board77

It's the coming after you later bit that keeps people from going in in the first place. Which is worse? A bill you can't pay that'll get handed off to a collections agency, or keeping your broken ankle wrapped and hoping for the best? One *will* cripple your credit rating. The other *might* cripple your leg. Faced with a guaranteed bad outcome and a potential bad outcome, most take the gamble. I saw someone make a similar choice over a broken hand when I was an EMT. She an adult and competent to refuse care so I had to let her sign off, but yeesh. True, if/when it healed wrong she could, in theory, get it fixed later when she had insurance, but that's a pretty hard-core round of surgery compared to having your bone set while still broken.

The Nameless Thing wrote:

My point of choice can be illustrated with this example:

I have an employee who drives a brand new Escalade (maybe $40,000). He does not elect to get the health care the company provides ($30/week would be his cost). That is BS, and I refuse to even consider paying 1-cent toward his care. People who choose a car or plasma TV over health care have chosen to be a burden on society. Why should we help them when they don’t help themselves?.

Why is that your "point of choice" instead of this:

Ara-anna wrote:

Why do you think so many people with insurance actually end up filing bankrupt after a health incident that is more than a broken arm. Yes, with insurance, not without. With. These are people who have full time jobs, work and are productive members of society who do pay for insurance.

This is an ugly turn in the debate:

Quote:

Randall Terry warns of ‘potential violence’ if health care reform passes
July 18, 10:55 AM


“Let all those in government be warned: They cannot order people to pay for murder and betray God Himself without horrific consequences” -Randall Terry
Randall Terry, Founder of Operation Rescue, and other local anti-abortion advocates will hold a press conference at the National Press Club on Tuesday, July 21 to discuss what they will and will not do if healthcare passes.

"Let all those in government be warned: They cannot order people to pay for the murder of babies, and betray God Himself, without horrific consequences."

The recent murder of Dr. George Tiller at his place of worship was trumpeted as God’s justice by Terry while other groups such as the American Center for Law and Justice fought to protect the “truth truck” displaying a picture of Tiller with the provocative message “Tiller the Killer Gets no Peace.”.

Terry says it is clear that many elements in the pro-choice congress and White House want to force Americans to pay for what he calls the murder of the unborn in their healthcare program.

“If that happens, it is tantamount to the government putting a gun to taxpayers' heads to pay for the brutal murder of an innocent child. This is tyranny and evil of the highest order.”

Terry ominously suggests that violence will result with or without his prodding:

"Please understand: neither I, nor any thinking person wants the convulsions that would inevitably come from such a government policy -- the decision to force Americans to pay for the murder of their neighbor.

"Nevertheless, the sheer horror and frustration of such an evil policy will lead some people to absolutely refuse to pay their taxes. And I believe -- if my reading of history from America and around the world is correct -- that there are others who will be tempted to acts of violence.

"If the government of this country tramples the faith and values of its citizens, history will hold those in power responsible for the violent convulsions that follow."
-Randall Terry

The full speech this week before the National Press Club should get lots of attention with these comments as something of a preview.

Choosing between getting treatment and filing for bankruptcy is in a effect a financial means of turning a person away. Thank God my sis was not born in the US. If the system currently as it is was working so many Americans would not be complaining. Every time I meet an American they comment to me on the healthcare. Something is really wrong.

I view health care as something basic like clean water which the city provides. Which an arm of the government pays for. (As in people part with their hard earned money to pay for clean water for everyone). Health care should not be a luxury item. Unless only those who have the right job deserve to have clean water.

Health care and God, only hardcore Republicans could come up with that. I am sure the government has paid for abortions on some cases. (I know some people may not watch the show, but one of the hosts was rushed/coerced into an abortion at 17 from a family planning clinic. You think she paid for it?) Do they ever stop to think that God or Jesus might have liked people getting the help they needed?

Do insurers actually pay for abortions that don't involve a health crisis (ie, an elective abortion)? I know they're quite squirrely about birth control pills - it would be beyond ironic if they covered abortions that didn't involve a health crisis of some kind. Especially since they're not too fond of just about any other elective procedure. I can't imagine that a government plan would have rules that are any more lenient.

The Far Left needs to show someone who died of cancer due to the fact they couldn't afford medical treatment. And then ask if that is really what Christ intended. That would shut the likes of the Far Right up. Make it a small child and Rush's head would explode.

TNT, it all comes down to "I don't want to pay for other people's healthcare," doesn't it? It's like my boss who makes over $500,000 a year, his wife just DID get a new Escalade giving away her 2007 Highlander to her daughter in law, who is a single issue voter. No taxes.

I know you don't want to pay for schools, or for roads, or libraries, or what-have-you. Wasted money. Better that you squirrel it away and build a fortress, and the lower classes can live in the slums. That's South America, a place I don't want to live. This is the U.S. Amazing things have come from free public education, parks, libraries, good roads, infrastructure, and the like. Let's keep it that way.

People aren't going to buying whatever it is you sell in your business, TNT, if they don't have basic security. China has a huge savings rate (30% or so) because the government provides zero social services to their people. No retirement. NO heathcare. But there is no domestic economy for them--their wealth is built on exporting. Their people don't buy stuff. Is that what you want?

In case you think I'm one of those mooching lower classes, I am a fairly highly paid attorney (patent attorney) and take complete responsibility for myself and my family. I'm 44 and have been working a long time. I've saved the max in my 401(k) for years. And I'm pleased to pay my taxes to keep the U.S. strong, the infrastructure strong, invest in the new energy economy. I'm not pleased to pay my taxes for a crazy war in Iraq.

ellienor wrote:

TNT, it all comes down to "I don't want to pay for other people's healthcare," doesn't it?

Right on the money. It's funny, too, because most people who have insurance are already paying for other people's health care. The majority of us do not have major health problems and pay more in insurance costs than we reap in benefits. So I have never understood why people who oppose universal health care think that it's such a big deal to pay for other people's healthcare costs--because they likely already do, if they are insured.

Well TNT would be pleased with a socialist health service like ours then. The feckless poor that escape paying for health care who offend him have compulsory deductions made from their pay over here. That's before they can go out and blow their wealth on plasma TV's and fancy cars.

elfshadow wrote:

ellienor wrote:

TNT, it all comes down to "I don't want to pay for other people's healthcare," doesn't it?

Right on the money. It's funny, too, because most people who have insurance are already paying for other people's health care. The majority of us do not have major health problems and pay more in insurance costs than we reap in benefits. So I have never understood why people who oppose universal health care think that it's such a big deal to pay for other people's healthcare costs--because they likely already do, if they are insured.

The difference is between forced and unforced. Health insurance is something we choose to buy. Having universal health care means we would be forced at gunpoint to pay, whether we want to or not.

Not that I think anyone will agree with me or actually have their minds changed, but I haven't tilted at windmills for awhile.

Healthcare is a good, not a right

Ron Paul wrote:

Political philosopher Richard Weaver famously and correctly stated that ideas have consequences. Take for example ideas about rights versus goods. Natural law states that people have rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. A good is something you work for and earn. It might be a need, like food, but more “goods” seem to be becoming “rights” in our culture, and this has troubling consequences. It might seem harmless enough to decide that people have a right to things like education, employment, housing or healthcare. But if we look a little further into the consequences, we can see that the workings of the community and economy are thrown wildly off balance when people accept those ideas.

First of all, other people must pay for things like healthcare. Those people have bills to pay and families to support, just as you do. If there is a “right” to healthcare, you must force the providers of those goods, or others, to serve you.

Obviously, if healthcare providers were suddenly considered outright slaves to healthcare consumers, our medical schools would quickly empty. As the government continues to convince us that healthcare is a right instead of a good, it also very generously agrees to step in as middleman. Politicians can be very good at making it sound as if healthcare will be free for everybody. Nothing could be further from the truth. The administration doesn’t want you to think too much about how hospitals will be funded, or how you will somehow get something for nothing in the healthcare arena. We are asked to just trust the politicians. Somehow it will all work out.

Universal Healthcare never quite works out the way the people are led to believe before implementing it. Citizens in countries with nationalized healthcare never would have accepted this system had they known upfront about the rationing of care and the long lines.

As bureaucrats take over medicine, costs go up and quality goes down because doctors spend more and more of their time on paperwork and less time helping patients. As costs skyrocket, as they always do when inefficient bureaucrats take the reins, government will need to confiscate more and more money from an already foundering economy to somehow pay the bills. As we have seen many times, the more money and power that government has, the more power it will abuse. The frightening aspect of all this is that cutting costs, which they will inevitably do, could very well mean denying vital services. And since participation will be mandatory, no legal alternatives will be available.

The government will be paying the bills, forcing doctors and hospitals to dance more and more to the government’s tune. Having to subject our health to this bureaucratic insanity and mismanagement is possibly the biggest danger we face. The great irony is that in turning the good of healthcare into a right, your life and liberty are put in jeopardy.

Instead of further removing healthcare from the market, we should return to a true free market in healthcare, one that empowers individuals, not bureaucrats, with control of healthcare dollars.

ellienor wrote:

TNT, it all comes down to "I don't want to pay for other people's healthcare," doesn't it?

Actually, no it doesn't. Every time the government directly competes with the free market, the result is that only the rich can afford high quality services.

Public and Private Competition

Since I want the poor to be able to afford high quality health services, and the track record of government services is abysmal, the last think I want is government services in this area.

The record of the government is not what you claim it is CG.

Quote:

Every time the government directly competes with the free market, the result is that only the rich can afford high quality services.

Public schools compete with private schools. I live a few miles from the University of Michigan - one of the premier colleges in the land. They deliver an excellent array of high quality services by almost any measure. You do not have to be rich to attend there and get those quality services. The same can be said for many K-12 public schools as well.

There are many other examples.

Did the TVA create the situation you claim exists? In fact, if you look at the history of utilities and how the TVA changed them in that part of the nation, I think you would find nearly the opposite happened. Average and even poor people were finally able to get high quality services in the way of power and utilities.

Did the US Post Office create the situation you claim exists?

Did the building of public roads create the situation you claim exists?

Did Social Security destroy private retirement plans so that only the rich can afford them?

When you use qualifying terms such as EVERY TIME and ONLY it severely limits your case. I do not want to tell you how to frame your own position, but i would think if EVERY TIME was replaced with QUITE OFTEN or even HAS A TENDENCY, it might allow you to find examples that are more easy to support with facts and analysis.

Government medical service in the U.S. (i.e. Military healthcare) is very good. Perhaps if they used that as a model it wouldn't be as dire of a healthcare situation as some would think.

Quote:

Since I want the poor to be able to afford high quality health services, and the track record of government services is abysmal, the last think I want is government services in this area.

Is what CG said. Below is what I wrote a few days ago:

Quote:

heard a piece on NPR quite a while ago that talked about the games private insurers play. One is that they make pools of insureds. The pool gets closed after a certain time. Thus, as the pool participants get older, and sicker, the pool gets older, and sicker, and since its closed (and no new younger and healthy people are coming in), the pool gets more and more expensive. Thus your insurance premiums will rise markedly over time. It's a game to force people who are older and sicker out.

I think I'll take my chances with the government.

p.s. what SF said.

ellienor wrote:

heard a piece on NPR quite a while ago that talked about the games private insurers play. One is that they make pools of insureds. The pool gets closed after a certain time. Thus, as the pool participants get older, and sicker, the pool gets older, and sicker, and since its closed (and no new younger and healthy people are coming in), the pool gets more and more expensive. Thus your insurance premiums will rise markedly over time. It's a game to force people who are older and sicker out.

And it works that way in our hybrid socialist-corporatist system. What I'm proposing is something completely different from what we have now, instead of just a few steps more down the road from mostly to complete goverment control of the system.

If you like the current system, you'll love what's coming up.

Cenedril_Gildinaur wrote:

What I'm proposing is something completely different from what we have now...

Which is?

I thought I'd read a good arguement against the "10th amendment" arguement opponents of government healthcare make, but I'm not finding it in this thread. So I'm curious what others would say to those who argue that government healthcare can't be allowed because the constitution doesn't say it's allowed?

Eruname ... here is Article I, Section 8 of the US Constitution.

Section 8. The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;

To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;

To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;

To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;

To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;

To establish Post Offices and post Roads;

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;

To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations;

To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;

To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;

To provide and maintain a Navy;

To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;

To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;--And

To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

=============================================================

I have bolded the part at the start and again at the finish. These are the two areas that would answer your question.

The general welfare clause right at the start of Section 8 is broad giving Congress the power to provide for the general welfare of citizens of the USA. The term general welfare is not defined within the document and is rather broad but its scope is up to the interpretation of the Supreme Court in the end. At the end of Article 8 is the clause called The Necessary and Proper Clause or sometimes The Elastic Clause. This gives Congress the power to carry out all the powers given to it in the previous clauses. When you combine those two together you get rather wide powers that Congress has to do many things. Health care would come under that.

this link gives you more information

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necessary_ ... per_clause

Quote:

So I'm curious what others would say to those who argue that government healthcare can't be allowed because the constitution doesn't say it's allowed?

You may have noticed that the debate surrounding the Health Care bill pretty much centers around the practical questions regarding it... the cost, how to pay for it, its impact on the quality of care, the role of the government in health care, private sector versus public, a public option, keeping costs down and other such issues. We have not really seen any serious mainstream Constitutional objections to such a program... yet. Although should such a law pass, it could be challenged in the courts and eventually the Supreme Court could indeed examine if it is Constitutional.

Nope, those two areas don't answer the question of constitutionality. You didn't bold a single line in clauses two through seventeen. Moreover such an overly-expansive reading ignores another part of the constitution.

Tenth Amendment wrote:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Quote:

We have not really seen any serious mainstream Constitutional objections to such a program

Because those in power no longer pay attention to that document anyway.

from CG

Quote:

Nope, those two areas don't answer the question of constitutionality. You didn't bold a single line in clauses two through seventeen. Moreover such an overly-expansive reading ignores another part of the constitution

Yes - I thought you would take that position. My answer was not taken from the libertarian viewpoint but from the viewpoint of the reality of the current political situation and the way the Supreme Court has previously judged challenges to other health related programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.

I did not bolden lines 2 through 17 because they are not relevant to the question Eruname asked. Nor are the other parts of the Constitution that I did not reproduce here. No use wasting time or space.

Yes- there is a Tenth Amendment and you reproduced it. If anyone wants to mount a legal challenge to the eventual health care bill that gets signed into law they have the right to use that Tenth Amendment in their challenge. The Tenth Amendment did not stop Social Security. The Tenth Amendment did not stop Medicare. The Tenth Amendment did not stop Medicaid. The Tenth Amendment did not stop the Wagner Act. The Tenth Amendment did not stop an entire host of programs enacted during both the New Deal and the Great Society that the right wing objected to partly because of the tenth Amendment.

when I said

Quote:

We have not really seen any serious mainstream Constitutional objections to such a program

your response was

Quote:

Because those in power no longer pay attention to that document anyway.

The US Supreme Court is in power. They are bound by the Constitution in making their decisions. I respect that your view of the Constitution is different than theirs. You have a right to a different opinion and that is fine. But to say that those in power do not pay attention to the Constitution is simply over the top hyperbole that serves no real purpose.

Even Representative Paul does not publicly make the case that you are advocating regarding the Tenth Amendment.

http://www.tenthamendmentcenter.com/200 ... t-a-right/

There is nothing in that which says the Tenth Amendment can be used to prohibit the health care bill.