Healthcare in the US

[Marcus]

How many of the public do disagree with the reforms? Are there stats available? And I'm talking nationwide, not just a certain state.

[comrade_general]

Nationwide I have not seen a poll where the opposition has dropped below 50% and I've seen as high as 75%. The support is usually around 30%.

[Jubal]

As I say though, you may find that that changes in a few months as this becomes the norm.

[comrade_general]

I don't see anything that its going to do for me other than an eventual raise of my taxes. My insurance is already only $9 a paycheck. Aflaaaaack!

[Jubal]

But you're young and presumably without any pre-existing conditions, so you're bound to get a good deal. You're a pretty low risk from the insurer's POV.

[comrade_general]

So then why would I want to change healthcare? I wouldn't thats why. I'll admit insurance companies can be a little stingy, but I would never be ok with the government dictating my medical needs. A person needs to worry about their own hide before anyone else's. I am not here to live for the good of the state. This is America; land of the free, home of the brave. Don't judge a book by its cover, and the cover on this place does make us look atrocious its true, but we are not all like the "America" you see on TV: 99.9% not I would say. Thank you.

 :rant:

I was bored, big whoop wanna fight about it?

[Jubal]

A person needs to worry about their own hide before anyone else's.

But under the new law, while you're paying more in tax it doesn't actually decrease the amount of care you're getting. So in that sense your own hide is covered, so what's wrong with a small extra to help those around you?

[comrade_general]

My taxes are already being squandered to 'help' the unfortunates, its called welfare, and I've seen firsthand its ridiculousness.

The best way to put more money in people's wallets is to leave it there in the first place.
-Edwin Feulner

We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes nonwork.
-Milton Friedman

We have rights, as individuals, to give as much of our own money as we please to charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of public money.
-Davy Crockett

The greatest danger to liberty today comes from the men who are most needed and most powerful in modern government, namely, the efficient expert administrators exclusively concerned with what they regard as the public good.
-Fredrich August von Hayek

[Jubal]

Welfare is what gives us better statistics on social deprivation, crime, health, and quite a few other things to the US despite you guys being the richer nation...

It's not a perfect system, but I prefer it to not having it. Friedman, Crockett, et al are all people who basically were comfortably off; people who do well in the US are of course happy with things. For people who do less well-paid jobs, have difficulties of once sort or another, suffer from discrimination, and so on... it's pretty clearly a worse system than the European ones. In the end it comes down to a value judgement of whether you'd rather share and avoid anyone being in a really bad state or whether you're happy to leave some people in a armadilloty state so some people can live lives of luxury. I don't think that the latter is morally defensible myself, so I have to go with the former. Besides, having a class of permanently unhappy/poor people in any society is a dangerous thing.

"If our economy of freedom fails to distribute wealth as ably as it has created it, the road to dictatorship will be open to any man who can persuasively promise security to all" - Will Durant

"All the property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire and live among Savages. He can have no right to the benefits of Society, who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it." - Ben Franklin

"If you who own the things people must have could understand this, you might preserve yourself. If you could separate causes from results, if you could know that Marx, Paine, Lenin, Jefferson were causes not results, you might survive. But that you cannot know. For the quality of owning freezes you foreve ito "I" and cuts you off forever from the "We"..." - John Steinbeck

[comrade_general]

You should see what these people do with the money once they have it. Don't think for a second that it is being used responsibly or efficiently; lottery tickets, cigarettes, alcohol, bingo (I'm not even kidding), cable, mountain dew, etc. and then when they need medication they whine to the government that they can't afford it. Food stamps are sold for half their worth so the selling individual can get the items formerly listed.

Ben Franklin was talking about taxes for public works, not giving away free money.

[Jubal]

Which simply means that the government should increase the range of items that can be bought with stamps to include all basic necessities and no luxury items, and then outlaw their sale for money, which is the system I myself favour. There's no question that benefits should only be being spent on necessities rather than cigarettes and alcohol, I totally agree, but the problem in my opinion is the way the system is implemented (which I totally agree needs improvement, along the lines I just mentioned) and not the fundamental idea that welfare should exist to give necessary support to those who need it.

O/T, have you ever done the political compass test? I'd like to see where you come out on it.

[comrade_general]

It is illegal to sell the food stamps.

Sure, I'd be happy to take it. Where can I find it?

[Jubal]

First post of the Religious/Political profile thread in this forum.  

Nevertheless, I guarantee that if you made it significantly harder for people to sell the stamps (issue every long-term benefit holder a card without which they cannot use the stamps, for example) and expanded the uses of the stamps into areas such as basic clothing to avoid giving them so much actual money one could greatly improve the system. And systems do need to be imporved, but the very effective argument you have given for them needing to be improved doesn't to me show in any real way that their existence is unjustified.

[comrade_general]

I completely agree; I've come up with some of those ideas myself. And if we could be absolutely sure that it was being used for necessities then it would be justified. Even with those restrictions it is very hard to control, for example: welfare recipients have been known to use food stamps to buy stuff like raw hamburger to feed their pets (which they always seem to accumulate) because dog food isn't covered by the stamps.

Your left/right score; 1.38
Your lib/authoritarian score; -1.59
Your religion; atheist

 What does it mean? fiik But I can see on the little graphic that no one else is represented in that lower right quadrant, and I am close to the middle. Hey, I just want my guns and low taxes.  B)

I like this question from the test:
Those who are able to work, and refuse the opportunity, should not expect society's support.

[Jubal]

I'm not a great fan of the test because it incorrectly tells me I'm a commie, but it's pretty good really.  

Left/Right is taxation based; the further right, the less taxes and less government spending, the further left the more socialist. 1.38 is pretty centrist really, just a bit to the right (in short, you aren't into big government in any way but see the need for some taxing & spending for the benefit of society in general). Lib/Auth is basically the lower the more individual freedom, the higher the more state control over the individual, so -1.59 is accepting some state restriction on some things but generally being opposed to it. As for me, I'm VERY liberal and VERY leftwing on the test.

Back on topic;
It is hard to control, but tbh if people are feeding their pets rather than themselves it's more or less their own stupid lookout I guess. Of course one could even amend animal welfare laws to state that people had to have sufficient income to feed a pet to be allowed to own one and so on... but nevertheless I think that more or less concludes my argument on welfare. Currently I perfer our doing it badly to your not doing it, but doing it well is clearly the best long-term option in either situation.

Guns is another fun debate, but I suspect we should leave that for another thread.