Trump / GOP's Stunning Hypocrisy on Preexisting Conditions

You really don't know the origin of this then, do you?

Oh, and "WOW just WOW" is the biggest PC response ever...but maybe that's what you meant?

Edited to add:

 

And you still don't get it, just Google "whose mans is this" .

The WOW was how off base you where in trying to correct me.

 

So you concede that universal coverage in other developed nations gets better health outcomes for less money, as the evidence overwhelmingly shows?
You concede that your "universal care is utopist" statement is bunk?
That Americans object to higher taxes is not an argument for or against the validity of a program. You could use it, of course, but if you rely solely on arguments that avoid discussion of a program being objectively good or bad, it gives the impression that you want to shift the conversation elsewhere.

One doesn't need an ideological stand to recognize that universal care gets better outcomes for less money. If your ideology is rational self-interest, however, it would fit. (IMO liberals lean too hard on the ideological argument for healthcare as a right, instead of plainly arguing that it's objectively better economically. It's better morally too, but moral arguments are messier.)

Of course they do, who has said otherwise?

This statement is irrational; it makes no sense. Proponents of universal care (single payer is one method of delivering universal care) argue for everyone to pay in, including themselves. The above quote is just boilerplate anti-liberal gibberish.

This thread alone shows you numerous proponents of universal care who want to discuss costs, me included. You're the one who shifts to ideological arguments when presented with an economic argument.
The people who don't want to discuss the reality of bringing down healthcare costs are republican politicians.

 

I've seen the clip that I posted before. I thought that was what you were referencing. As far as I know, that statement was original to that "gentleman" in that video.

 

I make no such concessions. I suppose it's possible, if people are willing to live with much higher taxes, that "single-payer" could, in some sense, "work."

But Americans in general -- at least the 47% that pay taxes -- are not willing to be taxed more to pay for the rest of the country.

Just because something supposedly works in Europe does not mean that it's a good idea here.

Yes, I argue on economic grounds, because that's what matters to me. I am at a bit of a loss how any other matter could be of more importance to anyone. If you don't have $ in your pocket, if we don't have a good economy, then nothing else is possible. That has to come first.

I have not seen too much discussion of how to pay for a single-payer system. What I see mostly are emotional arguments about "don't you care about the children?" etc.

Oh to be sure, there have been a few posters that say "I don't mind paying higher taxes." So I have seen that. It seems that proponents don't mind paying higher taxes. They also don't mind forcing others to pay higher taxes. And therein lies my objection to the whole thing. Proponents of single payer are being awfully generous with other people's money.

Look at the history of SS. When it was first passed in the 1930s, its retirement age was placed well above the average age of death for most Americans. But, then people started living longer. Then, the feds decided to expand SS so that it covers disability and other life events, and now the feds even reimburse states for collecting child support -- from SS monies. That's the nature of government bureaucracies.

The point is -- government programs grow and expand, the demand for them grows and expands, to the point now where we have a huge debt, and by 2034, the feds won't be able to pay for 100% of SSD claims.

That's what happens with government social programs. That's why people like me object to the introduction of new ones.

Let me ask you (or anyone here) -- have you ever seen any agency or department of the government go away? Do they ever say "our work here is done?" and fold up shop?

The answer is no, of course not. Creation of a new benefit creates new taxes; a new government bureaucratic class that then takes steps to ensure its survival (usually by expanding); and it creates a constituency among the public that demands not only its preservation but its growth.

Then there's the assumption that the government can do anything efficiently. I wonder, has anyone here dealt with the local SS office? I have, for a family member. It's not a model of efficiency or customer-friendliness.

In this same vein, see the VA. We want to expand this for everyone?

In short, I come at this (as must be evident by now) from a reining in taxes and government POV. Others are coming at this from "we just want to help people" POV.

I think depending on the government to help you (or me) in anything is a misplaced hope, to put it mildly.

 

Sure it does. No reason a country equally or more wealthy can't do it. Or if there are specific reasons beyond anti-liberal rhetoric, go ahead and give them.

People in developed nations worldwide, and even some of the poorer nations in eastern Europe, get better care for less money. The evidence is abundant. Those people have more money in their pockets because they aren't getting ripped off on care. Those people aren't getting bankrupted due to a surprise illness or injury. They're getting preventative care when the first symptoms arrive and heading things off with treatments before things get worse (and much more expensive). They aren't being refused care because of pre-existing conditions.
If a system of healthcare spends far more as a percentage of GDP than any other nation while receiving worse outcomes, then that system isn't economically rational.
If your number one priority is better results for less money, and reason and logic compel you to observe the evidence as your guide, your choice should be universal care.

My impression from your writing is that if a nation spends far more for a service than everyone else for worse results, but didn't pay it through the government, then somehow, magically, they have in fact saved money. This is illogical.

If you federally mandate that everyone pays into the system, costs reduce dramatically for everyone. You can do this through private industry or through a government single payer.

I think the left relies to much on moral/ideological arguments when the evidence clearly shows that universal care is economically superior. That being said, your moral stance is abhorrent. If it was impossible to take care of everyone, I would understand taking your position. As it turns out, it isn't impossible- most of the entire developed world is doing it.

Honest to god, if market based healthcare solutions worked, I'd be in favor of them. They don't work, there are systemic impediments. I favor a universal solution on pragmatic grounds.

Medicare is run with far less overhead, and more well-liked than any private health provider in the US.

I think you are very ideologically driven, and if proposed with a solution that is obviously superior economically, you will ignore it because it doesn't fit your ideology.

It may seem to good to be true, but you can run a system that is both more efficient, and takes care of everyone.

Your insistence that a government solution can never beat a market solution has blinded you to pragmatic solutions and cornered you into defending the indefensible.

 

Somewhere in the ether, Thomas Malthus approves of this thread.

 

And there we are. Federal mandate on everybody. I can't get past this. If that makes me ideological, so be it.

I would maintain that proponents of single payer are also ideological. Their ideology is getting everyone covered, no matter the cost or impact. ​

My position is that people pay their own expenses, and not plunder other people's wallets through the government.

A mandate, like the one you propose, is plundering my wallet through the government. "Getting everyone covered" is not my ideological goal.

So you see, everyone with strong opinions on this matter is ideological.

I agree that there's a problem with pricing in the medical field. But I maintain that insurance itself drives a lot of that, though probably not all of it. High medical costs are most likely multi-causal. But the solution -- more (mandated) insurance -- is in fact a large part of the problem.

 

Mandating that my wallet gets plundered to pay for nuclear weapons, new Jet fighters, etc is not my ideological goal. I agree that we can have a military to protect our nation but we don't need the military that we currently have. Our debt which goes heavily towards military spending is part of the problem.

 

Yeah, I know. If your ideological stance also provided pragmatic policy for the American people, I'd be all in favor.

This attempt at both-sideism is missing something important: the fact that there are decades of evidence from dozens of countries proving that universal care provides better outcomes for less money than market based solutions.
The label of ideologue belongs to the one who clings to their preferred ideological solution even when evidence shows that it doesn't work. (Hello, trickle-down economics.)
It's not a bad thing to take a principled stand, unless your principles create bad policy. Again, if unregulated market-based healthcare solutions actually worked in the real world, I'd be in favor of them. They don't work. Period.

I don't know which is more frustrating: the majority of conservatives who remain ignorant (willfully or not) of the successes of universal care vs market based care, or the minority who are aware that that universal care is economically superior, but still refuse to accept it because their ideology won't let them.

 

Pooling resources for a shared goal is one of the gifts of society. It's why people in large cities benefit more with infrastructure than small towns. There's also a knowledge and culture boost by being able to find and collaborate with similar minded professions.

The idea that you can make your own best choices because you feed upon common held resentment of a DMV style bureaucrat is the same logical fallacy as believing you're an above average driver while everyone else on the road is trash.

If all Big Government leads to failure, then small towns should outpace large cities in terms of efficiency and best bang for your buck services. Instead they're wastelands and money pits federal and state (by virtue of Federal funding) pour in.

Healthcare is exactly one of these cases. Most salaried workers don't even manage their own healthcare, so why is there enough political resistance with the belief that they can? There's several decades of labyrinthine regulations that corporations and well meaning lawmakers have put in that even some health experts can't decipher the fine print on coverage. I'm not saying Obamacare is the answer, but pre Obamacare is a deluded fantasy incepted in people's mind because they might had it easy then, and their delusion is to assume they could readily roll up their sleaves turn it back to the good ol days AND save hundreds of billions.

The people's resistance to reform here is pretty sad and shows how much sway money can buy.

 

"Doesn't work" -- here is a key point. What does "work" mean?

Let's say your solution "works" in some sense. But if you boil it down, it comes down to whether one is willing to accept higher taxes for greater coverage of the populace. I'm not. My view is: One wins health insurance in the marketplace, just as one wins a higher salary in the marketplace, by working hard and achieving more.

Your goal is to get everyone covered. My goal is to get the government off my back, in terms of taxes and otherwise.

BTW, I'm not sure that I agree that "trickle-down" economics does not work. Our marketplace is pretty much a meritocracy, sometimes ruthlessly so. But if one can adapt to the new economy, one can reap tremendous rewards -- including health insurance coverage.

 

Why don't provide some kind of link, like I did? But this is probably a tempest in a teapot.

 

Unregulated market-based healthcare doesn't work for several reasons, here are a couple:
- A healthcare provider that is profit driven cannot escape the fact that the most profitable action is to deny care to paying customers. If the competitive landscape is only for-profit providers, then there is a race to zero care, especially in the lobbying/legislative sector.
- Healthcare isn't a luxury sales item like a car or a gadget, and the usual rules of responsibility/accountability don't apply. With a car, if you overspend for a poor or inappropriate product, the consequences lie upon the irresponsible buyer. In healthcare, you could do everything right, make the healthy choices, drive safe, and still have something awful happen to you and be in need of care - a car accident that isn't your fault, Parkinson's, lymphoma, auto immune diseases, on and on. Principles of individual responsibility can't account for the numerous accidents and diseases that occur in normal life. Injury, disease and death come for us all eventually.

I'm not sure what it is about "better care for less money" you don't understand. You pay less, you get more healthcare.
From your writing, it seems you think that in a universal system, everybody is paying what Americans are already paying, plus a tax. If that were true, most of the developed world wouldn't be getting better outcomes for much less percentage of GDP spent.
The residents of developed nations are paying less than Americans for healthcare; in most cases a lot less.
My impression is you sprinkle magic libertarian dust on payments that are federally mandated, and then somehow it costs more. There's no magic. It costs less.

Actually, I'm wrong- there is a case where some are paying more: the young people who think they'll live forever and never meet misfortune because they haven't yet and feel that gambling without insurance will pay off. They'll have to pay in, whereas in the market system a lot of them will choose not to, until one day they get injured or discover they have melanoma and start a gofundme for 50,000 bucks to save themselves.

If was possible to make a healthcare system that worked under those principles, I'd love it. I love elegant market-based solutions. Unfortunately, it doesn't work in healthcare.

Well, trickle-down economics "works" if your goal is to expand the wealth of the already wealthy exponentially. But it's a misnomer. The name was an attempt to convince the public that prioritizing the wealth of the wealthy would eventually see the benefits trickle down to the middle class. Everybody, including the middle and the right, now know this is a lie. (Notice nobody says trickle-down anymore? Now they say "job creators.") The data is conclusive. Even contemporary conservatives acknowledge that wealth has greatly stratified, they just don't think it's bad. But almost no one still believes the myth that making the rich richer will "trickle down" to the average American.

 

If you hit the "bad luck" lottery (debilitating and expensive health condition or gap in catastrophic coverage), do you expect government or charity sponsored welfare to bail you out? Or you just going to "suck it up", and die on the streets with your abstract principles in tact? Maybe you can live in quiet family shame if you're lucky.

Let's remind ourselves why we despise telecom companies like verizon, comcast or at&t, and question why we want healthcare companies to "be more like them" on a macro scale. Are they "more efficient" or "more attuned to customer needs"? It seems like they're just the only game in regions larger than most countries that all Americans are funneled into with an eye on stock value rather than customer service.

Healthcare companies get away with this BS because your neighbor or family member isn't the example on the news for our farce of an affordable healthcare system. As long as it doesn't happen to you or someone you know, it's just a statistic.

Quite odd that we now have a huge "opioid epidemic plaguing our country", when people in corn fed flyover states started having the problem. "OH BUT THINK OF THE NEWBORN BABIES THAT ARE ADDICTED!!"

Do they mean...crack babies?

I guess fentanyl babies doesn't have that same fear mongering symbolism some Americans have an ear for.

 

Well, I could only say what I have said before: a) life isn't fair b) I hear what you are saying about insurance companies -- but how about get rid of them or don't use them? As I have said, there are very likely multiple reasons that medical costs are high, but insurance companies -- and customers who resort to them often -- are a huge part of the problem. You seem to recognize this, but our conclusions go in opposite directions from that point.

As a society, we didn't use to go to the doctor all the time. Now, for some reason, we do (even elderly people didn't go to the doctor constantly, say 40-50 years ago). The reason for all this would probably require a long essay from somebody.

 

BTW, I agree that Comcast sux. At least, in their service. And the opiod thing is largely media hype. Not sure what the point about crack babies is, but that too was widely reported on in the 80s and 90s.

 

It boils down more to whether everyone would rather pay $10 in health insurance premiums and deductibles or $9 in taxes.

 

I don't understand this...Are you saying that you aren't insured? It's great to be young and healthy.

People can admit that life isn't fair while acknowledging that our nation has the capacity to provide decency to the sick or ill. It's why most forms of child labor is illegal compared to 50 years ago and literacy and life expectancy increased in that time span. These are all benefits Americans take for granted that aren't commonplace nor natural, but is part and parcel to their expectations of "exceptionalism".

We used to throw **** and piss on the sidewalk in the good old days before the government decided to do something about it