Is healthcare a right? why or why not?

[Gadawg73]

Even more deaths could be prevented by free market healthcare. Why do you see government as this benevolent force? Do you honestly think politicians and bureaucrats are motivated by altruism?

You assume that if government controls healthcare, more lives will be saved. Considering they have utterly failed when it comes to our education, what makes you think they will do any better with our health? Would you put government in charge of making iphones?

How is over 1000 DIFFERENT insurance companies controlling health care any better?
And it would not be government controlling the health care. It would BE YOU AND I controlling it.
Which does not happen now. The insurance companies control it.

Your mistake is assuming we currently have free market healthcare. We have corporatist, fascist healthcare in this country.


1. Mandates
Layers of regulation plague every aspect of medical care and health insurance in America. In the health-insurance industry, for instance, each state imposes dozens of regulatory mandates on health insurers, requiring them to include coverage of everything from massage therapy to hair implants. The reason for mandates is that the message-therapy and hair-implant industries (and many others) hire lobbyists to bribe state legislators to require insurers to cover their particular practice if they want to sell insurance within a state. In other words, it gives these companies a guaranteed market, because insurance cannot be offered without covering their products.

Each mandate increases the cost of health insurance and probably increases the typical health-insurance policy by hundreds, or thousands, of dollars yearly. Not to mention that if a company providing a healthcare service has customers that are forced to buy from it, it has less incentive to keep costs down because it can never lose its buyers (health insurance companies mandated to buy from them).

The state also creates state-wide cartels with laws prohibiting the portability of some aspects of health insurance. (For example, some employer-provided health insurance covers pharmaceuticals in Maryland, but not in other states.). Cartelization always raises prices higher than they normally should or would be.

2. Government grants hospitals monopolies
Having taken over most of the hospital industry, government-run or government-subsidized hospitals have created regional monopoly power for themselves with so-called "certificate-of-need" (CON) regulation. How this regulatory scam works is that an existing hospital in an area will give itself the legal "right" to decide whether there is a legitimate "need" for more hospitals. They have given themselves, in other words, the right to veto new competition in the hospital industry. It is as if the Microsoft Corporation had a legal right to veto new competition in the computer industry.

Not surprisingly, research has shown that CON regulation has increased hospital costs. CON regulation is also used to block competition in various healthcare professions as well, from nursing to home healthcare.

3. AMA licensing restricts the supply of doctors, granting them monopoly profits.
Physicians have long enjoyed a degree of monopoly power derived from state legislatures that delegate to the American Medical Association (the doctors' union) the "right" to limit entry into medical schools through accreditation. Only graduates of accredited (by the AMA) medical schools are licensed to practice medicine. The AMA has used these state-granted privileges to limit both the number of medical schools and the number of medical-school graduates. The reduced supply of doctors drives up the price of medical care and the income of AMA members. Hundreds of other health professions limit entry with the help of occupational licensing regulation, the primary effect of which is to create monopoly profits, not to ensure quality of care.

4. FDA protects status-quo pharmaceutical companies by banning products that compete with existing companies
Government regulation of pharmaceuticals and medical devices, primarily by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), increases healthcare costs, denies the benefits of myriad helpful drugs and devices, and creates monopoly power. It has literally been responsible for the premature death of thousands of Americans who have been deprived of drugs that were long available to people in other countries.

FDA bureaucrats are extremely risk averse: On the one hand, it costs them nothing personally to delay a life-saving drug for years, if not decades, by demanding test after test. On the other hand, if they permit a drug to enter the marketplace that turns out to be dangerous, it is a public-relations disaster for the agency, which it does not want to be associated with. Consequently, the entrance of new drugs and medical devices onto the market is often delayed by years, costing many lives and inflicting much needless pain on those already suffering, while driving up prices.

The FDA also makes the market for pharmaceuticals less competitive by restricting what advertising may say for myriad drugs — even aspirin. New drugs do consumers no good if they do not know about them. Advertising restrictions imposed by the FDA, therefore, prop up the profits of incumbent drug marketers at the expense of newcomers in the industry and of consumers.

5. Government created liability crisis
The government's legal system is also responsible for what used to be called "the liability crisis." The genesis of this crisis began in the 1960s. The government courts began accepting the Chicago School Law and Economics argument that assigning all liability in product-liability cases to manufacturers would be a good way to minimize the "social costs" of accidents. Manufacturers know more about products such as medical devices than anyone else, the argument went, so contract law and shared responsibility for accidents with the users of the products were thrown out the window.

So, when accidents occur, slick trial lawyers have had an easy time convincing dumbed-down juries to award millions, or hundreds of millions, of dollars in liability lawsuits. These lawsuits have bankrupted the manufacturers of many medical devices, while convincing others that the devices are too risky to make. The effect on the healthcare consumer is poorer healthcare and higher prices.

Taken from this article.

On every level--local, state, and federal--government is in bed with all of the healthcare players and meddling in our lives. Government mandates certain services be covered by insurers and plans, a one size fits all policy giving suppliers of that service a guaranteed market, thus driving up prices. CON regulation creates hospital monopolies that prevent competition and lead to higher prices and lower quality service. The American Medical Association artificially restricts the supply of doctors, protecting their profits and leading to higher prices. The FDA serves to keep current pharmaceutical companies in charge, limiting innovation and advertising thus keeping prices high. Government mandating that manufacuruers are liable scares out innovation, and forces higher prices of medical devices to cover for legal costs.

Insurance is more expensive, hospital care is more expensive, doctors are more expensive, drugs are more expensive, and medical devices are more expensive all because of government interference in the industry. If the free market causes all these rising prices, why is it that computer technology keeps getting cheaper? Because we have much more of a free market in that industry.

Common problem in all of this? Government. The companies are all acting as scumbags as well, but without government setting up the framework they would not be able to.

And if government healthcare means you and I controlling healthcare, riddle me this. Do you and I control the wars overseas? In a free market, companies can only make money if they get people to buy their product. Government can just take our money and say deal with it.

No sir, I agree with most of what you state.
And it would be insurance companies and their lobbyists that bribe the government into what we receive NOW.
And Americans LOVE IT!

 

[Gadawg73]

Who said government was an intolerable evil? To paraphrase Thomas Paine, government in its best state is a necessary evil; when embraced by a bunch of dolts who forget that it's evil at all, it then becomes an intolerable evil.

And no, nanny government providing personal items - and your personal healthcare IS a personal item; I don't benefit in the slightest from you living or dying - that you should provide yourself is only "part of that equation" because of a bunch of lazy, selfish freaks who love the idea of getting something for nothing.

You don't think preventable deaths that could be prevented by government assisted health care wouldn't benefit you and society both? If so, Ebenezer Scrooge has nothing on conservatives.

Not really, and not just because I don't believe for a second that there will be any measurable increase in any such thing. I realize that leftists have this odd notion that people are just dropping dead in the streets out there, totally ignored by people who step over them to get to their high rises and power lunches, but you might want to rejoin us in Reality Land for a while.

I hate to break it to you, Sparky, but it makes no difference to my life if you die or not. Likewise, I have trouble believing that people who cannot and will not provide for their own medical care, who will just languish and let themselves die without Nanny Government to care for them, were ever contributing anything to society that will be missed.

By the way, Sparky, YOU are the one espousing Scrooge's point, not me. He didn't want to give PERSONAL charity because there were already PUBLIC charities for the indigent. And here you are, advocating public charity over personal, just like him.

If you want to quote literature to support your point, you might try actually READING IT FIRST. Frigging illiterate public school graduate leftists.

The current model we have is for disease care. More specialists each and every year and most of them cater to seniors.
In 2010 55% of ALL HEALTH CARE DOLLARS in America were spent on 4% of the population, 90% of them over the age of 65.
And 7 0UT OF 8 of the diseases they were treated for with that 55% of ALL HEALTH CARE DOLLARS were PREVENTABLE DISEASES!!!
To the tune of over 200K in taxpayer dollars in the last 5 years of a seniors' life on AVERAGE.
We do not have health care here anymore. WE HAVE DISEASE CARE.
Wake the hell up. The numbers do not lie.
And the doctors love it.

 

[ShackledNation]

How is over 1000 DIFFERENT insurance companies controlling health care any better?
And it would not be government controlling the health care. It would BE YOU AND I controlling it.
Which does not happen now. The insurance companies control it.

Your mistake is assuming we currently have free market healthcare. We have corporatist, fascist healthcare in this country.


1. Mandates
Layers of regulation plague every aspect of medical care and health insurance in America. In the health-insurance industry, for instance, each state imposes dozens of regulatory mandates on health insurers, requiring them to include coverage of everything from massage therapy to hair implants. The reason for mandates is that the message-therapy and hair-implant industries (and many others) hire lobbyists to bribe state legislators to require insurers to cover their particular practice if they want to sell insurance within a state. In other words, it gives these companies a guaranteed market, because insurance cannot be offered without covering their products.

Each mandate increases the cost of health insurance and probably increases the typical health-insurance policy by hundreds, or thousands, of dollars yearly. Not to mention that if a company providing a healthcare service has customers that are forced to buy from it, it has less incentive to keep costs down because it can never lose its buyers (health insurance companies mandated to buy from them).

The state also creates state-wide cartels with laws prohibiting the portability of some aspects of health insurance. (For example, some employer-provided health insurance covers pharmaceuticals in Maryland, but not in other states.). Cartelization always raises prices higher than they normally should or would be.

2. Government grants hospitals monopolies
Having taken over most of the hospital industry, government-run or government-subsidized hospitals have created regional monopoly power for themselves with so-called "certificate-of-need" (CON) regulation. How this regulatory scam works is that an existing hospital in an area will give itself the legal "right" to decide whether there is a legitimate "need" for more hospitals. They have given themselves, in other words, the right to veto new competition in the hospital industry. It is as if the Microsoft Corporation had a legal right to veto new competition in the computer industry.

Not surprisingly, research has shown that CON regulation has increased hospital costs. CON regulation is also used to block competition in various healthcare professions as well, from nursing to home healthcare.

3. AMA licensing restricts the supply of doctors, granting them monopoly profits.
Physicians have long enjoyed a degree of monopoly power derived from state legislatures that delegate to the American Medical Association (the doctors' union) the "right" to limit entry into medical schools through accreditation. Only graduates of accredited (by the AMA) medical schools are licensed to practice medicine. The AMA has used these state-granted privileges to limit both the number of medical schools and the number of medical-school graduates. The reduced supply of doctors drives up the price of medical care and the income of AMA members. Hundreds of other health professions limit entry with the help of occupational licensing regulation, the primary effect of which is to create monopoly profits, not to ensure quality of care.

4. FDA protects status-quo pharmaceutical companies by banning products that compete with existing companies
Government regulation of pharmaceuticals and medical devices, primarily by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), increases healthcare costs, denies the benefits of myriad helpful drugs and devices, and creates monopoly power. It has literally been responsible for the premature death of thousands of Americans who have been deprived of drugs that were long available to people in other countries.

FDA bureaucrats are extremely risk averse: On the one hand, it costs them nothing personally to delay a life-saving drug for years, if not decades, by demanding test after test. On the other hand, if they permit a drug to enter the marketplace that turns out to be dangerous, it is a public-relations disaster for the agency, which it does not want to be associated with. Consequently, the entrance of new drugs and medical devices onto the market is often delayed by years, costing many lives and inflicting much needless pain on those already suffering, while driving up prices.

The FDA also makes the market for pharmaceuticals less competitive by restricting what advertising may say for myriad drugs — even aspirin. New drugs do consumers no good if they do not know about them. Advertising restrictions imposed by the FDA, therefore, prop up the profits of incumbent drug marketers at the expense of newcomers in the industry and of consumers.

5. Government created liability crisis
The government's legal system is also responsible for what used to be called "the liability crisis." The genesis of this crisis began in the 1960s. The government courts began accepting the Chicago School Law and Economics argument that assigning all liability in product-liability cases to manufacturers would be a good way to minimize the "social costs" of accidents. Manufacturers know more about products such as medical devices than anyone else, the argument went, so contract law and shared responsibility for accidents with the users of the products were thrown out the window.

So, when accidents occur, slick trial lawyers have had an easy time convincing dumbed-down juries to award millions, or hundreds of millions, of dollars in liability lawsuits. These lawsuits have bankrupted the manufacturers of many medical devices, while convincing others that the devices are too risky to make. The effect on the healthcare consumer is poorer healthcare and higher prices.

Taken from this article.

On every level--local, state, and federal--government is in bed with all of the healthcare players and meddling in our lives. Government mandates certain services be covered by insurers and plans, a one size fits all policy giving suppliers of that service a guaranteed market, thus driving up prices. CON regulation creates hospital monopolies that prevent competition and lead to higher prices and lower quality service. The American Medical Association artificially restricts the supply of doctors, protecting their profits and leading to higher prices. The FDA serves to keep current pharmaceutical companies in charge, limiting innovation and advertising thus keeping prices high. Government mandating that manufacuruers are liable scares out innovation, and forces higher prices of medical devices to cover for legal costs.

Insurance is more expensive, hospital care is more expensive, doctors are more expensive, drugs are more expensive, and medical devices are more expensive all because of government interference in the industry. If the free market causes all these rising prices, why is it that computer technology keeps getting cheaper? Because we have much more of a free market in that industry.

Common problem in all of this? Government. The companies are all acting as scumbags as well, but without government setting up the framework they would not be able to.

And if government healthcare means you and I controlling healthcare, riddle me this. Do you and I control the wars overseas? In a free market, companies can only make money if they get people to buy their product. Government can just take our money and say deal with it.

No sir, I agree with most of what you state.
And it would be insurance companies and their lobbyists that bribe the government into what we receive NOW.
And Americans LOVE IT!

Americans surely do not love it. They are faced with higher insurance prices and lower quality care than would otherwise exist. The special interests love it. It would be the government that is acting outside of its constitutional rights in giving such benefits in the first place. The solution to the problem is getting the government out of all the above. The difficulty of such a task is an example of democracy and government failing, not the free market.

 

[SayMyName]

No one has a right to anything except what is in the Constitution, and judging from the days when it was enacted, that meant you can buy or barter or do whatever you want so long as you don't interfere with another's right to do the same.

If you want a pair of $200 Jordans, you buy them. If I decide to spend my money on medical insurance, I can do just that.

 

[beagle9]

No one has a right to anything except what is in the Constitution, and judging from the days when it was enacted, that meant you can buy or barter or do whatever you want so long as you don't interfere with another's right to do the same.

If you want a pair of $200 Jordans, you buy them. If I decide to spend my money on medical insurance, I can do just that.

And you feel that is the right of the insurance companies to operate in any state in the union, the way that they want to, by what is afforded or allowed them in those states, even if they are gouging the hey out of their customers, hoping that no one will intervene what so ever in the situation? My friend is paying $125 dollars a week right now for coverage for him and his wife, and he went to the doctor the other day for a serious problem he has with acid reflux (desease), where as the doctor gave him a prescription for Nexium to take, so he began taking the purple pill each day, and it brought huge relief and results towards his condition, but guess what, the insurance won't cover this pill for him to take now, so the cost is around $200.00 dollars a month if he wants to keep the pill going each day in which he cannot afford to do...So now I ask what good is insurance if one can't use it, and all one does is pay for it, but don't you dare use it now ?

 

[dblack]

And you feel that is the right of the insurance companies to operate in any state in the union, the way that they want to, by what is afforded or allowed them in those states, even if they are gouging the hey out of their customers, hoping that no one will intervene what so ever in the situation? My friend is paying $125 dollars a week right now for coverage for him and his wife, and he went to the doctor the other day for a serious problem he has with acid reflux (desease), where as the doctor gave him a prescription for Nexium to take, so he began taking the purple pill each day, and it brought huge relief and results towards his condition, but guess what, the insurance won't cover this pill for him to take now, so the cost is around $200.00 dollars a month if he wants to keep the pill going each day in which he cannot afford to do...So now I ask what good is insurance if one can't use it, and all one does is pay for it, but don't you dare use it now ?

Sure, as long as they're not committing fraud and, most importantly, as long as I'm not forced to do business with them.

 

[beagle9]

And you feel that is the right of the insurance companies to operate in any state in the union, the way that they want to, by what is afforded or allowed them in those states, even if they are gouging the hey out of their customers, hoping that no one will intervene what so ever in the situation? My friend is paying $125 dollars a week right now for coverage for him and his wife, and he went to the doctor the other day for a serious problem he has with acid reflux (desease), where as the doctor gave him a prescription for Nexium to take, so he began taking the purple pill each day, and it brought huge relief and results towards his condition, but guess what, the insurance won't cover this pill for him to take now, so the cost is around $200.00 dollars a month if he wants to keep the pill going each day in which he cannot afford to do...So now I ask what good is insurance if one can't use it, and all one does is pay for it, but don't you dare use it now ?

Sure, as long as they're not committing fraud and, most importantly, as long as I'm not forced to do business with them.

Ok, so lets say you need to do business with a health insurance company, but their is only one that you can do business with in which you can afford in your state, but then you find out that the reason you can afford it, is because the policy they will have written for you, is virtually no good & barely covers or pays for anything, and that really all you are doing by way of affordability, is giving what little bit of money you have in affordability, to a company that is not giving you an adequate policy for your health to be maintained in a quality way.

Is this ok or acceptable by you, when it comes to peoples lives, and isn't this a form of fraud perpetrated in the state when it comes to healthcare and a company gouging it's clients in which is allowed to exist in the state, where as the people are being misled or forced into dealing with predators who want money from them, but end up giving hardly nothing in return for that money that was taken from them ? These are real problems that have been attempted to be adressed, but many on the take want a blind eye turned towards such problems when it comes to these elections.

The people are tired of being played as fools, and these past elections have been showing this now.. Not enough is being done yet, but it is the peoples hopes that these issues will be adressed and will be dealt with by the next President right on and on, and if Obama meets with his continued rehetoric on the issues, while the republicans hide from it, then he wins again hands down. It's just that simple, because there are many who have been wiped out by the republicans and their greed, thus leading to some pretty bad things in this nation in concerns of, and yes the dems have had their hands in it also, but the dems are in the position of having a better human rights record on compassion, where as the repubs have been greedy tyrants for the last 20 or 30 years looking back now.

This nation is in a pickle, and no one soul knows the answer to it all, because many are still on the take for whom are in the cliques only, and their brainwashing has them voting with their wallets that are stuffed by the clique, but sadly they are in the minority when it comes to who has been hurt in this nation over time by it all, so the majority will place Obama back into the whitehouse again, because he will continue the class warfare found within these issues, while the repubs constantly cry fowl and cling to their greed, and not to their guns and religion as was claimed.

 

[logical4u]

You don't think preventable deaths that could be prevented by government assisted health care wouldn't benefit you and society both? If so, Ebenezer Scrooge has nothing on conservatives.

Not really, and not just because I don't believe for a second that there will be any measurable increase in any such thing. I realize that leftists have this odd notion that people are just dropping dead in the streets out there, totally ignored by people who step over them to get to their high rises and power lunches, but you might want to rejoin us in Reality Land for a while.

I hate to break it to you, Sparky, but it makes no difference to my life if you die or not. Likewise, I have trouble believing that people who cannot and will not provide for their own medical care, who will just languish and let themselves die without Nanny Government to care for them, were ever contributing anything to society that will be missed.

By the way, Sparky, YOU are the one espousing Scrooge's point, not me. He didn't want to give PERSONAL charity because there were already PUBLIC charities for the indigent. And here you are, advocating public charity over personal, just like him.

If you want to quote literature to support your point, you might try actually READING IT FIRST. Frigging illiterate public school graduate leftists.

The current model we have is for disease care. More specialists each and every year and most of them cater to seniors.
In 2010 55% of ALL HEALTH CARE DOLLARS in America were spent on 4% of the population, 90% of them over the age of 65.
And 7 0UT OF 8 of the diseases they were treated for with that 55% of ALL HEALTH CARE DOLLARS were PREVENTABLE DISEASES!!!
To the tune of over 200K in taxpayer dollars in the last 5 years of a seniors' life on AVERAGE.
We do not have health care here anymore. WE HAVE DISEASE CARE.
Wake the hell up. The numbers do not lie.
And the doctors love it.

This is "still" the USA. Are you suggesting that people be "told" where they can spend "their" money/benefits? So what if 4% of the population needs health care more than the rest of us. Are you suggesting (like the dear leader) that we just give those people pills, to assist their deaths and not "treat" them. Have you ever considered that the "elderly" supply the money, supply the experimental subjects, and do not demand the treatment be successful for diseases that were not even treated one hundred years ago. Are you suggesting that the jobs of all those treating the elderly, just stop? Medicare is the number one health insurance that denies benefits. Why don't we just ask the government to get out of health care and let competition make care more efficient, and less expensive?

 

[logical4u]

No one has a right to anything except what is in the Constitution, and judging from the days when it was enacted, that meant you can buy or barter or do whatever you want so long as you don't interfere with another's right to do the same.

If you want a pair of $200 Jordans, you buy them. If I decide to spend my money on medical insurance, I can do just that.

And you feel that is the right of the insurance companies to operate in any state in the union, the way that they want to, by what is afforded or allowed them in those states, even if they are gouging the hey out of their customers, hoping that no one will intervene what so ever in the situation? My friend is paying $125 dollars a week right now for coverage for him and his wife, and he went to the doctor the other day for a serious problem he has with acid reflux (desease), where as the doctor gave him a prescription for Nexium to take, so he began taking the purple pill each day, and it brought huge relief and results towards his condition, but guess what, the insurance won't cover this pill for him to take now, so the cost is around $200.00 dollars a month if he wants to keep the pill going each day in which he cannot afford to do...So now I ask what good is insurance if one can't use it, and all one does is pay for it, but don't you dare use it now ?

Medical insurance is not for regular health maintenance. It is for emergency or catastrophic care. Tell your buddy to skip nexium and eat an apple every night.

 

[logical4u]

And you feel that is the right of the insurance companies to operate in any state in the union, the way that they want to, by what is afforded or allowed them in those states, even if they are gouging the hey out of their customers, hoping that no one will intervene what so ever in the situation? My friend is paying $125 dollars a week right now for coverage for him and his wife, and he went to the doctor the other day for a serious problem he has with acid reflux (desease), where as the doctor gave him a prescription for Nexium to take, so he began taking the purple pill each day, and it brought huge relief and results towards his condition, but guess what, the insurance won't cover this pill for him to take now, so the cost is around $200.00 dollars a month if he wants to keep the pill going each day in which he cannot afford to do...So now I ask what good is insurance if one can't use it, and all one does is pay for it, but don't you dare use it now ?

Sure, as long as they're not committing fraud and, most importantly, as long as I'm not forced to do business with them.

Ok, so lets say you need to do business with a health insurance company, but their is only one that you can do business with in which you can afford in your state, but then you find out that the reason you can afford it, is because the policy they will have written for you, is virtually no good & barely covers or pays for anything, and that really all you are doing by way of affordability, is giving what little bit of money you have in affordability, to a company that is not giving you an adequate policy for your health to be maintained in a quality way.

Is this ok or acceptable by you, when it comes to peoples lives, and isn't this a form of fraud perpetrated in the state when it comes to healthcare and a company gouging it's clients in which is allowed to exist in the state, where as the people are being misled or forced into dealing with predators who want money from them, but end up giving hardly nothing in return for that money that was taken from them ? These are real problems that have been attempted to be adressed, but many on the take want a blind eye turned towards such problems when it comes to these elections.

The people are tired of being played as fools, and these past elections have been showing this now.. Not enough is being done yet, but it is the peoples hopes that these issues will be adressed and will be dealt with by the next President right on and on, and if Obama meets with his continued rehetoric on the issues, while the republicans hide from it, then he wins again hands down. It's just that simple, because there are many who have been wiped out by the republicans and their greed, thus leading to some pretty bad things in this nation in concerns of, and yes the dems have had their hands in it also, but the dems are in the position of having a better human rights record on compassion, where as the repubs have been greedy tyrants for the last 20 or 30 years looking back now.

This nation is in a pickle, and no one soul knows the answer to it all, because many are still on the take for whom are in the cliques only, and their brainwashing has them voting with their wallets that are stuffed by the clique, but sadly they are in the minority when it comes to who has been hurt in this nation over time by it all, so the majority will place Obama back into the whitehouse again, because he will continue the class warfare found within these issues, while the repubs constantly cry fowl and cling to their greed, and not to their guns and religion as was claimed.

The people that "have" insurance either worked harder to earn enough to get good coverage, or they took a job that paid insurance (not necessarily thrilled with the job). When kids are starting out (from high school), they usually do not need medical coverage (maybe catostrophic coverage for freak diseases). They either get a bare bones policy or none at all. As they get older, typically, they increase their skills and marketability to be able to afford what they want (along with medical insurance). It seems the same people that are "playing the system" (working jobs and not reporting their income) are now the ones screaming that life isn't fair, and they don't waaannnnaaa pay for their own health care. If you want to be someone's "toy", be good looking enough and appealing enough for someone to take you into their "care". I, as a taxpayer, do not want you, or need the additional burden of your care added to the responsibilities that I accepted as an adult (it isn't fair).

 

[madasheck]

Why don't we just ask the government to get out of health care and let competition make care more efficient, and less expensive?

Because it wouldn't. Asking the medical industry to regulate their prices to consumers is comedy at the extreme.

 

[beagle9]

No one has a right to anything except what is in the Constitution, and judging from the days when it was enacted, that meant you can buy or barter or do whatever you want so long as you don't interfere with another's right to do the same.

If you want a pair of $200 Jordans, you buy them. If I decide to spend my money on medical insurance, I can do just that.

And you feel that is the right of the insurance companies to operate in any state in the union, the way that they want to, by what is afforded or allowed them in those states, even if they are gouging the hey out of their customers, hoping that no one will intervene what so ever in the situation? My friend is paying $125 dollars a week right now for coverage for him and his wife, and he went to the doctor the other day for a serious problem he has with acid reflux (desease), where as the doctor gave him a prescription for Nexium to take, so he began taking the purple pill each day, and it brought huge relief and results towards his condition, but guess what, the insurance won't cover this pill for him to take now, so the cost is around $200.00 dollars a month if he wants to keep the pill going each day in which he cannot afford to do...So now I ask what good is insurance if one can't use it, and all one does is pay for it, but don't you dare use it now ?

Medical insurance is not for regular health maintenance. It is for emergency or catastrophic care. Tell your buddy to skip nexium and eat an apple every night.

Oh so you are suggesting that people listen to a person like you, tell them to eat an apple a day, yet to what maybe keep his symptoms away? Apples are full of acid ya know, and so now you have killed my buddy with your prescription coming from a repub who would rather tell someone something this crazy, by suggestion it is the alternative and is good for him when it would not be, and all in hopes that they would believe it (?) or is it that you should be someone who should be helping my friend fight for the services by what he is paying for, or no if you were that person, you would be attacking the aggregious bottom line of the insurance company, who is gouging my friend, and thus trying to give nothing back to him as far as product or service goes, and this regardless of what he is paying them for, so no you can't be that person can you, because the clique won't let you now will they?

 

[IndependntLogic]

Why do I ask? To me it seems to be the most fundamental part of why some advocate for universal health care and why some advocate for privatized healthcare. Every candidate on the dem ticket has a plan of some type for of universal or government run healthcare. So I have to think that most of them think it is a right. By extension then people basically have the right to good health it would seem.

The problem I have with it being a right is the concept of a 'right' itself. A 'right' like the right to free speech or right to bear arms is something that is provided you without any cost or requirment to obtain access to. You don't have to earn the right to free speech or pay a fee when you want to speak. The conundrum I have with healthcare is if it is your right, that is you are under no personal responsibility to provide it for yourself, then who's responsibility is it, and why? If I'm not paying for the services somone else must be. According to Hillary anyway that will be increased taxes on the rich. But wait healthcare is a right, so why should the rich be expected to pay for it? It's a right so isn't it suppossed to be free to them as well? Why should they be worried about their own health as well as those that can't pay for it?

Rush had a caller on today who was a female physician and basically asked the same question. Why is she, a provider of a service like any other service, expected to provide it a reduced rate or free all together? You can't control all aspects of your health anymore than you can control all aspects of your car working, but we expect people to pay to have their own car fixed even if not responsible for the problem, yet some have this expectation that when 'shit happens' where your health is concerned it's suppossed to be free to get 'fixed'.

Sure it's a right. It's amazing how easily The Machine has brain-washed so many Americans into believing that of all the things our tax money should go to, this isn't one of them. We're probably about the only country in the world whose citizens fell for that one.

 

[beagle9]

You don't think preventable deaths that could be prevented by government assisted health care wouldn't benefit you and society both? If so, Ebenezer Scrooge has nothing on conservatives.

Even more deaths could be prevented by free market healthcare. Why do you see government as this benevolent force? Do you honestly think politicians and bureaucrats are motivated by altruism?

You assume that if government controls healthcare, more lives will be saved. Considering they have utterly failed when it comes to our education, what makes you think they will do any better with our health? Would you put government in charge of making iphones?

Well, if we want to talk about preventable deaths, let's talk about people in socialized-medicine countries, who die while waiting for surgery because the wait times are so long. How's THAT for preventable?

Oh so what people do here instead, is just steal peoples money by taking way to much from them, or not paying enough when they could do much better by them, in order to have the money for their push towards the front of the line, while those in which they had held back by a corrupt way of class warfare, in which is conducted by them so precisely, are left to die out of sight and out of mind eh? This is what you support here as the alternative to other nations and their health care systems ?

 

[dblack]

why should it not be a right ?

we dun pay tax ntn ....

Good point.

 

[Wry Catcher]

Article X (the Tenth Amendment) "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people".

How are the people to decide? Is it time for major issues such as health care to be decided by a national Referendum? Are some issues so polluted by special interests money and too important to leave to members of Congress whose vote is may have been purchased, or who may have a personal/financial interest?

I know how I would vote on national health care, on making members of Congress place their assets in a blind trust, on an effort to move toward a greener energy policy, on campaign finance reform and on the matter of immigration. Yes, let real people decide, not the corporations whose sole purpose is to make money, many times at the expense of real people.

 

[SayMyName]

Article X (the Tenth Amendment) "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people".

How are the people to decide? Is it time for major issues such as health care to be decided by a national Referendum? Are some issues so polluted by special interests money and too important to leave to members of Congress whose vote is may have been purchased, or who may have a personal/financial interest?

I know how I would vote on national health care, on making members of Congress place their assets in a blind trust, on an effort to move toward a greener energy policy, on campaign finance reform and on the matter of immigration. Yes, let real people decide, not the corporations whose sole purpose is to make money, many times at the expense of real people.

This is exactly why the government must be reduced in size and scope. Remember, it was government that created corporations as "individuals." Before the 1900's, our government understood the dangers of corporations, and made sure they were dismantled after any one project that they were tasked to complete (e.g. Eerie Canal and others).

As governments size increases, so do corporations. You can vote anyway you want, but it will all remain the same unless you take the Holy Grail away that is sought after, and that is a larger government, with ever increasing number of people to be influenced for political favor.

Health care costs have risen as government has risen, along with the corporations in health that curry their favor.

Health care is not a right. It is a choice. One chooses to spend their money on being well, or they choose not to take such a path.

 

[NYcarbineer]

Basic healthcare, like a basic education, should be available to all regardless of their ability to pay.

 

[Cecilie1200]

And you feel that is the right of the insurance companies to operate in any state in the union, the way that they want to, by what is afforded or allowed them in those states, even if they are gouging the hey out of their customers, hoping that no one will intervene what so ever in the situation? My friend is paying $125 dollars a week right now for coverage for him and his wife, and he went to the doctor the other day for a serious problem he has with acid reflux (desease), where as the doctor gave him a prescription for Nexium to take, so he began taking the purple pill each day, and it brought huge relief and results towards his condition, but guess what, the insurance won't cover this pill for him to take now, so the cost is around $200.00 dollars a month if he wants to keep the pill going each day in which he cannot afford to do...So now I ask what good is insurance if one can't use it, and all one does is pay for it, but don't you dare use it now ?

Sure, as long as they're not committing fraud and, most importantly, as long as I'm not forced to do business with them.

Ok, so lets say you need to do business with a health insurance company, but their is only one that you can do business with in which you can afford in your state, but then you find out that the reason you can afford it, is because the policy they will have written for you, is virtually no good & barely covers or pays for anything, and that really all you are doing by way of affordability, is giving what little bit of money you have in affordability, to a company that is not giving you an adequate policy for your health to be maintained in a quality way.

Is this ok or acceptable by you, when it comes to peoples lives, and isn't this a form of fraud perpetrated in the state when it comes to healthcare and a company gouging it's clients in which is allowed to exist in the state, where as the people are being misled or forced into dealing with predators who want money from them, but end up giving hardly nothing in return for that money that was taken from them ? These are real problems that have been attempted to be adressed, but many on the take want a blind eye turned towards such problems when it comes to these elections.

The people are tired of being played as fools, and these past elections have been showing this now.. Not enough is being done yet, but it is the peoples hopes that these issues will be adressed and will be dealt with by the next President right on and on, and if Obama meets with his continued rehetoric on the issues, while the republicans hide from it, then he wins again hands down. It's just that simple, because there are many who have been wiped out by the republicans and their greed, thus leading to some pretty bad things in this nation in concerns of, and yes the dems have had their hands in it also, but the dems are in the position of having a better human rights record on compassion, where as the repubs have been greedy tyrants for the last 20 or 30 years looking back now.

This nation is in a pickle, and no one soul knows the answer to it all, because many are still on the take for whom are in the cliques only, and their brainwashing has them voting with their wallets that are stuffed by the clique, but sadly they are in the minority when it comes to who has been hurt in this nation over time by it all, so the majority will place Obama back into the whitehouse again, because he will continue the class warfare found within these issues, while the repubs constantly cry fowl and cling to their greed, and not to their guns and religion as was claimed.

Ahh, the ever-popular liberal ploy of "Let's set up a hypothetical situation that would never exist in the real world, and then discuss public policy based on THAT, rather than reality".

I have a better idea. Let's say the world works the way it ACTUALLY works, and people behave the way people ACTUALLY behave.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Why don't we just ask the government to get out of health care and let competition make care more efficient, and less expensive?

Because it wouldn't. Asking the medical industry to regulate their prices to consumers is comedy at the extreme.

Yes, that whole "competition controls the prices" thing NEVER works in any OTHER industry, so why would we think it would in medicine?

Have you always been this stupid, or was there a catastrophic head injury somewhere in your past? Perhaps THAT is why you're so eager to make other people pay to keep your worthless ass alive.