Universal healthcare is a good idea but the government should pay for it. Requiring everyone to belong and forcing people to pay for it is a serious abrogation of our liberties.
If the rest of the civilized world can have universal healthcare why cant we? Oh right, we have to give tax breaks to the rich and spend billions on wars. :censored:

The use of "lowest bidders" is also common in the private sector. Curious you mention the military, seeing as how the US has the most advanced forces on the planet. Need I continue?

As for the tyrant quote, I must call its use absurd. I do not know what the context of it is (though I would hazard that it is referring to REAL tyrants and not democratically elected presidents), but nearly all evil people will try to cover up what they do as being for the good of the people. It is not reserved for what are deemed "liberal policies." And the briefest glance at the rest of the modern Western world will show that you are wrong about doing such things "for the good of the people" inevitably leads to tyranny or are the result of tyranny. Americans are not the sole Keepers of Liberty.

That's ok, I'd rather go to California ;)

The gov. likes to spend money on stupid high speed shit but does not like to spend the extra dollar on its peons. The cost to get every service member a quality rifle in a better caliber, new ammunition and the training for a new platform would cost less than one F-22 Raptor fighter jet. Look up the DoD statistics in the cost of an F-22 versus the projected cost of purchasing, retooling and training for a new weapon. Why then do they insist on giving soldiers and marines an outdated weapon (M4) that has reduced range, accuracy and killing power, yet they will spend billions on a single fancy airplane?

I have seen the quality of government run healthcare both on active duty and through the VA hospital and it isn't pretty. Their method of helping you is by prescribing pills regardless of your injury and telling you to walk it off. If you think that is bad, you should wait until you you get operated on! Before, soldiers could not sue the doctors at the military hospitals but a lacksadaisyical attitude has become so commonplace that there have been an overwhelming amount of complaints and soldiers can now sue the military for inadequate care and malpractice. Google "Walter Reed Medical Hospital" if you do not believe me. The VA has been having the same shit go on for decades. If they show so much disregard for those that took an oath to serve their country, what makes you think that their attitude towards civilians would be any different?

Again I ask the question. Why is it so wrong to let people decide what kind of healthcare they want instead forcing them to partake in a government healthcare plan?

You do realize that the government by itself does not make much money and the money it does have is collected from you, I and everyone else who either lives in this country or does business with us by the way of taxes and tarrifs, right? So you would be paying for inferior care whether you recognize it or not.

Can you clarify the bolded part? Is that aimed at treatment facilities, health insurance companies and hospitals or is that directed at the government?

The biomedical field is a huge driver of the economy and necessary for the health of US citizens. It helps the country to be on the bleeding edge of this field. I still think it should be largely commercial, but if there are technologies in the biomedical field that are too financially risky for companies to take on, but could potentially pay back huge, then it may require the government to provide the funds to get it going.

If there's a danger with toxic food the FDA should step in, or at least mandate that the chicken be labeled stating the potential risk. If there's a risk to the population, the government has a responsibility to step in, while weighing the liberties of Americans and states rights. There should be a united states because each state is not its own country. They are all bound by the US Constitution.

How does the government pay for it without taxing the people for that cost?

Well, of course we don't get something for nothing. Europeans are willing to pay high taxes for health care because they consider it worth it. It releases them from the anxiety of whether they can afford the healthcare they need to stay alive.
Apparently, in this country, the people who have healthcare don't care whether people without it live or die. I think there is a racial component to this issue along with being "poor".

Yeah, San Diego has great weather and lots of hot shemales. :drool:

You're in SD? Lets grab a beer sometime if you are. :)

Thanks again, Tracy, for your thoughtful response. It is a pleasure to continue the dialogue in a rational and productive way.

I'd like to ask you a bit more about your answer to my question regarding food safety, which I used as an example for a more general question about regulation.

Your response references the FDA. In the example I gave, it would be a division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture that would handle the issue, at least as the federal government is constituted at present. Nevertheless, my question really is about having regulations in advance of a crisis. You responded about the federal government stepping in once a problem or crisis has been revealed. How do you, as a libertarian, feel about the federal government regulating things to prevent such a crisis. In this case, it would clearly be in the form of federal regulations prescribing certain things to protect consumers from toxicity in food. These regulations supersede states' individual regulations; in other words, a state can have a more rigid regulatory regime, but not a more lax one.

I asked a libertarian colleague about this today and he gave me a convoluted answer that I could only understand as an attempt to agree with the need for federal regulation without endorsing federal regulators -- quite a feat of verbal acrobatics. Where do you come down on this issue?

Well, I am pretty close, about half way between LA and SD.
One of these days I am going to hire two nice tgirls who will put on a hot tranny to tranny show and then ??? :drool::turnon::inlove:

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.

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.

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.

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

I have a few tranny friends here in SD...

[QUOTE=randolph;164323Apparently, in this country, the people who have healthcare don't care whether people without it live or die. I think there is a racial component to this issue along with being "poor".[/QUOTE]
Oh puleeeeez!

I'd go along with that. I don't really have anything against the FDA as it stands now.

Still watiing...

Tracy, you are already paying for this man. And he is very much a real man somewhere out there: round the corner, sitting behind you at the diner or the movie theater, maybe even a relative you rarely see or a relative you dearly love. You pay for this man by an increase in your, and everyone else’s, health insurance premiums, an increase that would not be there if this man had health insurance as well. You pay for this man by an increase in your taxes if his surgery was dealt with in a public hospital or Veteran’s Administration.

The inevitable conclusion is this: if indeed you wish never to have to pay for any individual then all public funding for this man, and all others like him, in need of surgery would have to cut. The question to you, then, is this: should there be NO public funding of healthcare, including Medicare? For that would be the only way you see no increase in your taxes or premiums.

Read and despair! (If you can withstand the monotone...)
 

Quantitative easing explained: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTUY16CkS-k

And with cute little characters too!

Wow, that is fantastic! Time to plant a vegetable garden. :censored::censored::censored:

I'm paying for him if he works at my company and is in the same insurance group. There is probably some mixing of risks between various populations though. Do you think taxes should go to pay for the health problems of those who abuse their own bodies?

Actually, Tracy, and I say this without taking a position on the broader questions, it does not matter whether he works at your company and is in the same insurance group. There is a societal amortization of insurance that works across all insurance providers, all the insured, and all the uninsured.

Since the beginning, humans have abused themselves with alcohol, drugs, food and yes sex, you name it and somebody has abused it and caused health problems.

One way or another, societies have attempted to help people who are in trouble whether it is self inflicted or not. That is what a society is all about. Taxes and insurance premiums are a way to provide this support.

Tracy, if you get laid off from your good (government?) job, lose your health insurance and need an expensive operation in order to stay alive, how are you going to feel? :eek:

Since you begin this stating that humans have abused themselves, I assume when you say I need an expensive operation you're talking about an operation for a self inflicted condition. I have read a lot about exactly how to avoid that kind of thing and live a healthy life. If I am in this predicament it means I have not followed it well, so I would be really pissed. I would wish I could go back and do better. But then I would be glad that I'm still on Cobra.

If I'm not on Cobra, then the law is that if you go to a physician, or a hospital for emergency treatment, and you do indeed, have an emergency, they are required by law to treat you until you are stable and can either be discharged or transferred to another facility, such as a state owned hospital. This is regardless of whether or not you have insurance.

Not all medical conditions are the result of abuse. Genetics can be a problem and physical injuries are are often unavoidable. I suppose a true libertarian would refuse medical attention from a tax supported institution and would avoid insurance coverage since it is a community effort to help individual members. The true libertarian would refuse all help unless paid for directly out of pocket.

Good luck in your bid for House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi. You're a fantastic creator of jobs for republicans.

I wonder how Nancy and Barak are going to get along the next two years if she leads the liberal Dems and he is after the GOP mods. :confused:

It's unfortunate that the thread is again reverting to a discussion that is not about the issues. We were doing so well for a brief while.

Am I getting this right? Everyone is paying with their taxes for people who are not insured and need an emergency treatment. You don?t want to pay others regular treatment with a new healthcare program, but want to keep the old system where you pay in an emergency.
Usually it is cheaper to maintain something than wait until a constructive total loss and than try to fix it.

What are the advantages in your old health care system? Or what I don?t get or get wrong?
it is by far the most expensive one,
your treatment quality is comparable to other high developed countries,
if you or your company can?t pay the insurance anymore, you only get treated in an absolute emergency,
the ones who are not insured are screwed and/or weight the tax payer, too,
your insurance companies decide how much you have to pay or even can refuse you,
it is bureaucratic to make the different accounts and to decide who gets what, because of your different insurance systems/emergency cases.
You can decide to not have an insurance, spent your money otherwise, and if you really need help the tax payer have to pay your treatment.




There is no way to avoid that, you can only lower or raise the risk to something. You can get fat and lazy without any problems, or can stay fit as Bruce Lee and die however.

You mean about Pelosi? The liberal free for all has her name written all over it.

I don't understand this endless hatred of Pelosi.
I have heard her talk about issues, she is intelligent and articulate.
I think the conservatives are just jealous that they can't come up with some one with equal intelligence to represent them.

Once Obama care is fully implemented my health insurance payments go up to around $1000 or more a year. Plus it adds another $trillion to our debt. This is less expensive how? Rather than the government paying for everyone's health maintenance costs in addition to emergency care, why not do something smarter like outlawing high-fructose sugar? As the use of this sugar spread throughout the US obesity has also spread in exactly the same way. You get rid of this sugar and you greatly decrease all the problems that come with obesity, like heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, fatigue, etc. 1/3 of the people in this country are now obese, and it is still climbing. It used to be that 1-2% of children were obese. Now it's 13%! People would be healthier and feel better. Isn't that a lot cheaper?


Yes that's true but I'm not as quick to throw out statistics as you are.

Discourse about issues can be productive, and perhaps even lead to solving problems. Discourse about people involved in those issues is usually counterproductive, especially if it is in the form of invective, or name calling, or blame -- unless the objective is for the individual who engages in it to feel better about himself or herself. At least that's my observation over the course of my life, and I've rarely found anyone who can mount a convincing argument to the contrary.

LOL good one. For those who don't get the joke though Pelosi is notorious for shutting out republicans from back door meetings and cramming bills through congress that involve 1/6 of the country's economy while the majority of Americans were telling her and congress to STOP! This was a huge breach of trust with the American people and resulted in the biggest routing of Congress in a election in over 50 years.

It's okay to have any opinion of the healthcare plan and expresss that opinion, but none of us in the discussion should be entitled to our own facts. The non-partisan Congresssional Budget Office estimated that the bill would cost $940 billion in the first 10 years but would also reduce the deficit by $138 billion over the same ten years.

I'm sure you were just as quick to point that out when it was open season on slamming Bush

Is her politicking any different from what both party leaders have been doing forever? :innocent:

Other than perhaps joining in the "fun" in a Sarah Palin thread during the election season of 2008, you'd be hard-pressed to find me violating this "rule" as I wrote it above with respect to "slamming Bush" anywhere on this forum. I may have chimed in on some policy discussions, but not in the way you are implying.

I can't take responsibility for the behavior of others. And yes, I reminded people many times during the Bush presidency that what he did mattered more than whether he was, for instance, the sharpest knife in the drawer.

Quite true, it seems politicizing and ranting about individuals is a way of smoke screening the real issues. We have critical issues facing us that are being covered over, ignored and distorted.
We no longer have enough domestic oil to supply our needs.
We spend billions to buy oil from Arabs
We out source the heart of our economy the industrial worker.
We consume far more than we need.
We are like a bunch of drunken sailors in a lifeboat. The booze is running out and we have nowhere to go.

Yet the politics is so intense that nothing is being done to ensure our future as a viable country.:censored:

I don?t know what is made with Obama care, but how can it be more expensive to your insurance payments? What are they doing wrong with the Obama care that it doesn?t get closer to other countries in price?
The cost to start this should be taken by the government, the trillion you mentioned. There is no surprise that this cost much at the beginning, but this should be amortized over time (as smc mentioned).

Personally I would prefer marking the products combined with elucidation about fructose.
Especially products labelled with diet do lot harm, because people think they are doing their self something good with less sugar. It contains less sugar, but most of it is fructose instead of a better sugar mix and it has often more fat than non diet products.



I don?t want to throw out statistics. I know what they show in general, but they do not work on an individual, there are always exceptions and everybody could be the exception.

"Is her politicking any different from what both party leaders have been doing forever? :innocent:"

Yes

This goes both ways. Not only should you attack at person's policies rather that attacking them, but when electing a president you should praise his policies rather than praising them. Very few people who voted for Obama even knew much about his policies. They just knew he was a cool guy. And he wasn't Bush. (Neither was McCain btw)

Most people who are trying to figure out why people don't like Obama care automatically assume it's those idiot republicans who just don't understand. They never consider that it may just happen to be a really bad plan. Other than the fact that dems got trounced in the elections, here's another indicator that Obama care will fail: Several large corporations are getting waivers from the government so they don't have to comply with the insurance changes.

products are marked. There's just very little choice for people wanting to avoid fructose or the mystery diet crap.

The reason its a bad plan is because the medical industry wrote. :censored:

Our government is run by a bunch of idiots. TSA lets a bunch of soldiers coming back from Afghanistan carrying a bunch of serious weaponry. Yes, unloaded, but still... Here's the crazy part. They bar one of the soldiers from boarding because he has nail clippers, which could potentially be used as a weapon to take control of the plane.

http://www.redstate.com/erick/2010/1...r-tsa-outrage/

Do we really want these kinds of people running our health care system? That's another thing people from outside the US don't realize is how inept our government workers are.

A teacher in Florida was doing a magic trick for his students in which he made a toothpick disappear. He was fired for doing witchcraft. No joke. That's how bad it is here. The USA is a 3rd world country with the world's largest economy.

Yes, agreed, we have idiots from top to bottom. Of course most of them are conservatives. Liberals are intelligent, responsible politicians and know how to properly run the country in an honest efficient way, right?
Look at the evidence, the country is debt free, we have plenty of energy, our schools are the best and we are free of crime and drugs. What a wonderful country, right?

I don't think I implied it was only one political group in the government. They're both retarded. Politicians... step back from our money.

I think the only way we can get good government is to change the structure of Congress. The enormous cost of getting elected and reelected is corrupting the government. It makes Congressmen very susceptible to financial influence.
So I propose that Congressmen serve one term of six years only. Then they can concentrate on governing. An enhanced impeachment process could be implemented to kick out bad asses before their term runs out. I don't think there is any value in the seniority situation, the longer they are in, the more corrupt they get. Congressional staff does and would do most of the work on getting bills together.
Also, since the airwaves are owned by the government, a certain number of hours of TV and Radio time should be provided free for candidates.
Oh well, good government, just a dream.