Another neo-con heard from

[Lucifer_Carroll]

Tatelou wrote:

"However, I will just make this one point.

Life Expectancy in 20 Countries in the developed world, according to the Centers for Disease Control, USA."

~~~

Just what point is that, Tat? Life in a bubble from birth to death might well exceed 100 years...so?

If you are implying that the presence of a program of socialized medicine provides a longer lifespan...perhaps you are right and then again, perhaps you are not...and perhaps even longevity does not contain quality of that extended life...none of that is really germane...

You seem to argue from the point of view that the end justifies the means. I reject that, out of hand as no one, ever, has the right to impose by force any system on a free people...no matter how beneficial you may think it is...


amicus...

Isn't living longer the point of medicine and medical science? I know that's why I'm entering the biomedical engineering field. But perhaps dying earlier is the goal I should be trying for, or perhaps getting rich off killing people. I don't know, maybe i'm in the wrong damn field.

 

[Guest]

Yeah, I thought so.

Oh well, from now on I'm just going to wallow in my knowledge and smugness and completely discount opposing points of view. My way is the right way, the only way, the way to complete freedom and prosperity. The rest of the world are idiots and I say that with complete peace of mind because I know I'm right. Or not.

And some Americans wonder why the rest of the world think they're arrogant assholes?

The voices that shout the loudest are those which are heard.

Sad, but true.

Lou

 

[Edward Teach]

Yeah, I thought so.

Oh well, from now on I'm just going to wallow in my knowledge and smugness and completely discount opposing points of view. My way is the right way, the only way, the way to complete freedom and prosperity. The rest of the world are idiots and I say that with complete peace of mind because I know I'm right. Or not.

And some Americans wonder why the rest of the world think they're arrogant assholes?

The voices that shout the loudest are those which are heard.

Sad, but true.

Lou

Limeys should be seen and not heard.

Don't you understand? If we had a life expectancy of 26 years, then everyone would be much healthier, there would be little need for medicine, Social Security wouldn't be a problem, corpses would be much more attractive and funerals would be more fun.

Now bugger off and mind your own bloody business.

Edward The Bold

 

[thebullet]

Tatelou said:

My way is the right way, the only way, the way to complete freedom and prosperity. The rest of the world are idiots and I say that with complete peace of mind because I know I'm right.

Welcome to the the neocon universe. Amicus is just a bit player here. Still, to be acquainted with him is instructive in the neocon species as a whole.

What he doesn't know isn't worth knowing. What he thinks he knows he'll shove down your throat.

 

[cantdog]

temper, temper

Actually, stats do show that socializing medicine, to whatever degree on whatever model, lifts the life expectancy. Canada's system comes in for a lot of abuse, and there are people lying about it right this minute in my country. But once it was adopted, the life expectancy moved upward. It's unavoidable when segments of the population without access to it suddenly get it.

The medical professionals see a very very mixed blessing in most systems, just the same, because the effects on a case by case basis are not always benign or even sensible. The form the program takes can have a lot of impact.

Who decides what is "elective" or what is "needed?" Remember, this question's answer is not unknowable just because no truly socialized system is in place. We have already a lot of extraneous factors determining behavior in any given case.

A big one is case law. A lot of very expensive hospital staff hours and equipment is wasted on tests that no one can dare shirk, because someone in some court somewhere got shellacked because she didn't give the test. Much of the roster of things a patient is asked are not diagnostic, but CYA, to build a good chart, for CYA.

Another factor like that is insurance companies, who often come down with arbitrary dicta, especially about length of stay in a facility of a certain class.

And they were the ones, mostly, who classified facilities as one sort or another in the first place. Insurance drives the review boards which second-guess a case over and over in tedious meetings, asking for a justification for every hour a patient stays in a hospital, or an extended-care facility, or a nursing home, so much time in each based on the wording of the initial diagnosis or the current assessment.

They look the diagnosis up in their book, and you have x days for that.

If you suspect a complication is likely and want to keep the patient on, you have to explain to some secretary or other official representing the cheeseparing suits in an insurance company, in much more detail than you would ever believe, exactly what complication.

They look that up in their book. Two more days for x complication, three if with this feature, only one if with this feature, fined down to boggling detail so they can save a payment here or there.

Then they have a lot more to say about what drug, in what form, the patient may be given.

So the bugbear about regulation by the government in a socialized system is somewhat less strong an argument. Private systems already have a lot of meddling in the process. Of the insurances, the government insurances are the most meddlesome, but the government has more teeth.

This is a complex and detailed topic. It does not come down to life expectancy, simply. Many consequences attend from myriad decisions at myriad points in the process.

Larger questions loom outside the process. What impact will a major change have on the nursing shortage or the shortage in beds for psych? Will more doctors be trained or fewer? More nurses? enough pharmacists? For what do we train the judgement of these people if we allow it so little scope, hemming it in with extra testing, limited stays, limited presription choices?

And what if dialysis is deemed "elective?" What if there are not enough of one kind of thing or another? A lot of the newer imaging machines are a huge investment, and new stuff comes along often enough and makes it obsolescent, or at least inferior. Will it still be used anyway because there was so much money spent on it and because the new version is even more expensive?

Who will be let in on these decisions?

The social safety net systems are distorted into a very unhelpful and arbitrary shape by political ideologues wrangling with one another, passing laws all the time. If medicine is in the same class, how much politicking and bigoted legislation, "compromises" and religious objections are going to be allowed an impact?

There isn't a lot of consensus.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Cantdog raised a lot of good points. I think one that a great many posting here miss is that Socialized Medicine in the U.S. comes down to one real issue. Taxes.

To implement such a system, you have to raise taxes, significantly, on everyone. It is at this point, the practical application of a system, and not during the theoretical good, evil, Pro, con, plus, minus level that the issue becomes a political hot potatoe.

Pro Socialized medicine falls to the Democrats to support. The agenda is liberal left and raising taxes to support social programs has ever been their sphere.

Anti Socialized medicine falls to the republicans. Raising taxes is anathema to their stated positions and they argue those who would suffer the tax burden are the folks who wouldn't use the service.

The issue becomes then a political one and as a defining position it gets shoved aside as the parties are so far apart on it that no compromise or common ground can be found to begin negotiating.

This issue is hardly a neo-con one. Even old school conservatives and moderates balk at even its mention.

If it ever comes to pass in this country there will be a democrat controlled house and seante, a democrat in the white house and a complete make over of the supreme court. In addition the lobby of the pharmecutical companies, Doctors and lawyers will have to be silenced, because all three will pour millions into defeating it.

Discussions of the need for it, the obligation of a society, etc.etc. really don't scratch the bone of contention that is at the heart of it. Who is going to pay for it and how. When you tell the average middle or upperclass person that their taxes are going up astronomically to support healthcare for those who aren't as successful, You will get cries rangening from unfair, to BS to communism. Many working class families who have managed to secure health insurance from their employers will scream just as loudly. That's a very large segment of the electorate to piss off and since it will include almost all of your independants, I don't see it becoming a main plank in the Dem's platfrom anytime soon.

-Colly

 

[oggbashan]

There is a fundamental difference of attitude towards welfare, social engineering, social care and health care between Europe and the US.

The European versions come from the source of the French Revolution which included 'The Rights of Man' and those principles have been disseminated throughout Europe as aristocracies lost their power. The US was never exposed to the French Revolutionary ideas because their Revolution preceded it and the American Colonies never endured the worst excesses of an unfettered aristocracy. In the UK the impact of the French Revolution was less but was influenced by the example of enlightened industrialists who cared for their workforce and trade union 'sick-clubs'.

I cannot see that it will ever be likely that the US will support public health and social care by a popular vote because it is an alien concept.

Who is right? Who is wrong? - those are philosophical questions.

My attitude is that society has a duty to support and care for its weaker members - but I am a product of my environment. How far the state should or should not go? That I can and do argue about but I do not dispute the benefits of the welfare state for those who cannot help themselves. I object to those who exploit the system to avoid working but they are a small minority compared with the disabled, sick and very old who deserve our support.

Og

 

[thebullet]

Socialized medicine will never come to America as long as this country is in thrall to all those good "Christians" who think people should pull themselves up by their bootstraps or they are just plain lazy. We are a very hard, unkind people. We are becoming less inclusive, more exclusionary, as time passes.

We have people living in the streets because Reagon emptied the psychiatric hospitals. We have 20% of our citizens without heath insurance. We know that feeding poor children properly means that they will be more successful in school. But we would rather give welfare to the super-rich and screw those little societal leeches who can't feed themselves breakfast. After all, someone will have to perform the dreg work when they grow up. We need those prols to be uneducated so that we can control them, force them to work minimum wage jobs, then discard them for the newer prols when they outlive their usefulness.

Yes, we are becoming the country that Amicus wants. He's a real nice guy and I admire him for his principals.

 

[oggbashan]

Soldiers' votes

The Labour Government of 1945 was elected with a massive vote from soldiers returning from WWII.

I think there were two reasons for that vote:

1. Their fathers had been screwed after WWI by the politicians then in power. They were promised 'Homes for heroes' - a housebuilding programme to replace slums with modern easy to run homes and relief from profiteering landlords. Their fathers didn't get homes nor help with the injuries caused by the war except from charities.

2. The Army ran discussion groups for soldiers on 'The British Way'. These groups wanted improvements in housing, in health, in employment that they knew the then Conservative Party would never deliver. They wanted changes to their world.

For example wartime Merchant Seamen were paid very low wages while on board ship and NOTHING when not on board. If the ship was torpedoed and the survivors took to the lifeboats their pay stopped as soon as the ship sunk despite the ship's owners being compensated for the ship and cargo. The shipping companies profited. Their sailors starved.

If a workman was injured his pay stopped until he was fit to return to work even if his injury had been caused by his employer. With no income he had to pay his medical expenses - unless his trade union had sickness cover for its members.

The soldiers saw this as exploitation and wrong. The Labour Party promised to change this. When elected they did. Nationalisation of the Railways and the Mines was a mistake in retrospect but the previous owners had been some of the most rapacious employers ever known in the UK. Miners died because of inadequate safety measures. Dead miners were cheaper than paying for safety.

The 1930s had been a shock to the average working man. If he still had a job he was earning less yet the employers profited more. That continued during the war and made soldiers who had fought and watched their comrades die for freedom very angry.

Their votes changed this country. After that the political system changed and even the Conservative Party celebrated the amount new housebuilding when they were in power. The Conservative Party of the 1950s was very different from that of the 1930s and has continued to change. The much-vilified Mrs Thatcher presided over the largest growth of individual families' wealth ever seen and many people today are far richer than their parents were because of her.

Politics in the UK is about a mixed economy with state and private provision of social services in the widest sense and no party is proposing to abolished state provision - only to change the boundaries between state and private.

Og

 

[amicus]

Everyone except thebullet aka Andrew Wiggins, seems to at least acknowledge, to some extent, that there are two sides, at least, to the issue of socialized medicine and the welfare state mentality.

That was in essence, my point. Many issues of the left are presented as the only humane compassionate solutions to problems faced by many.

My consistent solution is an advocacy of of small government and a free market economy.

The left wants a larger government and a more controlled economy.

Successful people in a free market, a free society, become successful because they understand the market place. They create an association, a 'business', that offers goods and services that people desire. Many businesses fail, most succeed only to the extent of making a living for the owners and employees.

But some businesses prosper and provide a return on investment in excess of just supporting those involved. At that point, the association/business can do one of several things.

It can become a 'corporation' and expand, to include others in the successful venture. That is to say, create more desired goods and services, employ more people, expand and grow the economy.

At the heart of the free market is an individual, a single human being that makes the original decision, makes the choices that succeed or fail.

Microsoft aka Bill Gates is one such example. You know the biography, so I need not illustrate.

Bill Gates/Microsoft...became successful by providing a product and a service at the right time and place.

He/they profited from it and are now 'hated' by people in the ilk of thebullet.

Successful people/businesses/corporations are then made to feel guilty at their success. As if they had done something wrong.

And they feel that guilt. They are coerced by societal pressure from those like thebullet, to take a portion of the already heavily taxed profit and 'donate' to those in need.

For the true good of society, those successful enterprises should not be taxed at all, should not donate a penny to the needy.

For the true good of society, we should applaud them and urge them to go on to even greater discoveries, greater efficency, larger corporate investment in successful ventures.

Just an an example, Microsoft does more for the needy of Northwestern Washington State, indeed, for the entire state, then the entire welfare and food stamp programs provided by taxation and human services at the state and federal level.

That is true of most, if not all, large corporations. The products and services they create, the jobs they create, the families and schools and hospitals they support far exceed what is gained if you tax that top 2% at a confiscatory rate.

You control my business and my ability to be successful, I will take my business out of the country. You tax my investment capital at a high rate, I will invest elsewhere.

For those of you who are struck aghast at a defense of the free market system, of Capitalism, I apologize for the trauma. I realize you have never heard of such a thing before.

amicus...

 

[Guest]

http://www.planetsmilies.com/smilies/sign/1/sign70.gif














Whoopsie! Did I post that in the wrong thread?

My silly little mind gets so confused at times...

 

[oggbashan]

Successful people in a free market, a free society, become successful because they understand the market place. They create an association, a 'business', that offers goods and services that people desire. Many businesses fail, most succeed only to the extent of making a living for the owners and employees.
...

But some businesses prosper and provide a return on investment in excess of just supporting those involved. At that point, the association/business can do one of several things.

For those of you who are struck aghast at a defense of the free market system, of Capitalism, I apologize for the trauma. I realize you have never heard of such a thing before.

amicus...

amicus

Your country owes more to other countries than anyone. If you were a business you would be bankrupt. The US is the world's largest debtor.

It is ironic that you defend a free market system when the US is not a free market for others. You take the world's money, don't pay, and won't let other countries trade on an equal basis.

Your free market and capitalist system is based on a lie.

Og

 

[thebullet]

Amicus lies again:

Everyone except thebullet aka Andrew Wiggins, seems to at least acknowledge, to some extent, that there are two sides, at least, to the issue of socialized medicine and the welfare state mentality.

Amicus I challange you to find any statement I have ever made anywhere on this website or anywhere else in my life's history that supports Socialized medicine or any kind of welfare state. I occasionally comment on the unfairness of a system where 40,000,000 people do not have health insurance, but how you extropolate that into a welfare state mentality is beyond my powers of compreshension.

What it nets out to is you are a dogmatic fool who can't see beyond your narrow little tunnel vision universe. Anyone who disagrees with your extremism is by nature a socialist. That must be me, since I think your ideas are total bullshit.

 

[amicus]

Dear Og....the United States has the largest trade deficit ever, I do recall reading somewhere....that means, my friend, that we buy more from other countries than they buy from us.

Secondly, a great deal of Investment Capital flows to the United States because there is little viable business enterprise elsewhere without confiscatory taxation.

And third, we don't eat mutton much in the US and what else do you have to export?


thebullet....You have forgotten that I have read your stories and many of the posts you have made of this forum.

All I read is a continual criticism of a free market economy, an anti-big business diatribe and the accusations that Americans are a heartless, discompassionate gathering of profit minded slobs who exploit the world for the Yankee dollah...

If it walks like a duck.....?


amicquackableus.....

 

[thebullet]

Amicus drooled:

thebullet....You have forgotten that I have read your stories and many of the posts you have made of this forum.

All I read is a continual criticism of a free market economy, an anti-big business diatribe and the accusations that Americans are a heartless, discompassionate gathering of profit minded slobs who exploit the world for the Yankee dollah...

If it walks like a duck.....?

You obviously have not read my stories very closely, or have read them through the filter of your RED (Commie) colored glasses. My characters in DbF are full-fledged members of the market economy. That's how they make their money. My characters are Americans who are anything but heartless or discompassionate. Perhaps you didn't notice.

Yes, my stories sometimes (rarely) poke fun at the extreme Right wing of this country and fundamentalist religion. Guess what, Amicus. That makes my characters MORE FREE, MORE TRUE TO THE CONSTITUTION than the people they are poking fun at.

My characters are MORE AMERICAN than you are, Amicus. My characters believe in the Contstitution of the United States. The bad guys in my stories are those that would destroy the individual rights that our Constitution guarantees.

Amicus, reread my stories. Prove me wrong! If you have the guts to try.

And just a note to those people that have read this bulletin board but have not read my stories:
Don't believe the bitter, anti-American diatribes of Amicus. My stories are funny, open-hearted, and non-judgemental of almost everyone. There is very little politics in my stories. Mostly they are about love of family with a little science fiction thrown in.