BoiseBYU wrote:

imuakahuku wrote:

BoiseBYU wrote:

CougyMonster, seeing people coming over the border for care is emblematic of rationing and scarce resources, to be sure. Something no one wants. But would you not agree that 35 million uninsured Americans, or whatever the actual number is, is just a different way that the resources are being allocated here? To me that reality is a troubling as the people coming over the border for medical attention.

I have never understood why it is either our system or "socialized medicine." Once that term comes out, end of debate, because who wants socialized medicine? I thought "socialized medicine" was where the doctor is employed by the governement. Am I wrong? That said, do you consider Medicaid or Medicare "socialized" medicine? If you do, why? If not, then what is wrong with this model as a means for covering all Americans? I am not advocating this, just wondering. The fact is that about 1/3 of all Americans today are on one or the other programs already.

That is the beauty and deception of this argument. Those millions of uninsured still recieve great healthcare. All they have to do is go to the local General Hospital and they will receive treatment regardless of whether they are insured or not. People always refer to them as uninsured as if they cannot get treated but that is a fallacy. They do get treated to the tune of billions a year.
Here's an option why not just get rid of health insurance altogether? Make people pay for it and I guarantee you that prices will drop. The problem is that you have to first limit the damages from lawsuites. How about it doctors? How much of your practice's fees pay for legal insurance. I know our OBGYN had to leave her practice because her partners decided the insurance for delivering babies was just too high. So now there are many fewer groups delivering babies in our area, which means demand for their services is much greater as well as the potential for lawsuits and both in turn leading to skyrocketing fees for their services.

You make some good points,as usual, but I think it would be good to consider that caring for the uninsured is more expensive than those who are covered. Why? They wait longer and problems grow, they ignore problems and they get worse, and when it gets too bad, they go to the hospital's emergency room where the costs skyrocket...and who pays for that? The taxpayers, the insured (through higher bills) and society in the form of lost time and productivity. Our system is not working...Many companies recognize this and are clamoring for change--the competitive disadvantages they are finding themselves being put in is gigantic...GM spends significantly more money on each car because of health care costs than does Toyota and its Japanese health care model. (Using CougyMonster's definition of "socialized medicine, Japan is a socialized medicine country). We can do better; we must do better.

Thanks for the compliment. From what I understand a good portion of the emergency room is full of people with no insurance that come in for every little thing including colds. I have never seen statistics on this so I have to take the claim that they wait with a grain of salt. My oldest brother does not have insurance but he is a bad example of this because even when he did have it he didn't go until he absolutely had to.
As for GM, they do have from what I understand is a good healthcare plan, but that is not what causes them to be at a disadvantage to Toyota. Toyota does not have a labor union that drives up the costs to produce each car. Have you ever hear of the jobs bank? In short it is 15,000 UAW members that report each day and earn on average $30 an hour plus full medical, dental, etc from the big three. The kicker is that they do absolutely no work. They show up at a union center and play games, read, watch tv etc. It was part of what the auto companies signed on to when they wanted to automate. These non-working workers add about $3000 per car! Pretty sickening if you ask me. Do the math $30 * 2080 * 15,000 = $936,000,000 (this is just in salary, imagine what they make factoring in benefits).

Hengst wrote:

Now, if people were smart, and would spend in those situations it would work. Unfortunately, I don't think most people are that smart.

Spoken like a true liberal.

happyvalleycougar wrote:

I just spent 30 minutes reading through all of this post. Interesting stuff. I need to preface what I say first of all. This election cycle, my wife finally is taking interest in politics, so I've finally had someone to bounce my ideas off. I have tried to determine why I feel and think the way I do, not just say what others have said.

This will probably not be a very coherent post, because I will be jumping all over the place, but, you are not forced to read it.

I get the feeling from Hengst (and from others I have talk to) who consider themselves liberal (I hate using broad generalizations, but it sure makes it easier to type) that their main concern is for the people. Especially those in the LDS church feel that they must help others, as stated by whoever quoted King Benjamin (Sorry, I'm not giving credit where credit is due, but I'm not going to go look for it over 19 pages of postings). As a conservative, I have thought how I reconcile the capitilistic idea of everyone for themselves vs. the liberal idea of "we have to help everyone".

What I have decided is that I don't believe it is the governments responsibility to take care of everyone. In that regard, I am libertarian. I feel we have a social responsibility to take care of the downtrodden, and help those who need help, but should the government help out?

We have had examples of poor people getting out of poverty and making a life for themselves, and they say "I did it, why can't you". We've had examples of socialized medicine that worked, and people say "It worked for me, why not you". As an example, lets think of a poor single mother of two living in the slums of Baltimore. The liberals say that as a people, we should provide health care for this family (because she obviously can't afford it), also help out with welfare (should we make her leave her family to work). If we do make her work, it shouldn't be minimum wage, because she can't live on it, and we should pay for her children to go through school, and maybe even get a college diploma. But, we also need to make sure that the kids don't have real problems at home, so day care is provided, etc... On the other hand, a libertarian (this is even a larger stretch than a conservative) says the government shouldn't have to take care of people. If the mom really wants to help her family, she goes out and finds a job or two. She provides for her family, and maybe moves out of the ghetto so that her kids are taken care of. It's up to her to teach her children self-reliance, and then they can take care of themselves. This is really the compassionate thing to do, so that we don't teach people to live off of handouts, but to take care of themselves. This is what the country was founded on, and we should stay with it. The idea is that in the whole, the economy get's better (less taxes = more money to grow) so that the poor people, over generations are better off (which historically actually has been the case). We will sacrafice the individuals, for greater overall prosperity, which will eventually help the poor.

When we bring in Christian values, do our ideas change? Whould Christ force people, through taxes, to care for the poor? Whould Christ sacrifice the individual now so that in the future things are better for all? Here is my view of what the best possible scenario for the family would be. Some kind individual would go to the home of the family. The needs and wants of the family would be discussed. In this case, the mother needs a way to support her family. A plan of action could be decided upon. Each individual is different. Maybe health care needs to be paid for, maybe not. What can the woman do to help her family? Maybe the family needs to move out of the slums, and we can help finance that. The needs can be taken care of without having to give everything to the family, and they can take part.

This seems the best of both worlds, mercy and justice. But, the mercy is not given without some sort of justice. The problem I see (and the main difference between "liberals" and "conservatives") is who is going to oversee the family? I don't think the government can do that job. Because of all the rules and regulations, a program can not be individualized enough to truly help most families. But if the government doesn't do it, who will? Well, before the welfare state, it was individual charities....but I don't believe if we just get rid of all government subsidies, that those charities will come back. It sounds a lot like the home teaching program......but we'll have to wait for the milenium first.

The reason I consider myself conservative, is that I think the government is normally the worst entity to get things done. So that's why I'm against socialized medicine. If the government is in charge, I just don't know how it can be better than what we have now, while still costing less.

Well, this is long enough. I think I'll have to write up a blog or something, so that those of you as bored as I can have something to comment on, without talking on a sports board about politics.

Though Hengst, I do agree that we need more dialogue, and less diatribes. If we just got some normal people who wanted to solve problems in congress, we could do a lot of good. Let's just elect all of cougarblue to congress (with the possible exception of that shoe person)

This last little bit almost made me laugh out loud really hard in my stats class.

I think the key difference between the way I see things and the way you see things is that you see the liberal perspective as forcing people to support the poor, or needy. I see your point, but I see things a bit differently. The way I see democracy is that the government is controlled by the people, so if the people vote for that kind of a system the government is not controlling them, rather, they have voted for and chosen to approach the poverty problem in that way. It just depends on how you perceive who is in control. The big problem with washington right now is that the lobbyist are having more of an effect on politicians than the people who vote for them. This has to change. This is probably the biggest reason I support Barack over Hillary. He is not owned by lobbyists, rather, his fund raising has come from the people that support him. Thus he is beholden to the people that voted (or vote) for him which is they way I think it ought to be in this democratic republic of ours .

I can't even read this stuff as fast as you guys post it.

This is good stuff all around. BTW, where do you guys get your news from? I usually peruse Townhall.com and Frontpagemag.com, while reading stuff from commondreams.org as well so that nobody can ever say that I'm "narrow-minded." Just curious.

Hengst wrote:

The big problem with washington right now is that the lobbyist are having more of an effect on politicians than the people who vote for them. This has to change. This is probably the biggest reason I support Barack over Hillary. He is not owned by lobbyists, rather, his fund raising has come from the people that support him. Thus he is beholden to the people that voted (or vote) for him which is they way I think it ought to be in this democratic republic of ours :-).

Excuse me for sounding cynical, but when has Washington not been controlled by special interest?