Universal Healthcare

Remove all ads!

Biting the hand ...?

I gave you a thorough reply refuting the point you made in post #274. You brought in the right to life, law and the death penalty, and there you are. Don't complain.

Now, with necessarily finite resources in health care their allocation is always a question of justice, is it not? The health insurance companies will say it isn't, and rightly so. Insurance companies don't care about justice but about profit. They provide according to the simple business criteria only to their paying customers. If you're out of money, that's just hard luck.

Here's an excellent and thoughtful blog post on the subject:

Indeed, isn't that unjust?

 

Actually, no, T2 brought up the right to life in pst #273, in an obviously legal setting. I also admitted already that my reaction to that post was inaccurate, but it was also off-topic, which is my point.

There's a problem with that. What do you call 'justice' in that case? Is it taking away from someone who worked hard in order to provide for someone who hasn't? There's no justice in that, either. Usually, justice is defined by accordance with law. Since there is no law on the topic, there is no justice in that sense. In another sense, justice is defined with enforcing that which is just. In that sense, it is a matter of great debate as to what is 'just' and what is 'unjust'.

A universal healthcare system is essentially state-ordered charity. Now, I'm not one to bash charity, and I won't even flat-out decry state-ordered charity (though generally I don't think it's a good idea to force charity), but charity is neither just (in that it is deserved or earned) nor unjust (in that it is a denial of what is deserved or earned). Charity is, by definition, giving what is not deserved or earned.

Yes, I'll agre that the conditions mentioned there are unjust. In my opinion, if you suffer from a 'covered' condition while you are insured, the insurance should pay for the treatement of that and all connected conditions for as long as they need to be payed for. Even if they cancel your coverage, that should only remove coverage from future illnesses. They're already responsable for covering the illness that you have.

Unfortunately, the Dems in Congress want to go a lot farther than that.

 

Not for anyone who pays taxes, and pays into the system. It's like medicare, you pay your monthly payment to the government instead of the insurance company. How come you are not aware of that point, NOG?

 

Chandos, the issue is that you aren't just paying your insurance, you're also paying for those who can't pay for themselves. That's where its charity. Charity isn't just someone getting something, it's also someone giving something. If that's done voluntarily, it's a wonderful thing. If it's forced, though, it's usually called theft. In this case, it's called taxation, but it's still charity.

 

In the US the poor are covered by Mediciad, which is a diffrent system than Medicare. I suppose in other countries anyone who pays taxes is paying into the system already, so it doesn't really matter, as long as you have paid taxes or are paying taxes.

http://www.cms.hhs.gov/medicaideligibility/

 

Chandos, taxes (and fees, which are basically the same thing) are the government's only revenue. How exactly do you think Medicaid is payed for? It's not grown on trees, I promise. The arguement has been made before that money is like water, it doesn't matter where it came from as soon as it hits a resevoir. Everything that pulls from that resevoir pulls from all sources at once. In other words, it doesn't matter how the gov't plays with the money, medicaid (and if expanded, medicare) is charity to those who can't afford it payed from taxes.

 

I don't quite get why you are repeating what I said. Anyone who pays taxes is paying for his/her health care.

 

Wall Street eyes Health Insurance ...

Wall Street Pursues Profit in Bundles of Life Insurance

Where have I hard of such a scheme before ...

 

Aah wallstreet...Allways playing with the bubbles.

 

The best part of it is that while the loonie wing of the R's accuses Obama of trying to kill yer granny with Health Care Reform, Wall Street is about to make money by betting on the time and cost of her death

Koppelmann was completely correct when he said:

 

...blood money...how icky.

 

AND for other people's. My point (which seems to have given you bullet burn, it came so close) is that people who can't and/or aren't paying their own health care are and/or will be payed for by taxes, which means by taxpayers. You, as a taxpayer, are being forced to pay for other people's health care. Now, you may not object to that, but it isn't 'justice'. It isn't 'injustice', either, but it's still not 'justice'. It's forced charity.

Hopefully, we've learned our lesson by now. Hopefully... (Darn, we need a :cross your fingers: smiley!)

One note though: you'll notice that it doesn't actually put the elderly at risk at all. I don't see how banning this would protect the elderly. Protect investors maybe, and maybe protect insurance companies, but not the elderly.

 

What came close to is pure nonsense.

That's what I was responding to if you can remember around all your usual tap dancing.

We have universal health care for those 65 and over. It's called Medicare, and people pay monthly for non-profit health insurance.

We have Medicaid, which is NOT universal health care, but only for those who qualify (poor people). That would be the closest thing we have to what you have in your mind as, "state ordered charity." And you can argue that it is, even though I don't consider it "charity" in the same sense as you. Nevertheless, it's NOT universal coverage. So whether a system is universal or not hardly matters within the parameters you are describing.

 

How? I pay taxes. Taxes pay for Medicaid. Medicaid pays for medical bills for people who can't pay for their own (and many of whom don't pay taxes). Therefore, I pay for other people's medical bills. If a universal health care package is passed, that will expand to me paying for the medical bills of even more who can't pay their own. That's charity, not justice. What part of that doesn't make sense to you? Honestly, I can't see how you miss this.

The only way a universal system wouldn't be charity is if it only works for those who pay for it, and only those who use it pay for it, in which case it isn't really universal, is it?

I never said we currenty have a universal system that is charity. I said any universal system we adopt will be (or rather, will involve) charity.


I'd also remind you that this whole topic came up because you claimed the same system was justice. There's nothing 'just' about it. Whether you call it charity, or welfare, or extended responsability, or whatever, it's still not justice.

 

No I didn't. That's not a term I would use to describe any health care system that I know of.

Yes, but by your own admission we already have charity -- and you claim you understand that we don't have universal health care, so I guess I'm not getting your point in this. We already have a system for the poor, so they receive health care already, but that is NOT universal health care.

 

Sorry, that was Ragusa's point, not yours.

Some forced charity, which I already question the value of. If you look back at post #282, you can see my opinion on this. Forced charity is never the way it should be, and the simple fact that we already have some doesn't mean that more would be better.

This made no sense to me. You admit that I know we don't have a universal system, but then you feel the need to re-inforce to me that... we don't have a universal system?

My point is, at this point, a quite convoluted response to about 7 points from you, Ragusa, T2, and maybe a few others.

Basically, though:
1.) Since deciding who get's limited resources and who doesn't isn't a matter of justice, falling back to strictures of sheer numbers is, if not particularly tasteful, at least understandable. That means the help goes to those whom society deems it appropriate. In the US, that's generally the elderly. In the UK, that's generally the poor but young. Trading one system for another isn't going to be an improvement.
2.) Universal health care would be both forced charity (albeit an expansion of a system that already exists), which I don't think will really help us any, and probably won't do anything to improve life overall. Sure, some people who can't afford any care now may get some, but many others who can afford decent care now may have to settle for shoddy care. All the while, it constricts the freedom of the individual in the name of 'fairness', and 'responsability' for the wealthy, but a lack of responsability for the poor.
3.) The entire idea of welfare is, at best, faulty. It should be kept to a minimum. Naturalists understand this, which is why they always tell you not to feed wild animals. Wild animals who are regularly given food become dependant on food from humans. They forget how to get their own and, when humans stop giving them food, often become aggressive. Humans aren't all that different. Helping somone who's recently lost a job to get through a short poor spell, or to cover excessive emergency medical bills, or providing cheap work for them (best of all) is understandable and acceptable, but providing a consistent, reliable, and ever expanding system that gives them food, gives them shelter, gives them money, and gives them health care, all without expecting much if anything in return doesn't help anyone. We need to take a lesson from the naturalists: giving a raptor food while it's broken wing is healing is acceptable, even better if it's their own natural food, but they are expected to return to nature and rely on themselves as soon as possible, and no freebies are given once they can.

 

How could we have more?

NOG - You keep saying the problem with univeral health care is that it is "state run charity," but we already have what you term as "state run charity" and we don't have univeral health care. So how can that be an exclusive problem of universal health care?

 

Umm, easy, we expand the current programs to cover more people, more procedures, or just make more programs. Seriously, that shouldn't confuse you. The standard way of making more of anything is either to increase the existing ones or to add new ones.

You misunderstand me. I never said it was an exclusive problem, just a guaranteed problem. In other words, I never said universal coverage was the only charity, just that it was charity.

 

Ok, now you are really confusing me. Are you saying that "government" provided health care is "state charity?" and that that is your objection to universal health care?

Keep in mind that Medicare is not "charity" because the people who have it, PAY every month for their coverage. It works the same as any insurance, much like you do for your car insurance: Everyone pays into the system, but not everyone gets the benefit -- THAT, btw, is how ALL insurance works, whether private or public.

Ummm, yes, but those people are still paying every month for their coverage.

 

Chandos, two things:
1.) Do the Medicare beneficiaries pay 100% of Medicare costs? Meaning, is Medicare 100% independant of tax dollars? If even $1 of tax money goes to support Medicare, then there's charity. Not much, but some.
2.) The systems being proposed by Congress don't pay for themselves. They will need tax-payer dollars to fund them, no matter which plan is used (of any of the current ones I've seen).

As for this:

Wrong. The idea of insurance is that everyone who pays can recieve benefits if needed. Now, hopefully not everyone needs it at once, and even for those who do, the average cost of care is lower than the average income from their payments over the entire period of coverage. Private insurance does not, however, take money from someone who can't benefit from the plan to pay for someone who can.

My real problem with a universal system, though, is the loss of variety and flexibility. In a private system, anyone who wants to offer a new kind of plan can offer a new kind of plan. You get all kinds of options out there. For even the heavy regulations that are being proposed by the Senate, you would loose much of the variability. For the House universal system, you'd loose almost all. If you don't like one of the few options the gov't offers, you're out of luck. Oh, and good luck seeing any changes in those policies. It's a bureacracy, after all.