Mitt "No insurance for uninsured with pre-existing conditions"

[kochman]

North Korea doesn't have a universal healthcare system.

According to them they do... I know it is under contention...
However,

In April 2010 the World Health Organisation (WHO) director-general Margaret Chan visited the nation, and claimed that its health system was the “envy of the developing world,” and that there were sufficient numbers of doctors and nurses[3]

[3] = News Asia-Pacific 2010 ‘Aid agencies row over North Korea health care system’, BBC News, viewed 6 September 2010, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-10665964

They probably do... but, can't really afford the tremendous costs... leading to rationing or what not.

Any, Cuba... Yay!
All those refugees that come here are really missing out on the UHC, I wonder how they could ever leave such a paradise.

 

[BSmith1068]

Are you advocating a drastic reduction in our standard of living?

EDIT: Addressed to Cooper...

 

[Traitorfish]

*snip*

Hence the necessity of obtaining the magical Cuban money tree. You said yourself, it's the only way that a country could possibly maintain a universal healthcare system. After all, not everyone can have the towering, ironclad prosperity of Bhutan.

 

[kochman]

Hence the necessity of obtaining the magical Cuban money tree. You said yourself, it's the only way that a country could possibly maintain a universal healthcare system. After all, not everyone can have the towering, ironclad prosperity of Bhutan.

I wonder how much of their budget goes toward UHC... we'll never know, because we can't trust any figures they release... sounds swell though.

 

[Core Imposter]

And right there is the major problem of our society today. We are a selfish lot too blind to see that helping our neighbor in their time of need is the right thing to do. From a moral stand point. From an economic standpoint. From a Christian standpoint. The list goes on.

You are free to do so. It is immoral to ask the taxpayer to fund your opinion of whatever assistance is required.

Charity is the realm of the church and private inititive.

Public insurance plans are okay so long as they are fair, equitable and reasonable.

 

[Traitorfish]

You are free to do so. It is immoral to ask the taxpayer to fund your opinion of whatever assistance is required.

So you're an anarchist now?

 

[kochman]

Mr Cooper,
I'm just looking at your signature line... and am trying to figure out how you grouped "conservative" versus "moderate"...
How did you come to the conclusions of Nixon or GW as conservative... and Dole as moderate...
What is the basis? That they won/lost? Because you have to make a pretty compelling argument for me to believe that GW was anything other than a social conservative... for example.

 

[BSmith1068]

You are free to do so. It is immoral to ask the taxpayer to fund your opinion of whatever assistance is required.

Charity is the realm of the church and private inititive.

Public insurance plans are okay so long as they are fair, equitable and reasonable.

So a progressive tax code is immoral?

How about the road into your sub-division?

 

[Core Imposter]

One of the biggest sources of the rise in health costs is that Medicare (the largest single buyer of health services) is NOT ALLOWED to negotiate prices.

Switching to a single payer system brings the cost to government down.

Peter, Peter, Peter.

A single payer system with the government as the payer is not negotiation. Its extortion. You can cetainly bring down costs that way but only at the cost of loss of innovation and long term quality of care.

 

[Antilogic]

Of course we can.
We choose not to.
It's all about priorities.

Of all the responses in this thread, this is the most insightful regarding the unique situation the USA finds itself in.

I feel like people aren't using terms correctly.

Why would an insurance company ever deny coverage to someone? They're really good an analyzing risk. For any medical condition, they should be able to assign a risk and cost appropriately so that they're not losing money.

The money obtained from any one individual over whatever expected lifetime they have is generally less than the cost of intensive medical treatments. When a high-risk person is identified, they are not offered insurance because of the probability of losing money.

The fundamental "free market" incentives do not function in the insurance industry. More customers does not equate to more profits.



And I don't have Traitorfish's patience right now to comment further.

 

[BSmith1068]

Peter, Peter, Peter.

A single payer system with the government as the payer is not negotiation. Its extortion. You can cetainly bring down costs that way but only at the cost of loss of innovation and long term quality of care.

I hate to break it to you, but we are already losing innovation and long term quality of care...

 

[civver_764]

I'm pretty sure MisterCooper's political ideology consists simply of different provocative conservative positions.

 

[Cutlass]

Our country cannot afford it.

Spending 5-8% less of GDP than we do now is how not affordable? We can't afford not to do it.

 

[Cutlass]

Part of the high GDP per capita comes from having an expensive and inefficient healthcare . If they adopted a system similar to many Euroepan countries quality of life would go up but GDP would go down, and we can't have that now, can we ?

GDP would go up. Much of health care spending in the US is digging holes for the purpose of filling the holes back up. That money would be freed up for something useful.

 

[Core Imposter]

So a progressive tax code is immoral?

How about the road into your sub-division?

To the extent that some do not pay income taxes at all, and some receive tax refunds in excess of the amount withheld, yes it is immoral but beyond that, may provide moral justification for the forcible overthrow of the Federal authority. IMO. If one can conclude that there is no remedy by the ballot box or by civil disobedience, then at some point another sort of remedy will likely come into play.

If pushed down to the State level, where the citizen can move to escape this sort of oppression, then that remedy would be less likely to be neccessary. This is why we should hope for the high court to strike down the Affordable Care Act as its failure to do so will only store up trouble for another day.

Public programs must be equitable. Budget must be sustainable.

This will come into focus better in the future when instead of 4 workers paying the social security of one retiree, it will be 2 workers paying for the social security of 4 retirees.

 

[illram]

Now, the typical retort to that is that folks have trouble buying insurance when they are "young and healthy", especially if they find themselves underemployed....or if they never have the chance to be young and healthy. This was one of the principle reasons for ObamaCare.

Do you think this is an appropriate stance? If you can't be arsed to buy insurance before you get sick, don't cry to anybody if you can't afford it after you get sick? Short of universal health care (which is a political impossibility), are there other acceptable options?

It's a variation of bootstraps. It is one of those arguments that could make sense, in a cold "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" way, since we are all supposed to be these rational actors acting in our own best interests at all times, and if we are not everything bad that happens to us is all our fault...but in reality that's just not how it plays out.

Lots of people either just don't make that rational decision or they simply cannot afford it, or they lose their job, or their COBRA runs out, or whatever. Life happens. Then, the cost for everyone else just goes up, since one person's inability to pay ultimately just spreads to everyone else, whether it is through higher premiums or the ripple effect of a bankruptcy/debt collection matter. So if a government or society or local community agree that this cost will be spread out in the more efficient way by spreading the cost of preventative care and insurance for health costs from the outset, since the alternative is to have a higher cost for emergency care + debt collection ultimately spread out regardless, and in a highly inefficient manner, I think there would be a net benefit. But, that argument has the specter of the evil nanny state vs. the proud independent freedom loving patriot who makes his own way in life, unsaddled by pesky government obstacles getting in the way of his freedom to pursue the American dream. It's sort of rooted in the (largely false) American mythos that if you just work hard, you will succeed, and ultimately if you fail (e.g. die of a treatable disease because you were not insured) that is your fault, regardless of the context. (Lost your job? Should not have gotten fired! Could not afford it? Why are you lazy and poor? Etc.)

Unless we just want to agree that if you can't pay, you do not get any service whatsoever. Does anyone want to go there?

 

[peter grimes]

DO we want the government taking on the job of an insurance agency? How big do you think a government can be, before it implodes on itself, without causing drastic inflation?

I'd say that if the governments of
Norway,
New Zealand,
Japan,
Germany,
Belgium,
United Kingdom,
Kuwait,
Sweden,
Bahrain,
Brunei,
Canada,
Netherlands,
Austria,
United Arab Emirates,
Finland,
Slovenia,
Denmark,
Luxembourg,
France,
Australia,
Ireland,
Italy,
Portugal,
Cyprus,
Greece,
Spain,
South Korea,
Iceland,
Hong Kong,
Singapore,
Switzerland, and
Israel

can do it, then surely USA! #1! can find a way to afford it.

A single payer system with the government as the payer is not negotiation. Its extortion.

No, it's far from extortion. Do you consider it extortion when an Union and management sign a contract? It's the same thing. The single payer entity has a vested interest in keeping the clinics, hospitals, and support services running. The union has a vested interest in keeping the business profitable so it can expand - generating more union positions in the jurisdiction. It's about as far from extortion as you can get.

 

[kochman]

Each and every one of those nations is way smaller than the USA population wise... by the way.
That matters... the bureaucracy must expand to support the expanding bureaucracy...

 

[BSmith1068]

Unless we just want to agree that if you can't pay, you do not get any service whatsoever. Does anyone want to go there?

Publically no. But I am afraid that many do want to go there but are too chicken**** to say so.

 

[BvBPL]

To the extent that some do not pay income taxes at all, and some receive tax refunds in excess of the amount withheld, yes it is immoral but beyond that, may provide moral justification for the forcible overthrow of the Federal authority.

Moral imperative derives from the Creator, not some idea about how temporal governments should be established.

Progressive tax codes are a Christian value. Christ called upon His flock to care for the sick and needy, and the US was established with the ideal of it as a new Jerusalem that will embody Christian values. Progressive tax structures are a necessary fundament to ensure an equitable distribution of resources as called upon by the Savior.

The Founders of the US didn't set out to establish a new standard of morality, they just wanted to establish the best government they could. To this extent, they incorporated rules of governance that are able to change and adapt to the constraints of the contemporary world. Two hundred forty years ago, the Founders didn't include dictation about health care not because it wasn't within the sphere of government but because health care did not exist, as we know it, at that time. It would have been a reach to far to dictate health care rules at that time because the infrastructure did not exist to establish a health care system them. Thankfully, our Constitution and system of government is sufficiently flexible to grow and expand the rights of men as our society develops new organizational technologies which enable those rights.