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[Strife26]

In with my my (-1)^.5 cents.

Obama getting the peace prize was pretty much bull. Definitly the committee's way of saying Fuck you to Bush (mind you, there is precedent for giving the Peace prize to people who haven't done anything, it's a good way to get lots of attention to up and coming issues). Although, from what I've heard about Obama's speech, it's qualifying as a minor crowning moment for him (which is doing a lot to help my opinion of the guy). I'll be watching the full thing in a bit.


Healthcare: The problem with socialized healthcare is the problem with socialism itself. If I'd move to Canada, my cat Joey would get better care then I would. Why? I'd be paying for it directly. Competition is the root of efficiency and progress. However, capitalism can also lead to exclusivity. This is what I see as the problem. Health Insurance companies and hospitals are screwing over the country. My solution: Government corporations. Down the bitter pill of a new bureaucracy, and start up an optional public option. The Feds don't have to care as much about profits as do private companies, plus, the size of the Federal government would allow it to push prices downward (most of the time, your insurance company doesn't actually pay your doctor for each operation, it's a lump sum deal. You just end uup screwed over with the sticker price if you pay out of pocket). What's that Hospital A? You don't accept Federal Health Coverage? Fuck you.

[Blacken]

Healthcare: The problem with socialized healthcare is the problem with socialism itself. If I'd move to Canada, my cat Joey would get better care then I would. Why? I'd be paying for it directly. Competition is the root of efficiency and progress. However, capitalism can also lead to exclusivity. This is what I see as the problem. Health Insurance companies and hospitals are screwing over the country. My solution: Government corporations. Down the bitter pill of a new bureaucracy, and start up an optional public option. The Feds don't have to care as much about profits as do private companies, plus, the size of the Federal government would allow it to push prices downward (most of the time, your insurance company doesn't actually pay your doctor for each operation, it's a lump sum deal. You just end uup screwed over with the sticker price if you pay out of pocket). What's that Hospital A? You don't accept Federal Health Coverage? Fuck you.

And then you have just put into place what amounts to a price ceiling, because health care quality cannot be rationed on the basis of who's paying for it. And the idiot populists will push to have more and more and more covered under the "bare minimum"--until it's all covered, and you've pushed insurers out of business to cater to the voters who are not bright enough to realize that somebody's gotta pay.

So much for competition.

[Strife26]

That's a risk, true, but I trust in the America's adversarial and individualistic nature. That and the fact that the Grand Ol' Party would raise bloody murder if it lost to much money. I forgot to mention that the Government Corporation should be expected to make money or break even.

[Neonivek]

Competition without regulation creates problems which is what people quickly learned about Capitalism but couldn't change anything because in order to be one of the people who make all the decisions you need to be one of the people who are benefiting under that system.

Think of Football without rules on steriod abuse and that is probably a closer analogy.

Though in no way am I saying that Capitalism is horrible. Only that its problems are more ingrained then it may seem.

[LegoLord]

Worse mass transit? Are you seriously bringing this up as a point in favor of "socialized countries"? Have you noticed how big the United States is recently? While better mass transit would be nice, the United States is bigger than the entirety of Western Europe combined by far and is culturally predisposed to individual automobiles to the point where you won't get people to use that vaunted mass transit system.

One, have you ever been to New York, D.C., or some other city that actually has a something like the metro or the underground?  In such places, most people walk.  Trust me, I've been to such a place before, and spent more than a few weeks there.

Two, just traveling within a single state can be rather annoying - all we have for that level are cars, because planes and trains don't go to every city within a state.  Why?  An area the size of South Carolina in Europe has much better transportation between cities.

Three, everyone just using their own cars is both wasteful of limited resources and expensive, when alternatives are available.  While the government would be spending more money on mass-transit systems, individuals would be saving money on it - even if there was a tax increase.  Mass transit costs less, hands down.

And on health care, Blacken, you're just using a paranoid "slippery slope" argument.  It is, as I see it, one of the weakest arguments possible.  The only reason I ever see behind it is either paranoia or spite for the opposition; no basis provided for why that will happen or even if it is likely.

[kuro_suna]

The biggest problem I see with health care in the United States is that it already has socialized medicine, just not universal medicine. Medicare is a single payer system to cover people who would never be able to get insurance like the elderly or disabled. The problem is your spending as much as most nations do for universal health care on medicine for people who will never be employed while people who have to go to work every morning are told to suck it up, this seems like the worst possible situation since your workforce are the people you want healthy.

You're entirely right. Note that I did not say that socialized medicine was a net negative. It simply has different aims.

(Medicare is a system that has outlived its usefulness. It, and Social Security, were developed when people died within five to ten years after retiring. Not thirty.)

But if you scrap both theirs a good chance they will go back to dieing a few years after retiring, even ignoring the morality of that it seems like a bad campaign promise when the party that supposedly stands for fiscal conservativism has a older voting base and main objection to a public system is too much money being taken from medicare. 

[Neonivek]

Does the USA's socialised Heathcare protect people outside of being poor from being entirely bankrupted by healthcare bills? How common is it REALLY to become bankrupt?

How much healthcare do the poor have access to?

(Hmm for some unrelated reason I am reminded when a Canadian Prime Minister took credit, or was given credit, for decreasing the number of poor in Canada... by lowering LICO... effectively doing nothing)

[Aqizzar]

Does the USA's socialised Heathcare protect people outside of being poor from being entirely bankrupted by heathcare bills?

Absolutely not.  That's the biggest criticism of the limitations of government assistance in America, you have to be either over 65 or really really poor to qualify.  If you're not quite poor enough, or rendered poor by health care premiums that have quadrupled over the past couple decades, you're on your own.

[Neonivek]

How poor are we talking? LICO? so around what? 21 thousand dollars a year?

[Realmfighter]

Healthcare: The problem with socialized healthcare is the problem with socialism itself. If I'd move to Canada, my cat Joey would get better care then I would.

Bullshit.

My mother had a bad asthma attack a few weeks ago, and she had to go to the hospital. There were no people dieing because there arms fell off and they couldn't get help. And it didn't cost us a dime, for something that in america would cost thousands of dollars.

You may not like our system, you may not think it may work in america but it works, dammit.

[Zai]

an optional public option

Repetition is repetitive.

[Aqizzar]

How poor are we talking? LICO? so around what? 21 thousand dollars a year?

I don't know what LICO is or means, but having been at the 21 thousand and lower level, nope, that usually ain't poor enough.  But part of my point is that even after studying it's operation for a year, I honestly don't know what it takes to qualify for the low-income provisions of Medicare, or state administered Medicaid, because the system is so damned arcane.  And if you can't explain it over the course of a college education, what chance is somebody making 20000 a year going to figure it out for themselves?

There's a lot of other problems, that all ultimately wrap back around to the double catch that health care is simply too expensive to pay for out of pocket if you're not bona-fide superrich, so you need insurance, but health insurance companies are probably the least regulated industry in America.  They're specifically exempted from the Sherman Anti-Trust Act for God's sake.

[Neonivek]

LICO is a bad term to use since it is likely unique term to Canada... but it is supposed to be: Low Income Cut off Point

In Canada is it basically the level where we officially say you are poor and have access to social assistance.

[Blacken]

Worse mass transit? Are you seriously bringing this up as a point in favor of "socialized countries"? Have you noticed how big the United States is recently? While better mass transit would be nice, the United States is bigger than the entirety of Western Europe combined by far and is culturally predisposed to individual automobiles to the point where you won't get people to use that vaunted mass transit system.

One, have you ever been to New York, D.C., or some other city that actually has a something like the metro or the underground?  In such places, most people walk.  Trust me, I've been to such a place before, and spent more than a few weeks there.

BFD. London's public transport is shoddy and it's not unheard of for people to be seriously injured there. See? I can point at shitpiles all around the world when it comes to mass transit, even in the vaunted socialist countries of Europe where clearly they are better because they are European OMGZ.

Using this as a barometer is absolutely silly. Talk about Canada's mass transit, or Russia's, and then get back to me. (Oh, wait...their situation, barring a little more investment--not much--in light rail, is a hell of a lot more like the United States's. So they make you look even sillier.)

Two, just traveling within a single state can be rather annoying - all we have for that level are cars, because planes and trains don't go to every city within a state.  Why?  An area the size of South Carolina in Europe has much better transportation between cities.

And that area in Europe is far more urbanized. The two have nothing to do with each other.

Go find the awesome public transport around vineyard country in France--which is a lot closer to what South Carolina, and most of the United States, is like than the Berlin frigging Metro Area or whatever area you have in mind. Go on. I'll wait.

Three, everyone just using their own cars is both wasteful of limited resources and expensive, when alternatives are available.  While the government would be spending more money on mass-transit systems, individuals would be saving money on it - even if there was a tax increase.  Mass transit costs less, hands down.

Horseshit. Mass transit costs less in a very limited set of circumstances. You go build a goddam rail line across the Great Plains and you run it as a nonprofit and you see how much red ink you spill. There are two stretches in the United States where it even begins to make sense on a non-metropolitan level, and neither of them can make a buck because nobody wants to take them. This is not a train-and-bus culture, this is a car culture. It has nothing to do with socialism, and trying to use it as a "socialism is better" argument is beyond disingenuous.

And on health care, Blacken, you're just using a paranoid "slippery slope" argument.  It is, as I see it, one of the weakest arguments possible.  The only reason I ever see behind it is either paranoia or spite for the opposition; no basis provided for why that will happen or even if it is likely.

Oh, please. Bread and circuses have been a problem as far back as the Roman fucking Empire. If you're going to try to call it paranoia, take a look at history. When the people can vote themselves what they want and not have to figure out how to pay for it, they always do. Do you seriously have to ask why that is? Gee, I don't know, maybe because then they're insulated from the cost of their fuckups and they can pass it right on to the guy who didn't fuck up? Why in the hell do you think that such a huge part of the drumbeat for American UHC boils down to decoupling what people pay from what problems they've inflicted to their own bodies?

People hating responsibility and avoiding it given the chance. Shocking. What a news headline that is.

health insurance companies are probably the least regulated industry in America.  They're specifically exempted from the Sherman Anti-Trust Act for God's sake.

That? That right there?

That's the problem. Treat them like every other company. Take away their antitrust exemptions--but when you do it, let them actually compete. Right now, they aren't dinged for monopolistic practices because the states regulate them to hell and back. My insurance in my home state is nearly four times as comparable coverage in the next state over because of state-level regulations that make the cost of doing business prohibitive. Competition means letting me buy insurance from the company in New Hampshire instead of Maine, because it's cheaper there for the exact same quality.

Don't let state governments forcibly segment the market. Combine risk pools from varying states. Stop fucking it up and the market can sort itself out. The free market is an imperfect creation, but in this case, when the costs of bad decisions are actually put upon the people who make them, it can work just fine.



But why won't they? Why will those supposedly well-meaning idiot authoritarians in Washington just traipse right down the road of "legislate everything"? Because it's not about your health, it's about control. The more control you give the government, the less inclined they must be to actually be responsive to the will of the people. Unchecked government exists to perpetuate itself, nothing more and nothing less--and the UHC silliness is an excuse to grow fat.

[Neonivek]

Blacken your slipping again. Calm down and come back to the conversation with a clearer mind.

the market can sort itself out

Not exactly. Unchecked market leads to severe problems (I am assuming when I push post now, there will be another poster...)

As for a more powerful government. I'd think more power with more accountability would balance things out.