Healthcare

[DigitalMaestro]

Voltaire (I believe) had a great quote:
"I may not agree with what you say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it."

I think this also applies to charity and wealth. I may not agree with Rich Person A who never donates to any cause, but I will fight for his right to his own hard-earned property. This is because I protect my own right to my property when I protect his.

Another great quote:
"A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have." -Gerald Ford (I believe)

-DigitalMaestro

[Bigwind]

>>I believe the private sector can provide a better product (in this case: healthcare) than any government.
>>>>Bureaucracy tends to stifle innovation and simply grow more and more bloated.

In the Uk we have the NHS (National Health Service) and various private health schemes. Some of these schemes run private hospitals. Everyone who pays taxes funds the NHS and, if they want, can also pay private health insurance.

Most of the doctors who have private practices also work for the NHS and the nurses and administrators who run the private practices, along with ALL doctors, are usually trained by the NHS. A lot of the private hospitals will do routine scheduled operations but if there are any complications or emergencies arising, the patient will be sent to the local NHS emergency department.

All our emergency medical services (ambulances, flying doctors etc.) are run under the umbrella of the NHS.

The private sector only helps the higher earners and very rich jump the queues to get elective treatment early. ALL other people, middle earners down to the unemployed (and unemployable) get treatment without charge!

Do I object to paying for healthcare out of my taxes, no! Do I mind getting all my (legal) drugs at subsidised rates, no! If I have an accident, do I want to have the emergency ambulance pick me up anywhere in the UK, transport me to a specialist emergency treatment department to get fixed up regardless of the cost, be sent home to be cared for by my local GP (General Practioner) and district nurses ALL for FREE, hell YES.

In reality, I know we pay for it but I wouldn't change it for the world!

[Spec8472]

All conditions which are not immediately life threatening should be dealt with by the private citizen and any cooperative he has entered into voluntarily.

So, you're in favour of *some* public healthcare. But, so long as you're not spurting blood on the ER doorstep though - tough cookies if you don't have insurance? And if you are, well, we'll sew up the stump of your arm, but we won't re-attach it.

I'm not sure if you have children or not - but are you aware that babies are not able to receive all the vaccinations until certain ages?
We rely on babies not getting diseases such as pertussus, measles, etc before they can be vaccinated by ensuring that those around them have already been vaccinated. (It's called Herd Immunity).
Would you extend your 'life threatening medical services only' to wide-spread government-paid vaccinations for all?

What about ensuring proper community sanitation (sewage and waste water removal, garbage removal, provision of clean drinking water for all)? This prevents diseases like Cholera.

I'm not always interested in being arbitrarily "fair" to the whole human population

I think this is really something that only someone who has lived a relatively privileged life could say.

Why shouldn't those who have plenty have an obligation to contribute (a relative pittance, btw) back to society for the improvement of all?

You should go talk to (or research) the hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people in your country who have had exceedingly basic healthcare procedures (dental work, sores/ulcers seen to, etc) go un-done for years because they can't afford the overpriced fees from doctors, or health insurance, or in the cases where they have health insurance - the insurance won't pay for this basic work.

These are people who have worked hard their entire life, but either don't have the skills to work in a higher paying job, or where they do have high-level skills, there is little or no work work for that skillset.

Think your Janitor or plumber or guy making you coffee in the morning - most of those people simply cannot afford healthcare insurance. So, under the system you're in favour of - tough luck for them. If they break their arm - they better hope they don't need a doctor, else they could be up for thousands.


Voltaire had another quote attributed to him too:
Upon his death bed, he was urged to renounce the devil. "Now is no time to be making new enemies".

[DigitalMaestro]

As an American, I can't deny that I live a relatively privileged life when compared to those in 3rd world countries, but I'm not all that privileged when compared with other Americans.

As to the obligation to help the poor, I believe that I do have a MORAL obligation to help them, hence my charity work and donation. What I do not support is LEGISLATED obligation. As a young adult, I have some extra time although little extra money and I contribute some of that time to helping those in need on a regular (almost weekly) basis. I do that out of personal conviction. I can't afford to pay ANOTHER bill right now, so I contribute more with my time and skills. Later in life, I expect the proportion of my charity work vs donation will shift toward the monetary side as my time fills up and my body is less interested in labor (and hopefully my income grows).

It's not that I don't think I should be involved in helping the poor. I simply think that I should be active in that help rather than simply paying more in my taxes for some bureaucrat to waste. That enables me to funnel my donations of time and money to worthy causes that are continuing to prove their efficiency and value.

Those of you worried by my avatar, I just thought the joke was funny. I'm not actually a Nazi.

A few of the issues you listed:
Waste water removal: I have a septic tank that treats the waste my LARGE household produces with little to no outside interaction.
Garbage removal: We pay taxes for this, but it is executed by a private contractor. Such contractors could market directly to property owners instead of to communities as a whole.
Clean drinking water: I have a well that provides clean water that has been tested professionally and found to contain almost negligible amounts foreign particulates.

For the record, I don't live in some random place in the middle of nowhere. I live in what has become a suburb of one of America's 10 or 20 largest cities, so I don't think that my own situation is a crazy exception.

-DigitalMaestro

[Fiferguy]

It's not just about the poor. Thousands and thousands of people have lost work in this recession, and they are unable to pay health care costs. Many have died because of this. Simply because they couldn't afford their treatments any more. Not because they are lazy, not because they are poor, but because their treatment cost skyrocketed when they lost their health insurance through work, and they couldn't pay for it. So are you saying that all those hard-working, normal Americans can just suck it up and die because they can't afford treatments for cancer, kidney failure, psychosis, etc? "Sucks to be you buddy...nice to know you..."

[GBLW]

I am astonished!
At least one positive has come out of Obamacare -- I was talking with a new doctor in town at a party last night. He's a Canadian, who was educated here, then 'cherry picked' by a US hospital after he graduated, but due to what he now sees happening to the health care system in the US of A, he's packing up and coming back home.

According to his view, he would have been overrun by patients who've received no health care for years because they couldn't afford it, but he wasn't going to receive any more for his services. Not only that, but in the lawsuit happy state where he was practising, he was already warned that his lawsuit insurance costs would increase.

I asked if he wasn't being a pessimist and he laughed, then said; "I'm just beating the stampede. Do you have any idea how many Canadians are hired right out of university to work in Yankeeland and are starting to think they'd be better off at home? Since Obama plans on killing off all the perks, we'll all be better off up here. It won't be long before they're the ones who are losing their newly educated doctors to Canada. Maybe we'll be able to get health care back on track up here, because most of what's wrong with the Canadian system is a shortage of doctors and nurses."

I'm not sure if he's right or not, but it would sure be a bright spot on our horizon if he is.