Why Universal Healthcare is wrong; A discussion for my liberal/progressive friends.

Re: Why Universal Healthcare is wrong; A discussion for my liberal/progressive friend

MrVicchio said:

A right cannot confer obligation on another for you to exercise said right. UHC is enforced obligation to others. And that is wrong.

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Soldiers are obligated to protect our rights via defense. Without them we would have been defeated long ago and have no rights. Our Constitution says we have the right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of happiness. I would say it's Constitutional to enforce the right of life by having healthcare accessible to everyone. You pay an insurance company to essentially do the same thing as a government with universal healthcare. They take your money and give it to someone else on the policy who is sick. We are obligated to pay taxes, we have a right to drive on taxpayer funded roads. We have a right to justice through taxpayer funded courts and police force. All these things confer upon individuals the obligation to pay taxes, universal health care is no different.

Re: Why Universal Healthcare is wrong; A discussion for my liberal/progressive friend

digsbe said:

Soldiers are obligated to protect our rights via defense. Without them we would have been defeated long ago and have no rights. Our Constitution says we have the right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of happiness. I would say it's Constitutional to enforce the right of life by having healthcare accessible to everyone. You pay an insurance company to essentially do the same thing as a government with universal healthcare. They take your money and give it to someone else on the policy who is sick. We are obligated to pay taxes, we have a right to drive on taxpayer funded roads. We have a right to justice through taxpayer funded courts and police force. All these things confer upon individuals the obligation to pay taxes, universal health care is no different.

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Well said. Kudos.

Re: Why Universal Healthcare is wrong; A discussion for my liberal/progressive friend

What if you think that universal health care would be a more efficient structure for the US than what we currently have now?

Re: Why Universal Healthcare is wrong; A discussion for my liberal/progressive friend

digsbe said:

Soldiers are obligated to protect our rights via defense.

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That's a different ball of wax, but thanks for playing.

digsbe said:

Without them we would have been defeated long ago and have no rights.

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Yep.

digsbe said:

Our Constitution says we have the right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of happiness. I would say it's Constitutional to enforce the right of life by having healthcare accessible to everyone.

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And everyone should have a nice house too. We should all be provided houses, and cars, because really, how can you be happy without a home? Or transportation?

digsbe said:

You pay an insurance company to essentially do the same thing as a government with universal healthcare.

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Except you can choose NOT too, or how much you wish to pay.

digsbe said:

They take your money and give it to someone else on the policy who is sick. We are obligated to pay taxes, we have a right to drive on taxpayer funded roads. We have a right to justice through taxpayer funded courts and police force. All these things confer upon individuals the obligation to pay taxes, universal health care is no different.

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You really don't get it, FDR wrought a hell upon this country.

Re: Why Universal Healthcare is wrong; A discussion for my liberal/progressive friend

Boo Radley said:

Well said. Kudos.

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Well said babble. You do NOT have the RIGHT to drive on the roads.

That's a privilege.

Courts and Police are part of an organized civil society.

Healthcare is quite different, but to the cradle to grave types, I suppose that they need to be taken care of.

Re: Why Universal Healthcare is wrong; A discussion for my liberal/progressive friend

While I agree that access to healthcare is not a right, I just think that giving everyone in our society access to quality healthcare is good for society. Something doesn't have to be a right for us as a society to do it.

And as several other posters have already mentioned, we already pay for the healthcare of those who cannot afford to pay for themselves. That is not going to change. We might as well legitimize it, because it will probably cost us less money that way.

Re: Why Universal Healthcare is wrong; A discussion for my liberal/progressive friend

MrVicchio said:

That's a different ball of wax, but thanks for playing.

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Explain how. You have rights because soldiers fought and died for them. All males are forced to sign up for selective service in the event of a draft. You freedoms as an American are protected by soldiers and the taxes you pay that keep our military operational. Every Constitutional right you enjoy is yours because others have paid taxes to protect them.

And everyone should have a nice house too. We should all be provided houses, and cars, because really, how can you be happy without a home? Or transportation?

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I am not for outlandish entitlements. Don't judge me as being someone that wants to treat everything as an entitlement that is somehow "owed" to everyone. Healthcare is necessary for life, it cannot be compared to driving a nice car or making a lot of money. I don't support abusing the "happiness" clause as meaning everyone is owed entitlements simply for being born.

Except you can choose NOT too, or how much you wish to pay.

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And when someone who can't afford insurance gets sick should they be left to die? The state basically pays for them anyway

You really don't get it, FDR wrought a hell upon this country.

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What do my comments regarding taxes and insurance companies have to do with FDR? Universal health care would be a public service just like roads, public transport, police, and other services we pay taxes for.

Like I said, an insurance policy is very much the same as universal healthcare. With insurance you pay money that goes into a social pool that gets paid out based on need and policy terms. With universal health care our taxes would go into a similar pool, only with this one none is taken out for profit. People will not be calculated in order to ensure that they will have a net profit. Right now insurance companies are afloat and make tons of money because they keep more than they pay out. They decrease coverage and increase prices. As a consumer there is no other choice. It's either buy insurance or have none, and when they raise their prices we have to eat it so they may profit. People can be denied if when put into the equation they are predicted to be a net consumer of funds instead of a net contributer. People who are sick or have conditions must also pay more if they do wind up covered. So, if a guy in his 40's has insurance, gets cancer, and is dropped from his insurance because it will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to treat him does he deserve to die? Does the guy who has paid for insurance all his life, and then is dropped, deserve to die when no one will offer him the purchase of insurance? What if he doesn't have hundreds of thousands of dollars handy to pay his bills off?

Consequently, what about the guy who can't afford insurance, gets heart disease, and when we wants to buy insurance he is denied that because he is calculated to be a net consumer? Does this man deserve to die because he chose to not buy insurance? It's wrong to reduce human life to having a net profit when it comes to healthcare.

Re: Why Universal Healthcare is wrong; A discussion for my liberal/progressive friend

MrVicchio said:

Well said babble. You do NOT have the RIGHT to drive on the roads.

That's a privilege.

Courts and Police are part of an organized civil society.

Healthcare is quite different, but to the cradle to grave types, I suppose that they need to be taken care of.

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Actually, it's not really that different. It's a public health issue, not at all like buying a wiget. In a civil society, we know health can effect other around the ill or injuried person, and it effects business when people are in ill health. We are paying for it now, quite ineffectively, so it is not wrong to seek to do a better job more effectively.

Re: Why Universal Healthcare is wrong; A discussion for my liberal/progressive friend

speaking of dollasrs and sense:

let's consider two gaping holes in the health care dollar bucket: profit and uncompensated care.

conservatives are railing against the ordinary guy having to pay for medical care for poor folk. this, as many of them know, is wholly disingenuous. You, I... WE pay fo rit now.

According to The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (2009) we theough teh aegis of Federal, State and Lcoal dolalrs paid $61b to reimburse doctors and hospitals for uncompensated care. you see... hosopitals cannot turn folks away without ensuring that they are not gonna die on the way home. many uninsured got to emergency rooms as a last resort. Emergency rooms are 3-5 times as expensive as clinic care. take those folks out of trauma centers and those ERs can do better what they are inteded for - emergencies. take those unisured out of ERs and cost go wqay, way down. and we have to find a way to bring costs down. that $61b ? that was up from $27b only 4 years before. what is it now?

did you know that uninsured pay as much as %60 more for drugs than insured? do you know how many uninsured declare bankruptcy trying to pay unpayable medical bills? of course... we all pay for those bankruptcies. just as we pay for the people who st4eal things from 7-11 through increased pirces of what we buy there, we pay those folks who take a bath from unpaid bills through increased prices on homes, cars, furniture. we ARE paying.

secondly:
according to Fortune magazine (among many other sources) the profits taken in by the top 10 insurers was 12 billion. that is a 250% increase over the decade. WellPoint alone asw an increase of %90+ between 2008 and 2009... one year. THAT was mostly due to cutting coverage and dropping insured. adn taht wasd only the top ten.

and THAT is just the top ten... according to an article in Vanity Fair by Matt Kapp, "The health-care industry’s total annual profit has grown to an estimated $200 billion, and it doled out nearly $170 million in campaign contributions in 2007 and 2008. It now spends more than any other industry lobbying the federal government—$3.5 billion over the past decade and a record $263 million in the first six months of this year".

that is 200b dollar spent by citizens to ensure health care that never went to providing health care. that is $170m spent to ensure that many citizens DO NOT get health care.

we are talking a huge amount of waste.

how much to ensure the uninsured? according to The Kaiser Foundation, about $50b. THat is less than the amount we are paying to provide them with care NOW.

UHC simply makes sense. NO NOT the current plan... a hideous bastardization of rational policy forced by republicans and conservative democrats to secure the profits of insurers.

REAL, single payer, non-profit, government regulated UHC simply makes the best sense.

geo.

Re: Why Universal Healthcare is wrong; A discussion for my liberal/progressive friend

jeepers.... what a mess of typos! was in a hurry to get to work.

geo.