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Mandatory Health Care

Discussion in 'Political Debate & Discussion' started by Ps104_33, Nov 18, 2006.

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  1. El_Guero

    El_Guero New Member

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    Give them a free open heart surgery in one of those great universal health care systems . . . ?

    So that a beginning doctor will have a warm body to practice on?
     
  2. hillclimber1

    hillclimber1 Active Member
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    Probably the majority of Americans agree with you, and you'll probably get it. But the great benefit to All (sic) of us is just not the case. It will be wielded as a huge hammer, demanding more and more tax dollars to cover the next health issue that comes up. It will be carefully crafted as a Democrat sponsored program that will insure their hold on Congress till the rapture. IMHO
     
  3. El_Guero

    El_Guero New Member

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    $1.50 an hour is not a huge economic burden . . .

    Or, do you think that americans should be paid pennies on the dollar?
     
  4. El_Guero

    El_Guero New Member

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    I say, eliminate the sales commissions.

    Make it an 'open' system for all workers.

    Make it voluntary.

    And place 'caps' on costs (& profits) . . . wasn't that the promise of limiting mal-practice law suits?
     
  5. Scott J

    Scott J Active Member
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    What a deadbeat thing to say. Why don't you come right out and say it, you expect others to pay your way for you. Maybe you are irresponsibly unindustrious. Your posting strongly insenuates it. If you are not admitting that you are too lazy to provide for your own family (as the Bible says you should or else you are worse than an infidel) then why are you so excited about gov't forcing someone else to pay YOUR bill for you?

    This response of course in light of....

     
  6. Scott J

    Scott J Active Member
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    I got an up close an personal perspective on this growing up 9 miles from an Indian Reservation.

    Free housing, free health care, free food, etc. yielded alcoholism/drug addiction, high illegitimacy rates, low employment, crime, violence, and generally a miserable, hopeless outlook.

    Dependence on gov't programs is one of the cruelest things that can be done to a human soul... not far removed from a permissive parent that spoils their child.
     
  7. Scott J

    Scott J Active Member
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    Then you have failed to "think" at all.

    It isn't provision of health care for everyone that any of us opposes. It is doing so with a massive, intrusive gov't bureaucracy that will be nowhere near as efficient at providing quality service as the messed up system we have now.

    The consumer will be even further from the market causing skyrocketing costs. It is very unlikely that service levels will be maintained for anyone. The need to control costs artificially will necessarily lead to some form of rationing like other countries see.

    In summary, what you and liberals propose is taking a system that is broken to a large measure because of gov't rules that prevent market efficiencies and turning it completely over to gov't... Gov't provided healthcare will be a nightmare and carries the very real potential of lowering our standard of living in real terms (the poor too) and possibly even destroying our national credit.

    Hopefully there is another Phil Gramm out there someone who will say, "Over my dead body..."
     
  8. carpro

    carpro Well-Known Member
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    It is the setting of prices and fees by the government due to the medicare program that has led to the huge increases in prices and fees passed on to other consumers who have insurance resulting in ever increasing premiums for the insured.

    IOW
    It is government meddling through price controls that has put us where we are now.
     
  9. Terry_Herrington

    Terry_Herrington New Member

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    I seriously doubt it will cost seventy percent of our money to have health insurance. I think you are exaggerating!
     
  10. Terry_Herrington

    Terry_Herrington New Member

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    I agree that we will probably have national health insurance some day, maybe soon. I also agree that there is great potential for abuse, but I believe that it is possible for this great country to see to it that all their citizens have access to good health care. And, I believe that it is possible to fund it without destroying the country, as some seem to suggest.
     
  11. StraightAndNarrow

    StraightAndNarrow Active Member

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    So basically, you're like the priest and the Levite who passed by the robbed man. Why should I get involved. It's not my problem. Let him die.
     
  12. Terry_Herrington

    Terry_Herrington New Member

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    Get the fact straight before you make a fool of yourself! :laugh:

    I do have health insurance both for me and my wife. I actually work at a job and they allow me to actually pay for this insurance. There are, however, millions who do not have any health coverage and many of these people cannot afford it. I guess, unlike you, I care about these people.

    Amazing how some will say things here that they would never say to a person's face. But, I have found that cowards are good at using these types of tactics.
     
  13. carpro

    carpro Well-Known Member
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    It's gotta cost something.

    You have any idea how much or how we'll pay for it?
     
  14. Scott J

    Scott J Active Member
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    That's hardly fair for someone advocating a socialized system not to mention incredibly shallow.

    You aren't playing the part of the good Samaritan. The good Samaritan took HIS own money... out of the goodness of HIS own heart... taking HIS own risk to get involved... He didn't run down to the local authorities and petition them to send the tax collectors out to forcibly take money from "the rich priest and Levite" to pay for the man's care.

    The notion that someone is generous or noble for forcing someone else to provide for the poor is ridiculous and most often very hypocritical. A liberal would have slightly more of a leg to stand on if they voluntarily gave at or above the percentage they think gov't should confiscate from others. But from the thread discussing giving by state as well as studies comparing the giving habits of secular humanists and church goers... we know that isn't generally true.
     
    #94 Scott J, Nov 28, 2006
    Last edited by a moderator: Nov 28, 2006
  15. Scott J

    Scott J Active Member
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    I was being facetious Terry due to your persistence in demanding that someone else provide benefits for YOU.

    Really? Do you care enough to give up some of your own convenience and pleasure expenses to buy them health care insurance?

    I didn't think so. Your idea of "caring" isn't personal caring... it is envy. You see someone in need and rather than doing as the good Samaritan did and offering them a hand yourself... you DEMAND that those who have for whatever reason been more successful than you do it.

    Do as you say not as you do, huh?

    Amazing that some people make such grand assumptions.

    Also it is amazing how generous some people are willing to be with other people's money and that it is statistically those who oppose such gov't schemes that give a greater percentage of their own time and money to charity.... just part of the abject hypocrisy of the leftist in America.
     
  16. Scott J

    Scott J Active Member
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    Healthcare expenses are overwhelmingly higher for the elderly. Our demographic shift over the next 25 years makes 70% a fairly reasonable estimate.

    BTW, right now there is somewhere between 6 and 8 contributors to Soc Sec and other programs for the retired. Over the next 25 years or so that will drop to 3 or 4... interpretation: The only way to keep the program solvent will be to deny recipients, reduce benefits, increase immigration dramatically, or else increase just that payroll tax to something on the order of 30%-40%.

    IOW's, the Dems are trying now to right checks that demographics clearly demonstrate cannot be covered by future workers.... Oddly enough, the 40 million+ people lost to abortion that Dems have kept legal would have significantly offset this demographic shift.
     
  17. Scott J

    Scott J Active Member
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    But this isn't a good means for achieving the goal that you state below that I think all of us agree with.

    Gov't schemes are fraught with abuse. Even worse, they are extraordinarily inefficient at getting dollars collected to beneficiaries. With healthcare, it would be even worse since people would see the benefit as "free" and so care very little for costs except when it came tax time.

    There are few if any gov't wealth distribution programs that would be legal as private charities. A private charity must distribute something like 80-85% of the money it collects. To my knowledge there isn't a single gov't program that runs that efficiently.

    If you really want the gov't involved then maybe petition them to allow individuals to co-op for insurance.... or get tax deductions/credits for healthcare expenses... or simply to get better rates if they live healthy lifestyles. Because of gov't interference, these things are either inhibited or prevented altogether now.
    Yes we can. BUT, only in a system that brings the consumer to bear in the market.

    The optimum value balance between cost, quality, service, and availability can only be achieved that way. Gov't paid system will assure that costs are too high, quality is suspect, service is poor, and that availability is limited.
     
  18. Alcott

    Alcott Well-Known Member
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    For that remark, YOU need to be asked: Are you like the Samaritan who personally washed the victim's wounds, took him to a town and paid for his lodging? Or do you just advocate forcing others to pay for such benevolence against their will [against their will because there would be no need for communist health care nor health insurance if voluntary help were the rule rather than the exception]?

    Furthermore, is the fact that one lives in a contry that provides government health care and welfare benefits going to put all people therein on the right hand of Christ at the judgment, where He will say, "I was hungry and you fed me...naked and you clothed me...."?
     
  19. FriendofSpurgeon

    FriendofSpurgeon Well-Known Member
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    Back to the OP ---

    The program in Massachusetts is similar to the plan that has been in Hawaii for years. In effect, it mandates that employers (not individuals) of a certain size provide health insurance for its employees. The goal is lower insurance premiums for everyone.

    There are many ongoing reasons due to the increased cost of healthcare:

    1. The high number of uninsureds cause the medical providers to provide "charity care." The medical providers have to increase their costs to those who are insured - thus raising our rates. The Massachusetts law is designed to help offset this.

    2. The cost shifting that has to happen due to the extra-ordinary low reimbursement schedules for Medicare & Medicaid enrollees. The federal and state governments often pay less than cost - thus, the medical providers have to increase the costs to those insureds in the private sector to make it up.

    3. The high costs due to medical liability issues. Not only is the cost of medical malpractice very, very high, but it also results in a lot of defensive medicine being practiced.

    4. There are extraordinary costs associated with beginning of life and end of life issues. Babies are being saved when born very prematurely -- when years ago, they would not have made it.

    There are more, but that's it for now.

    Basically, the Massachusetts law keeps health (and health insurance) in the private arena -- which is best place for it [imho].
     
  20. Scott J

    Scott J Active Member
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    Except that it doesn't.

    It interferes even more deeply. Perhaps a better law would have been to demand that medicare and medicaid pay at customary rates?
     
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