1. You state that conservative environmental policies killed thousands of people, as if that is a fact or a given. It isn't....
There are such costs in universal health care systems, too...
The suggestion that it is only "conservative" policies which have negative consequences is naive...
That's just, also, leaving the policy decision up to the single determining factor of which saves the most lives...
See post #46 for full text.
I'm not going to spend time citing proof beyond the links I've provided, nor will I ask for yours. You're right, there're unintended downsides to most any policy, conservative or liberal and there should be an analysis of both, but conservative dogma takes precedence over analysis far too often. I won't cite the lives saved by providing healthcare to an additional 8% of Americans, I will only point out that we spend four times the amount every other western democracy spends and their citizens are healthier and live longer. Conservatives see the data yet cling so tightly to our outdated, expensive system. It's the The free market must not be infringed, otherwise it's (clutch your pearls) communism!
The deaths caused by excessively long emergency room waiting times you cite is a
theory by a conservative author, known for his fight to scrap Canadian's current system and return to an insurance based system. Lastly, I'm enough of a capitalist to have heard about a theory called, supply and demand. It seems all the democracies in Europe and around the world that have a successful universal system are able to supply enough health care to meet their demand. As far as proof that stopping our funding of WHO will cost lives, if you can't take the opinion of the doctors who are saving those lives, how about the common sense that no money equals no health care, equals an increase in unhealthy people, that might result in more deaths?
I do have to comment on the WSJ
opinion piece on DDT you cited though. Until now I wasn't aware of the concerted effort by conservatives to paint Rachel Carson (who largely responsible for banning DDT in the
US), as a mass murderer, even going so far as to call her worst than Hitler.
If anyone wants to read an unbiased report try this link;
"...The reality is that the
American ban on DDT did not extend to other nations, although some later enacted their own prohibitions. For that matter, the pesticide was not completely banished in the United States or elsewhere; the E.P.A. declared it acceptable if public health was at risk. And despite a decline in its effectiveness because of overuse, it remains a valued anti-malaria tool in many countries, principally for spraying indoors, where its potency is enhanced and its impact on nature is kept low..."
As far as negative consequences, in the end I guess you have to pick your
poison. What motivates conservatives to ban abortion is based primarily on religious convictions, not on the analysis of women's health. An unrestrained Putin facing NATO without US backing is a recipe for tens of thousands of deaths and a return of the Warsaw Pact. Withdrawing from NATO is a penny wise, pound foolish policy. Dogma motivating conservative abortion bans and refusal to update our healthcare system, nationalism and greed motivating conservatives to withdraw from NATO...