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American health care vs the world!
Buddha73
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I was watching the news the other day and saw a democratic congress woman by the name of Rep. Jackson Lee argue before members of the House that Universal healthcare was an constitutional right, which dumbfounded me. When i was growing up my history teacher would say when dealing with the constitution 'Your rights end where my begin'. basically saying that your rights can not impose any more merit then my do. they are equal, side by side in the eyes of the law. now I'm not saying that don't believe in every American having the opportunity to get healthcare or has some on the left cry i don't want children dying in the streets. But for a government that has always in the past frowned upon Big corporations monopolizing it now tries to do just the same by being the be all for all standard threw entitlement programs like Obamacare. I would love to see every American have some kind of healthcare, its a noble cause but to say that half of all tax payers should take care of the other half is impossible, and if you don't have health care by a set date and time the federal government will penalize you. I believe the best way to insure that all Americans have equal opportunity to healthcare is by doing 3 simple things. Number one, open up interstate sale of health insurance plans. That would allow the consumer to buy insurance from any company in the world they like not just from the ones in your state, and create competition within that area of the free market so that in the end the consumer gets the best services for less money. Number two, place tough but fair penalty on insurance companies that inflate their prices beyond 5% of their competitor's prices. last but not least, Number three, give vouchers similar those used in magnet private school programs to help ease the burden of paying for healthcare for the first year. Now may disagree with me totally or even partly and if you would like the voice your thoughts or view on this issue you may do so, but remember to be respectfully of my view points and others. NO NAME CALLING OR THREATENING REMARKS PLEASE. thank you. i hope we can all have a civilized debate.
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How do you require insurance companies to provide service to people with pre-existing medical conditions in this approach? And if you don't, what happens to people who actually need healthcare rather than just health insurance?
And half of tax payers aren't talking care of the other half, healthy people are subsidizing sick people.
That said, legitimately accessible health care is probably a moral obligation, in much the same way I would say a rich dude sitting on a pile of food has a moral obligation to give some to the starving guy sitting across the way.
Either way, though, it's pretty clear that the constitution does not bar the government from establishing some sort of UHC system, and further, I think it's easy to make a case that it would be the best and most affordable way to set up our system. So regardless of whether or not our nation must necessarily provide health care to everyone, it should, simply on pragmatic grounds.
Fuck dude. Format your posts sensibly.
Ok. She was saying health care should be a constitutional right. Some might argue it is an intrinsic human right, but... then we really should be fighting wars to provide people in Africa with healthcare, which is pretty damned far from reasonable. I wouldn't mind seeing healthcare as a right added to the constitution, but that would take an amendment.
Seeing as large private health care providers/insurers have pretty much been what we've had all along, it's kinda silly to say the government has always frowned on them. Unless you are using a bizarre ass version of the word Government, synonymous with the way the Brits use the term(because their parliamentary elections actually create genuinely new government run by the winning party). Using the term to describe the government always acting this way, and meaning something other than Obama fulfilling a campaign promise, is just weird.
By and large, you are wrong to call ObamaCare an entitlement program. Most of it's effect comes from forcing healthy young people to get insurance, thus subsidizing old and sick people who will actually use their insurance. This is necessary because insurance companies are now prevented from not offering those classes of people coverage due to per-existing conditions. It does come with an opportunity pay for states to expand their Medicaid rolls, however this is actually a kinda small part of the bill. Though it is an important and expensive one.
Through a federally run insurance exchange program, ObamaCare is pretty effectively going to open up interstate health insurance market(I believe), though this will only happen in the vast vast vast majority of states that don't institute their own exchanges.
ObamaCare forces insurance carriers have more than an 8%(i think) overhead for administrative costs and profits. This is actually way fucking better than your number two, because it still allows people to pick a plan where they will be afford those services they will use. Both control insurance company profits and costs, but what ObamaCare actually does is waaay better, because it allows more flexibility for customers and insurers.
I don't know what purpose the first year thing is. Health insurance costs are not going to change after the first year. What Obama Care does is offer tax incentives to consumers buying their own insurance, and medium and large sized business to offer insurance to their employees on a continuing basis. If you make too much money to receive Medicaid, don't make enough to afford insurance on your own and your employee does not offer you insurance, you will receive money from the government to help pay for personally obtained insurance. Again, this is better by a lot than what you suggest.
You really need to also understand that the status quo is that poor people wait to get sick, go to the emergency room and receive more treatment(because they waited so long) at a higher cost(because emergency rooms are for emergencies) and can't pay. Who does pay? Everyone else in the form of higher costs and government support for heathcare providers. Right now, it is the 50%(less than that really) that is paying for the underclasses healthcare coverage. ObamaCare will actually move things away from that slightly.
I don't know if this post is respectful. You seem awful ignorant, and I find posts as illegible as yours to be a sign of disrespect. This is what you get.
Personally, I want a single payer system, and think ObamaCare is a weak ass way to go for achieving universal healthcare.
It is however permissible under the constitution
because we're all paying for it regardless, we're just being horrendously inefficient about it because we're terrified of socialism
Fixed that for you.
a civilized society has a moral obligation to take care of its citizens, Everyone should get access to healthcare and medicine, because those that need it the most are those most likely to be abused and ruined by the system pre-ACA.
Also I don't want people to think I'm implying that my education and knowledge of this subject is anymore then the average Joe.
Also to people that claim the constitution is stupid and useless is unbelievable. Without it you have nothing. Its the country's backbone. Men and women have died to protect what it stands for.
And its not written on goat skin or 200+ pages. Its written on hemp paper which is made from cannabis or better known as weed, and its only 6 pages long. Most state constitutions are longer like my state's constitution which is 40 times longer.
and to the post that addressed my number three idea, no i don't think that healthcare cost would suddenly drop lower after one year, but i don't that the government should have to buy for healthcare the rest of your life. and forcing insurance companies to cover the cost for pre-existing medical conditions is a no brainer. no one should be denied healthcare for something they can't control. and one last point healthcare is a market. just look at the stock market. hundreds of health insurance companies are public now and make billions off shares and their customers. and don't get me wrong there are a few parts of Obamacare i did like, but overall it doesn't fix anything and hurts our economy in the long run.
the reason I start this thread was to hear other people views beyond the mainstream talking points and learn more.
That is not compatible with health insurance companies functioning, unless healthy people are also forced to enroll. Which seemed to be something you were complaining about.
What difference does it make if you are forced to subsides the care of unhealthy people through a tax or through carrying insurance?
edit: The actual difference is with taxes, you pay less because you aren't contributing to profits for insurance providers and tricare, medicaid, and medicare are basically the three most efficient insurance providers in the country( dollars-for-service/dollars-intake and typically one of the lowest cost per procedure).
No, it's not.
But to be more on-topic if not less pedantic, while I agree with the sentiment behind calling health care (and things like housing and a living wage) Constitutional rights, pretty much all of the rights described (or implied) in the Constitution are negative rights (i.e. things the government is not allowed to do).
I do think that providing universal health care would fall squarely under something that the federal government is empowered to do, and could be seen as a Constitutional obligation for Congress to provide to U.S. citizens as part of the whole "general welfare" concept.
- John Stuart Mill
5k, out of how much income? How much of that state tax is a property tax? How much of it has anything at all to do with paying for health care?
The government forces people to do things against their will pretty much constantly. If you don't want to pay taxes and follow laws, please move somewhere else. By living in this democracy, you are agreeing to allow the will of other people to constrain and control your actions.
glad to see you want to stay on topic but please google what the kind of paper the constitution is written on. though i will agree that providing for the general welfare can be looked at as meaning healthcare. but i don't think our founding fathers were envisioning UHC when that they wrote that.
The government does, and should, force people to do things all the time.
Taxes overall are the lowest they've been in decades.
I would literally, happily, double my tax burden if it means I could have my government healthcare without the government job.
Drafts may have been on hemp, but the final documents were on parchment.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
If your society can sustain the idea that when you buy a packet of 12 cookies, you literally have a right to expect to find 12 cookies in the packet, and it does, then I think it can sustain the idea that you shouldn't let other members of that society die or suffer from preventable illness.
If you think missing out on a cookie is arguably a greater issue then I have no point of reference to your value system to enable a sensible discussion. Literally the rest of the civilised world treats healthcare as a right.
Then what do you do about people who have lifelong conditions that prevent them from working? A system that only covers short term illnesses is not a proper healthcare system.
The stock market is a market for stocks, not health. A health insurance company being traded on the stock market does not automatically make healthcare a market.
Also, short term illnesses are not what makes healthcare expensive.
But yes, I'm going to agree with "Not a right enumerated in the Constitution, but it is a human right"
true. but i still believe that life is better when the government doesn't force its self on us. also to quid how are the taxes lower then in decades before when the average American pays an average tax rate of 12.60% percent on their income and 10 years ago it was around 8 to 9%.
Me, my brother and my sister are all alive because of the NHS (appendicitis, impaled on a tree branch and premature birth respectively) and are paying taxes that provide pensions and healthcare for people whose taxes paid for the NHS when we were younger.
IIRC, doesn't your constitution specifically have a "there are also other rights not listed here, this isn't the definitive list" clause?
For instance we no longer believe that disease is caused by ill humors. (Ok, that's exaggerated, but only little).
Not for nothing, but the Founding Fathers where fucking ignorant of what we today consider basic science. Like Viruses, Bacteria and blood type. In the founding fathers time, barber shops where only just giving way to medical professionals as first stop for medical advice.
Why yes. Yes it does.
I'd be inclined to argue that treating healthcare as a right is an entry requirement for the civilised world.
There's a reason why the bill of rights are amendments, and it's not because the founders didn't believe people had rights.
I'll take "claims that aren't even remotely true" for $200, Alex.
One of them. I mean you did fix the slavery thing, that was good.
But man, if broke-ass places like Cuba can do healthcare as a right, what's your excuse?
yup
the right to party falls into this category