This would fall into the grasshopper and the ant story category.  If someone has been a productive member of society all their lives they probably have good insurance.

I realize it's intellectually easy (or lazy) to simply cast those who disagree with your political opinions as evil, selfish bastards. My view is that I don't want the federal government to get involved at all in health care.

After all, it's liberals, not conservatives, that seem inclined to use the federal government to try to control our lives, I could almost imagine a future liberal seriously suggesting euthanizing the elderly to cut down government health care costs. 

And who should determine need? The government? Some random group of doctors? And what is the criteria?

If "need" could be objectively and universally defined, it might be doable. But it's not. It's always subjective and in the absence of objectivity, I would prefer the government not be involved.

The value of human life is always there. Whether we accept that fact or not, people's lives are measured and valued. The question is whether they are valued by the government or through the free market? I choose the free market.

A bad analogy. You know why? Because like you said, funding comes from property taxes and as a practical matter, the fire department is a shared resources that has virtually no limit (i.e. citizens aren't really even remotely close to competing for that resource).

Moreover, people pay property taxes based on a flat rate. Your property is worth N, then you pay N times X.

By contrast, universal healthcare would involve providing services to a huge group that pay nothing at all in return but still get to vote on what services they receive.  It is also set up such that a tiny group is paying nearly all the bill. And it involves a resource in which there is a great deal of competition for.

Using your fire department analogy, if my house is on fire and the house of someone who hasn't paid their property taxes is on fire, you're damn straight I would expect my house to be taken care of before the house of the person who hasn't paid taxes even if their house "needs" it more according to some people.

Your system is that you're all equally screwed.  :)  Our system has some semblance of merit-based benefit.

In a socialistic society like Canada, the citizenry have largely abandoned their personal responsibilities to each other in favor of handing it over to the government to take care of things for them.

Ever wonder why the crime rate in conservative areas is so much less than liberal areas -- even taking population density into effect? Because conservatives do look at things as "we're in this together" but in a more literal sense - we work with our neighbors ourselves, we don't outsource it to the government to take care for us.

Forget the SON, how about you directly... if he is paying for the same treatment for HIMSELF and ANOTHER PERSON... he has every right to want HIS to be done first... and the other person to wait in line.

You could say "that is evil, both of their lifes are equal, thus it should be completely random who goes first, or based on who is sicker"... except that if he did NOT work hard enough to be able to pay for BOTH of them, then NEITHER of them would live, how is it fair to take it from him and give it to someone else?

Yes, people are sick and dying, but health care is finite, you never answered my question if people in canada get million dollar anti aids drug coctails... or if they get a team of 10 world class doctors flown to immidiately treat them on the tax payer dime... obviously they are NOT because it will be "too expensive" (10 best doctors in the world are a fininte resource, and doctors like to be paid)... so it is not FREE health care for all, it is just EQUALLY MEDIOCRE healthcare for all by taking from those that have and giving to those that have less until they both have the same amount no matter how hard they worked for it... instead of better healthcare for those who pay for it, and lesser for those who don't (by taking from those that have, and giving to those that don't... but to a lesser amount).

I actually AGREE that health care is a necessitiy... I categorized my needs as following:

1. Water

2. Food

3. Shelter (immidiate, a shack with some logs counts as shelter if it is cold outside)

4. clothes

5. healthcare.

 

Everything else is non essential wants... so why am I not living in a hut in the middle of the forest hunting for my food and having a grand old time? because i need healthcare, the BEST i can get, and that means working for it in the USA. If I was in canada I would be sorely tempted to just sit around and do nothing, living off of welfare while I paint and excercise, and do other stuff that is not contributing to society at all (and thus raising my funds).

Food is so fucking cheap and plentiful in places like the USA that everyone can have it... but what about places where people are starving? when some people are starving, to take from those that have (because they worked hard for it) and give to those that don't (because they didn't produce anything) until they both have equal amount (aka, both have equal chance of not making it through winter) would be ATROCIOUS. It is better that the non productive member of society die then the productive one, his life is worth less then that of the productive member.

You are all talking about those charities, or about "medicare" (as Guy mentionned) for those who cannot afford an insurance..

If that's the case. If your system really has such layers of protection against those who cannot afford insurance, then tell me why a large amount of americans still cannot have insurance coverage?

Tell me why a lot of people are still getting bankrupted because of their family's healthcare cost?

Tell me why healthcare coverage is one of the top (if not THE top) worry of americans?

You let people have their their lives wreaked because they had the indecency of getting terribly sick. Or maybe it was their wife's. Or their children. Charity cannot reach them all. Medicare obviously is not as efficient as some may think.

I probably live in the most liberal society when it comes to healthcare, and we aren't even remotely close to thinking like that. I think you are quite bigoted against liberal, when you are uttering stupidities of the kind. "Euthanazing the eldery"? What a total bullshit argument you just made.

No. Our system is that we are all serviced, no matter what. Some unlucky has to wait longer than others, becuase others have more urgent needs. It needs improvement, but we are far from being "Screwed". Actually, the services is usually extremely good, except for a few sad exception. But those few sad exception are FAR FAR outnumbered by the ones left behind in the USA's "you're screwed" system, even when you only look at the population ratio.

Cikomyr... funny you should say that because there are some very very liberal persons I know of who have been saying exactly that (forced euthanasia)...

That does not make sense... "if medicaid will pick up the bills if you don't have insurance, so why don't you have insurance?" the point isn't to have insurance, the point is to get medical care. Aside from that being relatively rare (never met one). Backrupcy = declare that you don't have the money to pay for things that you bought (such as high quality doctors and services from them) and the bill (And your current property) just goes away, and you start again from scratch. I don't understand why that is bad thing... you say that people should be spending millions that they don't have on medical treatment, then just NOT paying those millions that they own (that they chose to receive in services and goods), and STILL keep all their existing property? This isn't even as bad as you make it sound, since if you have nothing, you just get a small apartment and live there. Tell me why most women fake orgasms... Why should I know why people worry about stupid things. Probably because of liberal media lies that confuse them. You LET people have their lives ruined? I am not the one made them sick, neither is anyone else here. They got sick, shit happens. They get BETTER due to receiving the hard work and goods of many doctors, and then they don't even pay for it, they just have to give up their nice owned house and rent again. If anything they are get more then they should. And "you let" the same happen in places like canada... only in a different degree... uh oh... got a serious illment? here have some free treatment... what is that, you want BETTER treatment? sorry we can't give you the best, you will just have to make due or die.

Like a prostitute is "serviced"?  Last I heard, that is screwed.

There is another side to this that is not being addressed. The demographics of Canada and the US are miles apart. I would venture to say until recently it took a hearty person to live in Canada, a pioneer spirit so to speak. People that are productive and worked because it was a must. Now here is the difference the US population is 305,484,000, the Canadian population is 33,409,500. If 40% of Americans pay no taxes, there by paying 0 for health care (these people can replace the population of Canada with many to spare). I'll argue that if Canada had 40% of it's population as non contributors to the system that it would fail quickly.

Canada owes it's current position to the people past and present who work hard and make it possible. The US was like this once, until entitlement was implemented and now is growing like a cancer. As Canada grows internally and becomes more popular to immigrants, this is all bound to change, but by then it will be a right and too difficult to change. The only thing protecting Canada now is the hard work of most of it's people and the climate (weather) as perceived by potential immigrants, but the pain will come one day.

"The point is to force businesses to recognize a union whether the workers support it or not. This would be the biggest pro-union shift in the balance of labor-management power since the Wagner Act of 1935." Simply an example of political dialectic: a natural pendulum of power politics. "It is also set up such that a tiny group is paying nearly all the bill." That's been the case for decades as the uninsured has escalated.

Ah, homerically bless the immortal gods who are indifferent to mortals with bad health!

That's one way of looking at it. The other is to say that the citizenry discharge some of their personal responsibilities to each other through the tool of government, the most efficient way to take care of everybody.

Government: n. 1. A tool (of the people). 2. The most efficient way to take care of everybody

 

Thank you cactoblasta, I needed that laugh.

By dying earlier?! We could survive as a species with a life expectency of 30 years (due to no healthcare), just as we could survive if everyone over 50 years old was refused food and forced to starve to death. Doesn't make food any less of a need, in fact it shows that it is a need if you die much faster without it!

You already started to counter argue your own point there - profit making motive encourages increased efficiency, so it's not certain by any means that 'at cost' will be cheaper. Factor in overconsumption by making it 'free' and it could well end up more expensive

Why? With wants/luxuries sure, but we're talking about a basic necessity here - you're saying people should be denied such necessities simply because they're less productive than someone else? Now you can still allow very rich to obtain better healthcare (i.e. above that which covers the basic necesities) just the same as it is with food (pretty well all developed countries have at least enough of a welfare to allow people to purchase the really basic cheap food, while if you want to dine on caviar you need to be earning more), but take it too far and you could end up saying that for example you must have surgery undertaken without any anaesthetics by a poorly trained doctor using 30 year old surgical impliments for the 'crime' of not having/yet being as productive as someone else!

Until they (or someone they know) ends up in the situation of needing such care, I expect! Lets say you're 15 years old (hence still in full time education, hence no taxes likely paid, and unable to afford health insurance for yourself if you've even started thinking about such things). You're not as productive as your teacher, who probably earns a decent (but not massive) salary, pays taxes, might have insurance etc.; If you suffer a terrible and rare medical condition caused through no fault of your own, and need specialist attention costing say $50k in order to live beyond your 16th birthday, why should you be forced to have a substandard level of care (say $10k, the value of your parents combined assets+income that they have to spare) which causes your untimely death, while the teacher might have been able to see the specialist+survive if in the same situation? Should that child be punished simply because their parents may not be that productive (and hence unable to afford specialist treatment)? IMO it is immoral for such services to be denied based on income, and that everyone should be entitled initially to a basic level of healthcare that will mean if they need life saving treatment they will get it (although you could then introduce exceptions and would need cut off points - e.g. fat people who smoke might have to wait longer or be denied certain treatments, while highly expensive drugs that might give a 0.1% chance of saving someone simply wouldn't be viable either). This is of course in the context of the US or other developed countries, since such policies are affordable.

Age? Dependants? Contributory actions on the dying persons part? etc.

E.g. if you have two people needing emergancy lifesaving treatment, and only 1 can get it in time, and 1 is a 60 year old male lifetime smoker with no children who earns $2m a year, the other is a 23 year old woman with a 3 month old baby and a 1 1/2 year old child who earns $10k a year (and isn't likely to earn much more than that throughout her lifetime), most people wouldn't hesitate in saying that the young woman with dependants should be saved first - in fact even when you go back say 60-100 years to when you didn't have the same universal healthcare principals flying around that you do now, if a ship capsized, priority would b typicallye to save women+children first, and not simply the person with the most earning potential.

I'd have thought doctors would be the best judge of that, and in most cases it would probably be possible to determine; if you have 2 people, 1 of whom is expected to die within 24 hours if they don't get surgery, and one who will likely die in 24 days if they don't get surgery, you'd probably deem the first one to need surgery first. I.e. 2 people in an accident+emergancy ward, one has had his arm cut off and is going to bleed to death if not operated on, another has a gunshot to the leg that avoided any major arteries and will be in danger if not treated soon, but isn't critical yet, I'd have thought it wouldn't be too tough to determine who needs treatment more.

As for need more generally (as in what treatment is needed), that would be a tougher gauge, and probably best for the population to decide via voting for the party/policies they feel best reflect it, but as a basic rule, I'd say if you're going to die or suffer terrible injury, and there is a reasonably cost-effective method for saving your life/preventing that injury, then you need that treatment. Doctors are going to again be the best ones to start with for assessing whether you need something. The 'cost-effective' part I inserted is mainly because if this expenditure is coming from government, and their aim is to reduce deaths, then you need to put a price on life - e.g. do you spend $100k on some traffic safety features that will likely save 1 life a year, do you spend $1m a year on providing special healthcare to a person which will save their life, etc.;

Ok, how about the police then if you don't like the fire service analogy given? Two people are murdered, one of whom was on $40k, the other on $60k. Should they investigate murders equally based on the crime details, or should they devote 50% more resources to the person on $60k, or should they invest even more than 50% to the person on $60k (seeing as they'll likely have paid more than 50% more tax than the person on 40k, and hence base the increase in resources on the persons tax contributions)? In fact when you talk of basing such decisions on productivity+that it's unfair to pay for someone elses healthcare and not then get priority over them, are you thinking in terms of total taxes paid in lifetime, or taxes paid in that year, or income earned in lifetime, or in that year, or future earnings potential, or future taxation revenue potential, or some other measure?

The problem you have with such policies in the long term though is it causes massive resentment, and if rich people benefit from better public services than the poor I really don't see the party adopting such policies winning an election, while a dictatorship would not only result in higher taxation overall, but also then throw up issues such as revolution. Unless of course you had a democracy where you could only vote if you paid taxes - it'd have some merits, but also throw up other issues; would someone who had paid taxes all their life but was now retired be able to pay taxes? (although you could always then do it on the basis that people who had paid a certain tax for x years over their lifetime would be entitled to vote even when not paying any taxes, with voluntary contributions for people who wished to vote but had say been on maternity leave+looking after their family for some of those years; obviously you'd need to tie in other benefits like a pension to that so it's not quite about making people pay for the right to vote).

Hardly a left wing only issue - there are plenty of right wing people who support euthanasia (and therefore no doubt in extreme cases some who support forced euthanasia). Capital punishment is another case - it's not 'liberal' to support the death penalty, while a more right wing person would argue that you cut costs by killing the relevant people off, and that they've deserved it (never mind the small % of people who might get wrongful convictions). Hence on the issue of 'death to cut costs', I'd say the reasoning would likely be more 'conservative' than 'liberal'.

Well to pay for the healthcare taxes would raise, so you can bet that the figure would fall from 40%!

Perhaps you'd care to suggest alternative organisations that could take care of an entire nation more efficiently than the government in every conceivable situation? The government isn't perfect, but there are some cases where they are the most efficient method of achieving a particular goal.

 

A government is an organization that controls a specific region via military strength.

Most are not of or for the people. A FEW are of or for the people, and those vary greatly in implementation. And like every very large organization, they are far from efficient. If you had corporations controlling the government in a competitive environment you would MAYBE get a somewhat efficient way to utilize wealth.. MAYBE... you would also get a very corrupt government whose purpose is to make money for its owners, not to protect or serve its citizens (so it would be efficient in making money for the owners, not in serving the citizens).

"Democracy is the worst form of government ever made... except for all those other ones"

Themselves.

The government doesn't exist to "take care" of things people should be able to take care of for themselves.

Again... police are paid for by property taxes. 

It's a bad analogy again.  Everyone pays for the police in one way or another.

Health insurance is not a basic necessity. We have emergency room treatment today for anyone.

But yea, if two people need an organ transplant and one of them is a single guy of 50 years old who smokes, drinks, but has health insurance he should still get the organ transplant before the guy who's 25, father of 4, healthy in every respect, doesn't smoke or drink but does not have health insurance. Why? Because the one made the choice to get insurance and the other did not.

The biggest fear I have about universal health insurance isn't the cost (which is a big concern though) but inserting individual human value judgment into the equation. I don't want another human being deciding my fate based on some arbitrary set of criteria.

Health care, like you said, is a matter of life or death. It's a limited resource.  I think it's a good thing(tm) that some people choose to opt out of buying health insurance. They can choose that for themselves but there are consequences for doing that.

Universal health care isn't about getting the poor medical care. They have that already, it's called Medicaid.  It's about evening out the *results* people get with regards to healthcare regardless of what life decisions they make.  I don't like paying for other people's mistakes.

The less the federal government is involved in our lives, the better off we are.  

If universal healthcare is such a wonderful thing, why don't the states offer it and see how it works out for them? California for instance, certainly has more resources than the typical European country, let them do it if they want it and see how well it works. 

 

 

I agree fully, and this is also the crux of the matter... for some it is a bad thing. everyone but them is too stupid to make a right decision, everyone has equal right to life (except babies... heh... and I am FOR abortion... I just recognize the irony in what they say). and the state is a NANNY that has to say "we decide based on our own skewed moral beleifs who gets the transplant first... REGARDLESS of who is actually PAYING for it...

Liberal point of view: "the 50 year old smoking guy should pay to give a transplant to the 25 year old with kids because he needs it more..."

Will you tell the old man who probably worked all his life to pay for the hospital resources that you are going to offer those to somebody else instead of him, or shall I?

What about the next 23 year old woman who needs help and cannot get it because the hospital doesn't have any resources left after you decided to let the stupid rich guy who paid for all the stuff die?

 

Very good point... if the hospital saved that rich old man instead of the young woman with a baby, he would keep on paying his exorbent taxes paying for life saving treatments for dozens of other 23 year old women with babies who can't afford it. And again... even if he did NOT, you are still saying "she deserves to live more, thus I am gonna take YOUR MONEY and use it to pay for HER treatment and you will die... since you don't need it as much"...

Remember the part about "forced euthenasia?"... old people don't need the treatment as much is fairly close.

Strange reasoning in part - he was old, hence his working life was coming to an end. Meanwhile that woman not only has potentially a long working life (albiet not at much of an income in the example I gave), but also has children who have a long working life (who would probably suffer a decrease in their expected future productivity as a result of their mother dying). Thus it is quite possible that they could provide more via taxes. Furthermore, that old rich guy is a smoker who is more likely to have the same illness again in the future, and hence would prove more costly. Meanwhile their actions have contributed towards their own illness, so it would seem fairer, all else equal, to favour the person who hasn't brought it upon themself (and the law recognises this in many cases, reducing damages that can be claimed in negligence cases if the person claiming them contributed towards those damages themself). Then you have the more historic/cultural issue of women being saved before men - the view that men are the 'fighters' and hence should die for women (although that doesn't apply anywhere near as much now as it used to historically), while the man's 60 so is unlikely to be able to sire any more children, and certainly can't give birth to any, although the woman could.

Not really. If you can save 40 years of 1 persons life and 10 years of another persons life for the same cost, and you only have enough money for the one treatment, then all else equal you should look to save the most life - i.e. save the young person with an expected 40 more years to live than the old person who's likely to die of something else fairly soon even if you save them of this.
 So you could try and streatch it to forced euthanasia where resources are being spent maintaining the person such as life support machines, but not more generally to the issue of forced euthanasia where such resources aren't being spent. In the first case, why spend say $1mil maintaining someone in a coma per year, if you could use that same money, and save 10 young peoples lives (meaning many more 'years of life')? It may sound callous at first glance, until you realise that there are finite resources, and if you decide to use that life support machine, it will cost the lives of others - so in effect rather than looking at it as 'why kill this person to save money', you could look at it from the other perspective 'why kill 10 people just so you can 'live' for 1 more year'?

EXACTLY.  I don't want the decision as to whether I or my wife or my kids get life saving help to be made by someone else if I can avoid it.

I recognize that even today, that situation can/does come up all the time.  Adding 40+ million more people to the competition -- and paying for the priviledge of doing it -- doesn't sound like a a great idea to me.

This is precisely why we shouldn't have universal healthcare, determining who lives and dies when resources are scarce is too subjective.

Warren Buffet is 78 year old smoker. Pretty old.  Is society really better off without him but with the 23-year old welfeare mom?

 

I don't think I could illustrate better precisely why it's so scary imagining the government deciding who should get care than what you just wrote above.

For the most part, they can, they just choose to spend their money in other ways. THAT is why so many of us are against it.  We already have means testing for health insurance with the poor getting it for free.  The people who don't get coverage are overwhelmingly people who could afford it but choose not to. 

Look, this isn't rocket science: There are a finite number of doctors, nurses, transplants, etc.  The fewer people competing for those resources the better it is for those people.

Your premise is that it's a good thing to have everyone have access to those finite resources.  My response is that it's not.

If my son needs a bone marrow transplant, I don't want him competing with someone who's simply living off the system.

People CAN purchase health care insurance in the United States. If they're very poor, they get Medicaid.  Those who choose not to purchase health care insurance are making that choice for themselves.