Lord Flashheart said:
So you would rather people go without help and be put in debt or jail for not being able to cover the cost or hope some charitable soul helps them is better than say diverting funds away from your armed forces to provide basic healthcare?
In a natural disaster if someone is injured does your government not help them? or do they have to show their insurance details first?
Depends on the natural disaster. In 90% of disasters (mainly hurricanes, floods, ect), the insurance companies help with payments and local churches help with recovery efforts. The government is not needed in most cases. Or in your country, did the government come out and have to pay for snow removal around your house earlier this year when it snowed a lot?
The area I live in didn't get any snow but why would they pay to remove the snow. Bad analagy. They don't pay to unblock my drains or paint my house. They did send the army in to help with the flooding or gritters and snow ploughs during the freeze.A charity just wouldn't have had the resourses to do that. It's the local gov in New york that provides those services not charities and not insurance providers.
A health country is a more productive country. How can you say peoploe should be forced to find their own health care but not the same for education? or the roads. Maybe everyone should pay for the upkeep of the road outside their house and if they don't want to then fine.
Actually, Mafoo and I agree that people should find their own education too. Our education system in the US sucks as well, because there is no competition among teachers and schools, and we have wound up paying more money for less education than most other countries.
And the people that couldn't afford it?What do they do?I doubt if it was all private it would be cheaper. Look at the extortionate cost of private schools. Poor areas wont get enough funding (if they do now) and the quality will be lower.
I don't understand how people can say a basic human need, health, is up to the person and not essential and the gov should stay out of, my taxes are better spent elsewhere but then quite happily have the gov pay for something you don't really need like roads with your money?
Human need is a matter of perspective. We did not even have a tenth of the healthcare services in 1900 that we do today. What is a person entitled to? A 100 year lifespan, no matter what?
A person is entitled to whats available in that country. But without health how will you work to provide for yourself? You need health. How will you enjoy life to the fullest you can? Don't you deserve to have treatment if it's there? Would you want to sit and suffer because you don't have the right policy forced upon you by your job with no say or choice in the matter? Without health you can't live.
Education, health, food and a home are essentials for people to survive and if someone has problems with that then there should be some way of getting it. If there is a broken system or no system in place then it's down to the gov to do their job and provide it or put it in place for the population.
Yet for two of those four, the government does not control 100% of the services (food, homes), do they? Yet you are arguing that they do that for health in America. See, here is the problem:
The government does not fix food prices, nor home prices, because it is a good that has rapidly reduced in price over the past 100 years. 100 years ago, food costs made up 40-50% of a households annual budget. Due to revolutions in agriculture, that percentage has reduced to 10-15%. Homes can be in a similar situation - free markets allow supply and demand to be met, and everyone wins. However, with healthcare and education, prices and quality can suffer immensely under government control. In America, our education system costs more than almost any other country in the world, and we rank in the top 30s for math and sciences. Therefore, we get a horrible return on investment.
You do not understand our system. We have government health care. Medicare has about 40 million recipients, at a cost of $7,500 per person. That is almost twice the national average for private health care insurance (which is about $4,500 per person). If the government expands its role in health care, it will be enrolling new people at the $7,500 rate, not the $4,500 rate.
Nothing in the governments new health care bills addresses that issue. Health care costs are not expensive because the government does not run it, but because there are many issues surrounding the industry. I have outlined them before in this threat (AFAIK), and will gladly do it again.
So if the government does force its hand in making more people enrolled in a public system, our costs will go up not down. When that happens, more money will be taken away from everyone - rich, poor, middle class. We may have to pay out 25% of our annual GDP in health care, just to cover a system where everyone has health care. Simply because the system is broken and needs fixed.
Mafoo does not advocate that we do nothing. There are very practical fixes that can reduce the cost for people to get health care - government and public sectors included. We both want health care reform. We want them to reduce the costs of care, so more people can afford it first. Once the cost has dropped down, then we can look at how best to handle mandatory health care, or other systems. For example, in America, we require everyone that drives to have auto insurance. However, the insurance is cheap, readily available, and incredibly competitive. No one complains about the system, because it works fantastically. We could do the same with health care if we fixed it FIRST, then looked at how best to take care of those that need health care.
I see what you mean about the cost rising for everyone but will it? Isn't thsat scare mongering? How much of your food is subsidised by the gov? Regulated by them? I agree that and this goes for health care it shouldn't be gov run but you pay your taxes. Where is that money going. The gov should step in if its failing like it looks like it is. It should be there to offer out the money for these services as it's your money.
Car insurance is different. I've paid mine for over a decade and never needed it. That's why its so cheap, well not here but thats rip-off britain for you, they only pay out now and then and will do everything not to. With health care you might not need it now but you will eventually. And quite often especially as you get older. You keep claiming on you car insurance and what happens to your premiums?
Maybe a better way of putting it is you need the funding. If a bit comes from everyone they can pool the money and invest it wisely. You hope. but with people investing in one insurance and others in another you don't get the same level of funding and premiums go up. You don't get the same level of investment. Do the hospitals only get the money after they've treated someone? I guess I'm wary of insurance brokers being in charge of the funds. They aren't an honest bunch at the best of times and always looking to save money.
Of course no-one here will ever be homeless, hungry, out of work for a long time or seriously unhealthy over an extende period with no insurancw.
Given your immense debts to foreign creditors, I wonder how long you can sustain that.
Every country has huge debts abroad. By that reasoning every country will go bankrupt and fall.
That just doesn't happen.
Americans have a piss poor system which isn't working unless you're rich and are objecting to a possible alternative using fox news excuses to justify it.
We are not objecting to a better system. We are objecting to a worse system, which has been proposed by the democrats in congress, and backed by the president.
I hear a lot of republican vs democrats and it seems to be if you're one side then anything the other proposes is wrong without question and vice versa. Is that why you don't like it?
It boggles the mind. I've seen this before when govs don't want to bring in a change which could possibly help and they feed propagander to the masses who lap it up and repeat it verbatum.
You know, Hugo Chavez said the same thing about food distributions to the poor in their country. Look how well that went. Not every government controlled sector is benevolent.
I doubt any are.
I'm not saying that the new system will work I'm just questioning the attitudes of the american public. No-one has given a good enough reason why having the gov change the system is bad. Are you all telling me that the current system was not put in place by the gov? and they had no hand in it?
I do not think your well informed about the American public. The public has seen what congress is trying to do with the bill - load it with a lot of crap, and favors - and distains the bill. They want something simpler, and more malleable to work with, which is totally understandable. The American public absolutely wants health care reform - why do you think the Dems have been working on it? However, the American people do not want a 2,700 page overhaul of the system, changing virtually everything. They want a 10 page bill that gets the ball rolling on reducing costs. The American people never wanted universal health care, government take overs, or mandatory insurance. They just want to pay less for health care - and they are not getting that with the bills that are currently being circulated through congress.
I'm not for overly-complicating things but maybe this needs a complete overhaul and 10 pages wont do that. I'll resist the "duming down for Americans" bit ;-P but change isn't easy and you have Obama. He can do anything and yes we can and all that. Thats why you voting for the messiah./jk So you want to pay less but you don't want mandatory insurance, gov take over or universal health care. You do have to pay you know. Unless you want a system where you pay as needed I don't see how you'll get that. And that system is expensive. It sounds like if the reason yanks don't want reform is because the proposal is too long then maybe it should be done without them. Did they really expect it to be bullet points?
Please help me to understand your attitudes. I really want to thats why I'm asking.
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