By: hippybear
Not that Reagan didn’t create forced charity with his tax policies, giving money to those who need it the least while trying to support the finances of running the nation on the backs of those with less money… Robbing the poor to feed the rich. It’s charity no matter which direction it goes. It’s just less sustainable when you do it that way than the other.
By: yesster
Exactly - the Republicans are out to prove that government can’t work, and they actively work to break governement systems, just to prove they’re right. There’s nothing wrong with medicine in this country if you are independently wealthy. Nailed it there.
By: bowline
Quoting myself : As a result one of the biggest changes that a American government health insurance plan would bring is the transfer power from employers to employees. Quoting Hippybear: Without getting all Karl Marx about it, I see this as a feature and not a bug. Hippybear: Just to be perfectly clear — I agree with you 100%.
By: @troy
just think - with a real health system you could afford to go to a doctor to do that Sorry if my first post above muddied the discussion. I’m all for single-payer, mandatory-enrollment, subsidized-for-all government health system, even at the cost of levelling the tops of the trees who enjoy premier access and the professionals who profit thereby (Canada’s exclusive private system appears to be the right model for that). Health care — to keep people productive members of society — should be a core social service like lifelong education, local transportation, criminal justice, the legal system, disaster prevention & recovery services, and affordable access to land. But 30% or so of this country is most certainly not in this camp; these people agree with Reagan’s view on personal liberty of profit-seeking and distrust of gummint (eg here and here). Me, I go with Alan Kay’s “Point of view is worth 80 IQ points” observation and thereby think of the limited-government contingent as morons.
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By: FireballForever
This is depressing. It has nothing to do with productivity or a healthy populace, or poor people having insurance. This is pure, unbridled captalisim. ‘Health’ is nothing but the product, and the companies that trade in ‘Health’ are fighting tooth and nail to get a favorable bill passed or keep the status quo. I don’t know, I have no proof, but I believe that something is looming regarding health care costs. Something that is making this a very urgent issue for Obama. Possibly that without reform, he believes that a full economic recovery (whatever that may be) won’t be possible, because of the enormous costs. Just like with the banking system taking such a toll on the economy. I believe that if a plan favorable to the insurance companies passes, the best option is probably to buy stock in health care and insurance related companies, and then move to Canada (and I don’t say that flippantly). I’m with the two experts, that basically the system as it is needs to be replaced, but I don’t think that will happen. I only hope the stop-gap measure that might actually get passed now isn’t just round after round of Chemo, when a new wonderdrug (that isn’t FDA approved, mind you) would be a one-pill cure.
By: flippant
God forbid that proposals be judged on anything other than their potential as political leverage. Asshats.
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By: @troy
Me: “Why should the productive members of society be forced at gunpoint to help them?” They are already being forced, in that taxpayers and the actually insured foot the cost for emergency visits by uninsured people. Emergency visits that tend to cost more than regular, preventive health care. Actually, reading this essay I think my original jape above wasn’t quite right. If that is true, and it resonates with me, conservatives are truly afraid of the loss of choice and the overbearing involvement of Gummint into the free market wonder that is modern medicine. There’s nothing wrong with medicine in this country if you are independently wealthy. Conservatives don’t want to see this system destroyed by a Democrat patronage system on the order of the Postal Service or DMV. They believe in their bones that the competition of the free market is more reliable than a centralized planning. So conservatives aren’t necessarily opposed to government charity, they just want these government services to be limited, decentralized, inferior, under-funded, so as to not interfere with the existing private system for regular people. Same thing with Medicare in the 1960s, and the sam thing Bush II tried with Social Security in early 2005, when he thought he had some political capital.
By: octothorpe
Oh but Peggy Noonan says that “emergency rooms that provide excellent service for the uninsured”, so we shouldn’t worry about those poor unfortunates.
