True but you can use an idealist(or extremist) view to move something as far your way as possible. Kinda like starting at Z vs A and ending with M rather than starting at C vs A and ending with B.Cheeze_Pavilion said:
Confused Briton seeks clarification from right -wing Americans
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I've already proffered my explanation of why stuff works the way it does in the US. Time for barbs now.
In this case, it is transparently obvious that birthers/deathers/teabaggers (all the same group) are not interested in any kind of civil discourse. Their disagreements and grievances aren't actually about healthcare or birth certificate or even taxes at all. It's just "culture wars" and crypto-racism.
The party's elected and social leaders support this idiocy because it fits into their chosen political strategy, which is to resist every action taken by the White House or the legislative majority in the hopes of sandbagging them right out the gate and turning that stagnation into a political comeback in 2010 or 2012. (Okay, okay, a few of the party's leaders aren't quite lying: they actually are grade-A idiots who half-believe the gibberish they're spouting and go to bed at night thinking they are "great Americans".) There's something like half a dozen Republican congressfolk who do anything other than cling to this "insurgeny" strategy -- and those few men and women are the only ones actually representing anything even vaguely resembling an honest "conservative" position in any of these debates.
Right now, the best thing you can say about any Republican that isn't part of the frothing hate machine is that he or she is being exploited.
There's no way to meaningfully engage the Republican position without saying this stuff. If you bullshit your way around it to avoid offending people, you're letting them dominate the framing of the debate -- which is exactly the strategy that the modern conservative movement has used very successfully ever since the Reagan era to skew debate in their favor long before it even starts.
-- Alex
The rational, well-considered response on this particular issue is hate.scotth266 said:
In this case, it is transparently obvious that birthers/deathers/teabaggers (all the same group) are not interested in any kind of civil discourse. Their disagreements and grievances aren't actually about healthcare or birth certificate or even taxes at all. It's just "culture wars" and crypto-racism.
The party's elected and social leaders support this idiocy because it fits into their chosen political strategy, which is to resist every action taken by the White House or the legislative majority in the hopes of sandbagging them right out the gate and turning that stagnation into a political comeback in 2010 or 2012. (Okay, okay, a few of the party's leaders aren't quite lying: they actually are grade-A idiots who half-believe the gibberish they're spouting and go to bed at night thinking they are "great Americans".) There's something like half a dozen Republican congressfolk who do anything other than cling to this "insurgeny" strategy -- and those few men and women are the only ones actually representing anything even vaguely resembling an honest "conservative" position in any of these debates.
Right now, the best thing you can say about any Republican that isn't part of the frothing hate machine is that he or she is being exploited.
There's no way to meaningfully engage the Republican position without saying this stuff. If you bullshit your way around it to avoid offending people, you're letting them dominate the framing of the debate -- which is exactly the strategy that the modern conservative movement has used very successfully ever since the Reagan era to skew debate in their favor long before it even starts.
-- Alex
I'm a yank. I understand your question and I appologize for my countrymen. You see, a great many Americans, sadly, are ignorant bleeting sheep who also think the Earth is only 6,000 years old.
The hearsay that "The British health system is terrible", "rationed care", "people die on waiting lists for surgery" and so forth is typical of right-wing word of mouth propaganda, which then becomes common wisdom among the right and are never factually verified. So its not you, its us. The American Right has become a hive of know-nothing, nativist, conspiracy theorist lunacy.
Fortunately, based on party identification statistics recently provided by Gallup, Texas is now a swing state and red states have nowhere near enough electoral votes, so the next election is Obama's to lose. A warning though, the smaller the Republican Party gets, the crazier they'll become, so I appoligize in advance for whatever crazy shit they'll say in the future.
The hearsay that "The British health system is terrible", "rationed care", "people die on waiting lists for surgery" and so forth is typical of right-wing word of mouth propaganda, which then becomes common wisdom among the right and are never factually verified. So its not you, its us. The American Right has become a hive of know-nothing, nativist, conspiracy theorist lunacy.
Fortunately, based on party identification statistics recently provided by Gallup, Texas is now a swing state and red states have nowhere near enough electoral votes, so the next election is Obama's to lose. A warning though, the smaller the Republican Party gets, the crazier they'll become, so I appoligize in advance for whatever crazy shit they'll say in the future.
Wow. This is succinct and sensible. If anyone ever asked me about this, I'm going to use this as my opinion.Faps said:
OP: Not having direct experience but on TV I seen american people not seeking medical attention for things that clearly need it.
I don't think Medicaid is working as a national system.
I tried to watch Michael Moore's Sicko but I found it boring and turned it off.
Since I am the (likely)closest thing to a level headed "conservative" that you are going to find on this website, I will attempt to answer your question, because I bet that about 80% of the posts on this thread are going to say something like this " . . because all conservatives are hateful, gay bashing, fear and war mongering slavering idiots who will believe anything Rush Limbaugh tells them. . . and bush was an idiot" Did I get it right? I haven't even looked to see but I bet somebody on here posted that almost word for word.Squarez said:
Interestingly enough this is a subject that I don't really care too much about. But from what I understand it is that conservatives don't want government health care because it takes money out of the equation. Money is what has allowed America to pioneer most of today's greatest advances in medical science. America is where everyone else in the world comes to get the best medical care. ( I am not saying that America has pioneered every advance, or that America is the only country people go to for health care) but it is where most people come for most things. The reason is simple, the medical corporations make an ass load of money that way. They take some of that money and put it back into medical research, so that they can have the biggest, best, piece of medical crap that can be found, and then charge people an arm and a leg to use it.
It's unfortunate, but true, and sadly it works pretty well. If a government run health care system is in place then the money is reduced by a good amount. It is no longer is cost efficient to put an ass load of money into research, if you can't charge people ridiculous sums of money to use it. Now, maybe Britain's health care system works because your politians aren't screwing each other over all the time, or maybe they are, but here in America the politians rarely take enough time from sticking their thumbs up their asses to get anything done. Take our school system for example, it's been government run for years, and it hasn't gotten better, if anything, it has gotten worse. This is what the conservatives are afraid of.
Oh, and by the way, I love how you said that conservatives are wealthy. It's amazing to see news programs that depict conservatives as the most wealthy people in America who are out to steal everyone's money, and then in the next news cast depict them as uneducated inbred hillbillies. I am confused, will the real conservative please stand up?
Social security is untouchable because it is successful. Can you actually imagine what poor areas of America would be like if it wasn't for social security?Imat said:
If nationalized healthcare doesn't work, is America the only industrialised nation in the world not to have it and why is nationalized healthcare so popular in all the countries that have it that no politician would ever consider removing it?
I would love you to show me the sound and reasoned arguments that any Republican or Conservative commentator has presented as to why a nationalized universal healthcare system is a bad thing.
Obama, and (former president) Clinton. Sorry to break it to you, but anytime I've questioned something Obama or Clinton has said or done I have gotten flack from a radical democrat, and every word he speaks seems to be like honey to the slobbering masses. On the flip side, they're not idiots, but they're not the gods they really, really are made out to be.Cheeze_Pavilion said:
Rush Limbaugh isn't exactly patron saint of the republicans.
However, in reference to a previous post of yours.. .this one:
I have to argue that it has nothing to do with your side or their side when it comes to ideological intolerance. I have argued with republicans, and I have argued with democrats, and both sides have many people who reach a point of zealotry where I look at them and they've opened their eyes really wide, move their head really vigorously, and don't listen to anything that disagrees with them. It's a situation that has made me stop discussing politics because I go to discuss, not to be ranted at.Cheeze_Pavilion said:
And the best part is , everyone on ONE side dismisses my argument because I'm young. "oh, you don't have the wisdom on this issue."
The last time I got that, I looked at that person and informed them, "And yet you wonder why young people don't vote."
And these people are always democrats.
So no, your argument that just because you are a logical, thinking and well researched human being does not allow you to conclude that all of your half of the political spectrum are logical, thinking and well researched human beings.
Firefighting for example. If a poor neighbourhood catches fire why should the rich have to pay to put it out? I find the argument that because some people didn't try to become doctors or lawyers then they should die earlier than they have to, just so...grrrr. I can't even explain it except with the phrase morally repugnant. And this is from someone like me, who's always a bit wary of tax hikes and believes privatisation is (mostly) good.Cheeze_Pavilion said:
There will always, always be those who are poor relative to the rest of the country, and because health care prices in a private system are determined by peoples' ability to pay, the poor will always be stiffed.
Since I'm back I'll try to recall The Undercover Economist's take on private health care. It began with examining second-hand cars. Why can you never buy a good second-hand car? Because the moment it's second-hand no one will pay anywhere near as much for it as they would for a brand new one - they just don't know what's been done to it. Even if it were bought yesterday - especially if it were bought yesterday - the price would be much lower. Knowing this, no one who has a good second-hand car will sell it. Why do so when you'll get a fraction of its real worth? Because of this, the only cars on the market are bad ones; which pulls the price lower; which means that even fewer good second-hand cars will be sold; and so on.
There are a few ways to deal with this problem, but they're all suboptimal.
The first is to become a trustworthy seller. How do you become trustworthy? By selling lots of second-hand cars openly and having a big store. When you've got a big property people are comforted that you aren't a fly-by-night dealer; they'll pay more, safe in the knowledge that either the car's good or you'll be amenable to taking it back for the sake of your reputation.* This is a seller side solution: become respectable.
The other kind of solution is to gather as much information about the car as possible. How far has it gone? What's that noise? Can I poke around the engine? Those tyres look flat. Etc. The more you know about the car the better you can judge its worth. This is a buyer side solution: figure out what you're getting into. Unfortunately, it's very hard to be 100% sure about a car, so second-hand cars are still cheap and crappy by and large.
Now apply this to health care. In this case the buyer is actually the insurer and the buyer is the insuree. The insuree is selling their body and saying "Here it is, can you insure it?" The insurer looks at that body and says "How much will that cost me?" The insuree, who has a natural incentive to keep his premiums down, will be wary of saying how risky insuring his body will be. And he can't make himself respectable since you can't 'buy a big car lot' in the case of health care. So the insurer has to make money off people whose costs he doesn't know ahead of time. How does he respond to this?
First, he tries to figure out as much about each person as he can. Do you have a history of heart disease? Are you a smoker? Any mental illnesses in your family? And so on. As he gains greater knowledge of the insuree he can raise prices for that insuree in particular. There are two problems with this, though. First, it's inadequate. No one has a crystal ball they can look into to figure out their illnesses ahead of time. (If that were true a lot of the medical industry would be redundant!) So the insurer can never be sure how much money this insuree will cost him. (We'll return to what that means later.) Second, it has the same effect on health insurance as it did on cars: the more you know about a car the more accurate you can be about its price. The closer you are to understanding how sick someone will be over their life, the closer their insurance bill will be to the actual cost of the medical care they'll receive! Faced with that proposition, why would any of us bother with insurance companies? We're really just putting money into a bank that we'll withdraw in the hope that it will cover the treatment we need. If it doesn't (because of section 32c** in your coverage plan) then you'd have been better of with the bank. Every step closer insurance companies get to perfect knowledge, the closer they are to charging what you would have paid anyway.
Since ICs don't have perfect knowledge about your future (and thank god for that!) their only possible response is to charge everybody more. They know that they're insuring a whole bunch of sickly people who'll suck more money out of them than they pay, so everybody will have to pay the balance for these people***. In response, those who are young or healthy or poor (or a combination of those) will opt out, since they won't see the point of paying inflated premiums for something they probably won't use. This means there's a greater proportion of leeches to profit-making-propositions so ICs have to raise everyone's premiums again, and so on and so forth. Pretty soon you're left with three groups: the sick, who know any price is worth it; the rich, who can afford any price; and the comfortable, who know the value of insurance and happen to have money for a plan. Meanwhile, ICs are missing out on a swathe of the market - the poor, who could still pay something if it weren't so damned expensive; and the healthy and foolish, who could afford it but decide it's not worth it at its current expense.
Nobody's happy, and people are dying because a wholly private system is fundamentally flawed.
*Incidentally, this is why banks are big marble affairs. When you've built your house out of marble it's pretty clear you aren't going anywhere.
**Stiffing you is another way insurance companies make their profits and keep premiums down.
***This is one of the reasons I dislike the question "Why should I pay for someone else's health care?" If you're relatively healthy and have insurance you already are. You're paying for all the sick bastards who are leeching (quite understandably) off the private system.
public health does suck i'm australian, I have swine flu I was waiting for hours in a room with a stupid mask on.
but its better than nothing.
Damn Republicans!!!!
but its better than nothing.
Damn Republicans!!!!
your new point has nothing to do with my argument. Think about it. Would Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, or Glenn Beck be so widely known and in some cases respected if they were complete dunces? I know you are tempted to answer yes but realistically the answer is no. Republicans can think too, and I have listened to them become enraged as their senators failed to do what was asked of them. Perhaps it is because Republicans tend to have more people who fashion themselves as independent thinkers.Cheeze_Pavilion said:
Thus, they wouldn't listen to Limbaugh or Fox if all they received for their trouble was drivel.
Your argument kinda invalidates itself, as it automatically assumes your opinion is fact.