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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (3698)	1/10/2008 2:11:23 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 42652

Ideologically opposed doesn't indicate any lack of consideration. Also much ideological opposition is pragmatic opposition at one step removed. Its a belief that certain ideas don't work as well in the real world as other ideas. So many primarily ideological opponents would change their mind if it could indeed be perfectly guaranteed to "lower our costs by 50%, improve quality and cover everyone". Even more purely ideological opposition (believing that certain ideas are unjust, or otherwise seriously wrong, and not just impractical or likely to produce poor results), doesn't really indicate any lack of consideration. The holding of such ideas could be after long consideration, and in any case whether a result is pragmatically good or not depends on criteria that depend on ideological and philosophical ideas and inclinations. Changing the health insurance system may have some unambiguous and uncontroversial benefits, and some unambiguous and uncontroversial costs. How much weight to give each of these is something that reasonable people can disagree about. Another factor, perhaps a more important one, is that it will also have results which some will claim as benefits and others as costs, and there is no unambiguous or uncontroversial answer. And thats the uncertainty left in hindsight after a change is made. Before the change is made you obviously have a lot more uncertainty, because we really don't know what the results will be.

To: Road Walker who wrote (3698)	1/10/2008 3:00:45 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42652

There are some here who are ideologically opposed. Not pragmatically opposed. Even if were guaranteed to lower our costs by 50%, improve quality and cover everyone, they would still be opposed. Perhaps, but maybe not. How does one come to be ideologically opposed? Well, some are just born into it. They learn an ideology at their mother's knee or from their peers and that's that. Failures of that ideology don't shake them. They may not even register. But some people develop their ideologies as a result of wisdom collected during a lifetime. I've posted before that when I first went to register to vote at 21, it was as a Socialist. Having seen the failures of that through the history I've lived and having earned a living in part by studying the effects of too much employment security and egalitarianism in the public sector, I know how deleterious they can be and can anticipate how applying them to health care in our country might turn out. I am willing to look at counter arguments but I haven't seen any. I never ducked that. Maybe you forgot. If you provided one, I can't believe I would have missed it. I don't claim you ducked it. I recall your addressing it, in your way, but not countering it.