Why having universal healthcare in America would be bad

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It wasn't literally about making a monetary profit, but rather hiding one's faith, and not allowing one's faith to produce works.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

QFT

Something Republicans and tea baggers need to realize - - the one place in the world where there are is absolutely no gun control, and no health care is a hell hole like Somalia.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Is there some reason you feel compelled to change this to a gun control issue?

Can you or someone else explain that further?

Actually, no. But in all honesty, anti-gun control sentiment seems to go hand-in-hand with Republicans and opposition to healthcare reform. Just a fact I thought was worthwhile to point out.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

And you, being the opposite of a Republican, must therefor be antigun. To be otherwise puts you in with us hate filled conservatives and we know you won't do that.

Uhhh, no. Just no. Two different topics, stick to one thank you very much. Works a lot like how you're not supposed to bring politics into a non-political topic. But anyways I can't resist throwing my two cents into this. Yes the role of Government is a big topic when it comes to gun control, but it doesn't necessarily transfer into the health care arguments. A gun is the last line of defense whereas preventative care is the first line of health care.

Last edited by AceOfSpades on 03 Jul 2012, 11:01 am, edited 1 time in total.

It isn't the government's job to keep people healthy, but we have decided as a society that it is the government's job to save peoples' lives when possible. (I agree with this collective societal decision.) This means that uninsured people get sicker and sicker and sicker until they are in danger of death, then they go to the emergency and are saved from death on government money (the hospital is reimbursed). This means that for an uninsured person to truly opt out of government-paid healthcare, they must make sure that they die out of sight and neither call an ambulance for themselves nor let themselves be visible so that anybody else can call an ambulance. If somebody is dying in public sight, emergency services will take them to an emergency room, although if they are uninsured it will be the cheapest hospital around. This law is an attempt to prevent dying people from being saved at public expense. As a society we are not willing to just let them die, so the part that has to change is "at public expense". That can't be changed entirely, but this bill might ameliorate it a bit.







It is a terrible idea. I don't think the bill as written will help much. Maybe a little but only a little, and it just makes people angry. If people are going to be angry, I think something really good had better come out of it. I think a better (though more far reaching) decision would have been to create a government health care insurance plan that people would default to if they neither signed up for a private health insurance (Blue Cross etc.) nor were qualified for medicaid or medicare. Rather than a fine, the money that gets snipped from your paycheck would be your payment into this government health insurance. The law as it is now still leaves people just as uninsured and also minus that fine and also will be rescued on the government's dime if they wind up in the emergency room. I would prefer government insurance as a default that people opt out of by signing up for one of the private insurers. That might also get the private insurers to up their game and not suck so much, since they wouldn't want people defaulting into government insurance but actively choosing the private insurers.


edited to add: I realize that some people currently uninsured are uninsured because they have a pre-existing health condition that private insurers either refuse to insure or are too expensive. Fining these people for not having insurance that they can't afford or even get because of their pre-existing condition is just cruel. That's another reason I would rather see a government health insurance default rather than a fine.

Actually, I'm not invested emotionally or ideologically one way or the other when it comes to gun control. But gun fanatics tend to be the exact same people who oppose healthcare reform. Therefore, they would be happiest in a place like Somalia where there is zero gun control and no healthcare in sight - unless you consider being put out of your misery healthcare.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

We survived it by using barter. Barter works quite well between individuals and many people still use it. (Barter is especially popular among mothers, such as myself, who swap childcare between each other. I'll watch your kids today after school if you'll watch mine while I go to a doctor's appointment next week.) It also worked pre-money between tribes, since they were quite small and the only group entities in existence. Tribe A would barter, for example, a bunch of fish from tribe B in exchange for spearheads or other items. (So say archeologists.)

But when you get to entities bigger than tribes, barter becomes too unwieldy. So you see money springing into existence alongside cities and city-size governments. There was still barter among individuals (there still is) but large groups need money.

We can't go back to barter-only when there are 7 billion of us.

As you said, money is a form of energy. It is standardized and easily moved which makes it better than barter for large scale transactions. Barter is also a form of energy that gets transferred from one person to another. It's just unstandardized and requires storing and transportation when it is in the form of things rather than services.

I really don't see a way to do this without energy exchange of some sort. Things are finite resources (silly Zeitgeist theories aside) and services are something people only provide when they have a good reason to. "Because you should" only works as a reason for family.

And the question still stands. Why do you feel the need to bring up guns in a thread that has nothing to do with it? Gun fanatics aren't necessarily Republicans. Not to be condescending since I know you're not stupid enough to think literally all gun fanatics are Republicans or far-right (most people don't tend to be so literal about generalizing anything), but opposing gun control doesn't necessarily centre around the Government's role in everything else.

I brought it in regarding Somalia. As I had stated to Raptor already, people who oppose gun control are usually the same people who also oppose healthcare for everyone. Otherwise, it has nothing to do with the subject at hand.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Money is a special case of barter.

Money, first and foremost, is a universally accepted barter good.

ruveyn

I really don't want to get too much into politics, but here's the thing:

Europe is social-democratic,

From Wikipedia:

...social democracy is a political ideology that considers itself to be a form of reformist democratic socialism.

...it views the development of socialism as connected with the evolution of capitalism.

I.E.social-democracy practices capitalist economics, which is to say it is not actually socialist, which rejects capitalism.

What is failing in Europe isn't universal healthcare or nationalized industry, it's a mixture of reformist socialism with capitalism that's failing.

The welfare-state was an attempt to mold socialist practices with capitalist economics, and it isn't doing so well in 2012, now is it?

Capitalism's inherent weaknesses(I.E. class struggle against the working-class, rampant inequality, corporate control of government etc.) never disappeared under social-democracy. They are still there. The efforts to "fix" capitalism with socialist ideals has failed.

Under socialism, the capitalists' industries would be expropriated and be put under either government control, as in the case of the former Soviet Union, or under workers' control, which has happened in the past(in Russia, Spain, etc.).

Socialism has nothing to do with why Europe's Euro-Zone is falling to pieces.