Yeah. Wouldn't that be something.

[edit] I hate "turning the page" on a significant post because I'm afraid that by doing so it will be missed. To anyone that missed my reply #200 I would request that you take the time to go back and give it a read. Thanks. [/edit]

Perhaps it's only me.  This bill has less to do with health care than it does politics.  I'm on record in support of universal health care (100%)...but not in the manner presently crafted.  Mumble, you may be correct...but I can't help think it's the camel's ass and not nose that has entered the tent.

Rights, in my view, are protections from government not guarantees by the government.

Monk...your american bashing is tiring and nonproductive.  Americans are inherently stupid, uncaring and "think" upon birth superior...happy?  Certain Canadians for the opposite reasons superior..you in particular.

You (stupidly, IMO) assume that fine will stay that low. The reality is, far more people than the government expects will choose to go without insurance. When you are assured 0-day coverage in the event you get sick, only a fool would pay $10k+ a year for insurance when they can pay $675 a year and just get insurance when they need it. Likewise, this bill is a HUGE encentive for employers to drop their health plans. Let's see, pay $2k per employee penalty, or 80% of said $10k+ plan per employee? Common sense would say to drop the plan and save on HR costs. The fines will have to go up or insurance will start going broke (although I'm convinced that was the purpose of this "reform" anyway).

On the other side, I could see someone volunteering to do this to put it in front of a jury. Pick the right part of the country and there's no way they'll be convicted.

You do not truly own anything that you can't carry in both arms at a dead run - Robert Heinlein

The problem with your view here is that you don't see the government as one of those groups that is stronger than you, and willing to take anything you own at its whim. They may not be breaking into homes or mugging people on the street, but changes in laws can wipe out profit margins and cost jobs. Just look at Caterpillar and John Deere restating their earnings projections this week. The quarter billion dollars they expect to lose between them due to the healthcare reform isn't going to come out of executive pay, I'll bet.

You need to do a much better job generalizing, then. I know damn well several comments about that have been directed at me personally. I expect more shortly.

I'll make it blunt. There is merit in protecting the truly poor, and in educating everyone's children. The support society owes you drops off to near zero when you become an adult and should be able to look after yourself. As a society, we've gotten too apologetic for people who are poor (and those that aren't but claim they are) - while not every poor person is 100% to blame for being poor, many *are* in large part responsible for their condition. Very few are 0% responsible for being poor. Note the following is not referring to anyone in particular, just the generic "you":

If you dropped out or even "graduated" high school without basic reading, math and reasoning skills - you *deserve* to be poor. Screw any arguments about how crappy your school is, you made a life choice and should pay the consequences. Likewise to those who start having kids before they have the means to support them in any reasonable way. Your kids deserve support, you do not. Want to improve your life? Get a GED - you'll find getting a job a *lot* easier, and once you have one you'll start seeing things my way when you look back at those who didn't.

If you make $80k a year, you should *not* need government handouts to afford health insurance. Unless you're up to your eyeballs in kids (if so see above) you can afford it with what you make. If you find that you cannot, you have made some budgetary choices you should revisit and correct. If you make this much and choose to go without insurance, you *deserve* to be bankrupt if the dice roll the wrong way. You aren't poor, you're irresponsible.

If this set of beliefs makes me a heartless monster, so be it. If anyone thinks there is not a point where people should face poverty for stupid things they've done in life, their vision of society is flawed. Maybe we can quibble at where that line should be drawn, but if you don't think there should be a line, there is no common ground to discuss.

I guess the pot can consider itself stirred, Chasbo.

It's really pretty straightforward.  I don't believe anyone here wishes ill upon the poor, or desires that they be denied equal opportunity.  Not Mumble, not starkers, certainly not me.  Getting into a back & forth about who does more with less for those in need is a pointless distraction.  Broadly speaking, conservatives prefer incentivizing voluntary charity, liberals prefer mandating it.  Both advocate charity.  One favors coercive means, one doesn't.

I believe one approach preserves both dignity and opportunity.  The other (unintentionally, I believe, but de facto) preserves dependency, dampens class mobility and puts brakes on society's economic engine to the ultimate detriment of those it seeks to aid.

If we grant that the chaos of life & death preclude perfection, I would rather people not be made dependent on the coerced resources of others.  Such an arrangement assures less of the latter over time.

On another point, I used the term socialism in the generic sense when referring to the Soviet Union.  Yes, I understand it was a Communist state.  Whatever flavor of statism you choose, however, it's still statist, which is the term I should have used.  There may be 31 flavors but it's all ice cream.

The USSR was not a communist state.  It was a dictatorship.

It may be stirred but it's a long way from boiling.

Ran into this today.  Perfectly illustrates the bias of AP.

The sad/funny part:

Emphasis mine.

Sad, because they are either so blind to their cluelessness or so cynical in their exploitation, one or the other.

Funny, becasue of the bold part.

Guess I wasn't clear enough: It's all ice cream.

You were very clear.  Just mistaken.

It's a politically charged opinion-thread.  I'll grant you when mine get taken out of context or no attempt is even made in understanding them, I can be blunt and callous in my replies.  Please note....."bashing" would require the point to be untrue or void of merit.

the Monk

This is truly becoming an interesting thread.

I suspect no side can get it right, for all sides. There are just too many ways of doing things, and no group is willing to simply 'live and let live' - they all seem to want to 'live and let (or cause the other to) die'.

As I see it there are only two alternatives:

1. We discover a way to colonize other planets so that each group can be totally separate, and we each go our own way in the security of isolation.

2. The Earth and all it's inhabitants are totally obliterated, through whatever means - whether it is by a natural disaster, or someone inventing and using a true 'ultimate weapon' (or more likely, our governments unleashing all the nukes they have stockpiled).

Face it, everyone. Our differences are akin to the fire under a pressure-cooker, and our population is that of the pressure inside the cooker. Sooner or later, equilibrium is surpassed and the pot explodes.

by the time people finally realize we must force government to keep its hands off medicare, it'll be way too late and we'll find ourselves dead on arrival.  

Basically my point was that insults are usually explicit enough that you don't need to wonder whether or not something was an insult.

If you're getting to the point where you're *assuming* an insult was *implied* then perhaps your skin is starting to get just a little too thin.

The bottom line is if I'm trying to insult you then it will be more than obvious. If you have to wonder about whether or not an insult was *implied* then give someone the benefit of the doubt and *assume* it wasn't for a change.

Many of the things that I say that seem to be taken as insults are things that I don't consider to be insults at all. Like rabid right wingnut. Where's the insult in that? All I'm indicating is someone far to the right of the political spectrum. This is no different than someone calling me a socialist.

Same thing with Ayn Rand sycophant or Gordon Gekko capitalist. To me these terms are merely descriptive of the attitudes I regularly encounter. You (again I mean you collectively as in conservatives as opposed to you personally) mean you *don't* believe in Ayn Rand's Philosophy‎ of Objectivism or Greed is Good capitalism? Because from my side of the fence it sure seems like you (all) swallow this stuff hook, line and sinker. So I see this as merely descriptive, not as an insult.

This is a joke right? Making fun of the teabaggers signs that said "Keep your government off my Medicare", as if Medicare wasn't a totally run government program to begin with?

If you are being literal here then there is no danger whatsoever that there will ever be any success at eliminating or privatizing either Medicare or Social Security. Any party that really tried it would be voted out of office for 20 years.

That's why the right is so desperate to stop any kind of federal control over healthcare because they realize once such a system is established no matter how weak it starts out they will *never* be able to eliminate it.

Amidst all the health care debate, there is one underlying assumption that hardly anyone challenges: the notion that people have a right to health care. The truth is that it’s a nonsensical notion. People no more have a right to health care than they have a right to education, food, or clothing.

After all, what does a right to health care mean? If I have a right to something, then doesn’t that mean that you have a correlative duty to provide it? If you’re a doctor, then it means that you are required to serve my needs, like it or not. If I need an operation, then you cannot say “no” because that would be denying me my right to health care.

Thus, isn’t the right to health care actually a power to force doctors to provide people with medical services?

Now, the proponent of health care as a right might say, “That’s not what I mean. Why, to force doctors to provide health care services to others would be akin to slavery, especially if it’s for free. I think that doctors deserve to be paid for their services.”

Fair enough. But then doesn’t the right to health care entail the power to force someone else to pay for it? Let’s assume, for example, that I need hip-replacement surgery that will cost $25,000 and that I don’t have the money to pay for it. Since I have a right to health care, that means that I have a right to get the money from you to pay for my operation. It also means that you can’t say no because that would be interfering with my right to health care.

Thus, the right to health care entails the power of everyone to get into the pocketbooks of everyone else. That’s not only a ridiculous notion of rights but also a highly destructive one. Since obviously people can’t go and take the money from others directly, it inevitably entails converting government into an engine of seizure and redistribution. Or to paraphrase Bastiat, such a concept of rights converts government into a fiction by which everyone is doing his best to live at the expense of everyone else.

Meanwhile, while everyone is using government to get into everyone else’s pocketbook to pay for his health care expenses, he is simultaneously doing his best to protect his own income and assets from being plundered by the government to fund everyone else’s health care bills.

Over time, it is easy to see how such a system devolves in everyone’s warring against everyone else. It is also easy to see that such a system obviously does not nurture friendly and harmonious relations between people. This is especially true when these types of “rights” expand to such areas as education, food, clothing, and housing.

The true nature of rights — the type of rights the Founding Fathers believed in — involved the right of people to pursue such things as health care, education, clothing, and food and that government cannot legitimately interfere with their ability to do so.

Thus, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, as described in the Declaration of Independence, doesn’t mean that someone else is forced to provide you with the means to sustain or improve your life. It means that government cannot enact laws, rules, or regulations that interfere with or infringe upon your right to pursue such things.

When Americans began looking upon rights as some sort of positive duty on others to provide them with certain things, that was when the quality of health care in America began plummeting. That was what Medicare and Medicaid were all about — the so-called right of poor people and the elderly to health care. It is not a coincidence that what began has the finest health care system in the world has turned into a system that is now in perpetual crisis.

I'm with narby - neither health insurance nor medical care is a 'basic human right'.

And, yes, that was some of kingbee's classic oblique humor.

Richard - where ya been?

In the United States, I do have these rights.  I am just going to cover a few to make an example...

Freedom of Speech and Religion:  Though still, I cannot take someone else's speech as my own, or share copyrighted materials without permission.  I am also not forced to go to church or forced to believe in anything/ nothing.

Right to Bear Arms:  The goverment does not collect money or skills to pay for everyone in the U.S. to forcibly own a firearm.

Now applying this argument to healthcare, can we now see... that healthcare is not a right?

and therin lies the problem.....

I truly am confused as to why Americans seemingly always focus on rights.  I mean I know we as Canadians also have many rights but it seems like in the states people focus so much more on right and therefore completely forget/ignore responsibility (ie. to oneself, their neighbor, the world, etc. etc.)

Let's for a moment assume that the following is correct:

The US is the greatest country in the world.

If true, then doesn't the following also hold true?

The US must demonstrate (both at home and abroad) the highest level of responsibility.

The above means, not only doing those things that make one money (as a business might act) but as in moral responsibility as well. If the greatest country on earth can't feed/clothe its homeless, heal its sick and dying, prevent crimes effectively then how is it that so many lesser nations not only want to but also in fact can? 

How is it that so many lesser nations exercise a much higher state of unity (among their citizens) on the subject matter of one persons responsibility toward another?

See this as a plea from a neighbor if you will, please try everyday to focus on one more responsibility than right and I'm betting your nation will become "united" once again.

A nation that truly wants to effect change must change the cry for RIGHT into a cry for RESPONSIBILITY!

the Monk

Which makes the following all that more hilarious.

Of course all of this is moot because you cannot logically prove your *opinion* that healthcare is not a right just as I cannot logically *prove* my *opinion* that healthcare *is* a right. All I can do is to suggest that the large majority of the population of pretty much every other civilized country in the world *agrees* with me and *disagrees* with you and try to avoid plagiarizing someone else's words while doing so.

Responsibility is always desirable, but is an individual choice.  The overwhelming majority of citizens already act responsibly and have given us the greatest standard of living in the world despite your claptrap about 'feed/clothe, yada yada'.  It's about the supremacy of individual autonomy vs. the supremacy of the state.

We can choose to cooperate collectively through our representative form of government for the common good, but that's not mandatory and not related to our basic rights.  Our Constitution & Bill of Rights were crafted by people who distrusted government power and were intended as a constraint on government's ability to interfere in the lives of free men.  The argument that we didn't choose anarchy therefore anything goes is specious.  The concept of limits on federal power is absolutely legitimate.

Very well said Mumble.  For the same reasons the majority of the civilized world cannot be proven correct.

Ah Jesus...now a sermon.

Ah, a spelling nazi!  Sorry, I did not spell check my reply (oh wait, Websters does not include proper names!  My bad again).

And I guess you were an english major since your math sucks.  The difference is 12,500 not 13,500.

Yes, I know and Obama single handedly passed health care - to those only interested in hystrionics.  Clearly the only thing I said was what you quoted, which stands on its own.  The rest is your hysteria.

One termite is not going to hurt your house.  A colony of them will do a good job of it. So which termite do we prosecute?

Uh, because if not for war, then you would be speaking Japanese?  You cant sit on your fat ass and eat bon bons all the while demanding to be taken care of without someone making sure you have the right to do so.  And unfortunately, since not all men are live and let live types, that means going out and defending those who dont want to fight so they can criticize those that do.

And the rest of your premise is false, apparently.  You have UHC.  America has UHC (before 3-23).  3-23 did not give America anything except new taxes and bureaucracy.  If you would like, you can read the bill in toto, but it does nothing for health care.  And did not create some magical mystery tour of wellness.  But it sure did relieve us of some rights that we had before.

I would love to get into a discussion with you on this subject on another blog, as this does not seem to be the place for it here.  But I will only remind you that Japan was at war long before 12-7-41 and there are a lot of people that were grateful that America came in on their side against the japanese.  Indeed, the reprecussions of the Japanese "peace" before 1941 are still being heard to this day.

Well, blame it on the hysterics of the proponents of the law.  They were yelling "rights" for one reason only.  A right is something that the government cannot take FROM you.  But in this world of jabberwocky speak, it seems they have contorted that to mean the government has to GIVE it to you.  The government cannot GIVE a right.  It can take it away, but it is inherant to living.  So they do have it ass backwards.

A right is something you can enjoy in society, or in seclusion.  It is not something that must be done at the point of a gun.  The US was founded on certain inalienable rights that could not be compromised by the government.  period.  They cannot pass a law restricting your rights.  No other nation has tied its very existance to rights the way the US has (for sure the "right" of free speech in Canada is a misnomer - it is just a privelege).  That is why all center around rights in the debate - erroneously.

Another misconception.  The USA does, to a higher degree than almost all other nations (feed, cloth, take care of the sick etc.).  What no country can do is "heal the sick" through any type of mandate, law or desire.  How many AIDS patients have been cured?  All they can do is TRY. America sure does try in that regard.  We can debate that if you like.