Do you support universal healthcare?

Epignosis wrote: Conor Fynes wrote: Yes. An unhealthy citizen ultimately costs more than initial medical care. Having a heart attack and dying is pretty cheap, I hear.

This is why we need death panels.

I really don't know.

Who knows how well it would work if the US tried anything close to universal health care? It would probably suck. I don't feel right looking for handouts from people, but at the same time I know that I can not afford any kind of insurance if I had to buy it or do without. I suppose I'm covered under my parent's plan now, but I'm not really comfortable with that, even though it's the best option currently.

I'm frustrated at a lot of things really. I've switched majors a lot, and switched universities a few times too trying to find what I want to do. God bless the mathematically talented and the engineers who had their hearts set on a high paying careers that are in demand. And yeah you can take the hard-nosed approach if you want and say I could always go for the high paying job like that. But I have no love of economics or math. Nothing I get pleasure out of will lead me to a highly lucrative career. Unless I eventually get a master's or something. Anyway, the roundabout point is that for the sin of being indecisive, or just not knowing who or what I am or envision myself as being, I'm decently in debt. Not jobless art student at a private college for 4 years level of debt, but still. Even with scholarships, i can't help but be in debt. It wouldn't be so much of a deal if I was close to getting a degree (oh I wish) and if that degree was in a high-paying field. But not so much. No one owes me a high-paying job, but I don't see how the oppressive cost of education is a workable thing.

No one can say it's easy to put yourself through college and not end up with the sh*t end of the stick at the end of the 4 5 years. Not that it should be easy, but you can only work so much, and have to pay for college and rent and food until you wonder whether the whole thing is geared to screw you for a decade to come.

...

Given that sh*t, that a ton of people have to deal with, it would be awfully nice for the many people who may not be fortunate enough to be under their parent's insurance plan--to at least have some assurance that they'd not be completely f**ked financially if they fell seriously ill or had to have surgery. Would be nice.

Slartibartfast wrote: Epignosis wrote: Conor Fynes wrote: Yes. An unhealthy citizen ultimately costs more than initial medical care. Having a heart attack and dying is pretty cheap, I hear. This is why we need death panels.

Can we privatize death panels?

Lozlan wrote: thellama73 wrote: Lozlan wrote: Slartibartfast wrote: I demand death panels and I want to be one of the ones who decides who lives and who dies.  Awesome.  As for the whole taxes=stealing thing...yeah, we've got a bit of a weird thing going on over here.  A goodly portion of the population seems to believe that the government is a huge, brooding, interfering beast full of nasty progressives that want to control their lives.  I'm not entirely certain what they mean when they claim this...although I had a family member tell me not a week ago that the government caused this latest recession in order to get more people on unemployment.  Now that they are on unemployment, they are beholden to the government.  Or something.  At any rate, my neo-con relatives seem to think that receiving government assistance will transform the lower class into a mob of zombies with a taste for upper-class flesh.  And then the government will.......well, I'm not entirely sure.  Even the conservatives seem a little vague on this point. Truth is, I would be more than happy for 60% of my income to be taken in taxes in order to fund universal health care, free college, etc.  This freakish predilection that neo-cons have for hoarding their wealth and measuring any cent they can pinch from the government is, in my humble opinion, kooky, paranoid, and sickly amusing.  Really, all you folk from outside the US...feel very, very lucky that you don't have to put up with hordes of Tea Party enthusiasts and Fox News pundits. Then why don't you donate 60% of your income to medical charities? Okay....really?  Really?  All right.  Three very good/excellent reasons. 1.  I do not trust charities in the slightest.  One of the sad side-effects of living in a society where there is no universal health care is the resultant explosion of 'charitable' organizations.  Never mind the fact that many charities are wedded to a moral stance, squander their money in highly suspect ways, and ultimately stick band-aids on circumstances where a full-blown metaphoric operation is required.  There are very few charities I would dare to trust with my money. 2.  Obviously what I was stating was that, were I to live in a society wherein paying 60% of my income in taxes was normative, I would gladly do it in order to assure the same basic services to every member of the population.  Including me.  However, since I do not live in such a society, your suggestion is meaningless.  I am calculating my own availing of those services into my willingness to pay higher taxes.  3.  I actually have no income, since I was recently fired in lieu of the salaried manager who actually made the mistake.  I applied for unemployment, but my claim was denied since I was fired.  Apparently the government wants to enslave us via unemployment, but not quite enough to disbelieve an employer's fraudulent claims.  Believe me, at this juncture I really would feel more comfortable if more aspects of my society were socialized.  You may use this admission to accuse me of supporting these positions solely based on my own sorry state if you really want to.

I find it strange that you don't trust charities with your money, but you do trust government. Government doesn't squander money in highly suspect ways? Government doesn't opt for quick fixes when something more comprehensive is required? If you had removed the word "charities" from your post, I would have thought you were talking about government.

I was going to say that it's pretty easy to be taxed 60% of $0, but your last sentence spoiled my fun. 

Hey, look, we can't let the facts get in the way of political philosophy now can we?

Edited by Slartibartfast - September 23 2010 at 23:04

 

Epignosis wrote: Poor people also spend about 9% of their income on lottery tickets.

I was bored the other day and I decided that I had never won anything in my life gambling, so I was going to blow some money on the dollar scratch offs. I wasn't winning anything (the game I was initially playing was rigged) and I got pissed and went a little crazy, even though I knew it was stupid. I finally stopped after losing like $20 because I was passing the point into getting really stupid, although I did win $7 back. Let me tell you, those things are evil. That it was a machine instead of behind the counter enabled impulse irrationality because you didn't have to consider what someone else thought of you, and they print them so there are multiple instances where the numbers or symbols were close to winning. Even though you really didn't almost win, that's what it feels like emotionally. Now, I live with my parents who are very nice, so burning on a $20 on nothing isn't that big a deal to me, even if it represents 3 hours of my labor, but I can see how it would be a problem if I were a real adult and I got caught in the $20 cards. 

I would be very happy to see the state lotteries eliminated. It's amazing that people will generally recognize that gambling is a drain on society that preys on people's emotions and poor math skills and get all NIMBY if somebody tries to open a casino, but trying to kill the lottery would probably destroy you. 
 

thellama73 wrote: Even the poorest Americans are not starving to death. If they want more, opportunities exist.

I'm sure the 14% of Americans living below the poverty line are just thrilled to be there, they'd leave but it's just too much effort. 
 

Epignosis wrote:   I wasn't making any causal correlation between being poor and being fat.  You were.  You tell me how being poor makes people fat.  Aside from the absurd notion that poor people are forced to eat fast food because it's cheaper.  I've already debunked that.

Poor people are fat because they eat fast food and soda because it's cheap, that is incredibly obvious and well documented. Of course it's not actually cheaper than making spaghetti and hamburger yourself (but I've only ever seen Food, Inc. make that claim), but it's a hell of a lot easier (the poor tend to be quite busy and stressed) and doesn't require the initial investment in pans and whatnot. I think it's hard to claim that produce is more expensive than meat, but it's certainly disproportionately priced because of US government subsidies, the same goes for the bane of modern civilization, HFCS. And if you have few joys in life, soda is helpful, I guess.

^As always Robert, your example is supposed to explain every damn poor (or not that poor) family in this country. Just like when we were talking about unemployment benefits, the fact that you didn't take them was supposed to mean everyone could do the same. 

Edited by The T - September 24 2010 at 11:24

What I support is a basic minimum floor of health care provisions.  It should be available to everyone regardless of income or even bad habits.  Those who need health care due to bad habits should be heavily coerced into reforming in exchange.  I guess that's basic socialized medicine, and I don't give a damn.  If some dorkheads think it's stealing from them, I really don't give a damn.

Slartibartfast wrote: What I support is a basic minimum floor of health care provisions.  It should be available to everyone regardless of income or even bad habits.  Those who need health care due to bad habits should be heavily coerced into reforming in exchange.  I guess that's basic socialized medicine, and I don't give a damn.  If some dorkheads think it's stealing from them, I really don't give a damn.

It gets harder and harder to talk to you for five reasons, and all five are present in this one post:

The T wrote: ^As always Robert, your example is supposed to explain every damn poor (or not that poor) family in this country.

1. You take what I say and make absolutes out of them.

My examples are just that- examples (or in this case, counterexamples).  I don't claim to speak for all poor people, but you do.  You expressed a positive association between being poor and being fat.  I provided not one, but three counterexamples to this, and a scholarly article.  That's three more examples and one more article than you've provided in this discussion backing up your assertion.

The T wrote: Just like when we were talking about unemployment benefits, the fact that you didn't take them was supposed to mean everyone could do the same.

2. You don't listen to what I say.

I did take unemployment benefits, and I said I did.  In fact, it was in response to a question you directly asked me.  Here's the conversation, as you've clearly forgotten.

The T wrote: You had a mom and a dad. Let's just imagine only one. Working at your beloved Walmart 40 hours a week and then in some restaurant. Arriving late at home. Dead tired. Yes, she should cook a proper meal. But for that she has to have gone and bought it too. All of this is time that this person maybe doesn't entirely have. Maybe it's laziness. Maybe she just can't do it.

3. You use hypothetical anecdotes instead of data.

How pitiful do you want the person to be, T?  We can go further if you like.  Maybe this woman has no arms or legs and is blind.  Maybe she gets robbed everyday.  Maybe her kids are hateful towards her.  Maybe she is allergic to peanuts.  Maybe maybe maybe maybe maybe.  None of this changes my principles, sorry, and I think it's rather insulting that you reduce people to the sum of their worst circumstances.

The T wrote: And let's assume the parents that do this are stupid and/or lazy. They fed their children fast food all the time. Their children grow up obese or almost so. This children have learned that the best answer for food problems is fast food (besides the fact that they have already learned to please their stomachs with high sugar and fat foods...) Are they also obese because they're lazy and/or stupid?

4. You continue to assume more money fixes a problem (and that this money must come from the government, which is money taken from taxpayers).

Money doesn't cure stupid.  If you are obese because you are stupid or lazy, then more money won't fix that.  As I've said a hundred times, if you took all the money in the country and redistributed it evenly, we'd have socioeconomic disparity in ten years, maybe five, maybe even less.  How do people win millions in the lottery and wind up broke and worse off than they were?  Because creating and managing wealth is a skill that some people have and most of us don't.

The T wrote: Shouldn't they have some kind of access to care? Should they at least have access to some education that re-teaches them how to live a healthy live?

They have access to at least 13 years of government education.  Thirteen!  And lots of Americans are still poor and fat?  Interesting that we have a robust welfare system (40% of the budget according to the chart in the other thread) and we also have government-run education where students go for at least thirteen years.  We are practically already living the liberal dream.

The T wrote: Or Having a heart attack and dying is pretty cheap, I hear?  (again, no emoticon...)

5. You don't get when I'm being sarcastic unless I use an emoticon.

I guess this could be my problem, so I will work on it.  I'll practice now.

You annoy me.