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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dayuhan who wrote (82963)	6/26/2000 9:17:00 PM
From: Father Terrence	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

They don't have healthcare now, and I don't see them spreading diseases throughout the land, or alleyways jammed with corpses! ... but it makes more sense than having a bunch of people staggering around carrying infectious diseases and passing them on, or a bunch of corpses rotting in the streets. In fact, a good portion of Americans have never had healthcare insurance during the past 100 years. Yet, I cannot recall corpses piling up on streets like the black plague of Europe anywhere in America. It's true that millions died from influenza in 1916, but the medical community at the time was at a loss to stop that, and health insurance would not have changed that one iota. In fact, a significant number that are employed, but are listed as not having health insurance, do. They are teenagers who are covered under their parent's family plan even though their employers do not provide it because they are part-time workers. The better thing to do is to eliminate the IRS, incorporate the www.cats.org plan, and totally exempt anyone from below a certain income from any kind of tax at all. Including excise taxes and state, local and city taxes. Then they could afford basic health insurance premiums.

To: Dayuhan who wrote (82963)	6/27/2000 12:31:00 AM
From: Gordon A. Langston	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

The idea of a right to health care is of course absurd, but from a pragmatic standpoint it makes perfect sense for a government to guarantee - and pay for - basic care for those who cannot afford it. The proposition may be appalling on a theoretical plane, but it makes more sense than having a bunch of people staggering around carrying infectious diseases and passing them on, or a bunch of corpses rotting in the streets.. You are just stating a preference for government over any possible individual or community action that would be voluntary. The collective. Yes, free health care places an unacceptable lien on somebody's resources. So would picking up the bodies of the people who wouldn't have health care in your ideal state. Yes, unacceptable. Again shouldn't individuals and groups of individuals, like the ones who attend to health crises in foreign countries be given a chance or do we go for the collective again. The sad fact is that if we give people the right to succeed or fail, some will fail, and it is cheaper to support them at a minimal level than to clean up the mess they make if they aren't supported. It's not a compassionate calculation, it's a purely economic one. So, possibly we need a separate area for those who want the right to fail and for those who don't. It's perfectly OK to be pragmatic and attempt to influence others to "voluntarily" help their fellow man. Who's to say it wouldn't work? Alexander the Great asked Diogenes "Is there anything I can do for you?" to which Diogenes replied, "You can stand aside from between me and the sunlight."

To: Dayuhan who wrote (82963)	6/27/2000 12:16:00 PM
From: average joe	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 108807

I can afford health care but I live in a country where it is provided for me. I get the same common denominator health care as the next average joe. If I have anything more serious than a cold I'm off to the Mayo Clinic on the first plane. Only a very small percentage of the doctors trained here stay here. What we have in our clinics and hospitals is South African and East Indian trained doctors many of whom cannot speak basic English. So if you think basic health care paid for by the public purse guarantees a basic standard think again. More people die in Canada from Canadian hospital introduced infections than from handguns. A few years ago someone was dying from a rare virus in a hospital here. There was a new vaccine for this virus that was shipped to Canada. At the border it was discovered that the vaccine did not have both official languages on the bottle (French/English) and was not allowed in. So if your motto is let the rich pay how do you propose to contain the rich in the cesspool you are proposing?