Democratic Health Care Diagram
Ignorance. Stupidity. The kind of emotionally driven flatulence that comes from people who feed California condors fast food until they forget how to hunt and need a bailout — who would pine with moist eyes over school children’s crayon drawings of soldiers knitting peace sweaters — who would have out entire society revert to pre-industrialized agrarianism before converting to plentiful clean nuclear energy (or before admitting that their man-made global warming hysteria is, itself, man-made).
This cluster-screwed plan will NOT improve health care, and over the longer term will HURT the poor, defenseless, widows, and orphans more than help them. BAD. As a Christ-follower I am called to fight this.
Forced nationalization is the worst possible answer. To get elected, many politicians promise “free” medical care for everyone. But health care nationalization in European countries resulted in longer waiting periods, severe lack of choice, deterioration of health care quality, prohibition of alternative health treatments, higher taxes, and sadly (for some) permanent illness or death because they could not get the care they needed.
Also, a nationalized system is not “free” at all because someone has to pay for it. And why should anyone be forced to pay for someone else’s medical care? Very few decent people would personally assault their neighbors at gunpoint and steal thousands of dollars to pay for their own medical needs. How could any freedom loving person agree to delegate such criminal acts to the government by supporting a nationalized health care system?
I'm a Christ-follower, compelled by my faith toward reason, which points directly toward conservatism. This world's daily onslaught of lunacy offends my intellect and senses, so this is my venue to blow off steam.
I like it! thanks…..:))
When I saw this diagram, I made one for the current system for contrast.
I prefer the current system!
“As a Christ-follower I am called to fight this.”
Christ also men and women who were strangers to him—a principle similar to giving accessible health care for more people.
@Jim James (? yeah right)
I never said that Christ-followers should abdicate the command to help the needy. Accessible health care in the form of a universal socialized (single-payer… whatever) system is a complete myth that will decay far below what the uninsured get today.
“How could any freedom loving person agree to delegate such criminal acts to the government by supporting a nationalized health care system?”
It’s the government’s duty to uplift the poor and nationalized health care gives them the support to lead better lives. One cannot live if he/she is not surviving.
It is not the governments duty to uplift the poor. Only to provide a safe generally safe environment in which they can work to uplift themselves.
Even if the governments job were to “uplift” the poor a nationalized health care system would not do it.
Did you watch the second video before you posted?
What is funny and sad at the same time is that the opponents to this initiative have all the facts and are the only ones saying anything specific. We hear nothing specific from those who are the loudest supporters of nationalized medicine. That is because this is a very very bad idea – and all the facts point that way. This will do more harm to our economy and way of life then most of the other idiotic economic changes that Obama is hoping for. And it will be extremely difficult to repeal once it gets rolling.
“Blah Blah Blah, I’m religious and don’t know [feces] about politics, health care, or anything reasonable.”
This blog is such a joke. You rant about everything as if you understand anything (you don’t).
You must be pretty smart though, if you can post videos of Ron Paul. C’mon guys, you should have voted for him! Internet Conservatives for Ron Paul ‘12!! Let’s organize christ-followers to change policies we know nothing about!
@James
You are great representative of the “other side” of this or any debate. You are exactly what I picture (and indeed the intellectual equivalent of who I encounter in the real world). Articulate logic… well-crafted points… enchanting use of language. Ha!
this is the part of the discussion where i would slap the person and walk away……
I’m sorry but Ron Paul is not a person I’m going to listen on this. Also in most european countries you can get “premium paid medical help” if you want. You can pay for insurance or for every treatment you need in better equiped private health centers. But you don’t need to – if you can’t afford it you’ll still get some health care (even if it’s not as good) as opposed to just being left sick and alone.
“and sadly (for some) permanent illness or death because they could not get the care they needed”
And now tell me, ron paul, how many people died because they could not afford insurance in USA? I’d say a lot more.
James is case in point – that is exactly what I meant about all the facts being on the economically and socially conservative side of things. The liberal side has nothing with which to argue, so they say, “Ha, you’re arguments are a joke…” and meanwhile offer nothing substantive.
This is almost proof enough that they are wrong.
@gryfino
do you actually have any proof or data whatsoever to back up that last comment?
sure you can pay for your own insurance….if you are super rich.
and why not listen to ron paul? because he is a conservative? because he is a physician?
did you watch the video? or did you see ron paul’s name and automatically disagree with the the page?
i can’t help myself from commenting here. Mike, you wanted some numbers. how about this – the US spends more on health care than any other nation in the world, by a large margin – 16% of our GDP or $7000 per person. this is rising fast. right now, in our current system, the total government expenditure is approaching 50% of the total. the US government is already the single largest provider with Medicare, Medicaid, TRICARE, and the VA. if NOTHING else if the system does not change, the government will not be able to keep paying.
what do we get all this money we spend? we get some good things. we are the most aggressive at treating cancer and have some longer 5 yr survival times. there is an immediacy to health care in the US, at times good, at other times unnecessary. we subsidize the costs of medications and medication and device research by paying more for them than other countries. we have infant mortality rate last amongst developed nations (i am not saying that is all due to the health system, but it pays a part).
why else to change health care? well, American business and jobs. one of the (many) reasons GM went bankrupt was health care. plus, if i can build a car in Canada and not have to pay any health benefits to my autoworkers, my cars are going to be a lot cheaper.
and i would agree with you. health care for all is not a constitutional right (but the Union was created to promot the general Welfare). i do think, however, that health coverage for all is a laudable goal. AND it is a cost saving measure, as care delayed due to inability to pay is more costly once the people are so sick they can’t go without any more. an ounce of prevention and all that.
there are any number of ways to try to fix the health care system, and as Churchill observed “The United States invariably does the right thing, after having exhausted every other alternative.” I would favor a universal single payer system for basic coverage, with optional insurance above and beyond that for expedited services, expanded coverage (maybe fancier medicines, procedures, specialists, etc) with safeguards in place to ensure that the universal coverage does not become trivial. will it cost? yes. some of the money comes from the government is already paying for a big chunk, another that there is decreased cost by people having access to preventative care, decreased costs from less administrative cost from single payer, and more savings from how a single payer system could more easily push improvements like electronic medical records which would, in the long run, also save money. plus at least shifted insurance company profits. will all that cover the entire price tag? i can’t honesty say i know for sure, too complicated. but, as way back in the first paragraph that the plan of keeping the current plan will in the near foreseeable future cause the unsustainable budget deficits that various conservatives are squealing about now.
some more numbers
Taken from the National Coalition on Health Care Web Site
http://www.nchc.org/
Studies estimate that the number of excess deaths among uninsured adults age 25-64 is in the range of 18,000 a year. This mortality figure is more than the number of deaths from diabetes (17,500) within the same age group.
Institute of Medicine. Insuring America’s Health – Principles and Recommendations. The National Academies Press, 2004.
there are a ton of statistics on this site. i liked this one. it supports the administrative savings of a single payer system.
The United States spends six times more per capita on the administration of the health care system than its peer Western European nations.
McKinsey Global Institute. Accounting for the Cost in the United States. January 2007
@Montane
I don’t think Mike would disagree about some of the proposed problems or solutions you mention… but the underlying premise of the government offering a taxpayer subsidized option for the taxpayer and their non-producing peers is terrible, and leads eventually to lower quality of care compare to insured folks’ current care.
You are right in that our admin costs are high… but some of the numbers you see thrown around by folks in favor of the gov’t system are deceptive. They use numbers that represent the admin costs for ALL healthcare, not just the gov’t… and would thus not represent cost-savings to the taxpayer.
You are right that our system draws disproportional funds from the productive members of society to pay for the unproductive and equipment and R&D, etc. Indeed, a more tiered approach that allows people to make more choices based on what they can afford with the life choices and income choices they’ve made would be better… and they call this concept — wait for it — the free market.
If you want “fancier” medicine and you are a big producer (big income) you can pay the big price for fancier medicine. If you can only afford cheapo medicine then you’ll have to settle for paying a little with cheapo medicine. If you COULD afford the fancy, but want the cheap, then you should only have to pay for the cheap. If you WANT the fancy, but spent your last welfare check on $140 Nike sneakers and formula for your third illegitimate offspring… then you can kindly go pack sand. Freedom means not only making choice, but accepting the consequences.
Now there are exceptions, of course… but a government system treats everyone like they qualify as an exception, and it invites abuse. A private Catholic charity, perhaps, who have people with “eyes on” those they help are less likely to dole out money unwisely. I remember a bum asking my wife for money so he could “buy food” as she left her work (work… hmmm), and she said that she gives money to the city mission so that he could get a meal and a place to stay, to which he replied that he couldn’t go to the mission because they’d make him take a breathalyzer before admitting him.
With regard to numbers, I don’t consider the NCHC to be non-partisan, even though they try to portray themselves as such. Their agenda calls for mandatory healthcare coverage for all… and right there they die for me, because mandatory “equitable” coverage has an inevitable consequence. Heck, almost anything government controlled has a terrible end consequence… with all the politics and special-interests that will be driving where all that money would go to — not to mention that all that money would come FROM the nation’s producers, the one’s politicians seem to always want to suckle from.
“Excess” death studies are known to be widely speculative, often undertaken with dollars from the intended brandisher of said study who intends to use it to bolster their agenda. I saw a study that said doctors kill several times more people through “botched medicine” than all firearms deaths, intentional or accidental. I’m sure whatever site you go to there will be statistics on the surface that point one way or another.
I’ve talked to folks who have seen a socialized system at work. They say it’s not the panacea it’s made out to be by more liberal-leaning folks who seem to long for the government to take care of everyone. My worldview tell me that people are fairly clever and a little bit evil, so if that’s true a socialized system will never work. The present system could be FAR FAR improved with some small (but potent) fixes, not the least of which is tort reform, and medicare/medicaid overhaul.
If we actually only gave aid to those who REALLY needed it — for example people who can’t work because of physical disability and such, or have some other crazy life circumstance — then we’d have no money problems at all. Unfortunately, gov’t-based aid is not very discerning. That’s just one of many aspects that could be changed for a huge benefit… but gov’t has to take a step back, and people need to be allowed to self-regulate themselves and have the freedom to choose their own level of care based on their own life choices and income, not based on someone else’s.
@Waraxe
about subsiding r&d, what i was referring to is how America as a whole subsidizes the drug prices for other countries, for example, Europe. the pharma companies charge a lot more in the US because the governments of other countries don’t let them. so they charge even more in the US to make up the difference. this is one of many reasons why medical care costs more in the US. though i am not advocating price controls. i do like free markets (are would REALLY like them for corn, another topic).
one reason i am not in favor of free markets for health insurance is that given the stark economics, there will always be people without health care in such a system. whether it is their own stupidity or circumstances outside their control.
i agree, the NCHC is not nonparitsan, but i think the number are okay. i spot checked a few, and they look okay. i chose it specifically because the references their stats. for example the number about uninsured deaths comes from the national institutes of medicine, a division of the national academy of the sciences.
there are two main issues.:
there is the impending insolvency of the government side of health care. even if we do nothing, we are heading for intractable budget deficit. so major reform IS needed.
the second issue is coverage for everyone. i think the US can do it. look at it this way…even if the system in Canada is not perfect, it covers everyone for half the price. if they spent TWICE as much, in the same system, might they have much less waiting lists? and if we could hold health care spending flat, we would be doing well.
i think that universal coverage at a basic level, plus insurance which is purchased for premium care, is the solution which will work for America. providing basic care for all would be reasonable (compared to comprehensive coverage), then expanded care paid for insurance would be paid by insurance, if you had a good job. everyone would have primary and emergency care (and potentially with everyone having primary care, emergency care which we already all pay for for everyone would be less). things like tort reform would help, but that is going to take years to trickle down into the culture to significantly change the cost of health care.
and, to take a few peices and put them together from your comment – people are fairly clever and a little bit evil, and to be allowed to self-regulate themselves leaves gross inequities which give us our current system.
i will agree a lot of the statistic are difficult to get hard numbers. do medical ‘accidents’ cause increased health costs? yes. but when you dig down into what people are listing into “medical errors” they put, for example, hospital acquired infections. could they be decreased with good hand washing? yes. can they be eliminated? no. people who are sick to begin with are likely to get pneumonia and urinary tract infections while in the hospital.
look at it this way – what if we modeled health care on electricity. utilities are regulated, and perhaps a similar model would work for health insurance.
health care reform is needed. to be strictly political, some useful dialog from the right would actually be nice. not just gibbering about fears about ’socialized medicine’. maybe i just haven’t heard it, but where is a conservative idea for how to reform health care? with specifics rather than just “overhaul medicare”
http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=8227482
I’m going to wait to make a comment until I read all of the comments, but they’re pretty long and my brother needs the computer right now.
But I don’t need to read much to point out that AIC is a spammer.
@John3Sobieski
Maybe I need a little more hope and change in my life. Consider that comment gone.
I can’t believe that AIC comment got by me.
HEALTH CARE IS A RIGHT! As a canadian i find it appalling that you don’t find it inhumane to just let people die because they don’t have the money to pay for our (Monpoly) healthcare. Even worse my cousin died at age 21 because he never had healthcare due to a pre-existing condition. I am 16 years old and would gladly take any of you down in a debate.