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Originally Posted by Enoch Root
It is not that it is wrong. It is that not everyone has access to healthcare. People need food and water and an education and health and a system to heal them when they sicken. You needed healing when you ended your service. This isn't arrogance, this is looking at a problem/situation and realizing something is needed, that we need to come together as a people to remedy it. You got those surgeries at US Healthworks. Great. Now think of all the people who can't go to such places and the services those places may not provide. A system must be put in place that allows such access. It is easy to speak of "individual responsibility" when you have the means to provide for yourself. Not everyone can provide for themselves. Individual responsibility requires/assumes that what you need is somewhere around and you have the means to get it. It is impossible to get fresh meat if there is no local butcher.
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Before you think that I am well off, I make less than $18,000 a year right now as it stands. I am well within that "low income" bracket and I would be considered to be one of the poor, impoverished people who can't afford healthcare by most standards. Yet I am able to afford my own healthcare! Why? Because I save my money, I spend it wisely, I shop around for my healthcare instead of letting a health insurance company rape me out the ass and I eat right and stay fit with exercise. It isn't that hard to do. By allowing this sort of program, it essentially says, "Go ahead! Be cavalier with your body. Eat yourself into a diabetic coma. Check into the emergency room for every cough and sniffle you have and jack up the costs for everyone else. At least someone else gets to pay for it!"
All "free" health insurance does is distance people from the actual costs of their healthcare. When I go to US Healthworks or a similar clinic, they tell me the cost up front. They don't charge you out the wazoo like Blue Cross or a similar place does and they have alot of the same treatments available that you'd find at a hospital. By having the gov. pay for it, the costs will increase through way of taxes and other revenue collection schemes and you will eventually end up paying higher the market price for lower quality care.
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Originally Posted by Enoch Root
The answer to the Walter Reed problem, and others like it, is not to wave these places out of existence but to improve them--to hold people's feet to the fire, and burn them if necessary. Again, look to the rest of the modern Western world. They're doing pretty good. By all studies they are healthier and happier and better educated, precisely due to policies which you might term liberal. Because the government is working for the people, rather than merely for the moneyed class. It provides for the people, who in turn hold their government accountable. Is that not "individually responsible"? Is that not democratic? That things work badly in your country doesn't mean it can't work at all.
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Ahhh yes. The good ol' Europe example. Even though they are going belly up and can no longer afford to pay state employees and do not have the money to cover the costs of their social safety nets, at least they have free healthcare, right? Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Britain and other Euro countries are pretty much in the shitter, with the exception of Germany, and yet we should look to them for guidance?
Again, you assume that when the gov. gives you free healthcare, 1) The moment your money has been deducted, it hasn't already been spent by the fed since the start of these programs (Why else can't you fully deduct all that you have paid into Social Security and all the other programs or why when you pass away, all the "leftover" money never gets sent to your relatives or to cover funeral costs?), 2) People won't abuse the system (i.e. Hypochondriacs crying about every boo boo they have or idiots clogging up the ER when they have the flu), 3) The politicians enacting such legislation actually care about you (Afterall, why else do we have a defecit if they were the careful bean counters that some think they are?), 4) That everyone who pays into it will get the same amount back and 5) That you will have high quality treatment instantly. Unfortunately, all these social safety nets are just cleverly disguised revenue collection schemes that are proving themselves to be unsustainable.
Think of it as a water pump. When you have a steady supply of water pump, a constant pressure on the water and a steady flow from the pump, it all works out and there is no problem. Once the pump starts spinning faster and increases the amount of flow with the amount of water and the amount of pressure staying the same or lessened, you get a condition known as cavitation, where the pressurized water vaporizes and heats up to the point where it can literally melt or crack the impellers of the pump and render it useless.
We are experiencing the same thing with these programs. The reckless federal spending, the freebies and pay raises that politicians give themselves, misuse of the system, the intentions of the programs and general ineptitude of federal programs will only ensure that these programs will end up being another government endorsed ponzi scheme that is destined to fail from the get go and ends up being a drain on the people.
Brit healthcare-
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7071660.stm
Brit healthcare 2-
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/da...thcare_system/
European financial crisis-
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Spain-...59080.html?x=0
European financial crisis 2-
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/no...medium=twitter