- Joined
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- Political Leaning
- Slightly Conservative
You make so much sense, and then you always say something weird like this.
How can a life be given a cost value?
How can a life be given a cost value?
Some people make that choice.
I think that's pretty much it. It's a win, and it helps the GOP, but we're a long way from this being a big deal.
If Brown had defeated a living and healthy incumbent (Kennedy or Kerry), then yeah that's big news. But my feeling is either of those guys would have squashed Brown like a bug.
I don't know if they choose it or not but a lot of them are to lazy to do anything about it...........
You responded to the post that said "Hurray no healthcare for millions of americans." with "That's their choice".
The majority of those individuals that don't have health care cannot afford health care so are are saying they choose to live within this "poor" income level.
Hell when I was in my early twenties making a little over $30k I could barley afford health care. I think I was paying about $550/month.
A thirty point swing in attitude from November 2008, in the most flamingly socialist state in the nation?
That it's a continuation of a trend away from the Democrats already shown in two other states?
That's a big deal.
I see it... and that's the problem isn't it? The lobbyists are simply pandering to whomever is in charge and the politicians- no matter the party - takes the money. That has to stop.
Oh, so what you mean is that I can't get something that I can't afford, but some basic level of housing is available to me if I am below a certain standard of living? That sounds pretty much like our current healthcare system.
If we were to analogize the healthcare proposal, it would be like saying we're going to give out government subsidies to people who can only afford to rent, because we think everyone should have the chance to own a house. We tried that. It failed miserably.
Which is one of the reasons why I am completely against this bill.And I wouldn't have a problem with a bill that sought to do just that. If anyone proposes it, let me know.
That would have been 20-22% of your income. What do you think is the appropriate percentage of income we can expect people to pay?
How can they be the most flamingly (whatever that means) state if they just elected a Republican to the Senate.
I think many people have a huge misunderstanding of North East politics. They are a very independent bunch.
Last time I checked the poor are not in danger of becoming the majority....Well,it won't happen unless the Health Deform bill and Crap and Tax are passed.
Some people make that choice.
But you could afford it. Many (most?) of us struggled in our early 20's to afford health care. That's life. Some of my co-workers chose not to purchase health insurance. That was their choice and their gamble. I didn't think it was the brightest choice but so what? I'm not sure I can get behind this plan to force them to buy something they don't want to buy.
I responded the way I did, btw, because it was obvious that the original poster, like you, was ignoring Medicaid's existance. How convenient. For people who make more money than Medicaid allows it often is a choice. I want to talk about THEM for a change.
Owning a house and renting a house is different then having health care and not having health care. One is a necessity to live, the other is not.
I don't know I'm not an economics expert. I also know that a loaf of bread and water shouldn't be 20-22% of my income. I don't know what percentage it should be though. It should be left of to the consumer market (another reason I don't approve of government run health care).
There are only specific categories of people that are covered and less and less doctors accepting Medicaid insurance every year.
They will when they are given another burden keeping them from increasing their income to spend ratio.
Of course you could take the morbid stance and say not providing health care to those that cannot afford it will actually lessen the population of the poor. Since they can't afford health care to survive any sickness.
I must say I wasn't thrilled with what he said about his daughters at his acceptance speech.
While it's not something people like to discuss, lives are always assigned monetary values.
We do it with every aspect of our bodies - workers comp agreements have charts showing the value of each limb or finger, etc.
Look at it this way:
Say there's a disease called Deathabetes that primarily affects elderly people. Sheisa Pharmaceuticals develops a drug called Death-B-Gon that, on average, extends the life of a Deathabetes sufferer for 1 year. Now, if that drug cost $10, I would assume that every one of us would agree that Medicare should pay for it. If the cost were $5,000, I think most people would still be on board. But what it it cost $50,000? $500,000? $50,000,000?
At some point, everyone would have to agree that the drug becomes too expensive to be worth its benefit. We face this exact same dilemma with thousands and thousands of drugs and procedures today, ranging from hip replacements to cancer treatments. How the balancing point is calculated is incredibly important.
One of the reasons why insurance costs continue to increase is because of special interest groups that lobby insurers on this exact issue. First, a breast cancer group raises a stink about an insurance company refusing to pay for a particular expensive drug. Not wanting the bad publicity, the company agrees to pay for that drug. Then a Parkinson's group does the same. Then a MS group, then a Sickle Cell group, etc. The end result is that most everything ends up getting covered and the rest of the costs get passed on to everyone else.
Here is the stark reality that neither Republicans or Democrats are willing to admit: So long as we as a nation continue to place such an incredibly high value on the availability of expensive life-saving treatments, we will never bring health care spending under control. I don't see such a significant cultural shift happening any time soon.
The program should be designed so that it is in their benefit to get health care without government aid though.
How can they be the most flamingly (whatever that means) state if they just elected a Republican to the Senate.
Connect.
The.
Dots.
They said exactly the same thing about Reagan.
She delivers a message very similar to Reagan.
Now with a forum on FOXNEWS the remainder of the people can discover she isn't the idiot some people claim she is.
.
No.
A human is more than the sum of its body parts.
Good thing this is all theoretical, since nothing costs that much.
And why would we agree that Medicare would pay for it in the first place? It should pay for it if it fits some category that it has agreed to pay for in the first place. Whether it pays for it, or how much of it it pays for, does not then vary with how much it costs.
Except that whether or not something is covered by insurance is not, and should not be, entirely decided on a case-by-case basis, but agreed on early on, usually in the form of a contract.
Why wouldn't insurance companies cover breast cancer or Parkinson's? More importantly, why hadn't they until they were lobbied to do so? There's something fishy about that.
If that's true, which I doubt it is, then I guess I don't want health care spending "under control". High as our health care spending might be, we have, among other things, the highest cancer survival rates in the world (breast cancer included). Why you want to change that, I don't know.
I find how little value you place in human life depressing.
Mass has always been less Liberal than you might think. Hell, one of the Republican frontrunners in 2008 came from Mass. In fact, out of all the states considered blue, I would count Mass as one of the most conservative, and it has been that way for a while. They are only really socially liberal, and they still are (just look at what Brown had to say on social issues not to be chewed out). There are no dots to connect here.
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