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

To: Lane3 who wrote (9100)	9/5/2009 9:46:17 AM
From: skinowski	3 Recommendations Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42652

No disagreement... To me personally, I should admit, the debate is over. I am strongly against collectivist solutions. To the contrary, I think we could very significantly improve the quality and reduce the costs of healthcare through deregulation - and by fighting the culture of "defensive medicine". Regrettably, I find that there is hardly any discussion along these lines. There is always some sort of a rationing involved when we have a desirable and limited resource. I am not a believer in rationing by committees of bureaucrats and through political connections. In fact, I think this is the worst kind of rationing. This is what we will inevitably get under ANY centralized socialized plan. Public option.... one needs to be a real true believer - or a member of the media - not to see its purpose. It is a Trojan Horse built of glass. You just look at it, and you see politicians and bureaucrats salivating for money and power. We are not going to get where we want by making great strides in the wrong direction.

To: Lane3 who wrote (9100)	9/5/2009 9:54:15 AM
From: Lane3	1 Recommendation Respond to of 42652

Asymmetrical information 05 Sep 2009 08:07 am From my comments on whether any bill is acceptable to progressives with a lower price tag: I had a heated online discussion a few weeks back with a friend who is a liberal Democrat; eventually I realized that he was reacting strangely to my comments because he assumed that the federal government was going to give everyone in the country 100% free health care paid for out of taxes. So I quoted him the relevant passage from the House of Representative summary of their proposal; and then I had to quote him another passage to get him to believe that they actually meant to charge people a penalty for not getting insurance because it cost too much. He was quite shocked, and is now among the liberals who oppose the Democratic Party proposals. And he's an intelligent, educated man with a strong interest in politics. He just had not read the actual proposals, and had assumed that what Congress was delivering was what he had hoped for a year ago. I'm sure he's not the only one. I think also of the young woman with whom I exchanged comments more recently; when I suggested the possibility of her getting her employee health benefits as an increase in pay to spend on her own health care, she thought I was referring to the $100 a month she has deducted from her pay. She apparently had no idea that her employer was paying out several times as much to her insurance carrier, over and above her pay. That is, she didn't know one of the basic and important facts about American health care policy. Both of these things are distressingly common, and no, conservatives, not just among Democrats. People don't know what's in various bills, because bills are very complicated, so they just project whatever they think would be neat onto the ones authored by politicians they like--for all the policy heat about mandates during the Democratic primaries, I doubt 1% of the audience understood or cared. And most people are unaware of how much their benefits cost their employer. That's why when someone points out that their wages aren't growing so fast, they get all angry and outraged, instead of thinking, "Yeah, but I have $3,000 more health care every year!" That's partly because people just don't realize that the stuff costs employers as much as it does . . . and partly because insurance is a lousy consumer good. I remember having a conversation with a coworker within three minutes a) complained that there was no reason that health insurance should cost so much and b) insurance was really important, because a few years ago his wife had had a baby prematurely with massive complications for her, and if they hadn't had insurance it would have cost several hundred thousand dollars. More broadly, as I pointed out a few weeks ago, If you suddenly get organ transplant coverage, this is a big valuable benefit--but you probably only notice if you need an organ transplant, which is pretty rare. No one should claim that the real problem with the health care debate is that ignorant people are being tricked into disagreeing with you. The ignorant people infest both sides of the debate, and it's not clear to me which pool of ignorance is more powerful. meganmcardle.theatlantic.com

To: Lane3 who wrote (9100)	9/6/2009 4:41:37 PM
From: Road Walker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

The reason I chimed in was only to make a point about attributing negative motives to people. I think that it's all but impossible to fairly accuse someone of negative motives such as not being concerned about "the general welfare." One most certainly cannot determine that from the simple fact that one has good intentions and the other party disagrees. But you find folks doing that all the time. I have good intentions; you don't subscribe to my plan; ergo, you do not have good intentions. Nope, doesn't logically follow. I agree. But that argument doesn't follow the discussion. The gentleman was throwing the Constitution at me as an exception to my views; I was just pointing out that it didn't exclude my views on health care. Come on Lane... I didn't attribute anything, you did.