, and thus more affordable.
Not that the few areas where government isn’t entangled in health care – vision dental and especially laser eye surgery – are all pretty cheap and getting cheaper.
In fact, you can now get the latest and greatest eye surgery for the same price you could get hacked up by a guy with an exacto knife a few years ago. And my eye and dental insurance keeps getting better and costing less.
Now, my regular insurance just goes up and covers less.
The alternative is just let people die who are too poor to afford medical care.
You are aware of this institution called charity, are you not? Hint: the government taking my money and giving it to someone else ain’t charity.
Show me evidence that charity work alone will be able to cover the medical needs of everyone and I’ll go along with it. But you can’t because that’s ridiculous.
I just want one person to have the balls to admit that they think freedom means dying if you can’t afford healthcare.
And you think freedom means dying if the government has decided that it won’t approve the healthcare that might save your life.
Stop pretending, with your unicorns and pixie dust, that everyone would be able to get all the healthcare that they want with the government “paying for it.” Scarcity would still exist.
This is a totally disingenuous contrast. For one thing, no reasonable system would deny necessary medical care, despite the scare stories you’ve apparently bought about “rationing.”
And at any rate the existence of a government safety net does not prevent people from spending their own money for more treatment if they want. It’s always a zero-sum thing with libertarians. And it’s contradictory. You can’t be totally against government-funded healthcare and then bitch when government doesn’t give you enough.
It’s not unicorns, it’s called evidence from every other advanced democracy. And it’s not “all the healthcare they want,” it’s all the healthcare they need. If they want more than they need, they can pay for it.
I believe that data from all countries with single payer systems suggest there IS scarcity, and that health care is rationed. Also all the health care they need? When does one draw the line? .
Also, there is a reason the US is still the leader in “medical tourism”. You cant get the quality of treatment that you CAN get in the US in single-payer health care systems.
Needless to say there is a cost to everything, pretending they disappear in single-payer systems is ridiculous.
“there is a reason the US is still the leader in “medical tourism”.” It is not and “Almost 45 million Americans, or slightly more than 15 percent of the population…uninsured, according to U.S. Census Bureau statistics from 2005…more than 150,000 Americans traveled abroad for health care in 2006. The number is projected to double in 2007,…150,000 number is conservative,”…. “Some experts say 400,000.”… and some insurance plans are participating in these endeavors, as well.”
You have a really confused view of healthcare. There’s no sudden great divide between “healthcare they need” and “healthcare they want.” There’s just no such thing. As we get richer, as individuals and as a society, wants become needs.
All “healthcare they need” was once “healthcare they want.” If people just got 1950s or even 1980s era healthcare now, it would be cheap. But radical advances in healthcare, from MRIs to new drugs, have gone from “healthcare they want” to “healthcare they need.”
Down below, you talk about cancer treatment. My mother is a pediatric oncology nurse specializing in a pediatric bone marrow transplant unit. At some point as she’s been working, bone marrow transplantation went from impossible to something people would want to something that we now think that patients need.
The government will have to draw a line somewhere. It’s dishonest to pretend that the line between “want” and “need” is some kind of obvious TRUTH, unchanging over time.
Economists use elasticity of demand and a free market to determine the difference between need and want. You want a government panel to do it instead. But please don’t pretend that “necessary” medical care is some objective universal and unchanging truth.
Would you be satisfied with a healthcare plan that gave everyone in America “anything that was available in 1980, but nothing invented or widely available later?” Probably not, for understandable reasons. So how can you say that “necessary” health care is some kind of universally understood truth?
Now you’re practically arguing that the market is so magical it should replace the judgment of doctors. Sure the line between wants and needs is blurred, but I think we can include many procedures in the needs category without controversy. Whether, say, plastic surgery should be covered by government subsidy is a policy issue that can be debated.
The medical profession on principle handles its own rationing:
From the modern Hippocratic Oath:
“I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures [that] are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism.”
The market does not contribute to this wisdom. The discussion here isn’t about whether medical care can be adequately parceled or whether it’s an arbitrary judgment. The modern medical community has that part mostly figured out–and there’s nothing wrong with it evolving with time based on new technologies or values.
So doctors can use their judgment (without being bribed as they are in the marketplace). Successive Congresses can debate the specifics of the healthcare system; whether we should have one at all is the question at hand.
No, patients can use their judgment. Doctors can advise patients, but don’t take ownership of other people’s bodies by virtue of expertise. Technocratic asshole.
The discussion here isn’t about whether medical care can be adequately parceled or whether it’s an arbitrary judgment. The modern medical community has that part mostly figured out–and there’s nothing wrong with it evolving with time based on new technologies or values. So doctors can use their judgment (without being bribed as they are in the marketplace).
You mean, like, with respect to abortions and mammograms, for example?
No political interference there.
For one thing, no reasonable system would deny necessary medical care
No, they just put you on a waiting list so long that you’ll be dead before you get treatment.
And why does the waiting list exist? Because the government “rationed” it’s purchase of medical devices. Such as (say) MRIs.
Thank you for FOX News’s perspective.
The last time I watched FOX was in maybe 1998.
Get an argument. A real one.
And it’s not “all the healthcare they want,” it’s all the healthcare they need. If they want more than they need, they can pay for it.
All they “need” as decided by whom? And if they can pay for more than they “need,” why in hell can’t they pay for what they need in the first place?
Show me evidence that government health care will be able to cover the medical needs of everyone. It won’t.
John, just charity? You forgot the lottery and Santa Claus.
Show me evidence that charity work alone will be able to cover the medical needs of everyone and I’ll go along with it. But you can’t because that’s ridiculous.
Actually I can’t because that is not what I said. No one argues that charity work alone will provide for everyone’s medical needs. Take a philosophy class Tony; you’ll be in far less over your head.
What I said was that charity exists as a solution for those who are either unwilling or unable to provide for themselves. What’s great about charity is that it can place conditions on the recipient, unlike the government, which simply encourages permanent dependence.
And you’re damn right that if a woman has a right to kill an unborn child a person has the right to kill themselves through neglect.
Took several of them as philosophy was one of my majors.
Government can’t place conditions? What’s all this pants wetting about rationing then?
This is kind of out there. I don’t think if someone dies because they can’t afford healthcare it should be seen as them exercising a “right.”
So you’re admitting that you prefer a system in which your access to healthcare depends on either your wealth or your luck in getting a charity to help you. This obviously leaves a lot of people out, as you admit. That’s morally unacceptable to me.
Took several of them as philosophy was one of my majors.
Did you take any pronouns? And why am I not surprised that you had more than one major? Seriously Tony, is there something that prevents you from applying what you learned or is my assumption that you learned anything out of line? You commit more logical fallacies in one day than Obama does in a week and that is saying something.
So you’re admitting that you prefer a system in which your access to healthcare depends on either your wealth or your luck in getting a charity to help you.
Unlike you, apparently, I do not have to “admit” my preferences, I stand behind them. I want a system where the government follows the constraints of the Constitution and allows individuals to determine the path that their lives take. As for your unacceptable world, there is zero moral argument for empowering the state to take someone’s property and give to someone else.
Hey! Me too. Except in my system, which I believe to be constitutional, universal access to healthcare greatly enhances everyone’s ability to determine the paths of their lives.
If it’s not constitutional then we’re perfectly capable of amending it so that it is.
Actually there is an extensive body on the subject. See: every political philosopher who’s not an anarchist.
Except in my system, which I believe to be constitutional, universal access to healthcare greatly enhances everyone’s ability to determine the paths of their lives.
If you’ll take a gander through your philosophy-tinged glasses you might notice that everyone has access to purchase healthcare services already. If you want to give some people something for nothing then you and all of your like-thinking friends are more than welcome to pay for it. Having someone else pave the path for you is not self-determination.
As for amending the Constitution, bring it on.
If you’ll take a gander through your libertarian-tinged glasses you might notice that people are denied access to purchase healthcare services all the time.
Exactly how? Oh, sorry. You mean they are denied access to purchase because they don’t have enough of someone else’s money.
Fuckstick.
Kant feel Pietzsche, people are denied for a myriad of reasons. “Kaiser rejected me because I had visited the doctor too many times in the 12 months preceding my application (I filled in the “3-5 times” circle, to reflect the three routine and inexpensive check-ups I’d had in France). Blue Cross rejected me too. There weren’t many other options. Months later, an insurance broker told me I’d ruined my chances by failing to file a written appeal. “You’re basically done in California,” he said. ‘A rejection is like an arrest?if you don’t contest it, you’re guilty, and it’s on your permanent record.'” Btw, I admit this quote is from a so-so, 3rd rate website but I could find another.
Kaiser rejected me because I had visited the doctor too many times in the 12 months preceding my application
I doubt they would have objected too strenuously if you whipped out your checkbook. The fact that your insurance company did not cover the visit is a contract issue between you and them. It has nothing to do with your ability to purchase healthcare services.
Did I say the quote was from me? I meant this guy: https://reason.com/archives/200…..ealth-care
swillfredo pareto, you don’t mind if I call you my bitch? BTW, It isn’t like I didn’t give you an hint: Btw, “I admit this quote is from a so-so, 3rd rate website”
Freedom does mean dying if you can’t afford healthcare. Sometimes bad shit happens. Sometimes people die. Someday it will be me.
Happens every day, somewhere, no matter what kind of healthcare we have. Life goes on.
Thank you for the amoral nihilist’s perspective.
Show me evidence that charity work alone will be able to cover the medical needs of everyone and I’ll go along with it.
On the other hand, one way to ensure that charity will never be sufficient is to force a generation or two to depend solely on the government for care from cradle to grave. This neat trick can apply to just about anything — housing, food, jobs — the sky is the limit!
+1
Unexpected Consequences strike again!
“”I just want one person to have the balls to admit that they think freedom means dying if you can’t afford healthcare.””
I’ll step up.
Freedoms mean you are free to make your choice, by the same token, it does not absolve you from the consequences of your choice. Freedom, means you are allowed to screw yourself.
If you make choices in life that denies you healthcare, you have made choices that may kill you in the long run. But hey, that’s freedom for you.
They have the freedom to change their situation so they can come closer to affording health care, if they have the gumption to do something about it.
It’s often a question of priorities. Many people say they can’t afford health care, yet they have a iphone and a big screen tv.
Sorry, I mean my having to pay for your appendectomy isn’t equal to freedom.
Yes. You’re within a few astronomical units of a clue, Tony! You can do it!
The alternative is just let people die who are too poor to afford medical care. That is in fact the pure libertarian solution, but nobody admits it because there’s no way you’d be able to sell it to sane people.
Aaaand it’s gone again. The libertarian solution is a free market in healthcare, wherein open competition will — as it inevitably does — drive down the costs of care while increasing innovation. These words may look familiar to you, as you have read them many, many, many times on this very site, but it’s just so much more fun to argue in bad faith, ain’t it?
In other words, the libertarian solution is unicorns and fairy dust. There is no way market forces alone will ever make a heart transplant affordable for a poor person.
Such an odd topic to pick, transplants. Transplants are one issue where compensating donors would make them much more available to poor people. We pay the doctors, we pay the transplant centers, but we can’t give anything to donors, even kidney donors.
Organ donation is the issue where the non-libertarian solution is unicorns and pixie dust.
It’s the height of arrogance to think you own your own body.
The merits of letting people sell their organs is an interesting conversation I’d like to have. But forget transplants. How would a poor person pay for cancer treatment in a free market system?
Are we talking about eliminating Medicaid? Or is that just the strawman you’re choosing to engage?
I was trying to engage in a hypothetical based on the principles you espouse–which of course forbid medicaid.
Again, your question presupposes a possible system in which there are infinite resources. That with the government in control EVERYONE would get treatment.
But they wouldn’t. The government would have to ration. And such rationing would be subject to political influence.
So what’s more moral?
A) A system where people don’t get treatment because they can’t pay.
B) A system where people don’t get treatment because it’s not politically expedient to treat them.
At least money is color blind. In a free market, it doesn’t matter who you are, what you look like, who your uncle is, or where you went to school. If you can pay, you get treated.
Now… Imagine single-payer health care, with Fred Phelps in charge of the rationing system.
That false choice ignores the possibility that humans might actually be able to come up with a fair and rational system, even without magic market fairies. If we copied any system of any advanced country we’d be a lot better off than we are now, which for all intents and purposes you are defending as preferable to proven superior systems.
And if you can’t pay? Die? Because the most morally laudable system imaginable is one that amounts to a death sentence for the crime of being poor. O libertopia!
“And if you can’t pay? Die? Because the most morally laudable system imaginable is one that amounts to a death sentence for the crime of being poor. O libertopia!”
Then take it up with God. It’s not man’s fault his brother became ill. When we are all pennyless, who’s fault will it be then?
I agree with the concept that it’s not humane to just let people die like that. But that doesn’t mean it’s right to force your neighbor who made better choices in life than you did to pay for your shortcomings.
There are people who managed to get out of the ghetto, their story has a common element, they first made a decision they had to do better.
How would a politically disfavored person denied cancer treatment buy the government’s rationing system pay for cancer treatment in a single-payer system?
Answer: He couldn’t. It would be illegal.
Here is pure and true libertarianism. Everything is for sale. You are not a human being but something to be traded and consumed. As long as there is a profit to be made. If you are a wealthy child pornographer (which is okay because it’s free speech evidently) you can get whatever medical care you like but if you’re honest but broke you have the choice of death, misery and/or continued poverty. Despite all the platitudes and buzzwords it all comes down to money as the measure of morality.
Freedom > serfdom
Property > theft
Well, you picked the right screen name.
It’s interesting that you pick out child porn. Perhaps Freud was right after all. Anyhow, children aren’t able to give consent, therefore they are unable to willingly participate in porn. And when you make someone perform sex acts without consent, we call that a crime. Crime still exists in a libertarian system, no matter how many times you try to make it equal to anarchy. Thanks, drive through.
No, I want a universal single payer system, which evidence suggests will bring down costs per person significantly while saving thousands of lives per year
You have either never lived under a universal health care system or have no one in your family that has a cronic condition or you are – to quote Rahm the bomb – a fucking retard.
Is it really an either/or thing? Couldn’t all those be true? 😉
It’s always a zero-sum thing with libertarians.
A skull as impervious as yours wold be an excellent receptacle for nuclear waste.
Wow, I missed that one… It’s “zero sum” for US!?? Wtf.
I know I shouldn’t encourage him but I can’t help myself. I am willing to state definitively that freedom does mean that the government can not and should not guarantee the basic survival of its citizens (survival in the sense of securing basic necessities, not protecting citizens from force).
Unless you live out in the woods somewhere off the grid, securing the necessities of life requires receiving goods or services from another person. If someone can’t secure these things through voluntary interactions, then by definition, their survival requires the freedom and liberty of other people to be infringed. Hence, freedom and guaranteed survival are mutually exclusive.
That being said, I am confident that private charity would be enough to keep people from dropping dead in the street due to lack of care.
Brian Lockwood, you forgot the other libertarian tenets:
Option#2 Lottery
Option#3 Santa Claus
It’s interesting that you mention a lottery, since that is what Canadians have to go through just to get a family doctor.
As far as Santa Claus goes, he only seems to supply people with cheap plastic crap and lingerie for one’s wife, not health care based on innovation driven by someone’s desire at some point to drive a sweet car and pay for hookers (Dermotologists).
Ok,”since that is what Canadians have to go through just to get a family doctor.” Simply not true but there may be isolated cases in terms of remote areas. Cite where. Innovation is generally brought to us through university taxpayer funded research and then bought by pharma/ business in order to bring to market. Btw, you sexist pig: Women are now the majority of med school applicants and I am pretty sure they prefer their husbands without lingerie,a big SUV and unlike your dermatologist example they don’t need a hooker to get laid.
Except they’re not, because there are different levels of freedom. Living in society means sacrificing small freedoms in order to access larger ones. That’s what you do every time you obey a traffic light. Small freedom infringed upon: your ability to cross the intersection at any time you want. Large freedom gained by the infringement: ability to cross the intersection without being mowed down.
Same principle applies. Small freedom sacrificed: a pittance in tax dollars. Large freedom gained: access to healthcare without going bankrupt.
And I fail to see the substantial difference between “protecting citizens from force” as a means to securing their lives, and other means of doing so. Armies still require taxes to operate.
Small freedom sacrificed: a pittance in tax dollars. Large freedom gained: access to healthcare without going bankrupt.BIG FREEDOM SACRIFICED: can’t get access to the best available care.
If the choice is between adequate healthcare for all and best possible healthcare, but only for the rich, I choose the former. But I don’t see why adding government subsidy dollars to the health system means all our great technology will disappear. In a reformed system, the situation will not change for the rich: they will still be able to spend as much as they want on whatever they want.
But everyone has adequate healthcare now, you’ve just been complaining about having to pay for the indigents’ hospital visits through a roundabout method instead of directly.
I thought you said that there would be a net savings? You’ve been claiming that money would be taken out of the system, not put in it. You can’t have it both ways here. If the reform saves money, then there will be fewer dollars in the health system.
Profit, including insurance profit, is a miniscule amount of health care spending. Look at how non-profit hospitals are no cheaper.
Look at how mutuals and non-profit insurance companies aren’t cheaper.
You’re neglecting the tech progress treadmill — things that are available unequally to the rich (or in the case of less essential technology, to enthusiasts) eventually become available to all. If everything new has to hit the ground at a cost where everyone can get it, expect to see progress grind to a halt.
More people will die, over time, from your way of thinking than ours.
You have no evidence of course for your last assertion.
As for technological progress, who gives a fuck? What does it have to do with anything? Having universal access to a doctor sitting in a room is better than the status quo.
I’m so sick of hearing that the only way progress can happen is by people seeking profit. Medicine and technology advance mostly through science. All the market does is make viagra more a priority than a cure for cancer.
“As for technological progress, who gives a fuck? What does it have to do with anything?”
It have EVERYTHING to do with quality of care. Angioplasty, kidney transplants, targeted cancer therapy, and Nucleoside Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors were unavailable to 95% of the population at the time of their introduction. Now they are all the standard level of care. If you can’t see that, or that when you take away incentives that people stop inventing these things, you are truly a moron.
You said it yourself. You have to sacrifice freedom to gain the security of having guaranteed access to healthcare. Hence, the two are mutually exclusive. Calling it a “freedom” is just liberal doublethink.
As for protection from force, I am not going to get into a moral discussion over this but suffice to say, the protection benefits the individual directly and can be justified morally. Forcing others to sacrifice and work for someone else’s benefit as you describe it is slavery. The only question people of your kind disagree on is the extent.
Why is access to your money freedom but access to healthcare isn’t? You don’t sacrifice “freedom” in toto, you sacrifice a small amount of freedom (i.e., the freedom to spend the tax dollars on something else), for a much larger one (i.e., the freedom to access healthcare when needed).
I fail to see the substantial ethical difference between collectively paying for armed forces and collectively paying for universal healthcare.
Actually I do see one. The former is way overpriced for the benefit (the risk of invasion is relatively low, but the cost of defense is extremely high).
At any rate, tax dollars still pay for defense. That is to say, national defense is a single payer product. To the extent that taxation = forcing others to sacrifice work for someone else’s benefit = slavery, then paying for national defense is just as much slavery. You can’t have it both ways.
“freedom” in toto? What like the band?
From Wikipedia:
“Freedom is the human value, or situation, to act according to one’s will without being held up by the power of others.” How can access to health care be considered a freedom when it requires the involuntary actions of others? You are just adding the word freedom to disguise what you are actually saying.
Technically, healthcare access contributes to liberty. You are more free with it than without to some degree.
Simultaneously, your access to $100 contributes to your liberty. You are more free with it than without it to some degree. But that difference is much less than the difference above. The math leads to a net increase of liberty.
Yes,yes. Freedom is slavery, War is peace, etc. I’m done with this.
I don’t really understand why you consistently refuse to understand that this issue *isn’t* actually about money, Tony.
It’s very simple. Doctors, nurses, janitors, techs, assistants, administrators, all the way down to the fucking builders who make the hospitals and the factory workers who make the machinery & drugs are people who’ve got the right to live and work without having the products of their labor and effort be stolen.
When you say that Person X gets health care for “free”, what you are really saying is that they get to use the doctors/nurses/administrative staff’s time for free… But you are also saying that the effort and resources that went into creating the building itself and everything in it – all the drugs, the machines, the beds, the EVERYTHING!
You fail miserably to understand the principle involved here for the same reason you’ve consistently failed to understand the economic implications of your ideas: You CANNOT see past the first (most obviously visible) transaction.
To you Tony, the world is simple… Person X needs health care, Person Y controls “health care” and can be made to give to Person X in his time of need. Problem is, you don’t seem to grasp that Person Y had to get the training from Person A, the building from Person B, the equipment from Person C and the medicines from Person D….
A-D are also stolen from each time you make demands of Person Y backed by force.
What’s worse is that Person Y has only a finite amount of time & resources with which to treat patients, and the more people like Person X there are – the more who take but don’t give back – the less of Person Y’s time is available to treat people who are actually productive and contributing to the overall wealth of humanity.
This is true of any of your socialist schemes, Tony… And it’s why in every instance socialism has been seriously attempted, the results are disastrous and financially devastating. I encourage you at some point to go take a walk through the former soviet nations and see how they look. It isn’t pretty.
Regardless, it’s not about getting to keep “$100″…. $100 is to some extent an arbitrary number that merely reflects some arrangement of the time & resources of real human beings.
When you say you don’t have the right to keep your $100, what you REALLY mean to say is that you don’t have the right to keep the time or products that earned you that $100. If you’re working at $8.00, and someone takes $100 from you by force, that’s 12 & a half hours being stolen from you… If you’re working for $300 an hour, then you’re only getting 20 minutes of your time taken. But one way or another, Tony, it’s not the money that you’re stealing – it’s minutes, hours, days, years of people’s LIVES, and it’s legitimately acquired property that people used their lives to create or work towards.
The principle here is simple: When you pretend that you can give people health care “for free”, you are directly enslaving all those who provide health care and you are stealing from those who provide the goods, technology and buildings.
It’s not about $10, or $1,000,000 at the root of it, it’s about the deep and irreconcilable conflict between the idea of liberty, and your desire to give people free stuff by taking it from others.
Oh yeah… Also Tony, the *solution* doesn’t involve “letting people die”, the solution involves the following:
1. Relying on market forces to do what they always do, drive up quality while driving down price through innovations directed by information feedback mechanisms which cannot exist in your socialist utopia: prices which move in deference to demand and profits & losses which are obtained by a company’s successful or unsuccessful supplying for that demand… As opposed to by using government to grant special privileges or take money in the form of subsidies from unwitting taxpayers.
2. Once prices are down and supply is up (you know, like they are for pretty much everything that is supplied by people free to trade with each other adjusted for inflation), then charity should actually be enough to help the remaining cases who actually can’t pay.
3. Credit cards, a medical loan market, help from family & friends and perhaps sliding fee structures (as many doctors in the US used to have) are a few ways to cover the cases that are poor, but not so poor that they will get charity.
Debt > Death, as you yourself admitted earlier. There are always ways to do this… But right now, no one is free enough to make these alternatives work and the destruction of the price system has divorced costs from benefits for both patients & doctors… There are many other problems obviously but I’ve written at length about that and you’re retarded anyway so it really doesn’t matter.
What this comes down to is that you’re cool with pointing guns at people to get you’re way, and we’re not. What’s worse is that your system leads to worse and worse outcomes and you have decades of US history and centuries of world history to prove it.
I think I love you. We need a Share on Facebook button on the bottom of your essay, here. Everyone should read this.
I’ll put it on my blog and then you can link to it from there if you’d like
Share on FB all you’d like!
http://seanwmalone.blogspot.co…..money.html
I fail to see the substantial ethical difference between collectively paying for armed forces and collectively paying for universal healthcare.
That’s an excellent argument for eliminating our standing army. Way to go, Toni!
“”Why is access to your money freedom but access to healthcare isn’t?””
If you money is from your welfare check you might be right.
Otherwise, people earned their money. They used their freedom to earn money to pay for their health care.
Freedom doesn’t mean free. We all have the freedom to seek health care.
People who demand others pay for their health care are not concered with freedom, they are intrested in usurping the freedom of others to spend their hard earned money how they want.
You’ve thrown around the word “pittance” a lot. I don’t consider a 5% increase in Income tax a pittance. I have a job, but my budget is a personal balancing act of such pain I wouldn’t wish it on even you. With 5% less money to myself, I can’t pay the car bill. If I can’t pay the car bill, I don’t have a car. If I don’t have a car, I can’t go to work. If I can’t go to work, I am fired. If I am fired, then I can get healthcare without paying for anyth…OHHHH I see what you did there. Indigence here I come.
“I fail to see the substantial ethical difference between collectively paying for armed forces and collectively paying for universal healthcare.”
Well, for a certain level of effectiveness, defending one person from international invasions is probably about as expensive as protecting 300 million people. As a result, even whoever pays the highest tax in society could be said to benefit from national defense — everyone pays a tiny fraction of the costs, yet gets close to 100% of the benefits.
With healthcare, however, it’s more zero sum. Some people pay in a lot and take out very little. Some people pay in nothing at all and take out a lot. And a lot of middlemen will still get to take a cut for reasons that don’t improve health at all, because liberals can’t distinguish institutions from outcomes, nor jobs from work.
file under glaring hypocrisy:
Virginia MANDATES you either buy auto insurance or pay a $500 uninsured motorist fee (which i believe is paid to insurance companies) if you have a driver’s license.
so the Fed govt can’t force anything on us, but the state govt can.
yeah, i know… they don’t mandate you have a driver’s license. try bringing groceries home, picking your kids up, and getting to the jobsite at 5:30AM WITHOUT a car.
Why are you buying groceries and what are your kids doing out at 5:30AM?
Also, you do recognize that you’re generally only required to have insurance against damage you cause *to other people* right? You know, cause driving is dangerous.
Actually, they require that you show financial responsibility to cover damage you may cause. You can also do this by posting a bond. And it is only once you ask to use the privilege of operating 2 tons of metal at 65 MPH around your fellow citizens that you are required to do this.
Believe it or not, people live without cars. You just have to adjust your lifestyle. Find a bus route, or a bicycle, and buy a backpack. OR, if you’re going to endanger the lives of others (and you do, every time you start the car) you can grow up, stop whining, and accept some responsibility.
I crack up at the “liberal logic”. I won’t even waste my time trying to show them their ignorance because they don’t want to see it. They just don’t get that you can not sacrifice the majority to appease a few!
Why aren’t ALL the states doing this? Just think what message that would send to this administration and congress. We need to work on getting rid of Pelosi. Reid is in trouble (unless he steals the election) and many others but Pelosi seems to be solid. Initially she wasn’t even voted in by the people, she stepped in when “her friend” died. How scary is that?
“Also, you do recognize that you’re generally only required to have insurance against damage you cause *to other people* right?”
what other types of insurance do public entities *require* me to have to protect others from my behavior? i can’t think of any.
i’m pretty sure brazilian jiu jitsu is dangerous but the state doesn’t require me to take out a policy to protect the guys i roll with. Virginia does not mandate gun insurance to protect others in the event of a hunting accident.
my former landlord required renter’s insurance, my bank required homeowner’s insurance, and my bank probably would’ve required mortgage insurance if i didn’t put enough down… but those are all private, not public.
disregard, i missed the forest for the trees, i.e. Code of Virginia requires “license bond insurance” blah blah etc etc.
If you’re advocating for the state to quit forcing people to do anything of the sort, I’m with you. But the state also owns the roadways, which is kind of an issue, so since the state owns the roads, they still get to set the rules for who drives on them. I would much prefer a system of private roads – but that isn’t the case. Regardless you should see a difference between having insurance to protect others against your mistakes and forcing people to have insurance to cover themselves.
Tony, if prosperity could become the norm, then it wouldn’t be a problem to pay for a few individuals who end up in a bad way but have no insurance. It would be like dropping spare change into a charity jar at the local store. That’s what needs to change: widespread prosperity rather than lower class equity.
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It’s amazing to me that we physicians, who have gone through 4 years of medical school, and variable, often up to 7, years of postgraduate clinical training.