Camille Paglia rages.
AND: She approves of Sarah Palin's use of the term "death panels":
As a libertarian and refugee from the authoritarian Roman Catholic church of my youth, I simply do not understand the drift of my party toward a soulless collectivism. This is in fact what Sarah Palin hit on in her shocking image of a "death panel" under Obamacare that would make irrevocable decisions about the disabled and elderly. When I first saw that phrase, headlined on the Drudge Report, I burst out laughing. It seemed so over the top! But on reflection, I realized that Palin's shrewdly timed metaphor spoke directly to the electorate's unease with the prospect of shadowy, unelected government figures controlling our lives. A death panel not only has the power of life and death but is itself a symptom of a Kafkaesque brave new world where authority has become remote, arbitrary and spectral. And as in the Spanish Inquisition, dissidence is heresy, persecuted and punished.
Posts
370 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 370 of 370Patricia-
Ya, I hate bringing up this dirty laundry, but maybe they were hitting an average of gals that would be six months or so ?
It was like winning the lottery to get an appointment so it could have varied.
From what little first hand I have-it's sad because I hate to talk like this-there would be guys some doctors but more often in my observations PA's who ran around trying to make up for all the bad.
They would be inundated....
And the guys that tried to make up for the slack or less motivated got hammered with more work and patients that wanted to see them.....
C4 -
I can go back and itemize if you like but it seems to me that most of the points you're making, listing problems and what not, still do not obviously call for a government managed and owned solution. Stating the *problem* exists doesn't prove anything whatsoever about the solution.
What is the best solution to make health insurance available to those who are not covered? What is the *best* solution to bringing costs under control?
From your points - Why *not* allow more nurse practitioners? And isn't government responsible for the regulations that forbid nurses from doing a whole bunch of stuff they could otherwise do?
How about limiting what people can sue for? Do people in these countries that spend so little get to sue their government provider and get awarded millions from juries? We don't have to enact universal government owned and managed health care to limit punitive awards to something sane.
"And it would be far worse stats if 25% of our doctors were not foreigners, 16% of nurses."
And they work here and not in their own countries because...?
"The "US is too big, gigantic with a different culture to ever successfully adopt what any other country does!!" argument was not made with our emulating the German autobahn system or English industrial system."
False argument, and I expect better of you. You've set a straw-man, too, that the argument is that nothing a smaller country does will scale... not at all true! People are claiming that it's illogical to think that state run health care systems will scale. It's similarly untrue that EVERYTHING a small homogeneous country does will scale successfully. You can't possibly think that is true.
"The medical and business community now have a majority consensus that our present path on Medicare, employer health plans is uncompetitive, and unsustainable from a financial standpoint."
So explain how making the government the owners of the insurance solves that problem.
It's all "Do something now!" and who cares what, because being seen to "care" gets you reelected even if what you've done solves nothing at all and even if what you've done sets up a program that will be impossible to remove again.
California is finding out now that it's IMPOSSIBLE to adjust obligations to actual resources. Government is just a big pig that keeps on getting bigger. Failed policies and even disastrous policies can't be gotten rid of, they just get built up around.
You and I can downsize in a crunch, we can change our minds and try new things when something is found to be too expensive, too ineffective, or just not what we were promised.
Government can't.
Gibbs said that the NH audience was "mostly" drawn through a White House lottery. He didn't lie, exactly. Care to define "mostly?"
So. Might someone have "stuffed" the lottery box in the White House? (Political payoffs? Sniff. Sniff.) And we sure know the "drawing" wasn't done under bipartisan supervision or by one of those national contest drawing companies.
Care to venture a guess?
By virtue of the difference in the questions alone between the Town Halls in congessional districts and Obama's theater in NH one would have to deduce that the dice were loaded.
Common human nature sense.
wv = menis
Menace?
Matt said:
"all of my liberal friends believe in capitalism" [I paraphrase}.
Matt - I don't believe even 80% of liberals support free enterprise and capitalism.
wv = tholow
You will also notice a disproportionate number of military bases in the former Confederacy--including the largest Navy and Army bases in the world.
Well, hell. I just can't let that one go without comment.
First point. Naval bases. They tend to be predominant in the South for a number of reasons, but primarily the geography or the base locale. Certain bases are where they are by tradition, which is based on the defensive aspects of that base. The reason NOB/Norfolk is the largest naval base in the world is because it lies within a very secure harbor within Hampton Roads, which in turn is within the Chesapeake Bay. New York Harbor, by comparison, is a very weak position. Philadelphia was good as a naval yard, but as a base was lacking because of the distance to sortie out of the Chesapeake into the Atlantic.
Other naval bases have/had regional significance. New Orleans, Mobile, Jacksonville & Charleston have geography on their side, as well as shorter distances into the Caribbean and down towards the Panama Canal.
San Diego and San Francisco have two of the finest harbors in the world. San Francisco's denial of military basing is it's own choice. Seattle, strangely enough, seems to know better.
Army/Marine/Air Force bases? Here again, geographical necessity; it is easier to train and garrison large numbers of personnel in predominantly rural areas. Also, a majority of recruits tend to come from the South. Add to that the willingness of the regional populations to welcome and respect the military in general, and you have most of those bases in the South.
Now, for those of you who keep telling Southerners to get the hell out of the Union, y'all ought to keep all this in mind. Back during the Late Unpleasantness, this situation with military basing and industrial infrastructure was primarily in the North. The reverse is true now. The South is on either an equal or superior industrial footing than the North. We have the people who are willing and able to fight.
Sort of a neat thought exercise, isn't it?
wv: jahspla: I dunno, but greetings in the name of his Imperial Majesty, Emperor Haile Selassie I, Jah Rastafari!
Pastafarian wrote
"You know, I might be willing to drive 12 hours..."
Wow, Pasta that is one long mule trip! Let me know and I will start working on finding a horse stable that you can use for the night.
JAL
I read the WSJ article and it's not bad...for a business run health plan. But it doesn't really solve the bigger issue for those who are unemployed or for those with pre-existing conditions.
Also I find it highly ironic that he opens the article with a quote from Margaret Thatcher who certainly never bothered to touch England's health care system.
I will agree with him that we have a very large debt. And there will have to be a way to pay for this.
I also agree Tort reform is worth pursuing.
About the volunteering / charity solution. I think that really only goes so far in achieving the goals of so many millions. I mean, yes, it's a good idea in principle. But if you have no trouble with that then why would you have trouble with the taxes you pay for Medicare or Medicaid? There is no reason a government solution to healthcare [or a local or state system funded with taxes] cannot achieve the same goal. I think we are actually in agreement about a plan but just have different ways of getting them funded. You say charity I say taxes. And, sorry, but I just don't have trouble with taxes [which I pay] or with volunteering and charity both of which I have done [and done in CA with 'crazy liberals'].
JAL, the Whole Foods option article is great.
It hits on every one of the changes advocated by people who want a private solution that I can think of and added the non-taxed charitable donation for health care for the poor included on income tax forms. That seems like a good idea.
The best thing about these changes is that they directly address the problems and seem relatively risk free as experiment goes. And if they work, great, and if they don't, they'd be easy to reverse.
This *thing* Obama and Pelosi are pushing would be near impossible to un-do.
Big Mike
But how can you possibly believe that a government-run program will make things better? Trust me, if HR 3200 becomes the law of the land things will swiftly become worse for you and your family.
It's going to get worse [pretty much as everyone else here] if they don't least try the modest proposals that are being bandied about. Now, if all works that I'm unable to keep my current crap plan I detest with my current provider, and forced into a public option that was inferior to even that, [which I doubt] I will be the first to admit it and blast away. Maybe I'll even be so inclined to party it up with some Malkinites at a tea party somewhere. Maybe then I would get a tag.
wv- clami
"So. Might someone have "stuffed" the lottery box in the White House? (Political payoffs? Sniff. Sniff.) And we sure know the "drawing" wasn't done under bipartisan supervision or by one of those national contest drawing companies."
Wouldn't people hanging about White House web-sites be more likely to even know there's a lottery box? A truly random selection of those self-selected to agree with the President is not going to get a representative cross-section of the US population.
There is NO other country on the face of the Earth remotely comparable to our unique combination of attributes. To compare us to France, Germany, Japan, Canada, etc., is not to compare apples to oranges. It is to compare a grape to a watermelon.
Well said. This cannot be stated enough.
AJ Lynch
I don't believe even 80% of liberals support free enterprise and capitalism.
Okay, so?
Not sure where you get your 'beliefs' from but supposing you are correct that simply means 79% do believe in capitalism. That means 21% must be 'dirty commies'. Lock your doors.
Matt, the difference between charity and taxes to fund something is enormous. Not the same thing at all only with different funding sources.
For one thing, one of them is coercive and one is not.
Do you really not see the difference between voluntary contribution and confiscation under the threat of law?
One is completely responsive to public confidence in the program being funded and one is not.
Do you really not see the difference between a Charity that has to constantly convince contributors that it is effective and can change as needs are recognized or better ways of delivering services are developed and a government program that is a thousand pages of regulations and rules and descriptions that can't be changed by something other than a majority vote of Congress?
If your friends don't understand the difference between charity and taxes as anything other than different sources of funding, Matt, I doubt they have a clue what they even mean when they say they support Capitalism.
"This *thing* Obama and Pelosi are pushing would be near impossible to un-do."
I think you realize that to them this is a feature, not a bug.
TW: unifac. A frequently asked question (pointedly singular).
knox said...
There is NO other country on the face of the Earth remotely comparable to our unique combination of attributes. To compare us to France, Germany, Japan, Canada, etc., is not to compare apples to oranges. It is to compare a grape to a watermelon.
Well said. This cannot be stated enough.
++++++++++++++++++
That is just an argument for American exceptionalism. For example? That we are so big and so diverse that Japanese auto manufacturers can never create a better industry and it was POINTLESS to emulate their best practices.
The results are painfully obvious in Detroit - the price of false pride, 40 years of excuses in failure to adapt.
Like it or not, the human "model" does not vary much by ethicity, metabolism, general type of diseases and injuries. There is no "special American human being" that would be utterly ill-served by 99.9% of French or Japanese medical practices.
Nor is there a real problem with "scaling up" from a Japanese system with half our people and about half of our GDP. Or "scaling down" from a generally common EU system with more people and a larger GDP.
And of course, with a trillion dollar trade deficit and 50% to 100% higher health care costs than our competitors we either: (1) reform our system, (2)destroy other expenses like defense spending to compensate, (3) let the dollar collapse so that a 50,000 wage effectively becomes a 28.000 one in purchasing parity while items we purchase are free to be repriced to the new PPP value.
I think the question of payment for the illegals is the real sticking point in the whole thing that ought to stick in people's craw. They now make up 10% or more of our population.
The Nordics don't have to deal with illegals.
In Finland they let in almost no one to their system unless they already have a job. Finland is 99% Finnish. So it's like a big family.
Here it's quite different, a huge crazy quilt of all kinds of people, all kinds of work ethic, all kinds of ability to contribute something to the country. Some of the people here actually hate our country, and still ask what the country can do for them.
Maybe even the POTUS hates the country, or at least his wife does.
They don't have unpatriotic people in Finland.
The health care that I get in America is better than I got in Finland (I was there for five years as a professor in their second biggest university).
In america I'm in a fairly small college, and get terrific healthcare. But I'm afraid Obama is going to wreck it. My doctor said he'd just as soon go to Cuba and work if Obama's package passes, but I think he was kidding.
Nobody really knows what's going to happen.
Are we really just supposed to take Obama's word for it that things are going to improve?
He's such a dope.
Matt @ 7:36 But it doesn't really solve the bigger issue for those who are unemployed or for those with pre-existing conditions.
But the "big" issue of those unemployed (a variable population and number) and those with pre-existing conditions is NOT justification for the Federal government's take over and truly intrusive micro-managing of Americans' health care.
Baby
Bathwater
wv = paceress
A female pacer?
"Are we really just supposed to take Obama's word for it that things are going to improve?"
I surely won't take his word for it in 2012 if he promises to use public campaign financing. And because he lied about that, I will never again make a contribution to the fund when doing my taxes. I should ask for the money back I already donated.
TW: bihedro. Sounds like a sexual orientation.
Synova
I actually do see a rather large difference between charity and taxes. I was suggesting [not clearly] that in a smaller knit community a charity may be similar to a tax in its effectiveness. I also noted that if someone has no trouble paying into a charity why would they not want to pay a tax that virtually does the same thing. I mean, yes, I was being hypothetical. But the WSJ article is also essentially hypothetical on this point.
I just don't happen to believe that charity can or should replace taxes. I see trouble with that in the long run. As well as administering charity on such a large workable scale.
More importantly our views on taxes are a whole heck of a lot different. I don't consider taxes a 'confiscation'. Sure, there are taxes I like and there are taxes I do not like. But to quote Oliver Wendell Holmes, "I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization."
To give a small example I frequent state parks that are funded by taxes. I prefer the minimal tax to keep them open than a $10.00 fee every time I use the park. Yes, everyone else pays this tax but in turn I pay taxes for services I never use. So it balances out.
If they offered a box that said you could pay taxes or choose your money to go instead to charity I’d find in interesting which people choose charity but then turn around and use a service that was paid for by taxes.
JAL
I don't see the Federal government doing a health care take over. I see the Federal government essentially attemptingto expand Medicaid. Do any of the current drafts propose an actual take over of the Health care system? I'm pretty sure Single Payer is off the table.
[corrected]
Obama smokes. I don't trust his intuitions about healthcare.
"I also noted that if someone has no trouble paying into a charity why would they not want to pay a tax that virtually does the same thing."
It's the difference between making love and having obligation sex.
@Cedarford, do you mean to say that you don't accept American exceptionalism? Sorry, son, but I can't think of any other country that can send its military doctors to inner city hospitals so that they can learn the latest techniques for handling gunshot wounds.
That might, BTW, account in part for lower life expectancy in the US vice other nations. Just suggesting.
The reason why I imagine doctors will quit is because many of them have already opted out of Medicare (for instance Justice Sonia Sotomayor's brother) while others refuse to accept certain plans (my own doctor, though he thankfully accepts my BC/BS) because of low reimbursements and high paperwork requirements for any ailment that is non-trivial. Doctors are squeezed by high insurance rates (which chased on friend out of obstetrics) and low reimbursement rates, they spend nearly as much time doing paperwork as tending to patients. This is what you find desirable???
There's a lot that can be done to firm up the present system without resorting to end-of-life counseling to reduce patient loads.
Matt, do we have to have a discussion about intentions not necessarily dictating results again?
I find it hard to accept that liberals really believe that this is not an attempt to take over the entire system. You guys know it is. We all have seen the videos of Obama, Barney Frank and many others openly admit it before it became the wrong thing to admit openly. "It's just a small change and you can keep your plan."
It reminds me of the Nigerian email cons where they send you a check and even let you keep some of it, to get you to trust them. Then they spring the trap when the check bounces. A little sugar in the cool aid to cover the arsenic.
It so obvious and from a guy that has lied to them non stop. How's those Bush recipes tasting with the new cook?
WV: "thepigs" Seriously.
I don't see the Federal government doing a health care take over.
Oh Jeze. Where does one start?
* drums fingers*
Matt, I see by reviewing your posts, you're an earnest fellow. Here, let me help.
Step one: listen carefully to what Obama himself has said. This is easy enough, he talks to us every single day without exception. Even I know what he says, and I've had the man on "mute" for two years.
Youtube [Obama, single payer] You have at your fingertips Obama in his own words saying he intends to socialize medicine. Not all at once, of course, the public would never go for that, but rather in increments. That's what people are responding to.
And Matt, you really should know it's not the mean ol' Republicans either. That's too simple an analysis. If you pay attention you'll see those town hall meetings and the so-called tea parties are populated by people holding a broad range of political positions, I dare say, even Democrats. I know because I've met them and talked to them.
WV billi, I like that one
The US has highest life expectancy in the world, when all nations are adjusted to eliminate the effect of murder and accidents. (The health care effectiveness).
From the Wall Street Journal: "...they adjusted life-expectancy stats to get a rough handle on what life expectancy would have been like had the rates of these deaths (murder and accidents) been the same in all 29 countries. Their result: The U.S. would have ranked first, at 76.9 years of life expectancy — an increase of 1.6 years. Meanwhile, Japan fell from 78.7 years to 76 years, indicating it had been benefiting inordinately from low rates of accidental deaths and homicides.
The article is here: http://blogs.wsj.com/numbersguy/does-the-us-lead-in-life-expectancy-223/
"Now, if ...[I'm] forced into a public option that was inferior to even that, [which I doubt] I will be the first to admit it and blast away".
By then, however, there will be no point to objecting. It will be impossible to undo, for generations, or until a revolution, or secession of a state or states.
That's why voting to destroy your own liberty is so glaringly stupid.
Matt, and LE Lee,
I was planning a response to your claims to support capitalism, but I haven't the time or energy.
Let's just say you support capitalism like Bill Clinton supports fidelity.
More honored in the breach, as it were. Socialists hack at the roots of the tree that provides the very fruits they so desire, and always express surprise when the tree inevitably withers and dies.
They understand not at all how completely impossible it is to efficiently order a market, like health care, without real prices, and that fixed prices (a certainty) will lead not to savings and plenty, but inflation and scarcity.
And goddamnit, I'm sick of you assholes playing this stupid game over and over again, this utopian crap, this moralistic shit, this power play pretending to be justice.
Go to hell, will you?
Patricia,
If the plural of "anecdote" is "data" then mine cancel yours out. My sister is career Navy and has had 4 children inside the military system since she went in after NROTC in 1987.
Her family's only complaint was that the dentist at their station in Italy was pretty bad, and they had to drive all the way to Naples for someone else.
Given that in the DC metro area her drive for giving birth 4 times has been a LOT firther (Fairfax County to Bethesda) I'm not all that sympathetic.
Your Mileage Varies.
Fine.
But my anecdote is as good as yours.
I see the Federal government essentially attemptingto expand Medicaid. Do any of the current drafts propose an actual take over of the Health care system? I'm pretty sure Single Payer is off the table.
You have it exactly bass ackward. The government has already stated that part of the "savings" and how they plan to fund this giant hosing they are proposing is to cut Medicare by 500 some billion (I believe that was the figure).
Why do you think that the so called organized mobs (what a joke from the propagana media) consists of current and soon to be Medicare recipients? They can PLAINLY see the handwriting on the wall.
Single payer IS the goal and Obama and others have plainly said so. What they are hoping is that this boondoggle will be the camel's nose under the tent and that in a few years the private insurance industry will have been destroyed and no one will be able to have any other choice but to be controlled by the government.
Once the insurance industry is destroyed, there is no going back.
We cannot afford this program and it will put the country even further, trillions of dollars further, into debt.....much of which is owned by the Chinese and countries who really don't mean us well.
Pogo said,
Me? I'm thinking about the Republic of Texas, one nation, under God, indivisible..
TEXAS passed some great tort reform bills in 2003 and consequently more than 7,000 doctors have moved here from the evil west coast in the last three years. Unemployment rates are some of the lowest in the country, 70% of all the new jobs created in the US last year were created in Texas, and we have the largest wind energy grid in the U.S. What's not to like? Hell, we even got Tony Romo to dump Jessica Simpson. Come on over Pogo, it's a great place to live.
Pogo: Me? I'm thinking about the Republic of Texas, one nation, under God, indivisble.
Alex: You're gonna have to deal with the lefties in Austin first.
That's the beauty of Texas; there's a lot more to it than Austin (which is still a fun place to visit). Think most of suburban Dallas, lots of more rural areas, etc. I second Lawgiver's invitation.
"ensiaur"--an odd prehistoric being?
I had two babies in military hospitals (Clark and Eglin) and two babies in civilian hospitals in San Jose and Richmond. I was supposed to go to Alta Bates but ended up with an emergency C-section with the last and didn't make it all the way down to Berkeley. Alta Bates was supposedly the absolute pinnacle for having babies with modern birthing rooms that didn't look anything like a hospital with operating rooms and one of the best, if not the best, NICU facilities attached.
So it could be that I'm comparing two large, modern and excellent Air Force facilities with two crappy rundown city hospitals.
My *doctor* in San Jose was horrible but I didn't know how to find a different one, the hospital baby ward was shockingly behind the times... it was my third baby, I knew darn well that the things I objected to that they said they "had" to do, were completely bogus but I was too out of it to defend myself or my baby. My doctor at the other end of the Bay was recommended and wonderful. The hospital I had my emergency cesarean at was fine but the maternity ward was all but deserted. The up side to that was I got lots of attention since the several hallways had about three new mothers... got a room to myself. But no air conditioning and all of the emergency facilities were on the opposite side of the hospital from the labor rooms... Ooops.
I liked the military hospitals much better but some things are true.
You follow their procedures and rules and don't get to pick an OB/GYN. When you make an appointment you get the next doctor available. When you deliver you get 18 year old young men just out of high school bringing you ice chips and checking your vitals, a RN to look in and check your progression, and you get which ever doctor is on duty when you deliver... which might not be the same one you saw when you arrived and might be someone you *never* saw while you were pregnant.
Why is not possible to introduce the Obama plan to just one state or region first in order to evaluate how well it works?
I still say there's an even better idea: Let Congress, the current occupants of the White House and their families try it first; if it's good enough for them, it'll be good enough for us. That would be a great example of the "shared sacrifice" they keep talking about.
WV: "mattina" (really!)--the future daughter of the well-meaning but naive commenter in this thread who will have a pretty rough life if her daddy is wrong about ObamaCare's effectiveness.
"It's outlined in sections 440 and 1904 of the House bill (Page 838), under the heading "home visitation programs for families with young children and families expecting children.""
No idea which version... do they all outline "home visitation programs?"
If you don't want a visit do they assume it's because you don't want to be caught doing something wrong and have your baby taken away? Is refusing the "free" service going to be seen as proof of something "fishy?"
Will the home visits be mandatory if you report your pregnancy to your "insurance" company?
"...the bill points to specific targeted groups and problems, on Page 840: The state "shall identify and prioritize serving communities that are in high need of such services, especially communities with a high proportion of low-income families." (Quoting Chuck Norris quoting the bill.)
And of course, if the state (the actual "states" I think as this sounds like an obligation the bill places on them) is required by the bill to identify and serve targeted groups then there will be pressure to prove those groups are being served, which means it is no longer voluntary, no longer something that is simply made available to those that request it. It will be pushed so that any auditing will show that the obligation the federal law has established has been met.
DBQ, Matt said "I see the Federal government essentially attempting to expand Medicaid."
I don't know if he meant to write Medicaid or Medicare.
It's clear everyone on that side from Tom Daschle [BEFORE he didn't get appointed] to the Prez (I'm wondering whether my grandmother deserved that hip replacement...) are talking about limiting health care options for "older" people, not expannding them.
So that is not expanding Medicare. As for Medicaid, that's for people with limited or no income. The care provided comes from a very limited pool of physicians and dentists (we have one dentist, maybe two, in our county who take medicaid patients).
I have been a private mental health provider for medicaid. For adults that gives them 6 visits before I have to go through a labyrinthian process to get permission to see them any more. Lots of paperwork.
Is Matt thinking that this will simply be an expansion of medicaid to include everyone who wants to be in on that coverage? Talk about blown fuses. But because it will be done somewhat incrementally, while the insurance companies are destroyed, the bureaucracy will be added -- see! More "jobs!" to handle it.
The goal is clearly the Fderal single payer model. Complete with your medical records at the finger tips of many.
Someone, somehow, tell me where the Congress and POTUS think they are going to get the money to do this without bleeding us dry and giving us mediocity in its place?
Oh yeah, and the illegals.
You leftists all know the plan includes the illegals.
No thank you.
WV ideoloin
Ideology based on the loin. (Why does Clinton cross my mind?)
Oh yeah -- electronic medical records which are government accessible at all times...
Kim Komando -- the radio digital goddess chick was saying the other day that the health bill mentions electronic security of the records, BUT HAS NO PLAN OR WAY TO GUARANTEE IT.
Wv fluxa
Itsa fluxa me.
"Why is not possible to introduce the Obama plan to just one state or region first in order to evaluate how well it works?"
Isn't that Massachusetts? It seems to be going exactly as the critics are warning in that experiment, except that the innovation of medical technology is not killed by just one state trying it. So we still got that to look forward to.
Synova said...
"...the bill points to specific targeted groups and problems, on Page 840:
Oh shit. I never even heard that part before. What a mess that will be. Some kind of affirmative action for health care?
That's another problem there has not been enough talk about, but we know it's gonna come: The social engineering that will be attempted with this expanded government power. More pandering and vote buying with our health. My god, we're doomed.
JAL - You don't know your ass from a hole in the ground.
I've spent quite a bit of time in Canada and have never met anyone who complains about their system or services.
One of my best friends has full coverage, has taken advantage of services on many occasions and pays about $75 ever three months.
What do YOU pay...that is if YOU actually have to pay.
Camile is awesome.
Canadian healthcare
anecdote
http://www.qando.net/?p=4011
That has the link to the article. I suppose the usual suspects will get the cramps over it leading to Town Hall.
And Chuck Norris is awesome and all but he did support Huckabee.
But he also cites section numbers and pages so...
wv: puglys
Synova-
Looks like you got some lucky assignments-hell I don't think Clark even exists anymore....
At U.S. Military Hospitals, 'Everybody is Overworked'
Posted on: Tuesday, 5 June 2007, 06:00 CDT
By Gregg Zoroya
FORT STEWART, Ga. -- Winn Army Community Hospital has a baby boom it cannot handle.
Mothers and children and strollers pack the pediatrics department, another hassle after long waits for hard-to-get appointments. The problems don't stop there. From gynecology to internal medicine, this hospital on the grounds of Fort Stewart, the biggest Army base in the South, is overwhelmed. Too many patients are demanding too many services from a medical facility with too few doctors and too little space.
Military families complain they can't get in to see a doctor. The hospital's top commander points to a lack of money and staff to meet basic needs. And everyone involved agonizes about whether the problems can be fixed anytime soon.
[...]
It goes on-
Many families share that view:
*Sgt. Joseph Waterman returned from Iraq in October 2005 with ribs and vertebrae broken in a roadside explosion. The hospital did not have enough doctors or therapists to help him.
So each week his wife, Mary, drove him three hours to Augusta, Ga., for therapy at Eisenhower Army Medical Center. That required taking their three children, including two who had to miss school, and paying $69-a-night hotel bills the Army was slow to reimburse.
"It was breaking us," says Mary Waterman, 31. "He was hurt (in Iraq), so I thought they would go out of their way to take care of him."
Early last year, Joseph Waterman's case manager at Winn allowed him to finish his therapy at a private facility in Savannah, Ga., a 45-minute drive from Fort Stewart.
*Warrant Officer Dan Howison and his wife, Kathryn, wanted to have a second child before he went back to war. Kathryn Howison, 29, says the family care doctors at Winn were slow to see her and slow to refer her to the hospital's gynecology department.
"They'd say, 'I'm sorry we don't have any appointments this month, call back next month,'" she says. "And you're like, 'What? You know I have a limited time here where I can try to have this baby. You guys got to get me in there!'"
After nearly a year of delays, Kathryn was sent to a private fertility clinic in Savannah, where hormonal treatments led to conception last year. The Howisons' daughter, Piper, was born last week. Dan Howison will head to Iraq this summer.
*Amy Lambert, 40, a mother of three whose husband is being deployed to Iraq in two to three months, says Winn doesn't have enough staff members to follow up with patients after office visits.
"You have to be the one who pesters them and calls them," she says. "If you say, 'Fine, I'm tired of dealing with this,' that's what they're hoping for."
Patient complaints rise
Linda King, a hospital patient representative since 1990, says there are more complaints than ever. Complaints filed with the hospital hit a record 616 in March, four times as many as March 2006. Three out of four were about access to care or service delays.
Soldiers and families from closed bases have moved to Fort Stewart, adding to the number of those eligible for care at Winn. The potential patient population has swollen 40% to 74,000 since the facility opened in 1983, officials say.
The hospital's emergency room often has only one doctor on duty and strains to handle the demand, receiving 70 to 110 patients per day. Visits jumped to 36,000 last year, up from 30,000 in 2005.
Link
And incidentally I think you know-it takes a lot for active duty to complain, there are barriers to that.
"Looks like you got some lucky assignments-hell I don't think Clark even exists anymore...."
I was there. My first born was 3 months old when Pinatubo blew.
:-)
Oh well damn I remember then you all came to Eglin right?
Wasn't that the order...?
Or did they send some to P'Cola....
Oh - you know I think we were looking at real estate in Okaloosa and then you all got there first....
The prices kinda upticked...
My first born was 3 months old when Pinatubo blew.
Oh that musta been f-u-n....
[wv=grouse I shat you not]
When I was active duty they were changing it so that family members had insurance to go off base. We separated about that time but it was an unbelievable hassle to figure out how to get your kid to the civilian doctor and have your AF benefits pay for it.
I *did* complain to the fellow in the personnel office and he said, "well, that's what you get when it's free." Oh, I know, he was just some 19 year old Airman but dangit... it was NOT free. It was part of my compensation. Not *free* at all.
But like I said, we left the service and I don't know what happened with that.
I never had to deal with the AF medical as a dependent.
The distances driven was something we did deal with... the rules are that if you are within a certain distance of a military facility you have to go to the military facility even if there is a civilian hospital right across the road... and I *believe* it was something like 200 miles.
My husband had a doctor that refused to order imaging for his back, keeping him on muscle relaxants and pain meds and on quarters just *barely* under the frequency and duration that would require further medical examination. "You can't go on quarters again Sgt. Pascal, or I'd have to admit you to the hospital, so... here are some drugs, go to work."
When we were visiting my folks during leave on our way to the Philippines we crossed that magical line of however many hundreds of miles from the nearest military hospital (thank goodness VA didn't count!) and went to a civilian doctor and got an MRI/CAT or whatever... took it with us. He flew for 24 hours on three herniated disks in his lower back.
The care at Clark was excellent. He saw a neurosurgeon the day we arrived and he was immediately scheduled for surgery.
Sure, Sgt. Pascal, here are some muscle relaxants Sgt. Pascal, you can't be on three days quarters twice in a row Sgt. Pascal, or we'd have to actually examine you Sgt. Pascal, but if you can go to work today, come see me tomorrow and I can put you on quarters again.
No... I do NOT want government health care.
"Oh - you know I think we were looking at real estate in Okaloosa and then you all got there first...."
LOL! Hurlburt Field.
We bought a little three bedroom brick ranch in Mary Esther with a sliver of the Gulf visible from the front yard and never ending, circling, C141 (?) gunships blowing pine trees into tooth-picks in the rear.
I don't know if we *all* got sent to Florida, but I sure to pity the poor folks who repatriated to Homestead, AFB at that time... just barely settled and then flattened by a hurricane. Wow.
Oh... the doctor refusing to do anything for my husband's back was at Norton AFB (now closed) in San Bernadino, CA. I *was* a dependent then, but never dealt with them myself beyond going to the clinic for shots when he got orders to Clark.
I enlisted while at Clark.
Being a DW sucks.
A lot.
Fucksake. Having public healthcare does not mean there can be no private healthcare. Every piece of rightwing bullshit, including Paglia's and Palin's that she based it on, is easily dismissed by pointing out that no one is doing anything different with the healthcare your insurance pays for, except that it's so hugely undercut by what is publicly provided.
"Having public healthcare does not mean there can be no private healthcare."
Not immediately, no. Obama has admitted in prior interviews (recently confirmed by Barney Frank) that the public option was the way to a single payer program in the US, because the public option would over time eliminate the private options.
It's all part of the plan; it's always been part of the plan, ever since FDR first entertained the idea.
OT -
George, my commuting co-worker couldn’t stop raving about the Julia Child movie this morning.
He went to see it with his wife last night and he said he loved it. Of course he been a fan of Julia Child for as long as he can remember and he thinks the world of Meril Streep.
Oh yes.. The film features a blogger.
"Every piece of rightwing bullshit, including Paglia's and Palin's that she based it on, is easily dismissed by pointing out that no one is doing anything different with the healthcare your insurance pays for, except that it's so hugely undercut by what is publicly provided."
You would have done much better to have left off everything after that last comma, because you would have been omitting the feature of this scheme that will in fact destroy private insurance. Don't say you weren't warned when it turns out that way.
TW: coded. Shit you not. Don't know what it means though. It's apparently some sort of code...
Paglia
"As a libertarian and refugee from the authoritarian Roman Catholic church of my youth..."
I am amazed at the people who self-identify as libertarians.
I mean, ouch.
I see the Federal government essentially attemptingto expand Medicaid.
Then I suggest you get an eye examination. If they were simply attempting to expand Medicaid (Although is suspect you mean Medicare since not every 47 million uninsured is poverty level) it would not require a 1007 page piece of legislation. I remarked long ago that this could be solved rather easily by simply expanding Medicare Part A to cover the uninsured who would in turn have to pay a Part A premium. Illegals would be barred. In fact, take out the estimated 10-15 million that are here and you’ve knocked a chunk of the rising costs right there. And no I don’t care if they shrivel and die in the streets. I’m tired of paying for people who don’t even belong here in the first place.
And again, quit calling it health insurance because that’s not what it is. Insurance isn’t supposed to pay for basic care it’s supposed to pay for the unexpected. Kind of like your auto insurance doesn’t pay for oil changes but pays for collisions. If you expect your health insurance to pay for every single doctor’s visit, specialist visit or in garage’s daughter’s case, syringes and test strips then yes it’s going to be horribly expensive because those are known costs that have to be factored into the pricing in addition to the basic underwriting risk. Another reason we have higher health care costs is because we have some of the most unhealthy people living here too. It’s not a coincidence that we have some of the highest rates of obesity and diabetes in the world.
Personally I’d stipulate that insurance companies cannot bar a pre-exisiting condition unless such condition was due to lifestyle choices rather than a congenital condition. For example, garage’s daughter can’t help the fact she was born with diabetes. But someone who gets diabetes because they’re morbidly obese I have no sympathy. Take the fucking Twinkie out of your pie hole and start taking care of yourself. Want to eat like a pig, hey fine, just don’t ask me to pay for your stomach stapling (that costs over $50K by the way). Here is another example. In Indiana, a mandated provision for group coverage is that inpatient substance abuse care it has to be offered. So if you’re in a group policy and a fellow certificate holder is a coke fiend or has a kid that is, you’re paying for that bucko (ever see how much that therapy costs?). See, I’d like to be able to say, I really don’t need substance abuse coverage because I’m not an idiot. I also don’t need bariatric surgery coverage because I don’t eat like a pig. As a matter of fact, I have priced individual coverage for me and found a $2000 deductible 80/20 policy for under $100 a month and I’m 42 years old.
Point being, you take the illegals out of the picture, those who can afford insurance but rather spend the money elsewhere and you're down to a manageable number of 8-10 million chronically ill who I will grant need help.
WV -tuddents This is what Barney Fwank calls people who go to school.
is easily dismissed by pointing out that no one is doing anything different with the healthcare your insurance pays for, except that it's so hugely undercut by what is publicly provided.
Kind of like when WalMart blows into town and puts Mike's Hardware store and Mabel's Homemade Kitchen Necessities out of business inside of a year.
I remember all the liberals supporting Walmart when that happens.
It's a fairly simple analysis really. What government-run (either Fed or State) program is operating successfully?
The USPS? No.
Medicare? No.
Social Security? No.
The DMV? No.
The VA? No.
Public Education? No. (sidebar - see the recent study on home-schooling v. public education - public education performs abysmally).
Fanny Mae? No.
FEMA? No.
Department of Treasury? Not really. (spending more to make pennies and nickels than they are worth is not evidence of a rational, sound business practice)
Senate Restaurants? No - business operations were given to a private contractor. Only once privatized was it even able to stay open. Yet, the socialist dems suggested that, despite such a result, "we should not draw the conclusion that private enterprise works better than government..." (Hillary Clinton). We shouldn't? Of course not. Incredulous.
While there might be some government institutions that are working "well" (at what they do anyway - e.g., the IRS), the bottom-line remains that government has never been able to out-perform or out-maneuver the private-sector. By and large, government-run programs result in waste, fraud, mistakes, over-spending, inept-operations, etc. On the whole, they are failures at whatever they attempt to do.
As for who the "nazis" really are?...it clearly is Obama and his fellow statists. The most disturbing efforts (which are straight out of nationalist-socialist Germany) is perhaps the "inform on others" efforts Obama has instituted via the "flag" email addy. Der Furher would delight in such efforts. And to think, these statists were outraged when they thought Bush was monitoring their phone calls...now those very people suggest that even more drastic efforts are "necessary" to combating "dis-information." Unreal.
You would have done much better to have left off everything after that last comma, because you would have been omitting the feature of this scheme that will in fact destroy private insurance. Don't say you weren't warned when it turns out that way.
Well the argument from the liberals is that when it comes to health care, profit should not be a factor. Fine let’s grant that profit should have no bearing whatsoever on the medical care people should receive. Now that we have taken profit out of the picture, you’re still going to have to budget a dollar amount for the care we’re going to have to provide to 300 million people and also set forth the type of medical care that is going to be covered. Fact is, public health care doesn’t mean you’re suddenly going to get every bit of care you want and I’m not talking rationing, I’m talking simple facts because even Medicare has limits on coverage.
Simple fact. If you want health insurance something that will pay for the unexpected illness or injury or catastrophic incident and you take care of your routine care then you can find a reasonably priced policy for it. If you’re looking for health care coverage that is going to pay for all of your medical care including the routine stuff then don’t be surprised when it costs a lot. I don’t understand why this is a difficult concept for people. Whether the private industry pays for it or the government, it’s still going to cost a fucking ton of money because the expectation is that someone other than ME! pay for it all.
WV- debl - What Barney Fwank calls Satan.
It rejects discussion, for the truth has been revealed. Historical failures do not beg their caution, but demand yet another attempt. Naysayers are, at a minimum, misinformed, but are more likely evil heretics.
Ever argued with a Republican, Pogo?
Seriously, can Althouse ban this idiot garage once and for all? He is trolling incessantly!
One man's troll is another's freedom fighter! ;-)
Seriously, isn't every commenter on Althouse a troll?
Paglia has always been a traditionalist with a classical education and a very wide world view. She was a classical liberal in her day and has enjoyed a career of telling the truth from known facts in a provacative style.
Anyone who claims to be a "classical liberal" is not liberal. It's really quite simple. Some libertarians are apparently so ashamed of their own self-identification that they want to liberate themselves of the "libertarian" label. Are they jealous of liberals? It makes no sense.
As for Paglia, a fitting description is an overhyped gasbag, full of vapid blather. Paglia's not a public intellectual but a public dunce.
if someone has no trouble paying into a charity why would they not want to pay a tax that virtually does the same thing.
"that virtually does the same thing" LOL
I saw CNN go absolutely bonkers this morning when Chuck Grassley at a town hall in Iowa said the government should not be involved in end of life decisions. The reporter mentioned about 17,000 times that there are no death panels in Obama's plan, and how could Grassley who is one of the more reasoned Republicans say such a lie...
THE PRESIDENT: ... I don't know how much that hip replacement cost. I would have paid out of pocket for that hip replacement just because she's my grandmother. Whether, sort of in the aggregate, society making those decisions to give my grandmother, or everybody else's aging grandparents or parents, a hip replacement when they're terminally ill is a sustainable model, is a very difficult question. If somebody told me that my grandmother couldn't have a hip replacement and she had to lie there in misery in the waning days of her life - that would be pretty upsetting.
LEONHARDT: And it's going to be hard for people who don't have the option of paying for it.
THE PRESIDENT: So that's where I think you just get into some very difficult moral issues. But that's also a huge driver of cost, right?
I mean, the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out here.
LEONHARDT: So how do you - how do we deal with it?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think that there is going to have to be a conversation that is guided by doctors, scientists, ethicists. And then there is going to have to be a very difficult democratic conversation that takes place. It is very difficult to imagine the country making those decisions just through the normal political channels. And that's part of why you have to have some independent group that can give you guidance. It's not determinative, but I think has to be able to give you some guidance. And that's part of what I suspect you'll see emerging out of the various health care conversations that are taking place on the Hill right now.
Kaus quoting Obama on end of life planning panels.
Given Obama's pattern of throwing friends and family under the bus politically, is it really such a stretch he might support pulling or reducing care for non-Obama contributors who are consuming too many resources?
Camile, spot on as usual. I love her. She is my favorite leftist lesbian contrarian. Better than Hitchens even.
I also saw Arlo Guthrie on CNN this morning. He is a registered Republican. I am not buying it, but he did say he likes Sarah Palin and thinks she is "spunky."
As for Paglia, a fitting description is an overhyped gasbag, full of vapid blather. Paglia's not a public intellectual but a public dunce.
Yet she still loves Obama because apparently the only thing she thinks he's done right is to travel the world apologizing for what a fucked up nation we are.
So yes you're right about what a dunce she is.
I think that shows the difference between liberals and conservatives. Conservatives still think she's a flaming liberal despite her opposition of Obamacare. Liberals hate her because she dares question His Excellency's plan to heal us all.
Meanwhile.... More squirrels in the news
vw: hypermal = a really spastic epileptic seizure.
"Ever argued with a Republican, Pogo?"
Intransigence has no party affiliation. But that is well known.
What's your point?
You can't compare the US to Switzerland, Japan, or France. Those countries don't have a population that is 35% nonwhite and which is disproportionately poor and using government resources. I suggest that to make the comparison valid we pay several million non-whites to emigrate to those countries, let them settle in for a decade or two, and then make the comparison again.
It reminds me of when Milton Friedman was interviewed by a Swede who said "in Sweden we have no poverty". Friedman responded, "That's interesting. In America we have no poverty among people of Swedish descent either."
"I also saw Arlo Guthrie on CNN this morning. He is a registered Republican. I am not buying it, but he did say he likes Sarah Palin and thinks she is 'spunky.'"
Proof that too much LSD and weed can damage one's brain!
The reporter mentioned about 17,000 times that there are no death panels in Obama's plan, and how could Grassley who is one of the more reasoned Republicans say such a lie...
If you want to get realistic about it, how unreasonable is it that there not be some review over a procedure on a 89 year old who is on his/her last legs and needs a [insert procedure here]. Oh dear how can I put a dollar amount on it? Easy, there is a finite number of dollars available to pay for this stuff unless of course we devote the entire GDP of the US of KKA to health care and even then, it’s a finite amount of money. Does the 89 year olds [insert procedure] mean that some 8 year old kid with a congenital heart condition get shoved aside to make room? Or forget the blue hair, what about the 40 year old who supersized his diet at McDonalds and Arbys his whole life and now has diabetes and needs a $50K bariatric surgery? Who gets shortchanged to pay for his gluttony? I’m sorry Mrs. Doe, I know you’re a taxpaying citizen but Jose, Conseuelo and Manuel where here before you and well we can’t just toss them on the street now can we? Now give little Jimmy this aspirin and the ER tech with be with you sometime between 6 and midnight.
See where the difference comes between private insurance and public option is that everyone with private insurance is paying for it. Everyone in my group plan pays for it which means I can’t really bitch if fatass Maurice has to get his stomach stapled since he’s paying premiums too. The flipside is over 50% of the population pays zip, nada, neyt in Federal income tax which means I as a taxpayer will not only be paying my share of the public option but theirs too. Egalitarianism is a nice concept all things being equal but they ain’t. If everyone was actually contributing to the system I’d be less inclined to oppose the measure. I’m sorry but I don’t subscribe to the liberal mindset where I follow the rules and make smart life choices yet have to be sympathetic to the dumb schmuck who decided to follow the Dead for two years after graduation, shit out a couple of kids and then complain when they can’t get a living wage or insurance because their skill set doesn’t rise above stocking shelves at Wal-Mart.
Proof that too much LSD and weed can damage one's brain!
And I am sure that Cookie being the caring leftard he is has no problem paying the necessary taxes for his medical rehabilitation.
"Proof that too much LSD and weed can damage one's brain!"
Not unlike the effect of too much Marxist 'philosophy'.
Cookie - what are you still doing here? We killed the indians, remember? Now get out before we do something else 100 years ago that will piss you off.
"Now get out before we do something else 100 years ago that will piss you off."
That's quite good. LOL
"And I am sure that Cookie being the caring humanitarian he is has no problem paying the necessary taxes for his medical rehabilitation."
None whatsoever! I always liked Arlo and I'm happy to help him get right.
None whatsoever! I always liked Arlo and I'm happy to help him get right.
Good for you! Then please ask Obama to take a few extra bucks from your paycheck to cover that added expense. I don't believe in paying for other's stupid life choices.
Cookie, better that you spend your money on your own rehab - you voted for Nader, a sure sign of mental illness or, as it is known in Obamacare, conkus of the bonkus.
Didn't Arlo Guthrie run the "Freakout Tent" at Woodstock? This for people with bad trips who could get talked down and get some food. Wait, that was Wavy Gravy. Anyway, I think we should erect a humongous Freakout Tent for conservatives, black helicopter tea bagger types, and the rest who are seeming to have such a hard time lately.
Hoosier,
If you have health insurance and take great care of yourself you are already subsidizing the poor lifestyle choices of others. That fatass smoking cigarettes outside the office or the douchebag riding his Harley without a helmet, they're doing it all on your dime.
Anyway, I think we should erect a humongous Freakout Tent for conservatives, black helicopter tea bagger types, and the rest who are seeming to have such a hard time lately.
Nah garage, save it for loonatrons like you and the UN Sec General who think we only have 4 months left to save the planet. Or that Bush was actually Sauron and personally blew up the Two Towers. You shouldn't make fun of teabaggers. Barney Fwank would call you a homophobe.
Hoosier:
When I am Emperor, you and your fellow employees would each get the same fixed dollar amount to spend on your benefits. Then there'd be some financial incentive for the smoker/ fat guy to shape up.
wv= turni
Hoosier,
If you have health insurance and take great care of yourself you are already subsidizing the poor lifestyle choices of others. That fatass smoking cigarettes outside the office or the douchebag riding his Harley without a helmet, they're doing it all on your dime.
The way the laws for group insurance are written you are correct. However, the fatass smoker and douchebag Harley rider, if they are in my group policy are at least paying premiums like I am. Yeah they're driving up the cost but they're paying for it as well.
My beef is that over 50% of this country PAYS. NO. FEDERAL. INCOME. TAX. That my triangled friend is my biggest beef. I'm sorry but if you're going to be getting the same state provided benefits as I am then you damn well should have a stake in paying for it.
There is helping out someone and then there is enabling. Liberals for some God only known reason can't seem to see the differnce between the two. Exactly how many generations of state funded couch potatoes have to be created before you realize your humanitarianism ain't working? Or is that the feature and not a bug?
Then there'd be some financial incentive for the smoker/ fat guy to shape up.
Actually the company I work for used to have a fully funded wellness program just for that. It was discontinued...wait for it..
.
.
.
for lack of participation.
"ShadowFox" wrote: Some libertarians ... want to liberate themselves of the "libertarian" label. Are they jealous of liberals?...
Paglia did "label" herself as a libertarian. Of course you had to read all the way to page two to find it. Tough going for an ADHD left-winger.
It is also apparent that most of you lefties haven't read these Democrat proposals in the context of the history of comments by Teh One and his consorts, if at all.
Even some of the mainstream mediaswine, e.g., at WaPo, agree that Sec. 1233 of HR 3200 will put pressure on the elderly to sign "end-of-life directives."
Nearly everyone outside the Democrat dissembling machine acknowledges that Oblahblah's assertion that everyone will be able to keep their insurance is false (most recently USA Today).
Why lie?
Cookie - what are you still doing here? We killed the Indians, remember? Now get out before we do something else 100 years ago that will piss you off.
Well if Cookie and others who are so concerned about the Indians and who are in favor of this new big and improved government take over of the health care industry.....they might just want to take a look at exactly how horribly run the government option is for Native Americans. The program routinely runs out of money before year end and the level of care is spotty to terrible.
wv = miptcho Gesundheit!
And nobody's "jealous of liberals" except other liberals.
I’m late to this party.
@Roost on the Moon: Under all of these proposals, anyone can pay for the procedure themselves, just as now, either out of pocket or through private insurance..
They WILL eliminate the right to pay for your own care down the road. It’s one of their big goals, in order to 1) increase “equity” and 2) glom onto as much revenue as they can. Doubt this? Then explain why this last fall, an Arizona referendum adding a provision to the constitution that (I paraphrase) “the right of a citizen to pay for his own health care will never be taken away”. The left fought tooth and nail to defeat this provision, which they narrowly did. For all you who claim what Roost did above, please explain this. Also note that medicare won’t allow it. Also note that Canada won’t allow it (a provincial supreme court has recently ruled this unconstitutional). Also note it was a provision of HillaryCare. We will lose our right to pay for ourselves. It is the number one reason I am opposed to government taking over health care.
@C-4 Most big medical technology advances also come from university systems which then peel off professors to make money for themselves and their schools making a commercial product or by profs bolting from the schools....
As someone who has worked in this field for 25+ years I’m here to tell you you do not know what you are talking about.
I'm sorry but if you're going to be getting the same state provided benefits as I am then you damn well should have a stake in paying for it.
I understand your concern, and I don't want to create incentives for freeloaders either. My point is that having to pay premiums makes zero difference in people's health behaviors.
Because maintaining health benefits is a strong incentive to maintain continuous full-time employment, I do wonder what a switch to universal coverage will do to the job market.
@garage
"I think we should erect a humongous Freakout Tent for conservatives, black helicopter tea bagger types, and the rest who are seeming to have such a hard time lately."
Just to get you caught up, your side are currently the ones running for cover and looking more unhinged than my old kitchen cabinetry. The "silent" majority is slowly starting to stir. What you've seen so far is just the beginning.
Call it the Great Awakening.
Regardless, things do not bode well for your ilk.
WV "abbyl" - a C-list Swedish band composed of four transgender performers doing covers of old Wagner bierhall tunes.
Synova-
Oh ya! Those poor bastards that got sent to Homestead and then Hurricane Andrew{?} hit.
Oh I love that it's "free" part don't they tell you in that real pay breakdown that it's in lieu of paying you something like $15,000 to $20,000?
Ugh, sounds like your husband went through some pain there.
Crap-
Anyone else worried that Mdme. Althouse really crapped herself out on that slide?
Not worried - the state will take care of her.
W - sepin - what communism is doing in this country - sepin right on in...
Well shit good thing she's on record as voting for you know who....
Hey there's a tape of her declaring her loyalties even....
Wily.
wv = dingludg
dingludg.....
No way!
Too funny.
If you have health insurance and take great care of yourself you are already subsidizing the poor lifestyle choices of others..
You know what? I'm willing to subsidize the other guy. I'm willing to pay for the poor through my taxes. ALL I ask is to retain the right to control my own care. But this plan is so poorly designed that I will pay much more than I do now AND I will lose my autonomy.
Obama touts health care as a "civil right":
http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/obama-team-say-they-were-caught-guard
I think this will cook the right.
"Because maintaining health benefits is a strong incentive to maintain continuous full-time employment, I do wonder what a switch to universal coverage will do to the job market."
It would probably help. Employers, freed of the onerous financial burden of providing insurance coverage to their employees, would be more able to afford expanding their work forces, thereby providing jobs which currently do not exist, (or to halt planned layoffs to cut costs, thus saving jobs which currently exist). Many currently unemployed or underemployed people would thus get a double benefit: access to health care and more access to jobs.
@Alex
I've heard many a liberal commentator waxing about how health care is a basic human right. I have yet to hear ANY of them tell me when they think this basic human right starts.
If a woman wants a baby she's pregnant with, does that child have the basic human right for good OB care?
If a woman finds out she's pregnant and doesn't want the baby, I suppose that baby does not have this basic human right they're talking about.
How many other basic human rights are up to the whim of another person?
Utter nonsense and yet another example of the liberal point of view not standing up to the world-as-it-is.
WV "carnecales" - small, bony structures, actually made up of many small organisms, that attach themselves to the wheel wells of most cars made before 1990.
Scott M - most of the American people when polled say that health care is a human right. You and I are in the small minority on this.
@Alex
Oh, I'm willing to go along with that, but I still want the question answered by these nimrods on when that human right kicks in. Do you have that right when you've exited the birth canal? What about six inches early when you're still inside the womb? Do you have it then?
Again...nonsense and only an ideologue could possibly try and argue that fact. The only recourse they have is what they've always said, "the rights of the mother trump those of the fetus".
BUT
...if health care is a basic human right, it cannot be taken away by someone else. It exists in and of itself.
Could the left supporting the "basic human right" argument for health care be their undoing on pro-choice?
WV - reine : a river in Germany
.if health care is a basic human right, it cannot be taken away by someone else. It exists in and of itself.
Nonsense. Name one basic human right that cannot be taken away by someone else.
R Cook:
Have you ever read a business's profit & loss statement?
There is usually an expense line for employee benefits. Do you actually believe Obamacare will elininate that expense from businesses?
wv - adlible
JAL said...
Oh yeah -- electronic medical records which are government accessible at all times...
Kim Komando -- the radio digital goddess chick was saying the other day that the health bill mentions electronic security of the records, BUT HAS NO PLAN OR WAY TO GUARANTEE IT.
********************
And again, you have to check out how Germany, France, Japan have created digital electronic medical records..and safeguard privacy.
Or, fall back again to the American Exceptionalism argument.
" America is just too big and too diverse to EVER abandon 19th century paperwork systems for modern dBase IT! It's just too hard!!"
**************
Original Mike asserts that most drugs are not dervived from scientific research originally built by universities, research hospitals, government grants through NIH, etc., or NGOs like the American Heart Association, Gates Foundation.
In his world, I guess, great entrepreneurs see a disease, and work in Big Pharma or Biotech and hire people to go to college and then join their firms to understand it, then "find a cure".
Now, if we look at who gets the awards in electronics breakthroughs..you do see private enterprise - Bell Labs, IBM, the old Xerox PARC crowd, Hitachi..claiming a good share.
Medicine and new drug breakthroughs? Not so much.
@Triangle Man
"Nonsense. Name one basic human right that cannot be taken away by someone else."
I disagree, but I think we're confusing definitions. If you agree that there are basic human rights, then they cannot be taken away. They can only be suppressed by an outside force. The right still exists, it's just being usurped for whatever reason.
...unless you're nihilist and there are no rights at all...
@Cedarford
I have no doubts that using modern encryption and hardware it's possible to make the info as secure as possible. What I an extremely weary of is, once again, human nature coming into the fray.
The left will say, "if you have nothing to hide, why do you care?" Well, I don't necessarily, as long as I could be guaranteed a benevolent person would be overseeing it. As that's impossible, and corruption can and does seep in from time to time, I'd rather play it safe.
...unless you're nihilist and there are no rights at all...
It's worse than that! I think that the highest purpose of government is to protect or ensure basic human rights.
I just don't think that a valid test of whether something is truly a basic human right relates to whether or not it can be denied.
C-4 - I was speaking of devices (which is what I do for a living) not drugs. I am one of those scientist you speak so "knowledgeably" about.
Riddle me this. Those university scientist who spin off their work to a company. What motivation will they have to do that when you've taken the profit motive away? When their device won't even see the light of day because Bambi's panel won't approve it's use? Can you even conceive how much work you have to put in to do this? This activity will stop. Device development will die. D. I. E. Die.
You're smart enough to understand this (some here are not). I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt I say you haven't thought this through.
@Triangle Man
Okay, let's back up for a second. If you hold that there are basic human rights, and it appears that you do, when in the course of a human's life does that right start?
It looks to me like a lot of Dems, Rinos, and incumbents in general have stepped in it big time with this administration, congress and their fine work.
It's gonna be the plague next election. Mass die off and extinction.
If govt. health care passes or not. Just the attempt has shown a lot of us what kind of people are running things and we don't like it. Before, some of us wern't paying attention, some didn't care, some felt "how can it hurt?". These people are quickly all comming together to fight for smaller government. It's a beautiful thing.
wv: "chemis" = who Barney Frank calls for "supplies" when he's in London.
Robert Cook said...
"Because maintaining health benefits is a strong incentive to maintain continuous full-time employment, I do wonder what a switch to universal coverage will do to the job market."
It would probably help. Employers, freed of the onerous financial burden of providing insurance coverage to their employees, would be more able to afford expanding their work forces, thereby providing jobs which currently do not exist.
Add another factor in...America, unlike most nations, tries to pass on it's health care costs in anything we try exporting. So we get out-competed and lose millions of jobs in the new age of globalization. Including many high-value manufacturing and exportable services jobs. America now has a trade deficit with almost every other country.
That is why business leaders say the status quo is unacceptable. We face loss of further industries. And the old "we can outproduce anyone, like we did in The Big One!" argument doesn't wash. Nor the outsourcing mantra from the 80s that jobs going overseas will be replaced by "Exciting, high-paying jobs" Asians lack the brains and skill to do...starting with computer making, software programming, Biotech!, cell phones!, Nanotech!, high tech services jobs!, now "Exciting Green Jobs"!!
Guess where most of those jobs are now?
News in July was America's largest maker of solar panels is shifting all production to China. And drug companies call India and China the "future center of our R&D" because PhDs are plentiful and employer provided healthcare costs are negligible there (Yeah, Big Pharma itself does not like employees with high health insurance costs.).
"Have you ever read a business's profit & loss statement?
There is usually an expense line for employee benefits. Do you actually believe Obamacare will elininate that expense from businesses?"
I don't know if "Obamacare" will, but single payer insurance would. If a business is no longer providing insurance coverage to its employees, that expense is eliminated.
Single payer health care, I meant to say.
"I don't know if "Obamacare" will, but single payer insurance would. If a business is no longer providing insurance coverage to its employees, that expense is eliminated."
Well, then it's free. Cool! totally free, like magic or something. I like that. I'm convinced, count me in Obama!
It would probably help. Employers, freed of the onerous financial burden of providing insurance coverage to their employees, would be more able to afford expanding their work forces, thereby providing jobs which currently do not exist
Debatable. The question then remains on whose shoulders the taxable burden is going to fall to pay for 300 million people's health care. If its up to the left, its going to be on the very people you think are now going to have all this disposable money to expand thier workforce. This may come as a newsflash to you Cook but those folks making $250K or more that Obambi wants targeted for his tax hikes are the ones who tend to run the small and medium sized businesses in this country. If all you're doing is shifting the financial burden from the insurance company to the Federal government then not much is changing now is it?
I found the Arlo Guthrie stuff cringeworthy. Considering the possibility that he had Huntington's chorea (assuming it would have developed by now if it was going to, but don't know; I recall he didn't want to be tested), the brain damage comments (yes, I know it's not the same) raise the question of whether he would live very long if it did develop. Under ObamaCare, I mean. Hawking too, for that matter (I know, ALS not Hc).
TW: phans. Aren't we all? You enjoy myself, don't you?
R Cook:
The Obamacare bill has a provision to tax employers 8% of payroll IF the employer does not provide health insurance.
So I don't think the Obamacare bill says what you think it says. Before you respond, universal care in other countries is funded by an additional payroll tax.
Repeat after me "there is no free lunch". Heh.
wv = annize
wv = dictr
The cost of health care falls on the American consumer and worker no matter what system is in place private or public. All costs to business or taxpayers is passed on in the prices charged for goods. In that way, it's really quite regressive, but you can't avoid it no matter how you dress it up. It gets passed through anyway.
What matters is efficiency of the care provided and the pricing mechanism.
Government just sucks at both, because it kills incentive, which destroys work ethic, and risk taking which is what makes any human endeavor productive and contiuously improving. The loss of this is the real price to be paid.
This phenomenon is not new and has a long history of 100% correlation with centralized government control. It's just a fact.
I don't know if "Obamacare" will, but single payer insurance would. If a business is no longer providing insurance coverage to its employees, that expense is eliminated.
Yes and that expense is now picked up by the Federal government. Where does the Federal government get the money to pay for this new expense?
Seriously do you think now that business no longer have this expense that they won't be picking it back up in increased taxes? I mean seriously Cook do you live in some parallel universe where unicorns shit money for life's necessities?
Take a look at the French model that everyone gets an erection over. It's paid for with massive payrolll and business taxes which they freely admit chills hiring.
Original Mike said...
C-4 - I was speaking of devices (which is what I do for a living) not drugs. I am one of those scientist you speak so "knowledgeably" about.
Riddle me this. Those university scientist who spin off their work to a company.What motivation will they have to do that when you've taken the profit motive away?
I think your core mistake is equating universal health care to SOCIALISM! and the end of all private sector medical vendors. If you look at top tech nations with universal healthcare, you see they have a robust private sector and plenty of medical device, med support systems innovation. The profit motive is intact in Japan, Israel, France, Taiwan, Singapore, Sweden, Germany. etc..
And a hospital tour of a new ER wing, trauma care facility that a group I am associated with was one of several dozen donors (inc. State Gov't and Fed Gov't grants) showed off many foreign medical devices in addition to domestic ones. The Swiss, Israelis, and Japanese firms like Hitachi were prominent in monitoring, diagnostic equipment.
A nurse we know there in cardiac said that the last 15 years has gotten better and better computerized stuff in her speciality....while nurses and office techs spend considerable time transcribing stuff off computer screens and printouts for patient paper records and for Billing.
Alex-
So I followed your link to Crook and Liars-aka Liberalnation and even though I'm not too great at the grammars-
This comment well-
trying to conserve? Their fortunes (I've got mine, now you get yours, and I won't help you), their perks, their cushy jobs, their comfort? If it were up to the conservatives, there wouldn't be women or minorities voting, or civil rights laws, or anyone other than white mails running the country (into the ground)
Yes! It's all that "white mail" running us into the ground...
Oh, you took a tour. My bad.
I'm not talking about additional bells and whistles to the machine that sits in the corner and goes ping!. I'm talking about revolutionary stuff that takes lots of capital to develop, get approval for, and get into the field.
inc. State Gov't and Fed Gov't grants)
I'm not denying that gov. grants aren't important. I've got two of them. But to get a device in the field takes a LOT more capital than that. And it won't be forthcoming if the owner of that capital doesn't see a potential reward. A big potential reward, because most of these kind of investments turn out to be a dry hole.
Paglia did "label" herself as a libertarian. Of course you had to read all the way to page two to find it. Tough going for an ADHD left-winger.
Interesting that someone who accuses others of difficulties in reading could not even get through the full paragraph that he is citing. In case you didn't notice--and apparently you didn't--the words "classic liberals" came from someone else. And, as a rule, only libertarians self-identify as "classic liberals" in an effort to distinguish themselves from just "liberals".
Alimony due already?
wv = payex
when in the course of a human's life does that right start?
Sorry. I've been on Teh Interwebs too long and have use up my online abortion debate quota.
"Now get out before we do something else 100 years ago that will piss you off.'
LOL!
wv: nosyn
eek!
@Triangle Man
"Sorry. I've been on Teh Interwebs too long and have use up my online abortion debate quota."
That's very obtuse of you. Much lamer, in fact, than "it's above my pay grade". Do I assume, then, that you think "basic human rights" don't extend to all humans?
Alex said...
most of the American people when polled say that health care is a human right.
Of course healthcare is a human right. So is the right to bear arms.
So when is the government going to provide me with a rifle? I want one of the fancy sniper rifles; don't tell me those are going to be rationed, I have my rights!
What? You mean rights don't work that way? Oh.
So when is the government going to provide me with a rifle?
Most Americans do not believe that you have a right to free guns. Let's not get all snarky now. I mean how many people would be for undoing the law that requires emergency rooms to treat anyone? Even I as a libertarian have a hard time with that one.
obtuse...lame...Do I assume, then, that you think "basic human rights" don't extend to all humans?
Lame perhaps, but obtuse? I explained that I have a policy against discussing abortion online. They are exercises in futility that always boil down to beliefs about when a fertilized egg achieves person-hood.
VW: Mating - no, really.
"Anyone who claims to be a "classical liberal" is not liberal. It's really quite simple. Some libertarians are apparently so ashamed of their own self-identification that they want to liberate themselves of the "libertarian" label. Are they jealous of liberals? It makes no sense."
Everything shift over time and the usage of words changes.
("Liberal" does not mean the same thing in Europe as it does here, either.)
Liberals do not tend to be liberal... they are usually progressives, or these days, maybe socialists.
People who identify themselves as "classical liberal" are actually liberals as it was originally meant. They believe that all humans are essentially the same and want and deserve individual freedom and expression no matter what color they are or what culture they live in. This is why progressives are not liberal... modern liberals have embraced multiculturalism instead of a sort of human universality. Classical liberals are also more or less "humanists." They want the government out of our bedrooms *and* out of our heads... modern liberals are still concerned about the bedroom part but don't seem to even have the concept of freedom in areas more abstract.
A classical liberal will agree that... "I may hate what you have to say but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
A modern liberal or progressive will insist that freedom of speech doesn't extend to things they hate.
Classical liberalism is not the same thing as libertarianism but may often look like it because of the emphasis on liberty and personal freedom and freedom of expression.
A person identifying as a liberal might be a classical liberal if he or she is looking back toward that original ideal.
A person identifying as a conservative might also be a classical liberal as they strive to conserve what was the best of that earlier philosophy of freedom and individuality... not having "progressed" or "moved on" to the next shiny and distracting thing.
Objectivism and her libertarian step child often looks like classical liberalism in the personal freedom areas but the philosophical reasoning behind *why* of it is substantially different. Objectivism *is* based on the cold rationality of self interest... classical liberalism is based on the necessary conditions to nurture the human spirit.
*Sigh* And now I've just freaked myself out with a mind picture of Kirk and Spock arguing from different perspectives for the same goal.
Sort of broke my train of thought completely. ;-/
wv: layer
The term "Neo-liberal", as far as I can tell, seems to be a term referring to hard core Capitalists in South America...
... for example.
I'm not suggesting that we repeal the law on emergency rooms providing care for people even if they can't pay. But I do think it's vitally important that we stamp out this idea that one person can have a 'right' to something and therefore someone else must provide it for them.
That seems to contradict my acceptance of the law. I acknowledge that, and admit that I haven't worked out how to resolve that conflict.
I'm not suggesting that we repeal the law on emergency rooms providing care for people even if they can't pay. But I do think it's vitally important that we stamp out this idea that one person can have a 'right' to something and therefore someone else must provide it for them.
But that law means that as a society we have already let the camel into the tent. You can't say one thing is a right and another isn't anymore. Now everything can be a right if gets 51% support.
@Triangle Man
I agree with that, but, in this particular case, there's a bit more to it than the standard arguments.
In the health care debate, regardless of when you (or anyone) thinks a fetus achieves personhood, health care is required during the pregnancy. In this context, one cannot simply dismiss the unborn as unborn. They are recipients of the same health care system we're all arguing about.
That's why I think this is possibly an area of the argument liberals would rue going down or having brought to light.
Alex-
I agree that the camel's nose is already in the tent. I'm trying very hard to push it back out.
I think it's important to distinguish between those things that society chooses to provide to it's people, and those things that people have a right to demand from their society.
Maybe that's a distinction without a difference, but the words we use affect the way we think about things. And the thinking has been headed in the wrong direction for quite some time.
Ignorance - start with your neighbors. Ask them what they think about health care as a right.
'There is no "special American human being" that would be utterly ill-served by 99.9% of French or Japanese medical practices. "
Funny, C4, ISTR around the time of the Osaka earthquake, the Japanese wouldn't let the US send relief supplies of Tylenol because it wasn't approved for Japanese bodies - in other words, protectionism for the Japanese makers of acetaminophen. Not selling - giving the stuff was kinjiru.
So, the people you want to emulate don't seem to agree with you.
"I think it's important to distinguish between those things that society chooses to provide to it's people, and those things that people have a right to demand from their society.
Maybe that's a distinction without a difference,..."
Actually, it's an essential difference.
There are "rights". We recognize them as existing apart from and previous to any law. Our constitution attempts to describe those rights, not create or grant them. They are the things that a moral person will or must exercise even if a government or anyone else attempts to take them away and call it "law." (ie. self-defense, freedom of religion, personal sovereignty)
What happens when we start calling anything we like the sound of or consider a good idea a "right" is that it's very easy to start to think that those other "endowed by our Creator with inalienable rights" sorts of rights are really no different and we can start to decide if people deserve them or not.
What happens when we start calling anything we like the sound of or consider a good idea a "right" is that it's very easy to start to think that those other "endowed by our Creator with inalienable rights" sorts of rights are really no different and we can start to decide if people deserve them or not.
The average person I know believes health care is a human right and that's that. If you oppose that you are a "cruel person". It's interesting how health care is a right, but food is not? I don't see any "universal food coverage", but we have food stamp program as a voucher-program for the poor. Why not adopt the same for health care? I suspect people have been brainwashed to thin that health care is a some super-special right that we mustn't even perform any cost-benefit analysis on.
Yes. I mean, Alex, exactly.
But as annoying as it is what concerns me is that the proliferation of these "rights" is accompanied by a drastic weakening of foundational concepts such as Freedom of Speech.
Every one must realize, at some level, that we do not have a "right" to health care no matter how much we don't want to see people not receive care (or go hungry, etc.) If that is what we call a "right" then how profound and how far do we have to go to support Freedom of Speech if it becomes annoying or seems that people are saying things that are not helpful?
start with your neighbors. Ask them what they think about health care as a right
The average person I know believes health care is a human right and that's that. If you oppose that you are a "cruel person".
You live in the wrong neighborhood, Alex. In places where people who work for a living live they don't think health care is a right and they don't think they are cruel.
It's true I live in a neighborhood of lefties.
Alex wrote:
I mean how many people would be for undoing the law that requires emergency rooms to treat anyone?
It cost 3 to 4 times as much to treat anybody in an emergency room setting at a doctor's office. I heard this number from a healthcare professional and went and found a link here.
When can we have the discussion about the morality of anyone (including the poor)expecting someone else, i.e., doctors and nurses, to work for them for free?
My lower middle class neighborhood is filled with people who would take advantage of "free" healthcare if they had a chance.
When will we have a frank discussion of human nature and people's tendencies to want to get something for nothing?
@Alex, I'm not particularly amazed.
Alex says we have food stamp program as a voucher-program for the poor. Why not adopt the same for health care?
We do.
And you say you are a libertarian?
The "health care is a right" schtick is interesting because in the eyes of Obama & Co. it is not really a "right." It's one of those shell games. Now you see it ...
If it were a "right" he wouldn't be musing about his grandmother's hip replacement, (it was her "right," right?) or taking a pain pill instead of having heart surgery (or whatever the heck that was about).
It is a "right" right now to push the emotional buttons of people who don't want to feel like they are mean people to expect people to take care of themselves. But once it is codified into law there will be hell to pay. It will be just a matter of years before the "right" has to be sacrificed for the "common good."
Watch out for the "common good." It isn't common, and it isn't good.
And we DO have health care for the poor. Its called medicaid.
In general people who qualify for food stamps can access medicaid type programs and the local health department. In Nc we have health departments which provide basic stuff (pap smears, BP checks, physicals etc.) Of course you wait, and it isn't like a private provider. But get used to it. We'll all be pulling numbers under the new plan.
Shoot, one of our local non-profits has benn providing acute and "episodic" health care for indigents, uninsured and the underinsured for probably 20 years now. Including meds. They make referrals to the larger medical community when needed.
When a "right" depends on someone else doing it for you, is it a right?
wv = splogi Soggy gelato
Will we make this 400 without Sarah Palin?
President Obama's Lefty Health Club Band
Actually quite good when you get to the end.
Of course healthcare is a human right. So is the right to bear arms.
So when is the government going to provide me with a rifle?
Why am I not surprised that one nimrod wants to bring abortion into this--and not access to abortion, but the actual definition of life--and another wants a free gun. Given the vacuous nature of the rest of this discussion (e.g., it's "socialized medicine", not "socialist medicine"), empty unrelated rhetoric should be par for the course.
But it might help if you at least frame the question correctly. It's the right to bear arms--you can possess them if you choose, but you'll only receive one if you join the military (or civilian police force, which is, in some sense, a civil militia).
But when it comes to healthcare, healthcare itself cannot be that civil right--that does not make sense. The right is in the access to affordable healthcare. That is, you cannot be denied healthcare if you need it and cannot pay for it.
What's always bothered me about the second amendment arguments is that nowhere does it say that "arms" is "firearms". Why not a dagger, a mace, a spear, a halberd, a crossbow or a billy club? In fact, I have never heard a 2nd Amd. nut ever foam at the mouth about the right to possess an piece of assault cutlery the way they want their assault rifles. Yet, there are more regulations banning specific kinds of cutting and mechanical shooting weapons than there are outright bans on firearms. Even billy clubs and nunchuks are banned in many jurisdictions.
Damn it, people--I want my billy club!! Won't any defenders of second amendment freedoms stand up for my right?!
Freedom of Speach
Freedom of the Press
Freedom of Religion
The Right to Bear Arms
Protection from Unreasonable Searches and Seizures
Prohibition on Cruel and Unusual Punishment
Access to Affordable Healthcare
One of these things is not like the others,
One of these things just doesn't belong,
Can you tell which thing is not like the others
By the time I finish my song?
Oh, and of course a nimrod wants a gun.
"The right is in the access to affordable healthcare. That is, you cannot be denied healthcare if you need it and cannot pay for it."
Why?
What you've described is the right to own the labor of other people without their consent.
Any time you've got a right TO something like that you take the rights of other people to their own selves and freedom away.
The libertarian idea is that your rights end where they intersect another person. I have a right to "pursue happiness" to make my way in the world, to worship my own God, to feed myself, to supply my physical and other needs, rights to my own body and self-determination, rights to my own property, rights to employ violence to defend my rights (which is pretty much a good way to define what is a right or *not*)... just up *until* I intersect another human being. I may not take someone else's food nor compel their labor nor sacrifice them to my God nor otherwise violate *their* rights in the pursuit of my own.
We could argue til judgment day over the extent to which this may be followed in the "real world" but it does illustrate the points I was making about the use of the word "rights." We call things "rights" that are in no way rights at all and don't understand anymore that a separate thing called "rights" even exist.
The "right" to access to medical care without having to pay for it doesn't exist. A law is in place that allows it, but it is not a right.
The right to self-defense and to arm one's self to the effective level of technology and to commit violence on other people (or your government, something our founding fathers saw as a moral imperative) to secure the RIGHT to life, liberty and the freedom to pursue happiness... that is not malleable. It's not *limitable*. It exists no matter what the laws are in place in any culture in the world.
We may CHOOSE to provide a level of health care and medical attention to those who can not pay. It *ought* to be entirely voluntary, but we do have a representative process and collectively we have decided that hospitals should not knowingly turn away anyone who is ill.
This is a choice of those paying, NOT a right that those who seek care are entitled to compel.
And for goodness sake... the crack about when is the government going to give me a free rifle was obviously an *illustration* to show how silly it is to say that a right means you have a right to be *given* something instead of a right to *pursue* it.
And arming one's self IS an actual, real, right of any human being.
Actually, I just thought of a medical related right of human beings... reproduction. Forced sterilizations (which have happened in the US to people who are NOT convicted psychopathic sex offenders) or government enforced limits on reproduction violate inalienable rights.
But even this right is not a... is the term "positive" right? It's wrong to prevent someone but no one has to *provide* you a child.
I just came over from reading at Volokh and the temperate tone 'How can you oppose something that is vague in 5 different bills?' seemed pretty big in the comments on the 'health care slippery slope argument.' Paglia makes the excellent contrary point about why do we have to buy Obama's quantum mechanical 'the electron could be anywhere except where you worry it could be plan?' otherwise we are opposed to loving 'progress and humanity.' As to her assertion about Obama restoring our place in the world as reflected in his Mexico trip, what a mismash that was. The Dallas Morning News editorial today, and they are usually as critical as courtesans, bashed it. To me these trips seem like nothing so much as races for high school student body president; this was certainly no better.
@Shadowfox
As one of the aforementioned nimrods, I'll ask you to back up that pejorative with an answer to my question.
Before we get rolling, let me say that my stance against abortion has zero to do with religion. Now that my potential zealotry is out of the way, let's get on to yours (potentially).
If health care is a human right, when does that right start? As I mentioned prior, health care is a completely different ball game than the standard pro-choice/pro-life dichotomy. Babies in the womb require health care as well as the woman carrying said baby.
When does the "human right" to health care start?
Having a "right" means that the government can not prevent you from it. It does not mean it must be provided for you.
"Right" to free speech does not mean you get a free megaphone or soap box from the government.
What's so hard to understand here people?
One of these things is not like the others,
One of these things just doesn't belong,
Can you tell which thing is not like the others
By the time I finish my song?
Is there a right to education, oh mighty hunter? Or are we limited to the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights? If you believe the latter, you clearly did not read the Bill of Rights.
As one of the aforementioned nimrods,
Earlier ScottM wrote:
I still want the question answered by these nimrods on when that human right kicks in.
I'd like to correct the misconception here--you're not "one of", you're "the". In case it wasn't obvious to the rest of the echo chamber, I used the word because you did. Just making a point.
As for your question, it's a category mistake. You're just trying to bait a debate on the beginning of life, which is not an issue in this case. When does the right to bear arms begin? Are you for ante-natal gun rights? What about 8 year old's rights? Or do they begin at majority?
What if rights conflict?
One reason I am no longer conservative is because conservatives tend to ask only simple questions and provide even simpler answers. It has nothing to do with religion--it's the kind of reductionism that is natural to conservative philosophy. Liberals, on the other hand, tend to get bogged down in minutiae and libertarians don't want to ask questions at all.
The Nordics don't have to deal with illegals. ... They don't have unpatriotic people in Finland.
Of course, reductionism is so much simpler when you're ignorant.
Why do you think that the so called organized mobs (what a joke from the propagana media) consists of current and soon to be Medicare recipients? They can PLAINLY see the handwriting on the wall.
Hmm... Perhaps that also explains their signs that say, "Keep government out of my Medicare!" And, I am sure, it has nothing to do with them being organized by FreedomWatch which is operating under a lobbying contract with insurance companies. No, sir, it could not be... It must be the "handwriting on the wall"... Or on Fox News... or whatever...
@Shadowfox
"One reason I am no longer conservative is because conservatives tend to ask only simple questions and provide even simpler answers. It has nothing to do with religion--it's the kind of reductionism that is natural to conservative philosophy. Liberals, on the other hand, tend to get bogged down in minutiae and libertarians don't want to ask questions at all."
It almost sounds like you're so much smarter than the rest of us that you're completely screwed.
In case you didn't get the original point, I don't think health care is a "basic human right" at all. I said that if someone wants to contend that it is, they have to answer to the prenatal question. Is the OBGYN only there for the mother? Or does that doctor have a responsibility to both the mother and the health of the baby? What you don't seem to want to allow is that, in the context of health care, the abortion debate changes because the unborn DO require health care that's targeted right at them.
@Shadowfox
Oh, and I almost forgot to mention. I'm a card-carrying Libertarian. It's plain to see that I'm not one to not ask questions. That also applies to all of the Libertarian I know personally here in MO.
Got any other broad brush strokes you'd like to paint incorrectly?
ShadowFox said...
Is there a right to education, oh mighty hunter? Or are we limited to the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights? If you believe the latter, you clearly did not read the Bill of Rights.
Certainly there is a right to education. The government should not prevent people from being educated. Just as it should not prevent people from obtaining healthcare.
My point, that you clearly missed, was not the difference between enumerated and unenumerated rights. It was the difference between what the government may not do to you, and what the government must do for you.
And yes, I'm well aware of the ninth amendment. Did you know that there is another amendment right after that one?
Honey, Pelosi started the whole thing. People are responding to THAT. Plus, I saw one guy had an obama hitler mustache poster was id'd as a plant.
Honey, get a clue!
Pelosi was responding to photos and videos of protesters with signs that either displayed swastikas or equated Democrats (and Obama, in particular) with Nazis--and I am not saying it because I heard or read about it somewhere, but because I saw the actual images reported more than 20 hours before Pelosi made her remarks.
But, if you listen to FoxNews, Pelosi said it first (which is, incidentally, where one might hear about the alleged "plant" with Hitler mustache--now, is there a difference between a "plant" and someone mocking the other side?). And, if you believe WorldNetDaily, Rep. Scott had a swastika painted on his own office to drum up support. Of course, the evidence for this claim is even more scant than for the "death panels" in the bill.
People who identify themselves as "classical liberal" are actually liberals as it was originally meant.
This is complete horseshit, just like the nice straw man you have set up for "modern liberal". Neither self-identified "liberals" nor "classic liberals" are a homogeneous enough group to be swept all together under one rug. In fact, there is sufficient disagreement between "classical liberals" to make any sense of "original meaning" worthless. Nor are they all "humanists" as you claim--for many, it's quite the opposite (consider, for example, that corporate personhood is NOT a humanist ideal).
There are quite a few self-identified "liberals" that I would be ashamed of if I were liberal in some narrow sense (short of Trotskyites or Maoists--neither group being recognized as "liberal" by anyone with a brain outside of the two groups themselves). But, it seems, someone who self-identifies as a "classical liberal" is just trying to get into a pissing contest with the liberals that he despises. It seems that "classical liberals" are largely market-based anarchists and would make more sense to call them "classical anarchists" than "classical liberals". The problem is that, historically, "liberal" has been a positive descriptor (e.g., liberal professions, liberal education) and "anarchist" has always had a negative connotation. In fact, the word "liberal" has acquired a negative tinge solely to hysterical propaganda by the John-Birchers and the rest of the nutballs that have taken control of the Republican propaganda machine.
@Shadowfox
Taken on a negative tinge due to the Republicans?
Come on, my man. Even for you, that's a pretty lame broad brush stroke.
Tax and spend, taking from producers to prop up those that don't, etc etc. My parents were not Republicans (in point of fact they were apolitical if anything), but I had some relatives that were ardent liberals (modern sense) and I had a pretty good idea of what was negative about their beliefs at an early age. It didn't take anything more than exposure to liberals as a teenager to convince me that there's a screw or two loose there.
I said it before and I'll state it yet again. If we lived in a world in which I could bring chocolate pudding packs to work and leave them in the fridge over the weekend without fear of them disappearing, the "progressive" agenda might work. As that is not the case, nor has it ever been the case in any place I've worked or any place anyone I've mentioned this to has worked, we have to deal with the world-as-it-is, not the world as liberal/progressives would-have-it.
Not all policies espoused by one side or the other are all kosher. There's a lot to gripe about all around and where liberals overestimate human nature's ability to be decent to one-another, conservatives tend to underestimate it (at least socially). However, I'll go for the side that wants less control over me, thank you.
As I see it, the political playing field runs from tyranny on one side and anarchy on the other. from the middle, the further you slide left, the more control the government has. The further you slide right, the less.
Which side do you want to be on in general?
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