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

To: Archie Meeties who wrote (8547)	8/21/2009 3:09:33 PM
From: TimF	3 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

Drunk driving crashes involving non alcoholics are in fact the ones most amenable to intervention. Perhaps, but they aren't health care issues. With alcoholics you can at least frame the alcoholism as a disease and the intervention as health care. With non-alcoholics the intervention is not health care, even if its done by health care professionals in a hospital or other health care facility.

To: Archie Meeties who wrote (8547)	8/21/2009 3:40:28 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

Drunk driving crashes involving non alcoholics are in fact the ones most amenable to intervention. Maybe so, but that doesn't make them the fault of the health care system. Sure, while one is in the ER for something drunk related, it's a convenient opportunity to intervene. Workable, probably do some good. But that's not the same thing as holding the health care system accountable for all alcohol related accidental deaths. And in this country, such problems as smoking, drunk driving, obesity etc., need both public health and individual interventions. Public health interventions are clearly called for in cases of communicable diseases. That's why public health systems were created. When you extend that to include central management of human behaviors, you're getting into controversial territory. Institutional nannyism is anathema to the individual liberties for which this country stands. The progressive philosophy is somehow able to stand up for civil rights, privacy, and choice in some issues but ignore them completely in others. Boggles my libertarian mind. We already take law enforcement steps in response to the danger of drunk driving. Restraint of proven drunk drivers is an acceptable constraint on liberty. Smoking is a public health issue only to the extent that second-hand smoke is injurious to others. We have constrained smoking in public places but, appropriately, there is no constraint on smoking in private. There are no laws against obesity or overindulging in alcohol because they don't injure other people, per se. I cannot make a case for obesity or overindulging in alcohol being illegal. I hope you aren't thinking along those lines. As far as treating obesity and drinking as public health issue, at the individual level intervention would be extraordinarily intrusive. I don't see how you could make a case that the end justifies the means there. Feel free to try if you think you can. At the macro level, these behaviors that you want to manage affect the public more as health-care budgetary problems than as public health problems. And they wouldn't be health care budgetary problems if so much of the payment for medical care weren't communal rather than individual. If folks paid for their own medical care, they wouldn't be a public issue at all. Left in the dust is preventative care and public health. We've talked about preventative care a lot here on this thread. Some preventative care is cost effective. What is cost effective we are mostly already doing, like colon cancer screening. We should do--that is, pay for communally--that which has been shown to be cost effective. Most preventative care is not cost effective. It benefits a few individuals at great communal cost. It seems to me that the priority for such spending is not a given and that individuals who want preventative measures that haven't been shown to be cost effective should get them on their own. Our health communal care costs are already onerous. The default is to not pay for them so the onus is on those who want them covered to prove their case. A good system imo would have those in reverse order. And would over time lead to reduced overall costs. I think your assertion of reduced costs is more a statement of world view or belief system than objectively supportable conclusion. Again, you're welcome to try to support the notion that costs would be reduced. I'm pretty sure you can't.

To: Archie Meeties who wrote (8547)	8/21/2009 3:42:25 PM
From: longnshort	2 Recommendations Respond to of 42652

FALSE WITNESS Peter Wehner, writing in a blog at www.commentarymagazine.com, says it is President Obama -- and not his critics -- who is spreading false information about health care reform legislation. "In a conference call with a multidenominational group of pastors, rabbis and other liberal religious leaders who support his plan to reinvent American health care, President Obama said: 'I know there's been a lot of misinformation in this debate and there are some folks out there who are, frankly, bearing false witness. I need you to spread the facts and speak the truth "In fact, the number of examples in which Obama himself has borne 'false witness' is itself staggering - on everything from the cost of his plan, to its effects, to the endorsements he claims he has received, to the agreements he claims he has made. One reason support for Obamacare is collapsing is that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has blown apart various false claims made by Obama about his plans," Mr. Wehner said. "And in the call [Wednesday], Mr. Obama once again was, well, bearing false witness. 'Many of you have older members of your congregations. They're all now scared to death that somehow we're talking about cutting Medicare benefits,' he said. 'That is, again, simply not true.' "The president's statement is what's simply not true. President Obama announced on Saturday, in fact, that he was proposing an additional $313 billion in Medicare and Medicaid cuts - which the White House euphemistically refers to as 'savings' - over 10 years, on top of the $309 billion in his 2010 budget. "President Obama has developed a nasty little habit. It is not enough for him to spread false and misleading information on an almost daily basis; he has taken to portraying himself as America's intrepid truth teller. He really should stop doing so."

To: Archie Meeties who wrote (8547)	8/21/2009 3:43:05 PM
From: longnshort	Respond to of 42652

ABORTION DEBATE The National Right to Life Committee accused President Obama of misleading a group of religious leaders Wednesday when he said it is a "fabrication" to say that the legislation backed by the White House would result in "government funding of abortions." Douglas Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee, issued the following statement Wednesday: "Emboldened by the recently demonstrated superficiality of some organs of the news media, President Obama today brazenly misrepresented the abortion-related component of the health care legislation that his congressional allies and staff have crafted. "As amended by the House Energy and Commerce Committee on July 30 (the Capps-Waxman Amendment), the bill backed by the White House (H.R. 3200) explicitly authorizes the government plan to cover all elective abortions. "Obama apparently seeks to hide behind a technical distinction between tax funds and government-collected premiums. But these are merely two types of public funds, collected and spent by government agencies. "The Obama-backed legislation makes it explicitly clear that no citizen would be allowed to enroll in the government plan unless he or she is willing to give the federal agency an extra amount calculated to cover the cost of all elective abortions - this would not be optional. The abortionists would bill the federal government and would be paid by the federal government. These are public funds, and this is government funding of abortion."