5 freedoms you'd lose in health care reform

[ViperVX]

Originally Posted by LeVeL

I'd like to see your facts, please. Also, just because my neighbor is a fatass, doesn't mean that I want Obama to shove his idea of what my healthcare plan should be down my throat.

Sorry, i'll correct myself. (Wkipedia)

It's funny how in the country where 2/3 are overweight and 1/3 are Obese, ppl fight to deny health care to 50 million who can't afford it, instead of denying fast food to 350 million.

Should current trends continue, 75% of adults in the US are projected to be overweight and 41% obese by 2015

Doesn't that sound like something really worth fighting, especially since it's directly related to health care.

[LeVeL]

Originally Posted by ViperVX

It's funny how in the country where 2/3 are overweight and 1/3 are Obese, ppl fight to deny health care to 50 million who can't afford it, instead of denying fast food to 350 million.

No, just no. Those numbers mean that EVERYONE in the US is either overweight or obese. Sorry, but at 150lbs I don't think I'm either
That said, I do agree with you that there are more important things to worry about than centralizing healthcare

[ViperVX]

Originally Posted by LeVeL

No, just no. Those numbers mean that EVERYONE in the US is either overweight or obese. Sorry, but at 150lbs I don't think I'm either
That said, I do agree with you that there are more important things to worry about than centralizing healthcare

No, that means 66.6% are overweight, half of them, 33.3% are obese and a third is within healthy limits. But that's a big off-top to the main topic, which is a real fear of socialism in a must-have nationalized health care system.

[jetsetter]

I don't think some of the supporters of the reform realize that it won't work. It will cost more to the tax payer (a good many of those tax payers already have health insurance and are healthy) and in the end it will be a failure. Heath care is not a right, that must be understood.

[matt2000]

One thing: WELCOME TO THE NHS!

[ViperVX]

Originally Posted by jetsetter

I don't think some of the supporters of the reform realize that it won't work. It will cost more to the tax payer (a good many of those tax payers already have health insurance and are healthy) and in the end it will be a failure. Heath care is not a right, that must be understood.

Try it. You can always move any nationalized industry into private hands no problems, might as well try for those poor 50 million who need it.

[Plissken]

Originally Posted by jetsetter

Heath care is not a right, that must be understood.

Can you please explain to me how you can justify denying a cancer sufferer a life saving operation on the grounds that the patient don't have enough money.

Go on, justify it.

[jetsetter]

Originally Posted by ViperVX

Try it. You can always move any nationalized industry into private hands no problems, might as well try for those poor 50 million who need it.

What if I don't want health insurance?
The government is trying to force me to buy it, but absent federal meddling, the price of medical care would return to reasonable levels.
By Becky Akers
from the July 20, 2009 edition

New York - I'm one of the nearly 50 million Americans who don't have health insurance. I don't want it, either.

But the bill the House of Representatives is debating would force me to buy it. How good can any product be if Congress compels me to purchase it?

Politicians and interest groups have been trying virtually all my life to foist medical insurance on me. But their proposals rest on mistaken and even insulting assumptions.

First, they presume that everyone wants, needs, and should have abundant medical attention. But I come from a long-lived and healthy family, I've been a vegetarian since childhood because I've never liked the way meat tastes, I don't smoke, and I love to hike – the more miles the better.

I am disgustingly healthy, so much so that the only doctors I see – or try to: I'm near-sighted – are ophthalmologists. Could I be hit by a bus tomorrow when I head out for my daily walk? Possibly. But that's such an unlikely disaster that I've chosen to spend my money on more personally pressing needs than medical insurance.

On the other hand, unlikely disasters do happen. So I might purchase catastrophic coverage if it were reasonably priced – just as I might visit doctors for lesser complaints if their care were reasonably priced.

But the government's meddling is what helped mess-up the medical market to begin with.

The federal government perverts costs with its Medicare and Medicaid programs: Recipients of this largess have no incentive to save money since someone else pays their bills.

In fact, the incentives run the opposite way as patients demand more procedures and tests while magnifying problems I resolve out of my medicine cabinet into emergency-room runs. Doctors who get away with charging Medicare hundreds for diagnosing Grandpa's indigestion would charge me the same.

Meanwhile, state governments shackle the insurance industry, mandating that policies cover everything from chiropractic care to hormone replacement. These launch premiums into the stratosphere. I'd much rather pick and choose the coverage I want at a price I'm willing to pay than buy the plan bureaucrats and special interests decree.

But the universal-healthcare crowd thinks it knows better than I do how to spend my money. Why can't they leave me alone? I'm not forcing them to eat flaxseed and bike to meetings instead of hopping into their limousines. It's time for them to return the favor.

Besides, if that bus does hit me tomorrow, I want – and will pay for – top-notch care. And that's not what government-run medical systems dispense. Delays, expedient rather than proper treatment, and double standards of care depending on who you are and whom you know characterize universal-healthcare systems.

Which makes sense. We live in a world of finite resources and infinite desires, where medical care must be "rationed" like all other products and services.

Though we can't choose whether goods are rationed, we can choose how they are. Either the politicians and bureaucrats who bring us long lines at DMVs, failing public schools, and the endless war in Iraq will decide who gets what kind of treatment, or the free market will.

Fans of universal healthcare deride the market: They say it's cold and cruel because we each have to pay for the care we demand. But government healthcare can be far colder and crueler. Its care is inferior: Contrast an inferior, run-down veteran's hospital with a general one. And it's expensive. Dr. Jeffrey Anderson recently wrote in Investor's Business Daily, "Since 1970 ­– even without the prescription drug benefit – Medicare's costs have risen 34 percent more, per patient, than the combined costs of all health care in America apart from Medicare and Medicaid…."

Absent such meddling, the price of medical care would return to reasonable levels. It benefits no provider of any service to charge such astronomical fees that customers can't afford to patronize him.

Then, too, in a market free of the state's stranglehold, doctors and hospitals would compete with one another to lower prices and attract the ill or injured.

That doesn't mean everyone could finally buy all the procedures they wanted or even needed – but that's where private charity would come in. Humanitarians who send inner-city kids to summer camp and volunteer their time or money at soup kitchens would strive to ensure that needy Americans received medical care.

President Obama says, "We have no choice but to fix the healthcare system because right now it's broken for too many Americans." But the only fix we need is for government to get out of medicine.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0720/p09s01-coop.html

[jetsetter]

Can you please explain to me how you can justify denying a cancer sufferer a life saving operation on the grounds that the patient don't have enough money.

Go on, justify it.

I wouldn't denying a cancer sufferer a life saving operation. However, I wouldn't want the government to pay for it.

[Plissken]

Besides, if that bus does hit me tomorrow, I want – and will pay for – top-notch care.

In other words, Little Miss Self-Righteous can afford the thousands of dollars it will cost. And if anyone else can't afford it, well tough shit, baby.

[Plissken]

Originally Posted by jetsetter

I wouldn't denying a cancer sufferer a life saving operation. However, I wouldn't want the government to pay for it.

If the person can't pay it, who should?

[Symbotic]

Originally Posted by LeVeL

I am by no means "rich" and yet I am currently able to choose my own doctor. Hell, I just switched last year!
I'm not sure why health insurance should be mandatory in the first place. If you want to but into it, then by all means go right ahead. If you don't get sick very often (maybe that's a bad example lol) and think you can get by without insurance, then you shouldn't be forced to get it.

Its for the same reason that car insurance it mandatory. If that person get hurts or sick, he has to go to the hospital and they have to eat the cost. That is one reason why heath care is so expensive. I don't like Obama's plan at all, but something need to be happen.

[jetsetter]

In other words, Little Miss Self-Righteous can afford the thousands of dollars it will cost. And if anyone else can't afford it, well tough shit, baby.

Indeed. I wouldn't care her "Little Miss Self-Righteous" though, it is rude. She is just expressing the opinion of many Americans.

[ViperVX]

To cut it short, Health Care should be a right, costs should be spread among all population, obviously following tax/income pyramid. The question remains, if you don't want Gov-t to pay for it, the ill person can't, but you say he can't be denied the procedure, who should pay for it?

[jetsetter]

Originally Posted by ViperVX

To cut it short, Health Care should be a right

And there is the crux of the argument......

The question remains, if you don't want Gov-t to pay for it, the ill person can't, but you say he can't be denied the procedure, who should pay for it?

Private organizations, charities, etc. Be aware that the United States already has Medicaid, Medicare, etc. I am not calling for the removal of those systems.

[ViperVX]

Originally Posted by jetsetter

And there is the crux of the argument......

There is completely no way you can argue that i shouldn't be.

Originally Posted by jetsetter

Private organizations, charities, etc. Be aware that the United States already has Medicaid, Medicare, etc. I am not calling for the removal of those systems.

Ok, so you already have that, clearly it's not working for a big bunch of ppl. You are being offered an alternative that would cover 100%, there is no other options on the table, and it's an actual matter of life and death, so what do you do...

[jetsetter]

There is completely no way you can argue that i shouldn't be.

Of course there is. It is my right not to have to pay for health coverage for other people.

[ahpadt]

Most. Stupid. Discussion. Ever.

[jetsetter]

Originally Posted by ahpadt

Most. Stupid. Discussion. Ever.

How so? Please elaborate he who lives in Norway, country of only 4.8 million and 148,746 sq mi in size. The United States is not like any European country.

[ViperVX]

Originally Posted by jetsetter

Of course there is. It is might right not to have to pay for health coverage for other people.

You are obligated to pay taxes, you can't dismiss it, that falls under taxes. I don't see you crying about taxes going to national security, and 50 million ppl without any health care is a massive threat to national security and health of the nation, in epidemiological pov.

If you think of health of the nation as a matter of national security, which it clearly is, the current system already failed you, as (said above) obesity is already uncontrollable, plus it's N1 dismissal reason in US Army, so here you go.

Plus, you're already paying for health care of all elected officials, gov-t employees and all armed forces, so, by law, you can't dismiss enforcement of something you're already doing.