[clue-talk] Wow, Card's a little political...

[Brian Gibson]

>> And what's this obsession with socialists?

>The plan (posted on Obama's website for all to see) is more socialist than anything seen in a long time, that's why the "obsession" with it.  It's published, >and it's not a good plan for economic growth or anyone who doesn't want their money poured down the drain by government.  SOCIALIZED healthcare, for example.

>> Tell me where I said I support socialism, and the above might make some sort
>> of sense.I do think the hyper-"patriots" are the ones to watch out, for,
>> though, yes, as they are probably signifying they are RWAs.

>A vote for Obama's campaign is a vote for socialized medicine.

Good.  Because a free-market approach to health care does not work.  You only need to look at the millions of uninsured and the fact that the US pays twice to three times as much as a percentage of GDP for the same quality of health care for those who can actually access to it to realize that something is broken.  Just like many other independents, on some issues I lean left and others I lean right (and by world standards both the Ds and Rs are right).  Just like every tool can't fix every problem, free-market economics alone is not a one-size fits all solution to every problem.  In fact, like most problems you have to use more than one tool to come up with a solution.

Nate, I'm sure the biggest ideological problem you have with universal health care is that you should be free to NOT have health coverage if you don't want to.  I can certainly sympathize with that position.  However, understanding the way health insurance works is that the healthy members of any insurance group subsidizes the sick members.   Health insurance is inherently socialistic.  There's no getting around that.  Medicine is already socialized, but only within a walled garden.  Health care costs for all go down if you can distribute the costs over a greater number of people.  Taken to its logical conclusion, the largest insurance group a country can have is limited by the size of its population.  So let's say we have universal health care and everyone is a contributor but you, do you think it's fair to benefit from that but not pay into the system, in other words be a free rider?  I suppose ideally there shouldn't be insurance at all; everyone
 should earn and save enough money to cover all their health care bills and stay healthy and be accident free the rest of their lives. If only that were possible.

Free-market capitalism is great at efficiently distributing scarce resources. (FYI there is only the market and it's always free, regardless of what economic ideology you follow.)  Just because its efficient, doesn't necessarily make it the best method.  The problem here is that profit is not the best motive even if competition is the best mechanism for driving down costs.  If you believe you can't have competition without profit, you only need to look at Linux (surprise, surprise) and the number of distributions available to see the fallacy in that belief.  The reason being is that profit incentivizes an insurance company to collect as much money from healthy members while denying claims to the sick, which happens right now all too frequently.  Furthermore, an insurance company is only willing to cover conditions and treatments it deems profitable.  And treatment for pre-conditions maybe delayed or flat out denied.  (I've experienced this first hand.) 
 The fact is with a profit driven health care system, there will ALWAYS exist an income level at which people will be priced out.  I have nothing against insurers or health care providers making money.  Like everyone else, they need to make a living.  

The fact that other capitalist societies have managed to have working universal health care means there's no reason we can't.  Of course no health system is perfect, but when you can simplify your problems to the point of trying to convince your population that you need to raise spending from 6% of GDP to 8%, compared to the US spending 16% and rising (yay baby boomers!), that's a good problem to have.  

But before all that, I suppose one of the more fundamental questions should be, should we even have government-backed universal health care?  Disregarding the obvious emotional reasons in favor, you simply need to look at the role of government.  Government's purpose is to secure the rights of its citizens.  You feel the government should be as small as possible to achieve that goal.  I do as well, but with the caveat that government should grow and shrink as the need arises.  (I just wish it would do so more efficiently.)  The citizens' fundamental rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, the order of which is no accident.  Each right is predicated on the availability of the one(s) preceding it.  So life is the fundamental right we all have and, after the individual, the next entity responsible for securing that right is the government.   Hopefully I won't have to explain the impracticality of everyone going to medical school or trying to
 do brain surgery on yourself.  Besides you can do everything in your power to protect yourself and stay healthy, but the fact is shit happens.  So I would love to pay into a system to which I'm guaranteed comprehensive coverage, given quality care, preserves my freedom of choice, my medical information follows me no matter where I go, promotes preventative medicine, wait times are reasonable, and here's the catch, is affordable and can't be denied for any reason.  The last two can't ever be provided through a pure market driven approach and achieve all the other goals simply because profit is a motive.  Where private enterprise can't or won't fill the need, government must become involved which is why the system has become fragmented and you have MediCare, MedicAid, and emergency rooms as the provider of last resort, the one that doles out the most expensive health services.  And everyone pays for it through taxes and increased premiums so you're
 already paying for "universal health care" whether you like it or not.  

I'll spare you the Michael Moore slant, and link you to PBS instead.  It's more balanced anyway. 

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/

Going by the video, Taiwan is impressive.  Switzerland, the one country
most like the US in terms of social and economic ideals, managed to do
it (not without a lot of opposition) but now can't see itself living without
it.  Ironic, that their pharmaceutical industry isn't so whiney because they get 33% of their revenue from US sales.  Should a viable move toward establishing universal health care occur in this country, I'll bet you that these pharamceutical and medical equipment companies headquartered in these countries with universal health care will do their best to stop the US.  I would certainly consider that an attack on our sovereignty if that's the will of the people.