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

To: Mary Cluney who wrote (3729)	1/11/2008 7:44:56 AM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

What am I missing? I already addressed his comments. He's not proposing scrapping Britain's system for the same reason none of the Democratic candidates for President is proposing a government take-over of health care like they have in Britain. How can you disagree with this position? the equal right of everyone to care and comfort when they are born, when they are ill, and when they are dying. I think that's a lovely sentiment. If he said "access" instead of "right" I might even agree with it. I make a distinction between the right to non-discrimination and the claimed right to have someone else pay. I'm comfortable with that distinction. If we move into a paradigm where people have the right to "free" health care, that really is a departure from our current government paradigm. To make such a departure, we need to think carefully about it, not just fall into it because it's a lovely sentiment. I'm not arguing here that we shouldn't do it, only that it's a huge departure, not a small step. Look at police protection as an analogy. Having the right to be safe in our homes and persons is a lovely sentiment, too, one with a much stronger, more elemental, basis than paid healthcare. Yet we don't that right. If we are victimized by a home invasion, physically injured with property stolen, the police will try to bring the culprit to justice. The police do not protect us from the crime other than in the vaguest of ways, they only punish the offender. They don't compensate us for our loss. They don't pay our medical bills. And they most certainly don't provide any specific preventive services. They primarily act after the face. If you are threatened and want protection, they don't assign you a guard or move you to a safehouse. If you want that, you get friends to help or hire your own security. If you apply that same paradigm to health care, it means a trip to the hospital when your appendix bursts. It doesn't mean an annual mammogram or a lifetime supply of Lipitor. If we were going to increase the government role to reduce our risks from hazards, I'd put the money into protecting people from stalkers before spending it on protecting people from heart attacks. Protection of people from other people is a more elemental role of government than protecting them from cholesterol, yet we don't do that now. We're taking a big step if we place cholesterol above stalkers in our priority scheme and start funding health protection rather than police protection. If you want to do the former, start with the latter. Then you have a better argument for the former.

To: Mary Cluney who wrote (3729)	1/11/2008 12:16:01 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42652

Somehow you and others on this thread seem to think that providing universal access to healthcare for all Americans would lead to "socialism". Socialism isn't a binary thing where you have total socialism or no socialism. We have socialist aspects in our economy now. Any of the proposals on the table for universal health care would increase the extent of socialism. David Cameron might have said it isn't a dream of socialism, and perhaps implied it wasn't socialism, but it is. The system in the UK is particularly socialist, because its not just government paid health care but government provided health care. In that sense the UK's system is more unique among wealthy countries than our system is. Now socialism isn't automatically in every single case bad. I don't look at something, and say "that's socialism so it is impossible that it could be good in any way". But lacking strong information to the contrary that's the safer way to bet than the opposite. It seems to me like this is such pure and simple logic spoken by someone with very strong credentials in the advocacy of the free market. What am I missing? Well for one thing I'm not so sure that he has "strong credentials in the advocacy of the free market". "Cameron describes himself as a "modern compassionate conservative" and has said that he is "fed up with the Punch and Judy politics of Westminster".[1] He has stated that he is "certainly a big Thatcher fan, but I don't know whether that makes me a Thatcherite."[2] He has also claimed to be a "liberal Conservative", and "not a deeply ideological person."[3] Cameron has stated that he does not intend to oppose the government as a matter of course, and will offer his support in areas of agreement. He also wants to move the Conservatives' focus away from purely fiscal matters, saying "It's time we admitted that there's more to life than money, and it's time we focused not just on GDP, but on GWB - general well-being". [4] There have been claims that he described himself to journalists at a dinner during the leadership contest as the "heir to Blair".[5] He and others in the "Notting Hill set" have sought to focus on issues such as the environment, work-life balance and international development -- issues not seen as priorities for the post-Thatcher Conservative party.[6] In a speech to the Conservative annual conference in October 2006, he identified the concept of "social responsibility" as the essence of his political philosophy.[7] Some political commentators have suggested that his style is influenced by the Swedish Moderate Party leader and current Prime Minister, Fredrik Reinfeldt, who advocates moving to the centre and supporting traditionally centre-left issues[8] and in fact, Reinfeldt himself has been called the "Swedish David Cameron".[9]" en.wikipedia.org How can you disagree with this position? Well for starters because as a matter of simple fact its wrong. The UK has a socialist health care system, so any position that "its not socialism" is wrong. That would be true even if socialism (either in general, or in this specific area) was a very good idea.

To: Mary Cluney who wrote (3729)	1/11/2008 1:15:40 PM
From: Peter Dierks	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42652

"Somehow you and others on this thread seem to think that providing universal access to healthcare for all Americans would lead to 'socialism'." I am not sure how socialized medicine can be anything but socialized medicine. If you could explain how removing the private sector from the loop can result in private enterprise medicine or capitalistic medicine I would love to read about it. It is the exact thing that you advocates of unfettered government management of medicine want to remove that power the American medical miracle that has provided most of the medical advances over the last half century or more.